hi54lofi

Scroll to Info & Navigation

Bandcamp + Tumblr Integration

I’m not entirely sure exactly when this started working, as I never really heard or saw any ‘official’ announcement of it (as I seem to remember happening whenTumblr + Soundcloud and Tumblr + Spotify became available). Which is a bit surprising, at least for me, as I have been wanting to be able to use Bandcamp URLs for Tumblr audio posts ever since Tumblr first started their external URL feature as an alternative to uploading your own tracks.

I have been a bit preoccupied with ‘away from internet’ things these past couple months, so perhaps I just missed the announcement and everybody already knows that this is now possible. But if not, here it is in picture form…

image

But it was all new news to me when I stumbled across it being mentioned on Ben Walkers tumblr (and since he has insider Bandcamp info, I’m going to guess this integration started working around the time of that post), and when I tried googling to see if there was a more official announcement, I never found one. Although I have seen a few people already using it, so I guess the cat is definitely out of the bag already.

It doesn’t look like you can just ‘search’ for tracks that are available on Bandcamp (as you can with Soundcloud and Spotify), but I never use that feature anyways, so as far as my Tumblr + Bandcamp integration needs are concerned, I’m all good.

Anyways, I just thought I would also share this info in case there are any other Tumblr users out there who, like me, didn’t know how easily you can now spread tasty Bandcamp tracks on your blog.

Happy Tumbl’n.

The Little Bandcamp Bump

A few days ago I wrote about some of the things I learnt after experiencing —what The New York Times didn’t call— ’the Bandcamp Bump’. If you’re curious as to what ‘the Bandcamp Bump’ was (and if you don’t feel like clicking on the link to the article that I so conveniently placed in the previous sentence) here is a picture that more or less explains everything:

image

As mentioned in the ‘Things Learnt From The Bandcamp Bump (aka ‘The Big Fucking Spike’)’ post, the downward trajectory had already begun. It was a fun ride, but like all fun rides, they are short and the queue to get back on is long. To say I was honoured to have Bandcamp not only read what I wrote, but also enjoy it enough to officially recommend it to their users, would be a bit of an understatement. So thank you Bandcamp, you’ve coloured me chuffed.

There are still a few stragglers coming over to HI54LOFI on the tail end of that initial email from Bandcamp + other people sharing the ‘Damn You Bandcamp’ post, but the other day I started noticing a new path people were taking to the HI54LOFI door. They seemed to be coming from within their Bandcamp accounts ‘edit album’ page. This seemed odd, especially when I started to notice it happening more and more.

So I went to my ‘edit album’ page, but I couldn’t see anything. I considered writing it all of as another thing I didn’t understand, but then they kept coming in. Luckily, I moonlighted as a detective in one of my past lives (fun fact that I cannot actually confirm: the TV show ‘Moonlighting’ was kind of based on me). And like all good detectives, I started clicking on everything.

Which led to the discovery of ‘the little Bandcamp bump’:

image

It would seem that my post about why you should think twice about making your Bandcamp release a ‘free download’ is being referenced within everyone’s Bandcamp account as a way to make people think twice about making their Bandcamp release a ‘free download’. Again, as a long time fan of Bandcamp, this was a pretty cool discovery for me. One might even say that I’ve been having a pretty good week.

My only concern is that ‘BLKBOI BLACKMAGIC’ is going to see this and ascertain that I have been lying to him and really start to think that I have his money (ps - to understand this reference, you’ll have had to read that other post that I keep linking to).

Thoughts And Things Learnt After A Brief Moment Of Relevance On The Internet

A few days ago I had my first taste of Bandcamp’s new fan accounts. After spending a few hours playing around with it, and while still in the grips of what all the implications this new service would have on independent music (i.e. the buying of it) and my personal paypal account (i.e. the depletion of it), I wrote a blog post about how I was feeling. I didn’t really expect much to come of it, but was pleasantly surprised when I saw more than a few people feeling the same way.

It started off innocently. People other than myself started tweeting about my post (which rarely happens, and when it does it is rare that I don’t know the person). And then Bandcamp themselves retweeted it. At that moment in time, I thought that would be it and I was quite chuffed. But then Bandcamp included a link to my blog post in an email that they send out to everyone who uses Bandcamp. Which is a lot of people. And HI54LOFI.COM experienced what the experts probably call ‘a big fucking spike’.

image

The ‘big fucking spike’ is so big in its fuckness, that it actually makes it look like the website is used to having 0 people visit it daily (which is not too far from the truth, but when you consider that the 13th had over 500 unique visitors, you can see how things are a little bit skewed). What the graph does show clearly —unfortunately, but not surprisingly— is that the crazy times are coming to an end (although we’re still at over 700 unique visitors today, so the ‘Bandcamp bump’ hasn’t completely levelled out).

