songtradr, bandcamp, faircamp, etc
hi.
this blog makes me feel like an absent friend who just pops up at your front door unannounced every few months, like “hey whats good, tryna kick it?”.
there are projects in the work, i promise. an acoustic album recorded entirely to a 7” reel to reel, no digital processing, of the songs that are to comprise the album that never got finished that maybe will one day get finished. later today i’ll setup a peertube account and i’ll upload a phone-video of the reel to reel in action. speaking of fediverse products such as peertube…
as you’ve probably already heard, songtradr purchased bandcamp from epic about 2 weeks ago. like many others, i was worried about how a publishing company would honor the legacy of a platform that provided digital music free of drm to music consumers. but before we even got that far, the new owners decided to lock out the entire bandcamp team from their systems. and 2 days ago, news broke that they fired the entirety of bandcamp united union leadership as well as a huge proportion of their staff:
https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/bandcamp-bargaining-union-layoffs-songtradr-18432047.php
some might wait around to see how a company that deals with hundred of thousands of dollars worth of sales daily is going to function with a 3 person customer service team, but as a matter of class solidarity, i’m out. that’s a personal decision for me, one that i, specifically, am in a position to afford.
anyways, back to the fediverse… there has been a product by the name of “faircamp” for a little while now. the team behind radiofreefedi.net has decided to provide hosting for rff artists. so without further ado…
you can now find symphonie no. 4 here: https://faircamp.radiofreefedi.net/benjamindaass/
as well as the embedded player to the right (and above, fuck squarespace’s web editor).
where you can stream and download for free, or leave a donation if you so please.
you can also listen to rff in browser or via a variety apps: https://radiofreefedi.net/
there are a few different groups that i am aware of trying to create a full-fledged bandcamp replacement, but for now faircamp seems like a great solution as long as you have the technical know-how and time to self-host or if you are fortunate enough to find someone willing to host.
huge thanks to control freak (whose work can be found here: https://faircamp.radiofreefedi.net/control/) for setting me up with hosting.
thank you for reading. new sounds coming soon.
