Sola Rosa on bandcamp

I came across a super-awesome service for bands and recording artists called Bandcamp.  It’s free, and it lets you host your band’s music and discography, sell it or give it away, and it provides a smooth and clean website presence for your band.  It takes music hosting to the next level and can really improve your band’s web presence.  This review from bandcamp user, Mike Ventimiglia of the The Mississippi Kings, covers all of the features in depth.

I won’t re-hash all of features that make this free service great for bands, but there are few gems that really struck me about bandcamp.  From a web guru’s perspective, these are the things that separates the run-of-the-mill website from the innovative and super-useful web 2.0 applications.

Every Flavor of Audio Formats

The first thing that jumped out at me about bandcamp is the ability to post every type of audio format imaginable.  It even makes all of the conversions for you.  Just start by uploading the highest quality version you have – a lossless .wav or .aiff – and bandcamp will convert down to AAC, Ogg (not even sure what that is), and a variety of mp3 qualities.  By the way – here’s a video screencast about converting to mp3s yourself… but with bandcamp, you don’t need to.

Offering a variety of sound quality options is a very cool idea, which sets your band apart from many others who simply give you the most compressed mp3 audio possible.  Audiofiles will dig you as well as casual listeners looking for a bit more punch in their listening experience.  Nine Inch Nails has been mindful of sound quality by giving away various audio options of their albums as well.

Oh, and you can choose to set a price (any price) for certain versions of each song, while giving others away free.  For example, you may want to give out your mp3 version for nothing, but charge a little something for the lossless AIFF version.  Bandcamp makes these options are totally flexible.  Here’s an article weighing the pro’s and con’s of giving away your music.

Your own URL or Domain

The other super sweet feature from bandcamp is the ability to use your own domain for your bandcamp page!  That’s right, you can make your bandcamp page www.myband.com or something like music.myband.com.  This allows you to make it a totally legit extension of your band’s website.  Use bandcamp as the “music” area of your website by linking to it in your site’s navigation.

You don’t have complete control of the page layout and design, however you can certainly customize the colors, and add your bands graphics to the top.  You will also notice that album art is a major focus of your bandcamp page, which I think is great.  I’m all for promoting great design in music.

Over to you

Anybody out there using bandcamp already?  Promote your band’s music page here.  Lets see how you integrated it with your website.  I’m interested to see if their feature-packed service has had an impact on growing your fanbase and music sales.

You’re midway through piecing together a new song and you hit a road block. The song needs… something. But what? Often times the best addition to a song is a subtraction.

What I mean by that is keep things simple and straightforward can often serve your song quite well. By stripping away the clutter you can focus your audience’s attention on the core concept of the song – this can be a riff, a rhythm, a lyric, a melody, or some combination of these. Whatever it is that’s meant to be front and center should remain clear and digestible.

Taking this idea a step further, you can actually use empty space as its own instrument. Try working with an interesting and obscure rhythm. Then slowly take away one note (or hit) at a time, leaving only the most essential backbone notes. The space that’s left in between these notes serves to add tension and anticipation for the primary components of the phrase – giving the overall sound more impact.

A few songs that come to mind which utilize this technique are:

If You Believe – Nino Moschella
Master Blaster (Jammin’) – Stevie Wonder
Right Where It Belongs – Nine Inch Nails