Here are some things I learnt from the experience:

There Is No Shortage Of Musicians Seekings Ears

When a link to your website is sent to almost every independent musician / band in the world (or at the very least, a very large proportion of them)… expect a lot of ‘check out my music’ emails. Like, a lot a lot. These past few days have really made me sympathize with all those music blogs of the world that probably experience the same thing, but on a daily basis, 365 days a year. I now better understand why so many emails I’ve sent out about HI54LOFI RECORDS releases never see the light of day. All the emails start looking the same, just with a different band name and a different link to click. And the task of actually giving them all a fair shake slowly becomes an unclimbable mountain.

I’m going to try my best to listen and respond to all the emails I’ve been sent, but I will admit that all I’ve been able to do so far is keep adding email after email to a special folder in my inbox. And I appreciate people wanting to send me their music, but…

People Forget That The Internet Is Still Mainly Used By Humans

A lot of bands are really bad at asking someone to listen to their music. If you can’t take the time to put together an email that contains more than a link to your music, you really shouldn’t expect anyone to take the time to go listen. That’s just lazy and selfish. I don’t think there is a golden rule to follow here (I know I haven’t perfected the art of the ‘press email’), but at the very least, try to remember that you are sending an email to a human. And try to remember that Reverbnation kind of sucks. It may be a bit unknown as to what will get your email into the ‘check out later’ pile, but it is a little less of a mystery as to what will get it put in the ‘only if I have absolutely nothing else I would rather be doing with my time’ pile.

Out of all the bands that have gotten in touch, I’ve actually only listened (so far) to those who didn’t even ask me to listen to their music (or who made that part of their email secondary to just trying to genuinely connect on a personal level). They interacted more like how a human person interacts with another human person in the real world. Crazy how that same behaviour translates well in the online world.

So if I were to give any bands advice on passing on your music to someone else —besides the obvious advice of making excellent and inspired music— it would be to approach things the same way you approach making a friend. Find some common ground before you ask them to help move your furniture.

A fine example of ‘human to human’ being done right —and the success of that kind of approach— can be found in the great collection of ‘Letters To Yvynyl’.

Lots Of Traffic Doesn’t Convert Like You Might Expect

Since posting the ‘damn you Bandcamp’ post on the 12th (and right up to the writing of this very sentence), HI54LOFI.COM has been visited by 15, 255 unique people. That is a lot of people. Surprisingly, of the over 15,000 unique visitors to the site, this has only resulted in about 60 new likes on the Facebook page and about 60 new followers on the Twitter. Don’t get me wrong, it is great to have that many new people interested in what HI54LOFI does, but if there ever was a better indicator on how tricky it can be to convert visitors into ‘fans’, the difference in those numbers are quite telling. Another good number to crunch is that almost 500 people have clicked the ‘like’ button on the article itself, but only 60 have ‘liked’ the Facebook page responsible for the post.

This ‘lack of conversion’ is something that I’ve noticed before whenever we were lucky enough to get a ‘big’ blog to write about one of our releases. It never converts like you’d hope. Up until it happens, you think “if only something like that would happen, then we’d be set”. And then it happens and you are reminded of the way the internet works: Seen That, Now Off To See Something Else.

In retrospect, I probably should have added links to our Facebook / Twitter at the end of that blog post (in a more ‘call to action’ type way) once I realized how many people were about to come knocking at the door. Perhaps it was a bit of a missed opportunity. Or maybe the numbers would have been about the same. I guess we’ll never know. If I get the first pictures of the Kimye baby, I will try it out on that post and let you know.

Expect A Few Nonsensical Interactions

Whenever a large horde of internet users comes your way, you’ll end up with a few puzzling interactions. The oddest, and therefore my favourite, came from someone called ‘BLKBOI BLACKMAGIC’ (not sure why he gets all precise with spelling and vowel use in the second part of his name). Here is his email, in full:

“NEED TO FIND OUT HOW MANY PEOPLE BOUGHT MY TRACK AN HOW CAN I GET MY MONEY THANK YOU”

Hopefully he believes my reply of “I don’t work for Bandcamp” and I don’t end up with someone banging on my door shouting “WHERE’S MY MONEY!”.

