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Thinking about Bandcamp and incentives.

So I just bought music from derinaharveyband.bandcamp.com/… and you should too. You should buy it all and leave a tip. But, let's talk incentives.

So I want to buy Derina's music, because (he way she sings makes me want to scream, weep, join the chorus, and somehow fly. And if she releases a new anything, I want to know one second after, if not early enough I can preorder.

But I don't buy a lot of music, I have extensive ear damage and most music falls flat for me. So I don't care about much other music.

Derina Harvey Band doesn't care what music I buy, as long as I buy theirs (they are probably good people and hope I support their community though, back there in a second).

So Derina Harvey Band and I have a relationship (I want to give them money), but they want to make more, so they use Bandcamp for discoverability. I found their bandcamp before I found their website! So bandcamp is good! It fascilitated a relationship, and I get to hear about the sea.

But now Bandcamp wants to spam me about not-Derina-Harvey, they want me to learn about Nathan Evans or whoever, bands I really don't want to engage with, since I might buy their music. And this has lead me to turn off all communications from Bandcamp. This means I miss when bands I like release music.

So, because there's a broker (platform) who is going to meditate my relationship with Derina Harvey Band, I am going to lose out. Bandcamp turned a new fan into a new customer, but made it harder for a customer to stay a customer.

And, I want to be clear here, there was not even regular Enshittifiation. It's bandcamp Friday, I sent the band slightly over full price for all their albums and they're probably getting, as cash, the full price of all their albums, the platform took nothing. But they band also doesn't have a POSSE style setup, I need to use a platform to learn about tours and releases, and I don't.

I dunno, this is just a tragic story, there's no lesson we don't all know, and there's no solution that isn't to tell a band to manage their own mailing list. The obvious solution is to create a platform that isn't evil, but even then, I don't think that's possible because of all this.

Abolish capitalism so I can revel in a shanty about how capitalism ruins sailing.

in reply to silverwizard

I can't solve the medium-level problem of bandcamp's mediation, and can't speak to the high-level problem of 'capitalism', but if you use an RSS reader, and if the RSS reader takes commands, you can pull in this url to generate an RSS feed for an arbitrary bandcamp band.

curl 'rss-bandcamp.deno.dev?artist=d…'

in reply to silverwizard

Bandcamp won't let you, but one "PaweΕ‚ Grzybek" has set this service up based on another. It's limited to 100,000 daily requests, so he requests people don't hammer it too much.

pawelgrzybek.com/generate-rss-…

I guess that means you can't get notified the very second another album comes out, but I bet once per day wouldn't strain PaweΕ‚'s limits too much.

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