This Summer At Bandcamp….

Posted by Nay on June 30, 2010 · 5 Comments 

Founded just two years ago, free web-service Bandcamp has become a benchmark of musicians’ new-found freedom on the web. Super Extra Bonus Party were quick off the mark to release their remix album Appetite For Reconstruction via the website in summer 2008, at a stage when giving an album away for free was still considered a bit eccentric. This year however has seen Bandcamp truly take off in Ireland as music-makers and fans alike have found the facility a flexible alternative to iTunes and messy Mediafire links. Albums, EPs and singles can be quickly streamed, offered for free or paid downloads and even physical copies can be ordered, direct from the source.

In February an unheard-of band called The Cast Of Cheers unveiled their smashing debut Chariot by making it a free download on Bandcamp. The remarkable response since its release has seen TCOC booked up to play across the gig and festival circuit with  the album a dead cert to feature on year-end lists, already being name-checked by Drowned In Sound‘s readers as one of the best albums of 2010 so far. While it helped that members of The Cast of Cheers had played in bands before and they had friends at Richter Collective to spread word of the album, the success of Chariot has really been down to the fact that it’s a stunning collection of tunes available free at the click of a button.

As it stands now, six months on from posting their Irritant album on Bandcamp, Cork duo I’ll Eat Your Face have seen a phenomenal boom in their playcounts – to the extent of their album being the #1 most-downloaded Grindcore album on the entire site. There’s more to it than simply giving music away however; at a time when word-of-mouth recommendations spread like wildfire on instant communication platforms like Facebook and Twitter, Bandcamp is an exciting tool of the new model music industry, providing a service to many different aspects of music fans through one, clear interface.
DIY artists have always used available resources to release to the best of their abilities but in the past, talent was not always a guarantee of success. In a profit-driven environment, the most prosperous musicians of the physical record era were those whose work reached a mainstream audience thanks to the support of a label and the media. They provided a product that was packaged and delivered to large numbers of people with limited choice but it was only after recouping the costs of releasing on such a huge scale that a musician could really live off their art. Today, that’s all changed. Lower costs mean a manageable career and while sales may be down from the zenith of CD production at the turn of the millennium, quality is way up and choice is far from limited. It makes you wonder how much brilliant music went unheard before simply because it couldn’t reach the proper channels.

While music writing has undergone a paradigm shift by embracing social media to present bands no one’s heard of as opposed to household names, the stability of the Internet affords greater risks in other areas too. Small labels can gamble with unconventional signings without the fear of losing money, just as independent musicians can self-release creatively, free of the prohibitive expenses of physical formats but not limited to a sparse file-sharing server. Team Fresh, an established group of obdurate, funky punks from Belfast who riff, rap and groove from the underground, had never taken that step to bring their music beyond the stage and demo tapes they shared with mates, until last Friday, which saw the launch of their first single Rhythm Tradition, which they furthered with an accompanying Bandcamp page. It’s just one of many new options the music scene has been crying out for.

For Aidan Wall, it’s a more exciting way of promoting music. “I decided to release Teenage Elders on Bandcamp for a few reasons, the main one being the simplicity and accessibility” he said, talking about the new album of electronica tracks recently made under the name of Hipster Youth. “It offers numerous ways to embed and share your album in a streamable way, which is slowly becoming the easiest way to put yourself out there. Someone can listen to any track on the album right away to get a taste as opposed to sitting through a Mediafire download in order to sample the album. Initially I decided to use Bandcamp for the great download code resources (200 free when you sign up) but I ended up offering the album as a free download anyway due to how I feel about the purchasing of mp3s. I’ll need to promote this album a bit more online before I can properly compare it to my first release but I certainly know that posting someone a link to a package with all your album information is more attractive than that Mediafire download page.”

There has been very little criticism for Bandcamp, other than unavoidable complications entailed in offering high-quality formats, as Aidan explains. “Another download-related reason I used Bandcamp was its ability to offer users a number of file types, which is sure to please audiophiles. This advantage of being able to download high-quality FLAC or WAV also creates the disadvantage of having to sit through the uploads. I have an 8-minute track on Teenage Elders which in full quality took a long, long time to upload. I even feared for a time that I wouldn’t be able to upload it due to breaks in my connection.”

