I am still buying cd’s, mainly at Bandcamp, I however do think about streaming and how to progress. I saw that a new SACplayer is in the pipeline, but are there any plans to issue a separate streamer or perhaps a streamer/server that will go with my current PSAudioset including a bridge I never used…
I have still nothing decided, but looking for a one box solution that doesn’t cost me a leg to connect to my DSDAC.
Bandcamp rewards the artist with a significant proportion of the income, streaming does not. Good for searching for new music though is streaming, but tempting to only use that. I believe a new PS Audio music server and streamer is on the way end of this year?
Then you can buy digital from Bandcamp and stream it locally - best of both worlds and the artist still gets paid!
That’s what I am after, perhaps even just buy the cd and stream the files that come with them. Up till now I never downloaded them.
Any more info on this streamer/server?
search / look for Octave in the threads on the forum - there’s stuff about octave records too but also about the new streamer/server.
i have ripped most of my CDs to a local server (done on the cheap with a Raspberry Pi) it is so much mor convenient hence i listen to a lot more of them now.
Thanks, I’'ll check it.
Does anyone know how to find out the sample rate of an album on Bandcamp? I can’t seem to find it listed anywhere on the individual pages for albums. I’ve only made two purchases on the site before and I knew the sample rate because it was listed in a review on another site.
Hi,
When I recently inquired about this issue, specifically asking if this information can be added to the album’s information, Bandcamp’s reply was:
“That’s not something we’re currently looking at. However, we’re always trying to improve Bandcamp for fans and artists. So, who knows what the future holds? That suggestion has been brought up before and I’l be sure to pass it on to the appropriate folks.”
Wow! Thanks for the info. Kinda crazy don’t ya think? The page for the album I’d like to purchase even lists the band’s instrument endorsements, but no sample rate. Oh well, found the same album on Qobuz which lists 96/24 right next to the price.
I got introduced to Bandcamp really at the start of lockdown in 2020 as a lot of artists moved on there to get more returns instead of using a label.
I absolutely love it for several reasons:
1/. Much higher percentage of proceeds go to the artist, less outlay for them to a label or distributor.
2/. Bandcamp now have their own vinyl production service which artists can source, quality is very high and again, it’s easier for the artist to get low production runs at reasonable costs while maintaining quality.
3/. Downloadable content for albums that qualify. I tend to use FLAC downloads just for convenience, but absolutely love the fact they have WAV as an option also. But as @gedlis correctly points out and @brumtech raises, to make it a more appealing option for audiophiles, specifying bitrate is quite frankly, essential.
But I buy an awful lot of my records from smaller artists through Bandcamp, I would always choose it over another source simply because of the returns the artist gets. But the only lesser quality record I’ve had from them was through an artist called Flevans, and it wasn’t a bad quality record, but was obviously quite old and hadn’t been stored too well and hence was very dusty and needed a good clean.
Streaming wise, I get all my digital content through sites like bandcamp and others, and have a server at home with my music library on board that I stream from both while at home and when out and about through my phone.
For streaming content, I’m not as fussed about quality, I won’t do mp3, but I don’t mind too much about bit rate as I’m usually out and about or just having background music while I’m working or something. For any critical listening, I do all that on my analogue system through vinyl. As such I use Plex as my media server for both audio and movies and find it perfect for my needs.
I think though obviously if you’re doing critical listening through quality components, then you’ll greatly benefit from Roon (very expensive) or Audirvana (more reasonable) and host the server on a Mac Mini or Windows device with whatever quality DAC you prefer.