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by cneutron_Archive
Let me preface this by saying that I neither work for bandcamp, have sex with anybody that works for bandcamp or am I getting any kind of unsolicited kickback or reward from them at any kind. This is merely a community bulletin over something I find badass.Much like a lot of you, I've been playing in bands for awhile, and for most of us that means a whole lot of grunt/crap work in the background that has very little to do with the actual playing of music. Therefore when a tool comes around that actually makes some of that grunt work easier, I get excited. When it turns out that it is a damn useful tool that is run by great and responsive people, well... I want to spread the word as best I can.Bandcamp is one of those.I guess the nutshell explanation is that it's a free third party site where you upload high quality .wav or .aiffs of your music, you set up a page with all of the information and either set it up for paid, sliding scale payment or free download in any form anybody could want. .aac, high quality mp3, .wav, Ogg Vorbis. FLAC... whatever!There's also a really easy link to setup stuff for people to buy physical products that is one of the more elegant payment processes I've yet seen (warning: paypal required). I'm not kidding folks, Bandcamp has cdbaby licked in that regard.From their own site:Bandcamp isn t Yet Another Place to Put Your Music. Rather, we power a site that s yours. So instead of ads for Sexy Singles Chat, your fans see your design, your music, your URL. You retain all ownership rights, and we just hang out in the background handling the tech stuff.Being one of the people that ALWAYS found myspace abhorrent, and really have gone to any level possible to avoid putting people at Murdoch's site, I have to say... bandcamp fucking rules.To say nothing of the super easy flash players that they allow you to download and embed in blogs, websites or really anywhere with custom code. They give you analytics data, they let you set creative commons rightsI had a few minor issues of craziness to deal with, all on my side I might add, and not only was their customer service fast... they literally changed things up for me for the better without asking just to be helpful.They are setting up a sort of directory thing, ala mp3.com but not retarded. No idea if that will catch on, but as a digital file delivery service, it's god damn holy shit hell fuck bonkers crazy.If they can somehow manage getting into the itunes store and physical distribution they'll have discmakers/cdbaby/super D licked in no time at all.Again, from their site:We provide fast, dependable streaming and downloads of your entire catalog, adorn your tracks with all the metadata they need to sail into iTunes with artwork, titles, and so on intact, and mutter the various incantations necessary to get your site top-ranked in Google. All things we know you could do, but we suspect you d rather focus on your music. Well, think of us as your invisible bandmate who loves that other stuff. And we won't even ask to play tambourine.I don't know man, maybe it's that I'm getting older and cranky, but I feel like shaking my fist at the various web 2.0 options for music these days, while bandcamp never ceases to actually amaze me and surprise me by it's goodness.A cursory search shows that some PRF'ers (besides me) already use it.Post HoneymoonUnited Sons of ToilMaple SteveDiamond CultVictory and Associates (me)Karl Rove: Courage and Consequence (me)update: Conan Neutron & the Secret Friends now!Dudes, do this.Please don't make have to go to myspace to hear your musics anymore.Thanks in advance.
Yes it's true, I am made from atoms.