That may be true for bigger artists on major labels, but for smaller independent bands it’s not always the case. I am a heavy user and fan of Bandcamp for listening to and purchasing music but I use Spotify for listening in the car and sharing playlists. I often find albums that are only available on either Spotify or Bandcamp but not both.

The ones that aren’t available on Spotify tend to be self-released but otherwise there isn’t much of a pattern. Albums not on Bandcamp, though, tend to be mediocre at best.

And that’s not even mentioning bands that are pulling their music from Spotify in protest…

Someone once told me “every setting you expose to your users is a decision you were too scared to make.”

User: I'd like to be able to change my password

Dev: I'm too brave to let you do that

That gets less true the more utility your software is expected to have.

When it comes to software intended for the general public it doesn't take bravery to decide that every user should only ever be allowed to do things exactly how you'd want them done. I might be more likely to attribute that to arrogance. Really, for something like converting audio/video I'd just see the inflexible software with few if any options as too limited for my needs (current, future, or both) and go looking for something more powerful.

It's better to not invest my time on software that is overly restrictive when more useful options are available, even if I don't need all of those options right now because it'll save me the trouble of having to hunt down something better later since I've already got what I need on my systems.

Math pun… 6! = Factorial(6) = 720

Whoosh, it went right over my head.

  Location: Boston, MA, USA
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I'm an experienced developer and manager, ideally looking for a small software company that needs someone to help grow and mentor a department of engineers.

I think you’re getting your 90s rock goddess Kims confused, though it would be cool to hear a Breeders/SY combination!

One solution to this, albeit a fairly technical one, can be found here: https://github.com/Ezwen/bandcamp-collection-downloader . I've been using it for years to download my library in FLAC format.

There are also a bunch of GUI tools that claim to download libraries (search for "bandcamp downloader") but I haven't used any of them.

I was hoping someone would chime in with something like this. Thank you!

Another factor to consider is that BC makes files available to download in a variety of formats (MP3, FLAC, AAC, etc.) Presumably they're transcoding on the fly from a lossless format and not storing all those extra files...

Yes, there's often a wait on the download page while the transcoding is done.