Bandcamp Friday, October 2023
Caught up on my collections of:
Added the discographies of:
Rambles that are fluffy, by fluffy
Caught up on my collections of:
Added the discographies of:
So, hey, Bandcamp is a great service that a lot of musicians and fans rely upon for fair distribution and sales of music. It is a really great thing.
Unfortunately, Bandcamp’s owners decided that having a sustainably profitable business wasn’t Enough for them and sold it to Epic Games a year ago, with the idea that it’d become a money-printing factory that does All The Licensing.
And that didn’t pan out, so a week ago Epic re-sold Bandcamp to Songtradr, which is basically an A&R pay-for-play scam with the trappings of respectability. Here’s a video Benn Jordan did on the topic (focusing on a site called Taxi but Songtradr is the same basic thing):
Now Songtradr is blocking the Bandcamp union from actually being, y'know, a union. They aren’t honoring the union terms, have locked workers out of critical systems, are completely ignoring the collective bargaining power of Bandcamp as a company and are doing all sorts of heinous shit.
However! This is not a time to boycott Bandcamp! All that does is make Bandcamp less valuable and gives Songtradr more sway over them, while disproportionately impacting the musicians who rely on it. Please look to see what the union is requesting in terms of support and solidarity. There’s a lot you can do to show your support.
Independent musicians thank you.
As usual, Bandcamp is waiving their cut of the purchase price on the first Friday of the month. So this is the best time to consider buying my music. Update: Today only, use discount code plaidfriday
to get up to 80% off on everything, including my full discography. Because why not.
As a voracious consumer of music, I maintain a running list of things to buy on the next Bandcamp Friday so that I can make the biggest impact on a monthly cadence (and also keep better track of my music spending habits). Here’s what I bought this month:
For more recommendations, check out my Bandcamp profile, or look at my past Bandcamp Friday posts.
Getting back on my “listen to music to calm my shitty brain” thing, because it was helping and then I started to forget to do it again.
I might add more as the day goes on.
Hey it’s Bandcamp Friday! This means today’s a good day to buy music on Bandcamp. (Such as mine.)
Here’s what I’ve bought this month:
I got a late start on listening to music today since this morning I was having some stomach issues and didn’t want the extra sensory input, and then I had to take Tyler to the vet for his annual wellness exam and butthole grooming.
But after I got home from that I started listening to music again. Here’s things that are tickled my ears today:
For the next 23.5 hours, Bandcamp is waiving their cut of music purchases made on their platform, which makes it an amazing time to buy independent music there.
As always, I have plenty of stuff you can get there (including a recently-released 80-minute meditation album and an hour-long musical journey inspired by a variety of coffee grinders), and you can get a pretty decent discount on my music if you just buy it all at once as a discography.
I also like to keep a checklist of albums to buy on this day, and this month the two albums I bought are a recent release by my friend Sam and the discography of ratwyfe mostly because I heard someone do a cover of his song cryptid and I knew right away that I’d totally dig all of his music.
Anyway. Support independent musicians, both by buying the music that you like, but also spreading the word of mouth of the music that you like, too. You might not think you have much of a voice but every little bit helps way more than you think; every flood begins with a handful of raindrops.