Did you ever feel like the music you like…. Well, you don’t really like? Are you tired of opening Spotify, sitting through 5 minutes of ads so you can listen to the latest bland track by whatever artist learned how to trick the algorithm to get on the most Spotify playlists? How did this happen? How can we escape it? Music should be the soundtrack to our lives and a beautiful source of inspiration, not some faceless, endless, bland background activity bookended by ads and dictated by machines. Machines who, by the way, don’t even have the ability to actually listen to music.
Once upon a time humans would buy records, 8 track tapes, cassettes, CDs, and later MP3s. We each had a collection. Even in the early days of digital music, MP3 ownership was actually a thing. Our music collection was a reflection of our individuality. It was something we could share with people or connect with them on. They were smaller collections. Sure some people’s music collections were in the thousands, or even hundreds of thousands. But we didn’t own millions of CDs, or billions of MP3s, because that would be insane. First of all, you wouldn’t be able to listen to it all. Secondly, the cost would be astronomical, and you wouldn’t even enjoy 99% of it. There is absolutely no need for this much music for anybody.
The truth is that we as consumers of art were left with little choice. After the invention of smartphones and then Spotify, big tech companies started phasing out the ability to purchase music. On an iPhone these days it is nearly impossible to transfer files to listen to even if you wanted to. Admittedly, this is far easier to do on an Android device, but this is not an iPhone vs Android video, and most people in the USA use iPhones these days. Like it or not, this is the truth.
So what can we do?
One option is the return to the physical world. These days turntables and vinyl are readily available at many retail outlets. But the problem with this is the vinyl selection in these chain outlets such as Best Buy, Target, and Others is very generic. You’d be hard pressed to find anything in these stores besides complete mainstream selections. Also, vinyl is expensive! One record costs upwards of $25 to $30. There still are independent record sellers scattered about who offer a wider selection and better prices, but in some cities there aren’t any at all, and honestly much of the best new music is not being pressed to any physical format.
Enter Bandcamp:
I’m sure many of you watching this already know about Bandcamp, it is not new and has been around since 2007. Whether you know of them or not, Bandcamp is a unique platform. It is somewhat oldschool in its business model and offers music from the artist in a more direct way.
Artists can upload music to Bandcamp, create their own band or label page, then decide how much they want to charge for people to download their music. You can also stream the music from Bandcamp’s app or website, but you absolutely should download it and save it to your computer, more on that in a bit. In addition, bandcamp also offers a marketplace for physical releases.
In comparison to all of the other online platforms that exist for music, none of them pay the artist as well as bandcamp does. It’s not even close. For example take a look at these charts that compare my Bandcamp earnings to my streaming earnings. These numbers are based on the entire time I have had my Bandcamp page and since my music has been streaming. My Bandcamp page was created only about a month before I put my music on streaming services.
Since 2011 I’ve had 43,815 plays and 286 sales totalling $2,135.07 income on Bandcamp
Now if we look at streaming, since 2011 on all the streaming services combined I’ve had 59,351,188 streams for a total of $285.88 income.
CLEARLY Bandcamp is the far superior service for artists.
Bandcamp is also better for the consumer. As I am about to show you how to use bandcamp to build a completely unique music library filled with independent artists that reflects your own musical taste and individuality. You will OWN the music you buy, you can download it to your computer. You can play it without an internet connection, you can make your own ‘mix tapes’ or playlists and share them with friends, and you will have directly supported the artists you listen to in the process.
How to get started building your music library with Bandcamp.
The first thing you need to do is go to bandcamp.com/fans and create a fan account if you do not already have one.
Once you have your fan account setup, try going to bancamp.com/discover. Personally I try to avoid the Bandcamp home page because it features suggestions as well as top selling releases. Our goal here is not to just buy whatever is popular. We want to truly discover some new artists.
On the Discover page, try typing a city or location you might be interested in. For example you could put in Manila, and then all the releases located in Manila, Philippines will show up. Below the location you will see other criteria where you can narrow down your selections. I selected ‘dream pop’ as my search genre. This is usually enough for me. Then I like to start previewing tracks from the different albums. If I find something interesting I will click on the album page and check out more songs. Once I feel like I’ve found something I like, I add it to my cart and move on.
Then I can switch genres, or locations and start over. Personally I like to do this once every couple of weeks to keep adding to my library. I also sometimes like to arrange things by selecting ‘new arrivals’ rather than always using ‘best selling’. There is also a ‘surprise me’ setting that just randomly orders things on the page which is a cool way to search as well.
Let’s be honest, algorithms suck at finding music because they literally do not have ears. I am tired of the Spotify apologists out there saying things like “I’ve found some great music thanks to the Algorithm”. Sorry bub, you didn’t find ANYTHING. A machine suggested something that you happened to like. But is it really that good? Is it really that special? Much of it is lukewarm, mediocre, and is ‘what everybody else is listening to’ music. Labels and marketing teams spend all their time these days trying to find ways to trick Spotify’s algorithm into suggesting their music. So many great artists do not have the time nor the resources to spend doing such research, they’re too busy making amazing music. This is all of the great music being lost thanks to the algorithm.
Some people out there might be thinking, jeez this will take a lot of time! Yes it does! That is the point! We SHOULD spend the time searching for music. People seem to not have any problem at all spending hours upon hours scrolling through Instagram or TikTok and they are not accomplishing ANYTHING in the process. At the end of your Bandcamp scrolls you will have found a bunch of new things to listen to, plus you will have supported musicians directly in the process! There are artists out there pouring their hearts and souls into their music that is going into an empty internet void. It is up to YOU to find them, support them, and spread the word!
If you want to get started filling your library and download a great compilation for FREE, check out my Bandcamp Label’s mix that has 10 songs totally for free https://anthillrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/free-mix-2024. If you like that, you can also look halfway down the page for the ‘Full Digital Discography’ link.
And get a total of 52 albums for only $22.70! That’s 90% off the price if you bought them all individually!
Take your library back and start developing your own music taste without the prison of big tech algorithms!
