One Time in Bandcamp: Challenging MySpace Music
Bill Tancer, Hitwise GM of Global Research recently wrote about MySpace's departure as a top traffic generator for entertainment and music sites. Says Tancer, "MySpace was the most significant contributor of traffic to entertainment - multimedia sites providing over 35% of traffic to the category...that percentage now hovers below 10%."
And then on a related note, Wired's Eliot Van Buskirk profiled SoundCloud as MySpace's biggest music threat.
While no one is arguing that MySpace has lost its grip as one of the leading music and entertainment destination traffic generators, I disagree with Van Buskirk's choice in SoundCloud as the great equalizer.
Due to the service's ease-of-use and speed, SoundCloud is indeed one of the best file collaboration and music sharing sites. Quite simply, the site does everything right except help indie artists monetize. Meanwhile sites like Mix Match Music and Bandcamp provide solutions for bands to share AND monetize their products.
In particular, Bandcamp's execution is extremely elegant. As with MySpace, musicians upload their cover art, track listings, liner notes, lyrics and audio files. But Bandcamp adds four additional key features:
1. File Conversions: The site converts a single uploaded file into eight different formats to meet device and music player requirements.
2. Monetization: Bandcamp allows musicians to price their tracks and albums as they see fit. There is even the option to let fans decide prices on a sliding scale.
3. Sharing Tools: The service provides embeddable player widgets for Facebook, MySpace and a variety of 3rd party blogs.
4. Analytics: Perhaps most importantly, site analytics measure popular songs, track links and locate where files have been embedded. This means that musicians can search out their best advocates even if they're miles (and sites) apart.
While SoundCloud is definitely a fantastic tool for collaboration and remixing, it's the storefront-style tools like Bandcamp that will either eat or be eaten by MySpace Music. We'll just have to see where the major artists choose to flock in the coming months.
CORRECTION: Earlier the writer described SoundCloud as a P2P site. SoundCloud is not structurally based on a peer-to-peer network of nodes. Instead the company considers itself a "Flickr for audio".
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Agreed - but then it's entire typical that Wired would focus on something that (a) hardly anyone uses yet (b) is focused on users redistributing existing recorded content, rather than the (hard problem) production and promotion of original content.
Everybody wants to be a DJ . . . solipsistically creating playlists for an audience of 8 people.
What about Facebook/iLike - that's actually a LOT more effective than mySpace and band specific sites/RSS feeds at one crucial thing - 'X has posted a concert near you' - especially if live music is the way forward (well, it will be, once we can prise the freetards away from creating playlists on Soundcloud, and get them to put their money where their philosophy is and go out more).
It's something I've long seen as a service the net should be able to do - match your location with forthcoming things you are interested in, and technically it's easy enough, and lots of people have tried creating local events platforms, but the problem has always been connecting a volume of subscribers and publishers - Facebook seems to have the technology and the critical mass.
My band is on bandcamp and I can't praise the site enough. Not only is the concept great, the execution is beautiful. And if you have any problems or suggestions they actually help and listen.
I personally doubt the people at Myspace can do what bandcamp is doing, but it also should be noted that bandcamp aren't really trying to do what Myspace is doing - yet. It is not a site to go and find bands at this stage. You can - it's difficult though unless you know who you are looking for as there is no tagging system yet, but that is not the primary purpose for it. The idea is that people find your bandcamp page through you, your website or through their friend's widgets and word of mouth. There is no friend following feature - and I don't think there will be or needs to be.
Some major artists I've noticed on bandcamp so far are Wynton Marsalis and Omar Rodriguez Lopez from The Mars Volta.
It's brilliant to be able listen to all of Omar's music streaming (all bandcamp pages feature full streaming of mp3s). I wouldn't have heard it otherwise.
Also, part of the pricing options not mentioned is the ability to give away mp3s at 128k (or any quality) in exchange for an email address.
And yes, the stats page is gold.
This site is doing it exactly right for the new direction of the music industry. I doubt that Myspace gets that or ever will.
Hey guys!
First of, a little clarification. We'd concider bandcamp to be our friends and we're even talking about how to work together. For us (and hopefully for them too) the web needs more companies that (unlike myspace) actually focus on making life easier for *the people who create music*. Myspace is and has always been primarily about the consumers. Bandcamp allows creators to sell their tracks which is great! Soundcloud helps creators collaborate and promote their tracks via many integrations with other sites (where they might already have parts of their audience). We think this is great too.
Oh, and we have absolutely nothing at all to do with P2P. Not sure where that came from. On the other hand we have thousands of labels (everything from the majors to one-man shows) using Soundcloud as a tool to receive, send, collaborate, promote and distribute their music.
Anyways, I'm keeping my fingers crossed for us and for bandcamp. And if myspace can still be useful for the artists i'll be secretly keeping my fingers crossed for them too.
Alex / soundcloud
Hey JulesLt,
Check out Songkick (http://www.songkick.com). I'm not sure if this is what you have in mind, but it's a social network for discovering live music shows and you can even track multiple cities. (Just in case you're the kind of diehard fan who'll travel a couple hours to see your music idols play)
I am fans of both SoundCloud and Bandcamp.
I recently bought the new Beats Antique on Bandcamp and enjoyed the experience with the exception of getting kicked to PayPal for the purchase. There are plenty of digital download ecommerce plugins out there that can be combined with a gateway to make the experience more seamless. Perhaps that is in the works.
SoundCloud just makes good clean sense. I like the simplicity of the interface and functionality as well as their clear vision on what services they offer. We talked with them about integration into championsound.com and they were a pleasure.
@bandcamp, connect with me if you are interested in exploring any opportunities to integrate with our Champion Sound broadcasting tool.
I LOVE to see bandcamp getting praise. To me, it is hands down the best site for artists who want to post their music in a simple way that might just actually make them a little money. It is NOT a social networking site. It is not a site for FANS to share music they like. To compare it to such sites misses the point.
Soundcloud is growing on me. Alexander's point is dead-on (as it should be, since he founded Soundcloud): Soundcloud is a collaboration tool, perfect for posting roughs, demos, snippets and other such noises that are part of the songwriting progress.
To me, the ideal combo is bandcamp for finished material and Soundcloud for works-in-progress and experiments. Oh, and dropbox for sharing session files.
As for MySpace, they are either going to fade into irrelevance or they are going to bite the bullet and do what Steve Jobs did when he introduced OSX. Jobs understood that OS9 was no foundation for a good future, so he made the tough -- and right -- call to scrap it and start over.
Personally, I doubt MySpace will take such a bold action. Instead, they'll do what they've been doing, which is upgrading parts, but this approach is like tricking out a Ford Pinto. In the end, it's still a piece of crap.
Jeff