The Bandcamp Fan Accounts Work

And I don’t mean they ‘work’ as in I haven’t experienced any problems in using or setting mine up (which I haven’t, so I guess they do ‘work’ in that way too). I mean that I have already been notified of 17 purchases that people have made after discovering something on my fan collection. Granted, there was a link to my fan collection on that ‘damn you Bandcamp’ post (so it has received an unusually large amount of traffic), but that doesn’t mean you still can’t find some proof in that pudding.

So there you have it. Everything I’ve learnt from my brief moment of internet relevance. Maybe you can take away a few learnings as well.

And a big and genuine thank you to everyone who enjoyed / shared that blog post and to everyone who took a further look around the site. And an extra ‘cheers’ to anyone who enjoyed their further look around the site enough to want to internet hang with HI54LOFI ‘post-Bandcamp bump’. Maybe we can still be internet relevant for a few.

Up until now, I’ve kind of kept my attempt at making a ‘Bandcamp Radio’ over on exfm. But since 8tracks lets you enter custom urls for where each track is available (i.e. so you can override the automated link that is created for iTunes or Amazon), I figured why not expand on the ways of sharing how much great music is getting put out on Bandcamp.

And with Bandcamp’s newly launched fan accounts, what better time than now to put up a mix of 30 great tracks / artists that are all available on Bandcamp. Almost all of these tracks can be added to your fan collection (I say ‘almost’, not because a few of the tracks are no good, but just because a couple of the tracks are free downloads so you can’t technically add them to your Bandcamp collection… but you can and should still get them). I’ve updated each track on the 8tracks player so that the ‘buy’ links all go straight to the artists Bandcamp page.

So press play and when you hear something you like, press the ‘BUY’ link and go support that artist directly on Bandcamp. It’s a win win, because at the same time you’ll be building a tasty collection that all your (cool) friends will be envious of. Isn’t that what it is all (partly) about?

I’ve also created a track listing for this mix, with each track linked up to where you can listen individually on exfm (where each track also has direct links to Bandcamp), and you can view that over on HI54LOFI.COM. Plus a bit more.

Bandcamp Artists: Why ‘Name Your Price, No Minimum’ Is Better Than A ‘Free Download’

Yesterday, Bandcamp launched their brilliant Fan Accounts. I wrote a large amount of words on it already (Thank You Bandcamp. And Damn You.), but one point I didn’t make in the previous post —as that post was long enough– is a rather important one for anyone releasing music on Bandcamp:

If you want people to download a release for FREE, don’t do it as a straight up ‘free download’, but rather set it as a ‘name your price’ with a $0 minimum.

image

The reason for this is that with these new fan accounts, by giving people the choice of giving you a little money for your ‘free’ release, you are giving people a chance of saying that they ‘support’ your release. Anyone can still enter a $0 and get it for free, but if you keep your release as a ‘free download’ you have taken away a fans option of adding your release to their collection. Which also means, you’ve taken away a fans option of including your release amongst all the other releases that they want other Bandcamp users to see that they recommend.

Even if Bandcamp didn’t launch fan accounts, I think it is a smarter move to give people the option of supporting you for an album you’re perfectly fine with them having for free. But now more than ever, ‘name your price, no minimum’ is seriously a better option than setting your release as a ‘free download’.

Want a little bit of proof? Just yesterday, me and Benjamin Shaw were talking about how these new fan accounts were making us want to go buy music we already had and Ben mentioned how he asked a friend of his to change an album from ‘free download’ to ‘name your price’ so that he could add it to his collection. I’ve experienced that too. And I’m sure me and Ben are not the only crazy ones.

Thank you Bandcamp. And Damn you.

image

I don’t throw around the word ‘game changer’ much. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever thrown it around. But if I were to use it for the first time, I would feel pretty comfortable using it in a post about the Fan Accounts that Bandcamp just launched.

As all things Bandcamp, it is extremely well executed, straight out of the box. And like all things Bandcamp, they’ve posted on their blog everything you really need to know about the nuts and bolts of how it works, so I won’t delve into any of that in this post. I’ll just share why I say ‘thank you’ and ‘damn you’ in the title of this post.

“Bandcamp for fans is a social music discovery system based on the high-friction concept of ownership. If someone simply listens to a song, I frankly don’t care at all. And if someone listens to a song and then burns .01 calories tapping a Like button… well that’s slightly more interesting, but I still don’t care much. However, if someone is passionate enough about a record to spend money on it – to actually support the artist who made it, and perhaps even write a bit about why they love it – that makes me much more likely to listen to that record, and perhaps add it to my collection as well.”

First of all, thank you Bandcamp.

