Bandcamp

Bandcamp.com is kind of awesome. It's a site for putting up an artist's music -- where you can set up embeddable streaming players and downloads (for free or for pay) in a variety of formats. The best thing about it is that they figured out what it is that "we" really need -- a site that's sort of a cross between the advantages that Myspace had with the ease and ability to put a band's music up, but with iTunes-like sales tools.

But the really brilliant thing about it is that it's not actually designed for your fans to necessarily go to. No, instead they figure that someone looking for (say) Tyrannosaurus Mouse, will go to the T-mouse homepage and there will be Bandcamp - embedded audio right on the artists' site.

Now, people can go to the Bandcamp Tyrannosaurus Mouse page (and you can make that look pretty nice*) but Bandcamp is really set up to be the "back end" of your server.

Which is kind of awesome.

It's easy to set up what kind of copyright you choose your music to be under, how much music costs (or if it's a "pay what you want"), and have the music available in a number of different formats (not just .mp3). Plus, there's the cool embeddable player with the groovy psychedelic visualizations.

And they even have a sweet setup where a music label can have a page which links to all its artists.

Bandcamp can be used for all sorts of purposes. I use it for demos and tests and things. It's really well thought out and seems to be getting better all the time.

Anyway, that's my plug for Bandcamp.

*Neither the T-mouse homepage or the Bandcamp page for T-mouse have very much on them. We need to have some pictures of the band and at least one album to really have a decent website.