Site hosts, streams bands’ tunes for free

By: Ronald Caldero/Contributing Writer
I created an account, uploaded some songs and had a high-quality, sleek-looking platform for distributing my music digitally in less time than it took me to write this article.
*Bandcamp.com* is a relatively new site that offers a definitely-not-so-new online service concept: to host and stream musician’s tunes, free of charge, on a personalized artist page.
The site that immediately comes to mind is MySpace – and rightly so. MySpace is the Internet’s premier site for music streaming. If you’re feeling in the mood for some Lady Gaga, all you have to do is search for her name followed by the word “myspace” and you will find her profile in a heartbeat.
Once on there, you’ll find everything that’s needed to satisfy your fame monster crave: an audio player with a couple of songs that can be listened to for free.
Why else would you need more? Bandcamp agrees, why would you really need more? If listening to music is all you’re after, you don’t. But you can definitely do better than MySpace.
This philosophy of less is better is what truly makes Bandcamp a music lover’s dream. Unlike MySpace, which started as an online social networking tool and later incorporated band profiles, Bandcamp was created with only musicians in mind. That means you won’t find four or five low-quality songs (or even worse, song clips) buried underneath mounds of images, friend comments and advertising.
Instead, you’ll be presented with a simple yet elegant layout consisting mainly of a music player and the album cover art. Below that, you will find the complete track listing for all the songs in that album, all of which you can play in glorious high quality audio by simply clicking on them.
If the band has more than one album up there, it will be displayed on the right, and you can access it with a click and listen to it in its entirety in the same manner. Simple as that.
Even though its design may sound very spartan in the scarcity of elements, it all works extremely well to provide you with an enjoyably pure listening experience. Of course, you can personalize your page by choosing layout colors and images, but not everything on there is readily modifiable. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, because if the immense popularity of Twitter has proved anything in the realm of design, is that you don’t need 37 animated glitter pictures on your profile to make it look good.
Bandcamp has even gone a step further by making it possible for artists to sell their music directly to the listener right there from their profile. No label, no middleman, no hassle. Bands upload their songs in uncompressed audio, name their price and then purchasers download it in the file format they choose. Artists can also bundle in other stuff like videos, additional art, liner notes or whatever it is that they feel someone who purchases their music is entitled to for their money. That is if they want to charge anything for it; it’s possible for bands to distribute their work for free.
Intrigued? Then head over to Bandcamp.com and check it out for yourself. As of today, music is the only media available on it, but pictures and videos are coming. You’re definitely not going to find Lady Gaga on there, as the site’s mostly populated by independent artists right now but, hopefully, the winds of change will start blowing soon.
*The Beacon does not accept any free goods or services in exchange for positive reviews.*