Bandcamp suggestions...are they worth it?

jayem wrote: Well...I confess that I was recently about to add the Wanani Bane Band, one of my happiest prog discoveries ever (sic!), on Unsigned Bands.  But I haven't so far, because of the not so perfect renderings. As the band leader doesn't seem to focus on a song until it's perfect and prefers going on with new stuff, my hopes for a non-utterly-perfect rendering is quite low. My sharing about this band ended up, along with other projects the same main composer was involded in, in Prog Recommendations.  http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=94960 Would one rather have it added in a General Music Discussions thread? Would this Unsigned Bands thread be suitable anyway?

Well...I confess that I was recently about to add the Wanana Bani Garden band, one of my happiest prog discoveries ever (sic!), on Unsigned Bands. 

Edited by jayem - October 07 2013 at 17:53

Dean wrote: Bandcamp is an adequate "pool of projects" as it is, it does not need us to validate or replicate that.

There are some great genuine bands on there that deserve to be here. One of my Top 10 albums I submitted to the collab list came from bandcamp. But as you said I'm pretty sure they have a small presence outside of that site. I agree that suggestions from there should be slowed down though. Not every band from there with a progressive tag should be posted here or suggested for addition. It just adds to the lists of bands that get no ratings or reviews besides the person who may have suggested them. I don't think that's a worthy exchange. Though, we are an "archive".

I just read Spotify lost 78 million dollars last year, one wonders how well the new paradigm is going. 

It depends on the type of Bandcamp band really. If it is an artist whose sole presence is on Bandcamp, and the release is digital on that site solely, then value is limited. But there aren't too many of those cases actually.

I do find that many bands on Bandcamp for some reason or other fail to mention that their music is also available on CD and/or vinyl for instance, and just as many fail to mention an existence elsewhere on the net as well. So while they may appear as a Bandcamp only band, in reality they aren't. Which, basically, boils down to poor marketing skills. Which is the reason for the existence of stuff like record labels in the first place I guess.

Bandcamp has also become much more than it was just a couple of years ago, as this link documents quite nicely. Of course, it might be more fruitful to explore other sources of potential artist additions prior to bandcamp - CDBaby and emusic to name but two of many more high profile sources or potential artist additions that to my knowledge hasn't been given a thorough run. When checking both those sites from time to time I come across tons of artists that haven't yet been given a check.

I strongly believe we should not be expending too much energy on these bands. If they have a web-presence outside Bandcamp and the ubiquitous social network channels then (and only then) should we look at them, but that should be at the discretion of the respective Sub-genre Teams, not as a golden rule that they must follow.

I am curious as to why some member(s) insist on adding every band on bandcamp that comes along to this thread? Sure in an ideal world we would all love to see a band make it but surely bandcamp is merely a huge unending bucket of many one man bands/part-timers using a prog tag to maximise their coverage? Yet how many of these are really prog?