What you have already done for artists could have been plenty, so the fact that you keep upping the ante is amazing and very much appreciated. And these fan accounts really are the icing on the cake (a cake, I know, that you are not done icing).

They are going to have such a positive and powerful effect on music purchasing, it boggles my mind. The incentive for someone to actually make a purchase now —whether that means putting a dollar amount in place of a 0, or just buying something that someone is on the fence about— is shockingly massive.

I say ‘shockingly’ because I can’t believe I just bought some albums that I already own (whether that be because I bought them somewhere else, or was sent them as a promo, or downloaded for $0). There was this overwhelming urge that I needed to have ‘that’ album in my fan collection, as just having it in my iTunes now felt pointless (“where’s the proof?” I said aloud to no one). I’ve had to show some serious strength not to buy more and more today (and I already know that strength will wear off by tomorrow, if not later tonight). There has been so much music that I’ve felt I’ve ‘supported’ over the years (whether that be in a blog post, or by putting a song in a mix, or etc.) and not seeing those same records in my fan collection is giving me an ulcer. If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around, did I really ever buy that album? The psychology behind what is in play now runs very deep.

image

A music service has never so brilliantly propositioned us to put our money where our mouths are. You can ‘like’ something all you want (or ‘scrobble’, ‘heart’, etc.), but if you want an album to show up in your collection, you’ll need to actually get out your wallet and support the people who made it. With money. And that’s a great thing for artists.

And it’s a great thing for fans too, as it finally puts a face (your own face) onto your music purchases in a meaningful way. I know from my own experiences, it was a lot easier to put in a 0 for a ‘name your price’ download back when the process felt more like 1’s and 0’s (i.e. an automated ‘thank you’ email and then maybe lastfm will scrobble the fact that I now have this album… and as far as a scrobble goes, I could just as easily of downloaded the track on a torrent site or BIRP.FM, or just listened to it on Spotify).

But now it feels like purchasing an album means more. And that feeling is, of course, completely selfish. Because it always meant something to the artist making the music. But something was missing for the customer.

What Bandcamp has done is make buying music mean more for the people buying the music. That is what the game changer is.

You almost feel fraudulent for every album that you love that is not in your collection. I know that is not a natural feeling, especially for music I have actually purchased, but there it is. Burning a hole in my stomach. I want to get in a time machine and rethink every purchase I made away from Bandcamp and every free ‘name your price’ download I have ever done. I want to buy every great album a musician has ever been kind enough to send me. Even records that I helped release. I want all that shit inmy collection. And the only thing that has really changed is now it is not just the artist that is putting themselves out there in an exposed way, the music fan is too.

And therein lies the ‘damn you’ from the title. The one thing these fan accounts are bad for is my paypal account. I am going to be spending a lot more money now. But I don’t mean ‘damn you’ like ‘damn you, I’m mad at you’. I just mean ‘damn you’ like ‘damn you, you brilliant, beautiful bastards’.

If you’d like to follow my descent in to a beautifully soundtracked poverty, my fan account is here.

I just randomly came across a new feature that Bandcamp is developing: Fan Accounts. I came across it after doing an advanced google search to try and see if there was a reason why A Singer Of Songs 2010 album Old Happiness was suddenly selling a bunch of copies (I am being a bit loose with the word ‘a bunch’, but still, in this day and age when you sell more than one copy of something a few months after it’s been released - in this case, almost 3 years later - the “what’s going on, did Lady Gaga tweet about it” alarm bells start to ring). That google search didn’t solve the mystery of the Old Happiness sales, but it did point me to a beta fan account of one of the people who recently purchased it. Which then led me to the Bandcamp page describing what Fan Accounts will be. I think this will be a great new addition to not only the Bandcamp package, but modern day music buying in general. It’s such a small thing, but actually providing that small incentive of being able to show off your purchases - and interact with other people of similar tastes - is bound to increase purchases. It’s also a nice way for someone’s purchases to be more than just a faceless purchase. It puts a face and personality behind a sale, and that’s a good thing for both the fans and the artists. Really looking forward for this to move out of beta.

I just randomly came across a new feature that Bandcamp is developing: Fan Accounts.

I came across it after doing an advanced google search to try and see if there was a reason why A Singer Of Songs 2010 album Old Happiness was suddenly selling a bunch of copies (I am being a bit loose with the word ‘a bunch’, but still, in this day and age when you sell more than one copy of something a few months after it’s been released - in this case, almost 3 years later - the “what’s going on, did Lady Gaga tweet about it” alarm bells start to ring).

