A look at Bandcamp’s music discovery tool

In December 2023, Bandcamp launched ‘discover’, a page that takes users directly to the built-in discovery section of Bandcamp https://bandcamp.com/discover

This section has existed in some form for quite a while before the 2023 announcement. The page allows users to filter through certain tags ie ‘electronic’, ‘house’ which can be further narrowed down to digital or vinyl , best sellers or new arrivals.

While we don’t know how the algorithm works on Bandcamp, it seems safe to say that tags are important. Search options are decent- we searched for ‘Tim Reaper’ which brought up his artist page and a series of EPs and albums by/or featuring Tim. Compared to the artist pages on Juno Download and Beatport, this Bandcamp alternative would benefit from the option to sort music by date.

While Bandcamp is not necessarily as granular as the legacy download stores, it offers more to the artists in terms of merch sales, livestreaming options, more leniency regarding unofficial edits and remixes and most of all, the ability to sell physical formats (vinyl, CDs, USB).

Unlike Beatport et al, Bandcamp doesn’t do weekly release schedules which reflects in the discovery tool that surfaces music several months old next to current releases. This isn’t a bad thing, in fact, it helps promote longevity, once a thing in electronic dance music before today’s constant churn and oversaturation.

Overall, Bandcamp discovery is a useful tool for those looking for an alternative to the big download/streaming stores. The apparent lack of electronic dance music is likely due to the dominance of the aforementioned sites. Discovery could benefit from sales based rankings and integration of the excellent https://www.buymusic.club/ allowing artists to curate lists but even without these additions, users are likely to come away with some great tunes that may have gone under the radar.