Bandcamp Radio
Table of Contents
Listening Experience
It’s oftentimes obvious that “how” we do something, has direct influence on “what” we do; even the most (seemingly) irrelevant factors can sometimes come into play.
for example if you’re refactoring a piece of code, not only do your technical skills matter in the process (how familiar you are to the codebase/framework/paradigms/etc.), but also do the way you approach the task at hand. from mildly relevant factors (e.g., work environment. is your screen too bright that your eyes are sore after 20 minutes? is your chair comfortable enough? are you hearing a lot of noise?) to even the most seemingly unasociated matters (e.g, your mental/physical state. your last night’s fight with your landlady, the dead bird you saw on the street this morning, or your payrolls that are due this week). these are not even butterfly effects, since the mediary elements are easily traceable.
Narrowing this down, while listening to things, not only does “what you listen to” affects “what you hear”, but so does “how you’re listening to it”. this can range from various technologies (vinyl, cassette tape, your cellphone speaker, 320kbps pirated .mp3s? lossless .flac files 300mb each?) to all the nostalgia and biases you carry from childhood (the bully in your class loved Green Day and now it reminds you of him? the girl next door loved TLC? your mom sang Blackbird for you to sleep?).
The question of “what you listen to” is extremely subjective (e.g., genres), and I’ve grown to believe that it’s “ok” for people to listen to what I dislike, and I can still like them despite their cheap inferior taste (still a work in progress). so I leave this part out.
so far
So far I’ve listened to music from a variety of sources. when I was a child cassette players were the major medium, and so was TV and radio. however public media was obviously not so diverse, so wheat I heard from TV and radio where almost always the same 100 pieces of music: instrumentals (classical, flamenco or new age. or short advertisement music that was relatively more “bright” with catchier melodies) or ritual/religious/celebatory government music. children shows had also music, that nobody could really complain about.
Later, Walkmans were a thing too, and home cassette players. I don’t remember ever “having” either but I have visual memories of people owning, using and loving them. CD-man also existed for a while but not as present and for as long. CDs and later DVDs were a very present medium. we paid certain “stores” to get disks filled with music, mostly based on artist. people played them at home or their cars, and cooler young guys on their home stereo systems. Metallica was always a presence in the underground, cool teen, hide-the-cd-under-your-shirt scene, and later techno music and parties. I was too young for all these though. I was busy playing ball with neighbors, riding my bike and writing homework for tomorrow.
When I grew older people started talking of this thing called “internet” where you could video chat with indians, find homeworks, and pirate music (still relevant). so during middle-school we used to spend a few hours everyday afterschool in “internet café”s because that was where the internet was, and not our pockets and backpacks and bedrooms. among everything we did (which isn’t a broad spectrum for a middle-schooler boy on the internet. yea, yuo guessed right) there was a unerasable chore in our daily internet sessions: [mp3skull]((https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mp3skull). a website that listed latest music based on popularity and you could download them too. “as of October 2016”, mp3skul is offline.
Get Lucky is my most prominent souvenier from that time.
Next were cellphones. with everyone owning one, the major platform becamse the 1gb SD card (I remember owning a 64mb SDHC card on a Nokia 6600, among the several cellphones I had before the android-era). cellphones were all (basically but not technically) offline so infrared and bluetooth during gatherings were the major music (and literally everything else) distribution platform. there was GPRS internet but it was a practical joke, hardly loading up a simple pre-historic webpage. we also paid the “certain” stores to fill up our SD cards with music, often stuff. my first encounter with this “random” music was Ain’t no reason by Bret Denin; I was shocked and lost to what the hell it was! of course we all knew names like Michael Jackson, Enrique Iglesias or Madonna. but the catalogue ended there, with only the super-hyped top-of-the chart pop songs, or older music from before the revolution (most middle-aged people have heard The Beatles, at least the name or the haircut!)
That went on for a while and then suddenly everybody owned an android phone before 2017/18. so there was much more music getting around, with (3g) internet at hand (literally). bluetooth was faster, devices had more storage, and also more music was being produced! rap was a thing, techno was dead, and with the new levels of moderate freedom, a lot of new pop stars were around.
That went on for a while and then cellphones became an omnipresent element in our lives. Spotify was a thing but not everyone exactly knew what it was: “so you have to turn on your traffic to listen to music all the time? you can’t download anything? you need to pay for an account? aren’t we sanctioned, or isn’t it prohibited by the government?” (the two challenges of streaming I still can’t come over). I occasionally used Spotify, but not so much. it was a new experience and you could discover new music that you actually liked, I guess that was the best thing about it. my most vivid memory is listening to Starboy on spotify in one go, and I think that was the first time I listened to a whole album in one sitting.
Spotify was banned and it was difficult and expensive to use it, even without buying a pirated premium account (which is still around despite the mindblowing price for some reason. can’t people just listen to 30-second ads every 10 minutes anymore?).
I tried deezer too but nobody else used it so it felt weird and left out. it wasn’t banned at first but then it was, and it was all the reason I needed to abandon it for good.
Today
Since I started working my first 9-5 job, I’ve been sailing the uncharted waters of my mental and physical stability. this resulted in battling against undiscovered foes, namely managing my sleep schedule, focusing at will, planning my days, napping with my eyes open, and logging my work. I realized music helps a lot with the first two (also a small drink/snack but that’s beyond the scope of this writing).
newsflash: every streaming service is banned where I live; either sanctioned from the outer world or prohibited from the inside. so started the digging and the shoveling through lists of streaming services. some self-hosted (Navidrome, Ampache, etc.), some genre-specific (funkwhale), some ugly (Sockso) and some aesthetically pleasing (forte). I found most of them to be of no use for my current condition and use-cases.
Finally I settled with Bandcamp. it’s a very unique experience since:
- it’s not even a streaming, but a music distribution platform
- it does NOT have autoplay (you have to manually click to play every song, every time. well, except when listening to albums)
- there’s a very intimate connection between the listener and the artist
- I can NOT download the files (as I normally do) for later local listens; because the artists are mostly too obscure to be found anywhere (for downloads that is! I do occasionally find them on other major streaming platforms like YouTube Music).
- as an amateur musician myself, I can easily sense the production process while listening to the music
- Bandcamp Radio! a great radio(-like) show that helps me hear VERY new sounds. be it genre, instrumentation, artist, etc. without trapping me inside a filter bubble. there are often annotation and interviews with artists as well.
- I admire the platform philosophically. the body of work that’s showcased is beautifully channelled and distributed for the right audience.