Lots of new trad folk to hear (Bandcamp)

Subject: New trad folk albums to hear (Bandcamp)
From: GUEST,matt milton
Date: 22 May 18 - 04:16 AM

Having just waded briefly through a post about taping stuff off Spotify, I thought I'd post a link - for anyone as yet unaware of it - to the host of folk musicians selling their wares on Bandcamp.

Listen for free to their albums, then buy them, knowing that they the musicians will get a much better deal than if they were selling them on amazon or itunes.

Trad folk musicians on Bandcamp

Subject: RE: Lots of new trad folk to hear (Bandcamp)
From: GUEST,matt milton
Date: 22 May 18 - 04:18 AM

You'll need to scroll down the page a bit (until you see the word "Discover")

Subject: RE: Lots of new trad folk to hear (Bandcamp)
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 22 May 18 - 11:01 AM

cheers matt...

I spend too much time getting exasperated and sarcastic
with the sanctimonious judgemental mudcat miseries...

..who oddly enough don't seem to like music that much...????

I know.. it's so futile...

So many thanks for a refreshingly positive constructive thread about new recordings
and 21st Century distribution methods...

Subject: RE: Lots of new trad folk to hear (Bandcamp)
From: GUEST,Lin
Date: 23 May 18 - 01:27 AM

Thanks so much for posting information about Bandcamp. I had never heard of it before but clicked on the link to get to this site.
Wow!! Lots and lots of great music to hear. When you click on any particular album you can also hear more songs from that album by just clicking on "Hear More." Brings you to the album and all the songs listed on it.
I spent a good hour just going through many of the folk albums. Sure, I didn't like everything I listened to - but there was plenty of really good albums! One I particularly liked was by a female singer named Alice Dillon. Her album is "On A Green Growing Tree."
I also listened to a duo called Kacy & Clayton (female/male folk duo.)

Thanks again for letting us know about Bandcamp! I plan to spend a lot of time over the next several days listening to lots of CDs and plan to buy some too!
rvro

Subject: RE: Lots of new trad folk to hear (Bandcamp)
From: GUEST,Richard Robinson
Date: 23 May 18 - 03:52 AM

Theres' a coincidence - I've been thinking about this stuff lately, having (finally) come up with some recordings that wanted to be put somewhere (It's an Ill Wind). [Hijacks thread, posts advert, goes silent, creates bad impression of drive-by advertiser - sorry about that, but I'll be out of the door in just a few minutes for the Train Journey North on my way up to the Orkney festival, back next week ...]

The main thing I've thought is that the streaming SpotiFaceTube sites see music as a business expense that cuts into their profits (which come from advertising), so their interests are at odd with ours, whereas Bandcamp takes a cut on our sales, so we're on the same side.

That thing about VAT on downloads is a piss-off, though, I hadn't known about that till I tried to do a test-purchase.

Subject: RE: Lots of new trad folk to hear (Bandcamp)
From: Howard Jones
Date: 23 May 18 - 04:15 AM

The problem with all these streaming sites is that the filtering categories are usually not sufficiently refined. For a general listener "folk" or even "traditional folk" may be sufficient, but anyone with a more specialist interest will want to narrow it down, to avoid being overwhelmed by the sheer number of tracks available online. So I want to distinguish between revival interpretations of traditional material and source singers; between Americana and British, between Irish, Scottish, Welsh and English, and perhaps even regional variations within those. I want to distinguish song from dance music.

iTunes has "Traditional Folk" as a sub-category of "Singer-songwriter" for god's sake. Gracenote, the database which tells you about an album when you load it into your computer, doesn't allow the artist to define even broad categories when submitting it to them. This is decided by someone in California who may have no specialised knowledge of that particular genre and so is frequently unreliable, and useless from the point of view of discovering new music.

Bandcamp is perhaps the most helpful as it does allow the artist to describe their own music and also to suggest their own "sounds like" comparisons.

Subject: RE: Lots of new trad folk to hear (Bandcamp)
From: GUEST,matt milton
Date: 23 May 18 - 04:16 AM

" That thing about VAT on downloads is a piss-off, though, I hadn't known about that till I tried to do a test-purchase."

Oh, I didn't know about that either. I think that might have come in since I last bought something.

Subject: RE: Lots of new trad folk to hear (Bandcamp)
From: Howard Jones
Date: 24 May 18 - 07:04 AM

The rules on VAT on digital sales (including but not restricted to music downloads) changed in 2015. From then on digital supplies had to be taxed at the rate in the customer's country, rather than the supplier's. This was to stop big companies like Amazon operating from countries with very low VAT rates, but caused a huge admin problem for small-scale business who otherwise would not have to worry about VAT as they were below the UK threshold for registering for VAT. Google VATMOSS (or VATMESS) if you want your brain to hurt. There is now a €10k minimum which helps small businesses, but not when selling through a big platform such as Bandcamp. The rules may change again after Brexit. It's a mess.

