Tech writer, Joe Lewis, reviews Bandcamp.com, a new on-line service targeting independent musicians and music lovers. He also get's a candid perspective of music sites from Glen Philips, of Toad the Wet sprocket fame ("Walk on the Ocean").

The oft verbose and opinionated Ulrich, however, does deserve credit for bringing an all-important question to the forefront. How would this new era of music distribution impact the artist(s)? 

It's been nearly ten years since Napster's inception. Has the question been adequately addressed? Napster, as we knew it, is gone. Now, we have services like Rhapsody, eMusic, Amazon Music, not to mention the thousand pound gorilla in the room, iTunes. These marketplaces, iTunes in particular, have made their name by refining the experience for Average Joe music listener. The process, however, is often less than intuitive for the musician.

That's where Bandcamp.com, a new service targeting independent musicians, looks to fill the gap. I had the chance to chat with Glen Phillips—former front man of Toad the Wet Sprocket and successful independent artist in his own right – about the tools that Bandcamp offers and how it differs from existing models.

In our conversation about what attracted him to Bandcamp, Phillips offered up these thoughts, “The fact that you [could] just upload the song and it would do the conversions on the back end...It's set up very nicely if you just want to throw a song up there and have it exist immediately and not have to do any scrambling or re-encoding yourself. People can hear it and you can sell it. Basically, it's as simple as it could possibly be.” 

And while we're on the subject of encoding, songs at Bandcamp are available in several different (and mostly lossless, hooray!) flavors. Any given track can be obtained in high quality (320k) mp3 format, AAC (high/low), Ogg Vorbis, free lossless audio codec (FLAC) or Apple lossless. As an added bonus, all of the options listed above are free from any digital rights management (DRM) – meaning that purchases are wholly owned by the purchaser and can be uploaded to any portable music device, not just the iPod. 

A fundamental assertion from Bandcamp's founders is that thirty-second snippets are not sufficient for consumers to make a purchasing decision for a particular track. To remedy this, the site requires full-length samples, which essentially means that visitors can stream an entire album, for free. 

But isn't this contrary to the whole idea of making money from music? Not necessarily. 

Phillips had this to say on the topic, “I know from people who have done a lot of studying of peer-to-peer (utilities that allow users to share files across a network) that people who trade more music also buy more music. The more active a listener you are, the more you buy. So, I would say the idea of full-length samples, streaming an entire album, or giving away an mp3 version of it –[I think] it's a reasonable thing to do. I think it's a good way of doing business. I would rather more people have the record and enjoy it. If more people have the record and like it, more people are going to come to the shows. In the real world right now, you need to give copies away.” 

Bandcamp is about getting the music into people's hands both quickly and effectively. By simplifying the technical process for the artists, it gives them time to concentrate on more important things, like making more music. Moreover, Bandcamp's tools aren't merely focused on distributing the music, but also give artists the opportunity to understand where the audience can be found. 

Phillips concluded our talk on Bandcamp with this insight, “I think looking at the stats (feedback on the site from users), that's my favorite thing at Bandcamp. You can find out if somebody wrote a blog about you. You have no idea how they heard of it, or why there interested in it, but all the sudden you'll get twenty-something hits and people will hear the music.” 

Easy encoding. No DRM. Free marketing tools that are actually helpful and the ability to customize the look and layout of the artist's page. These options are driving Bandcamp's increasing popularity among independent musicians. For up and coming artists, this will definitely be a site worth keeping an extra set of eyes on as it evolves in the coming months. 

As a digital music enthusiast, I think there’s also a lot to like about Bandcamp from the consumer standpoint. Because the site has such a strong focus on making the process very simple for the artists, more musicians are stepping out of the shadows and putting their music out for public consumption. There’s a lot to be said for choice when it comes to spending my music dollar, and this an area where Bandcamp truly shines. 

Let’s talk about the purchase itself. Checking out was pretty simple when I decided to grab Plover’s self-title EP from the site. Bandcamp’s merchant services are handled through PayPal, but you don’t actually need a PayPal account in order to make purchases. This adds an extra layer of security since it means I don’t actually have to share any of my personal or financial information with Bandcamp in order to buy music.

I like this feature… I like it a lot. It tells me that Bandcamp isn’t interested in sending me spam e-mails or marketing to me; they just want to get good music in my hands, collect their commission, get the artists paid, and start the process all over again. This approach is brilliant to me in its utter simplicity and will be one of the key components, in my opinion, to Bandcamp’s long-term sustainability. 

The site, however, seems to be missing something that would seem fairly obvious given their grass-roots mindset: community interaction. Why not give users the ability to leave feedback about artists or particular songs? Granted, you’ll get your share of bozos that will leave less than inspired commentary, but on the whole this seems like information that musicians would be particularly interested in obtaining when thinking about how to market their music effectively. Heck, even setting up a forum would be a decent step. I feel that Bandcamp could instantly transform from a marketplace into a thriving music community given the right opportunity. 

That said, there’s really not much else not to like about Bandcamp. What it does, it does really well. There’s definitely a bright future in store for the site. All you audio aficionados should definitely head over and check out some of the bright young artists that the site features. I highly doubt you’ll be disappointed with the experience.