That google search didn’t solve the mystery of the Old Happiness sales, but it did point me to a beta fan account of one of the people who recently purchased it. Which then led me to the Bandcamp page describing what Fan Accounts will be.

I think this will be a great new addition to not only the Bandcamp package, but modern day music buying in general. It’s such a small thing, but actually providing that small incentive of being able to show off your purchases - and interact with other people of similar tastes - is bound to increase purchases.

It’s also a nice way for someone’s purchases to be more than just a faceless purchase. It puts a face and personality behind a sale, and that’s a good thing for both the fans and the artists.

Really looking forward for this to move out of beta.

Bandcamp Radio on exfm…

I love Bandcamp. I also love exfm. And since they both play so nicely together, I decided to create something that combines what the two sites do so well.

That ‘something’ is called Bandcamp Radio. So what is that?

Well, in a nutshell, I’ve created an exfm account where I only ‘heart’ songs that are available on Bandcamp. This creates a radio station that is not only made entirely of music available on Bandcamp, but all songs have direct links back to the Bandcamp page they come from. I personally believe that the greatest way to support an artist is to purchase their music through their Bandcamp page (as that is the place where they’ll get the biggest cut). I also believe that not everybody is as aware of Bandcamp as they should be (which isn’t helped by the fact that most internet radio stations always create buy links to iTunes or Amazon). And… finding new music on Bandcamp can sometimes be more labour intensive then your average music consumer is willing to put in. So I hope that Bandcamp Radio can help with that (as long as you have a similar taste in music as me).

Now Bandcamp has already created a great tool for discovering music on their site (called the Discovernator), but the one thing it doesn’t currently allow you to do is to put things on shuffle and discover new music through osmosis (i.e. like having music playing in the background while you get your Excel on). So hopefully you’ll find Bandcamp Radio as a nice alternative to listening to the radio while you’re at work or on the bus or wherever (and hopefully when you hear something you like, you’ll click the source link and support the artist… a lot of the times they are free downloads anyways).

IMPORTANT: The best way to listen to Bandcamp Radio is to scroll down until you hit the last song (or at least scroll down a ways so you load more songs) as soon as you arrive on the Bandcamp Radio exfm page. If you don’t scroll down before you push ‘Play All’, then exfm only loads the first 20 songs. If you scroll all the way to the bottom of the page before you push ‘Play All’, then exfm will load all of the songs that have been added. So - at the time of this blog post - you’ll be putting 151 songs on shuffle instead of 20 (which is the difference between an hour long playlist or an afternoon long playlist).

I’ll continue to add new songs every week to Bandcamp Radio, so keep tuning in and discovering how much great music is available on that extremely artist friendly service called Bandcamp (and don’t forget, exfm has a great and free iPhone and Android app, so you can take Bandcamp Radio with you in your pocket).

HI54LOFI RECORDS WISH LIST - Item #1

#1 - Que Entire Albums for Uploading on Bandcamp

If you have ever made your music available through Bandcamp (if you haven’t, you should), you are well aware of the very slow and painful uploading process. Perhaps I am really feeling it today as, ever since we moved to England, our internet has been a lot slower than what we were used to in Canada. But if my memory serves me correctly, even back then it was painfully slow. So I guess the reason I am really feeling it today is because I am uploading a 15 track compilation that is being released tomorrow. And it is crawling at an overweight and elderly snails pace… and it’s kind of delaying some other important things I need to do (but can’t until the album is up on Bandcamp).

The reason it goes so slow is that you have to upload WAV files, which are really big. You have to upload WAV files because Bandcamp provides consumers with the choice of downloading your music in the file format of your choise (at a high quality). This is a good thing. I just wish it was possible for me to que all the tracks I need to upload in one step and then go away (or go to sleep) and come back when they are done. Instead, you can only have two tracks uploading at one time, which means every 20-60 minutes you need to check on things and see if you can start uploading the next ones.

I got this compilation ready for Bandcamp in the early hours of last night / this morning and all I can think about today is how nice it would have been to have qued all the tracks right before I went to bed at 5 in the morning, and have woken up to them all being uploaded. Instead I went to bed at 5 in the morning and set my alarm for just a few hours of sleep, so that I would have enough time to upload tracks 2 at a time today and still have enough time to send some press emails out before tomorrow’s release. But, for now, I guess I can only place this wish out into the universe and hope it is granted.

This post is a part of a new blog series called ‘HI54LOFI RECORDS WISH LIST’. I don’t know how frequently I will post in this series. I guess it will be whenever I am doing something and I have thoughts like ‘I wish this was like this’.