Subject: RE: Lots of new trad folk to hear (Bandcamp)
From: GUEST,matt milton
Date: 25 May 18 - 05:10 AM

" Bandcamp is perhaps the most helpful as it does allow the artist to describe their own music and also to suggest their own "sounds like" comparisons."

Yeah, I find Bandcamp's "traditional folk" tag does seem to, by and large, feature traditional folk (rather than singer-songwriter stuff), largely cos it's artist-applied.

You can tag yourself however you like, and I think more Bandcamp artists should go a bit further in this regard: if you're a traditional singer, for instance, who plays concertina and guitar and is heavily influenced by John Kirkpatrick and Martin Carthy, then you should give yourself searchable tags like "traditional folk", "English folk", "trad", "concertina", "Martin Carthy", "John Kirkpatrick", "morris", "Child Ballads", "murder ballads" or whatever. That way, people like me, with tastes like mine, are more likely to find and buy your music.

Subject: RE: Lots of new trad folk to hear (Bandcamp)
From: GUEST,Reinhard
Date: 25 May 18 - 10:17 AM

If you're interested in what other folk enthusiasts got from bandcamp have a look at my bandcamp account page https://bandcamp.com/mainlynorfolk.

Subject: RE: Lots of new trad folk to hear (Bandcamp)
From: Will Fly
Date: 25 May 18 - 11:48 AM

Thanks for the link, Reinhardt - I discovered a very nice track by Canny Fettle!

Subject: RE: Lots of new trad folk to hear (Bandcamp)
From: Gordon Jackson
Date: 25 May 18 - 12:52 PM

I have a couple of CDs on Bandcamp, but can't for the life of me work out how to come up in searches by genre. I've added the tags 'traditional folk' (a sub-heading of 'folk') and 'Celtic' (a term I hate, for the record, to be found under 'world') and they don't show up.

So, you are all cordially invited to visit our site - thejonesboys.org - and hear us there. There's a link to Bandcamp from our site.

Regards,
Gordon

Subject: RE: Lots of new trad folk to hear (Bandcamp)
From: Gordon Jackson
Date: 25 May 18 - 12:55 PM

Oops, let's make it easier: The Jones Boys

Subject: RE: Lots of new trad folk to hear (Bandcamp)
From: keberoxu
Date: 25 May 18 - 02:44 PM

Punkfolkrocker,
I misread your post (mondegreen)
and saw

"sanctimonious judgmental mudcat mini-series."

Oh, the possibilities ... !

Subject: RE: Lots of new trad folk to hear (Bandcamp)
From: GUEST,Richard Robinson
Date: 30 May 18 - 09:53 AM

"You can tag yourself however you like, and I think more Bandcamp artists should go a bit further in this regard"

Yes. The sheer bulk of stuff Out There means that 'little people' are unlikely to turn up at random in front of the general public - we rely on people who are looking for something specific, so the more we can announce the things that people who might like us might be searching for, the better.

But I stopped to fiddle with my tags before I posted this, and got "OK, settle down. Please limit yourself to 5 genres, no more". *hrmph*. They're not, they're sub-genres. A more sophisticated (hierarchical ?) system of tagging would be more helpful.

It's all world music, I ain't never heard no Martians singin' it.

Subject: RE: Lots of new trad folk to hear (Bandcamp)
From: Tootler
Date: 30 May 18 - 10:25 AM

I've considered Bandcamp but wondered about how copyright is dealt with if you upload recently penned songs as your material is being offered for sale.

Subject: RE: Lots of new trad folk to hear (Bandcamp)
From: GUEST,Richard Robinson
Date: 30 May 18 - 12:10 PM

[copyright] - Yes, so have I. I contacted bandcamp support to ask them, but all they had to say was that if I didn't understand my legal situation I should consult my lawyer (which didn't make a particularly good impression, I have to say. They must know). So I contacted PRS to ask them, and they told me it's the site's responsibility to take care of this. I suppose they'd do this by letting the collection agencies (MCPS, PRS) know what they're playing. And likewise, possibly, with performance rights to the musicians for the 'listen now' streaming plays (??), which I think are supposed to be collected by PPL (all this in the UK) and am guessing would be in the same range as the Spotifacetubes (i.e. fractions of a single peanut). I think all this is, in theory, supposed to be kept track of by the ISRCs ?

Or I could be entirely wrong, I'm new to all this, I haven't seen how things actually do work, yet.