
Show HN: Supportify – Support your top Spotify artists by buying on Bandcamp - tomduncalf
https://tomduncalf.github.io/supportify/
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aquabeagle
I wish all bands were on Bandcamp. It makes it so easy to buy albums in
lossless formats (FLAC and ALAC) that I get frustrated when bands (usually
more popular ones) aren't on it. Now I won't even buy their albums because I
don't want them in MP3.

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danbee
I recently discovered that 7digital
([https://www.7digital.com](https://www.7digital.com) or
[https://us.7digital.com](https://us.7digital.com) in the US) sells FLAC
downloads for many popular artists. I first check Bandcamp but if a band is
not there I can usually find it on 7digital.

~~~
KozmoNau7
Unfortunately only available in select regions.

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justtopost
Too bad all these solutions have at least 3 middlemen before the artist...
Credit card, processor, bandcamp... and then the whole label, distribution,
and management fees... its a great start, but as an artist, its only that. One
person buying a tshirt, or coming to a concert makes me more than 100 internet
store sales. Support your artist by seeing them live. And dance.

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KozmoNau7
>"Support your artist by seeing them live"

Yes, absolutely the best way to support artists. Provided they actually tour
in your area, obviously. I see a couple hundred artists every year, most of my
free time is organized around concerts and festivals.

I do try to buy some merch at most concerts to support the artists, but I have
way too many band shirts at this point, and no more room for posters/flags, so
I wish artists would branch out more when it comes to merch options.

I love making battle vests (working on my fifth vest at the moment), so I
nearly always make sure to pick up a patch or two. But I absolutely wouldn't
mind keychains or lanyards or pins/badges or something else.

Short of that, I do buy a lot more music on bandcamp now than I used to.
Bandcamp's cut is a flat 15% (or 10% if you surpass $5000 in sales), and I
know Paypal takes a cut as well. But it's still vastly superior to the old
record label ripoff scheme.

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rchaud
Album artwork can be really artistic and look great hung up in the home. Back
in college, I would scour Ebay for "album release posters", which would be 36"
x 24" in size and designed to be hung inside music stores.

Seeing as how such stores are all but gone today, I'd like to see Bandcamp
helping bands produce merch like that. Let the artists provide the artwork,
while BC handles the printing and shipping to customers.

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rchaud
Prior to Bandcamp, the only other times I can recall paying for digital music
was for an obscure album on emusic.com, probably around 2007.

The UX of the site and the app are really conducive for discovering new music,
and fortunately the audience of BC is such that you wouldn't see a musical
equivalent of Pewdiepie or Logan Paul shoehorned into your recommendations.
And I especially love that "supporters" (buyers) are the only ones who can
post comments on album pages. Keeps spam/trolling/abuse to nearly zero.

Of course, the flip side of that coin is the feeling of doubt around how long
a service like this can last without hitmakers that bring in larger audiences
and revenues.

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kochthesecond
If I remember correctly, their revenue streams are looking fantastic. Not
every internet business needs to be billion dollar unicorns to survive.

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applecrazy
If that’s the case, why are they doing an ICO? I went to eMusic’s website and
was greeted with a link to this:
[https://token.emusic.com](https://token.emusic.com)

Blockchain? For music?? Needless to say, I’m a bit skeptical.

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kochthesecond
Bandcamp, not eMusic!

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solarkraft
One thing I already like about this is that it allows you to view top artists
and top tracks. I bookmark it already, just for this.

Maybe it'd be nicer if it already showed links to artists' Bandcamp accounts
where you're certain one exists. Searching individually through a button
barely provides less friction than copying the name and pasting it into
Bandcamp's search. Nice about this model (beside being very easy to implement)
is that you can easily add other platforms: My suggestion is Patreon.

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tomduncalf
Hey, thanks for the feedback!

This was hacked together in an hour this morning so I wasn't able to go too
deep but I'd like to try and improve it for sure. Sadly Bandcamp don't have a
public API for searching any more, so I'd need to do some kind of scraping to
ascertain whether an artist has a profile... not ideal I know!

Patreon is a great idea, any other suggestions for destinations also welcome.
Record shops is one possibility. I'm not sure if iTunes etc. is, not sure how
much the artist sees from that!

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iicc
You could use the data from musicbrainz

eg
[https://musicbrainz.org/artist/7d0e8067-10b9-4069-95dc-1110a...](https://musicbrainz.org/artist/7d0e8067-10b9-4069-95dc-1110a0fbb877/relationships)

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tomduncalf
Wow, I didn’t know musicbrainz had that kind of info. Will look into that for
sure, thanks for the pointer!

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patrickbolle
Bandcamp is one of the few companies / platforms I use that is consistently
doing things right for all their users. Musicians on Bandcamp are happy and
getting paid a fair amount, listeners are happy and are provided a great
interface. It's just lovely.

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tomduncalf
It’s a shame they don’t have a public API for these kinds of use cases, but
I’m sure they have their reasons. Agreed that it’s a platform that just gives
off good vibes!

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anotheryou
The reason is probably they are just now trying to migrate away from wordpress
XD

(if I saw that right)

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tomduncalf
Oh boy, in that case I wish them luck!

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anotheryou
:) they do have an app already and checkout is migrated to something sane,
too. Maybe the API used by the app could go public some time..

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brianbreslin
I like this idea, but I really don't need the originals, don't even want them.
I would like a way to buy tickets to my favorite artists shows, merchandise,
and other things like that.

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soared
If you go to the artist on spotify it will show you tour dates, merch, and lps
if you scroll all the way to the bottom.

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hmhrex
It's closer to the top on desktop! I wish it was higher up on mobile.

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kn8
I've been thinking of doing something similar for a while! A service that
continuously keeps track of what you're listening to and suggests donating to
the bands. And if you could allow bands to claim the money via some kind of
Brave BAT style mechanic, you could perhaps also cut out most of the
middlemen.

The main reason I haven't explored this further is – would enough people care
enough to make this worthwhile?

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IfOnlyYouKnew
You, just like Brave, would not be "cutting out the middlemen". You are (would
be) just replacing them with yourself. The only difference being that artists
currently do have a choice between different labels, payment processors, etc.
Whereas the Brave concept just inserts itself in the process without asking
for permission, then holds the creator's money hostage until they sign.

~~~
kn8
That is very true. That's why I said cut out "most" of the middlemen. But fair
point.

This platform is kind of "on the side" and not in the middle though. It's not
meant to affect how people listen to the music, how else they contribute to
the bands (buying records, tickets, merch). This would just be a way of
supporting the bands extra. I think Patreon is good, overall. This is similar
but based on your "usage" and leveraging your Spotify account, and it's nice
to bypass Spotify to support the band directly. I mean, Spotify gets enough
money to run their service, but the bands don't.

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chx
Before bandcamp I used 7digital but eventually some (well, most) tracks I
bought became unavailable. Bandcamp doesn't suffer from this. Also, the
selection is beyond incredible, Journey from Mirabilis is so obscure it's not
even on YouTube but gosh, that's some incredibly beautiful music, one of my
favorites.

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stevenicr
I've been wanting something like this for my di.fm likes and shazam song
finds.. I don't want to be each track each time - but it would be nice if
every three months a system would put up a list and show what it would cost to
buy each song and an option to get the whole album for each / any as well.

I'd gladly support them and desire to have offline availability on demand -
but don't want to do it one at a time. Batch quarterly, even yearly would be
fine. I guess a monthly option would be cool too and used by some.

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TarpitCarnivore
I love that Bandcamp integrates lyrics into their player. It helps to re-
create that intimate experience of listening to an album for the first time
with your liner notes open.

