Music Information Retrieval in Bandcamp.com

Introduction

Bandcamp  describes itself as “an online record store and music community where passionate fans discover, connect with, and directly support the artists they love.” The company claims that 82% of all revenue goes to the artists (About Bandcamp, n.d.). Bandcamp operates on a traditional retail model and collects no information about the users (Krukowski, 2020). Bandcamp allows you to save your music directly to your hard drive in any of the major audio file formats—a boon to the discerning audiophile. This paper seeks to accomplish the following goals. First, we provide technical documentation on how to use the Bandcamp information retrieval tool. Then, we critique the tool from an Organization of Information (IO) lens. Finally, we provide a set of recommendations to digital information organizations to model the success of Bandcamp.

Description

The landing page for Bandcamp contains many options, but you can find the primary navigation elements on the top bar of the page. To search for music, you select the search bar to view a list of genre tags. You can then either select a genre or enter a manual search query. See Figure 1 for more information.

Figure 1

LEGEND:

1. Search Bar
2. Cart
3. Feed
4. Collection
5. Profile

If you select a genre tag, a page dedicated to that genre is loaded. The page displays a curated selection of the music that has been tagged with that genre. From the top of the page, you can select several options to navigate the search results. See Table 1 for a description of the elements of the retrieval tool.

Table 1
Description of Elements in the Retrieval Tool

The musical items are displayed in a list along with their album art and several options. You can select the album art to play that musical item. You can also select the following options below the album art:

• The album title and artist name. This action loads the album’s page.
• Buy Now. This action loads the album’s page with the purchase dialog box automatically displayed.
• Wishlist. This action populates your Wishlist with that item.

Figure 2

Analysis

The Bandcamp music information retrieval (MIR) system relies on metadata tags for music discovery. This system is based on an Information-as-Thing concept, where the digital music files are treated as objects in the same way as a record or t-shirt. This front-end system aligns with the user sentiments collected in the information science literature.

Information-as-Thing

Some have argued that information is an object that can be empirically observed. That is, what people call “data” isn’t immaterial, but made up of “physical bits and bytes” stored in a computer (Buckland 1991). Even though the magnetic engravings on the disks of hard drives are microscopic to the human eye, they’re as physical as the writing printed in books on a shelf. However, others contrast digital objects with “physical things like books” (Glushko, 2016, p.27). Bandcamp follows a distinct information-as-thing model. Bandcamp markets and sells the digital music files on the website in the same way as the macroscopic merchandise. In this way, the users of this site maintain a sense of ownership (Lee et al, 2016).

User convenience

In a quantitative study, it was found that user interest in digital music files increased 15.4% in the period between 2004 and 2012. Meanwhile, interest in tangible recordings decreased by 10.8%. However, one aspect of music information seeking that remained constant was that the most sought-after information was podcasts and feature articles (Lee et al, 2016). Bandcamp addresses this user need well. See Figure 1 and note that the Bandcamp search function is underemphasized. The site gives the most space to the podcasts and articles that the company produces. Bandcamp recommendations are made by people, not algorithms. In a qualitative analysis, users reported that MIR algorithms can be off-putting (Lee & Price, 2016).

Recommendations

Information organizations would do well to note the success of Bandcamp. It has proven a sustainable and successful model of a commercial music information retrieval system. Moreover, it has done so ethically, fairly compensating the artists and collecting minimal information from its users. We advocate that digital information organizations adhere to the following guidelines when they design information systems:

• Don’t rely solely on back-end automation to deliver user satisfaction.
• Emphasize front-end, human-centered systems that are actively maintained by content managers.

These guidelines require no self-sacrifice on the part of the organization. Bandcamp is modestly profitable and growing (Krukowski, 2020).

Conclusion

In this paper, we’ve analyzed the Bandcamp MIR system against findings from the information science literature. We’ve found that the system aligns with sentiments revealed in qualitative and quantitative analyses of user experience outcomes. To recommend information to users, we call for information organizations to emphasize front-end content management by subject matter experts.

References

• Buckland, M. K. (1991). Information as thing. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 42(5), 351–360.
• Glushko, R. J. (2016). Foundations for organizing systems. In The Discipline of Organizing (pp. 25–62). MIT Press.
• Krukowski, D. (2020, August 19). A tale of two ecosystems: On Bandcamp, Spotify and the wide-open future. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2020/08/19/903547253/a-tale-of-two-ecosystems-on-bandcamp-spotify-and-the-wide-open-future 
• Lee, J. H., Cho, H., & Kim, Y.-S. (2016). Users’ music information needs and behaviors: Design implications for music information retrieval systems. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 67(6), 1301–1330. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.23471 
• Lee, J. H., & Price, R. (2016). User experience with commercial music services: An empirical exploration. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 67(4), 800–811. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.23433