Alan Healy, who also released an album on Bandcamp recently under his solo project of Letter From Belgium, agrees that quality makes all the difference. “Aside from its simplicity, a really great thing about Bandcamp is the quality of the stream. I’ve uploaded songs on both MySpace and Bandcamp and the difference in the way they sound is huge – MySpace can really degrade the sound of a song, especially when it comes to the kind of recordings I do, which are not studio recordings. I find MySpace is pretty much unusable these days due to the lack of spam controls, as well as the fact that so many bands or musicians have layouts that are extremely distracting.”

The mention of spam is crucial when taking into consideration the massive sway MySpace once held over the future of digital music. The booming popularity of music profiles proved that people were prepared to go looking for new music but this was countered by a rapid decline when members got fed up of being hassled by hordes of incompatible bands with crap demos. The huge number of profiles to move through, each loaded down with bulky code for layout skins, video embeds and bad flash programming made searching out new bands tiresome and time-consuming. While other websites such as SoundCloud offer movable widgets and hosting for work-in-progress, Bandcamp is a professional site for serious musicians. The impetus is very much on using the website to further bands’ potential on a formal scale. There are no distracting social networking features like comments or friend requests but users do have access to detailed statistics which not only tally play and download figures but also provide comprehensive referral details to inform musicians where their traffic comes from. Though simple, these are useful tools for cultivating a better understanding of a band’s audience. Another feature are the download codes mentioned by Aidan: even if an album is posted for sale, the codes provide musicians with a quick and easy way to share their music on a promotional basis, for example with bloggers and journalists, as the Richter Collective chose to do prior to the release of The Redneck Manifesto‘s highly-anticipated album Friendship in March this year.

Another growing trend amongst Bandcamp artists are public pre-release streams, such as that of Jogging‘s debut album Minutes back in April. Unlike the old ways of record labels keeping albums strictly under wraps until their launch date, Dublin indie label Popical Island chose to premiere their new compilation sampler ahead of its physical release. Of course independents don’t compare to multi-million business investments so you might be forgiven for thinking that pre-release streams pose more of a risk for the little guy. On the contrary, reports were positive:

“Going on our own experiences as music fans, we felt that people would appreciate the chance to get to know the album in advance of its release. We reckoned that these days people don’t just buy CDs on a whim, they have to have a good reason to buy,” professed Michael Stevens, one-half head of Popical Island. “Our record, being an indie-pop compilation of local bands, was really an ideal candidate for being the centrepiece of a genuine community experience, so in that spirit we felt we should make it available. It had a positive impact. Aside from allowing people the chance to get to know the record, it also helped in generating a bit of buzz among the blogo/twittersphere (and also the print media, which was a nice surprise) in the lead-up to the launch.”

Surely if music is freely available online, that would take away from the reasons to buy, as alluded to above? Not according to Michael. “We chose to press only 200 [compilation CDs] and it was a good number to go for because we’ve sold almost all of them. I don’t think the Bandcamp held back sales in any way — if anything, it boosted them. It’s nice to have the additional option to sell downloads directly online once physical copies are sold out and in fact, that has already started.”

So in keeping costs down and advantages up, musicians have a lot of extra freedom with how they use their music. Getting a CD out is no longer the be-all and end-all of a band’s priorities and may even be combined with digital to ensure they get the very most out of a release before moving on. Alright The Captain recently announced the upload of last summer’s 1, 2, 3! EP for free download to keep their cred up ahead of their forthcoming album later this year. Conversely, BATS released their post-hardcore debut Red In Tooth & Claw last summer but to prolong its endurance, only made it available online via Bandcamp a few months ago. Likewise, Logikparty have just uploaded their 7″ Good Hood/Iodine single, some time after the limited number of vinyl copies went on sale. In choosing this extra avenue of distribution bands have a new potential outlet to make those extra euros so crucial to releasing new material. And the beauty of it all is in the ear of the beholder.

Filed under Albums, Bandcamp, EP, Free, Irish, Music, Record Labels · Tagged with Alright The Captain, Bandcamp, BATS, Drowned In Sound, Hipster Youth, I'll Eat Your Face, Jogging, Letter From Belgium, Logikparty, MySpace, Popical Island, Richter Collective, Social Media, SoundCloud, Team Fresh, The Cast of Cheers, The Redneck Manifesto