
Cheaper than free: paying for music after searching for a free download - spatten
http://blog.bandcamp.com/2012/01/03/cheaper-than-free/
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TomasSedovic
I didn't know Bandcamp but a few days ago I wanted to buy the Bastion
soundtrack. The Bandcamp link was the first hit on Google and it was linked
from the game's official page so I went there.

I could listen to all the songs without restriction, pick from a variety of
reasonable formats (including ogg) and download the same album to my computer
at work the next day without any trouble.

This is how you do it. They treated me like a customer not a criminal and it
was actually _easier_ than using BitTorrent. I was happy to give these folks
my money.

~~~
dekz
Bandcamp is a fantastic service, my friends and I absolutely love it. I love
the ability to preview the mp3 audio at 128kpbs without flash. Noting that
bandcamp takes 10-15% of the sale, with the rest going to the artist is what
keeps me going back there first to look for music instead of iTunes.

Only downside is discovery of music on bandcamp, a side project I'm currently
working on is a tool for myself to find new music on bandcamp; unfortunately
their APIs aren't designed for finding similar artists.

~~~
richthegeek
Take a look at last.fm and their API - they have a pretty good relevant artist
graph.

I made something to show it off a year or so ago:
<http://richardlyon.co.uk/coffee/lastfm.php?artist=mogwai> (switch from 3d to
2d if it's being a pain, change artist in URL to something you like)

~~~
iambot
I dont suppose its open source is it? I'd really like to see how you've done
it / what you used. Is it on gitHub?

UPDATE: @richthegeek, Thanks much appreciated.

~~~
richthegeek
Yep - <http://github.com/richthegeek/coffeegraph>

A more update version of the graphing program (without the lastfm stuff) is
visible at <http://richthegeek.github.com/coffeegraph>

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JoshTriplett
Another interesting point: bandcamp does not in any way prevent users from
downloading songs from them for free. A quick "view source" makes it trivial
to determine the actual URLs for all the songs in an album, as do any number
of standard tools for downloading files referenced by a page. Despite that,
they make it easy for people to actually purchase songs and albums rather than
just downloading them, and thus people do purchase them rather than just
downloading them. They explicitly point out this approach in their FAQ:
<http://bandcamp.com/faq#steal> .

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NE0313
For example, just this morning someone paid $10 for an album after Googling
lelia broussard torrent. A bit later, a fan plunked down $17 after searching
for murder by death, skeletons in the closet, mediafire.

Where do they get this data?

~~~
ars
From the referer header. If someone clicks from google the search fields are
transmitted in the referrer.

If this bothers you, use duckduckgo.com which has a special bounce-page to
hide this info.

~~~
ohgodthecat
Or use https search, google doesn't even require you to go to
encrypted.google.com [1]

[1] <https://www.google.com/>

~~~
spindritf
Won't the referrer still be sent if the target site is available over SSL?

~~~
ComputerGuru
Yes, but the referrer will only be google.com.

Google SSL uses POST for the search query parameters, so the referrer URI w/
GET parameters will not leak your search terms.

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marknutter
I still think paying more than a few cents per song is _insane_. Who set these
prices? They're not based on actual scarcity or supply and demand.

~~~
rimantas
Why? Do you think there are plenty of Queens around?

~~~
marknutter
I'm not paying for the band itself, I'm paying for digital bits which are an
infinite supply.

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failrate
I use Bandcamp from the other side, and it is a fantastic service. They not
only know the music industry from the inside out (read "Bandcamp for
Drummers"), but I've literally never had any problem with their site's
functionality.

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d135-1r43
This can work for some special interest bands that are arty and hip and young
and sexy. It will not work for conservative musical genres and pop music.

~~~
TheHegemon
> It will not work for conservative musical genres and pop music.

I don't see why it can't work for most musical genres. I have bought music
from bandcamp that spans dozens of different genres.

As for pop music, good riddance.

I'd rather artists get paid because their music is good, not because some
company is paying millions a year to market the hell out it.

~~~
DarkShikari
I think what the GP means is that it won't mesh well with certain outdated
marketing methods used for certain target audiences. The genre itself is
merely correlated with this, not directly linked.

Which is perfectly okay. We're in an age where music production is so
accessible that a few talented musicians can make music of better quality than
a top "pop band" and sell it with near-zero distribution costs. The production
cost of a full album, including paying a talented, professionally trained
vocalist, is now down to just a few thousand dollars.

As a result, there's a massive, ever-increasing supply of incredibly high-
quality music that never touched a record label. The genre and style are
irrelevant.

"Pop artists" these days are now more a matter of selling idols than selling
sound. Let the music be made by actual musicians: Justin Bieber and AKB48 were
never marketed based on their music to begin with.

~~~
nedwin
Exactly. A "one-size fits all" model isn't going to work in the fragmented
music market. Pop artists & their labels already know how to make money
selling music, this model is more in tune to the less-than-mainstream.

