Why I love Bandcamp: Free Fridays, solid app, no DRM, more



[ad_1]

For the remainder of 2021, Bandcamp Friday returns on the first Friday of every month (including today).  This is one of the many reasons I recommend checking out Bandcamp as a solid showcase for digital music.
Enlarge / For the remainder of 2021, Bandcamp Friday returns on the first Friday of every month (including today). This is one of the many reasons I recommend checking out Bandcamp as a solid showcase for digital music.

Band Camp

The world of digital music has come a long way since the Napster era, and nowadays that means a good number of paid subscription services strive to deliver all the music you could imagine in one. legally acceptable package. But getting music subscription dollars into the hands of your favorite musicians is still a sticking point.

When it comes to musicians, Apple Music remains one of the best payment services. drop based on any wacky spreadsheet that every service runs in the background. Anyway, this calculation checks; your $ 10 or $ 15 per month so far can only be split between hundreds of song streams.

If you’re willing to open up your wallet a bit more for downloaded music, today’s return of the Bandcamp Fridays promotion is a massive counterweight to underpaid subscription services. And that’s a good excuse to point to Bandcamp as a feature-rich, mobile-friendly option for buying music online.

Are you down with OGG?

Bandcamp Fridays was launched in early 2020 as a way to generate more money in the pockets of bands and artists, especially after so many COVID-19 tour cancellations. Purchase any digital-only content through Bandcamp on the first Friday of a month when the promotion is active, and the service forgoes its normal reduction in artist earnings (which is 15% by default and 10% after the promotion is active. ‘a user exceeds $ 5,000 in revenue in the past 12 months). The promotion stayed true to its First Friday cadence for almost a year before jumping a few months in seemingly unpredictable ways. This week, Bandcamp confirmed that the Bandcamp Friday promotion will resume for the remainder of 2021.

From a digital rights perspective, it’s easy to recommend Bandcamp as a showcase, as any purchase includes unlimited downloads of DRM-free audio files and you can choose from lossless FLAC, uncompressed WAV, and a variety of other formats with and lossless. If you’re not ready to buy, Bandcamp also allows artists to easily enable uninterrupted previews of their songs and albums, as well as a “you’ve listened enough, maybe buy it” option after a single machine uses the preview feature a few times. And once you’ve purchased something through Bandcamp, you can use the service’s mobile app on Android and iOS to download offline copies, see updates from artists you’ve already purchased from, and access playlists. reading organized by Bandcamp. This app, in particular, has matured a lot over the past year on the functionality and stability fronts.

Bandcamp’s normal 15% revenue reduction is certainly competitive against other popular digital storefronts, including game services like Steam and the Epic Games Store. It made me more likely to buy on days other than the first Friday of the month, although I admit Bandcamp Fridays drove me to the service as a way to pay my favorite artists when I can’t see them in concert. . Since then, Bandcamp has convinced me as the favorite music service and app for everyday use. (And if you’re an international user, you can buy from Bandcamp using a wide range of compatible currencies, whether that’s using its inbuilt payment processing or Paypal, which I appreciate.) You have until midnight. Pacific today to take advantage of this month’s free promotion.

[ad_2]

Source link