The bandcamp v spotify discourse grows tedious because there are certain features that bandcamp would need to implement in order to truly compete:

shareable playlists
shuffle mode
dl tracks to device
in-app purchasing

idk others probably but those seem like no-brainers

People always frame it like "why choose the bad option when you could simply choose the good option" but the thing is normies don't consider the good option "good" if it only does like 40% of what the bad option does

As of right now, they are not comparable services. One of them allows you to pay artists directly and purchase music for download to a computer, while the other lets you play anything anytime and share everything with everyone everywhere. It sucks but that's what it is

People are buying whole discographies and collections are getting huge. The fact that there's no way to hit shuffle on your entire collection, or even have another album start playing when one ends, is kinda ridiculous

I'm not trying to shit on bandcamp - it continues to be the best way to support artists directly and everyone who can stand to cancel their spotify subscription should do so. But bandcamp could implement some features that are now de facto standard and make it a real competition

Years ago there was this website called mp3 dot com. It was great because you could upload mp3's and sell physical cd's (really, fancy cd-r's) on-demand. Only problem was, the only people who were ever gonna find your music were other artists who had stuff for sale on mp3 dot com

Bandcamp has a similar vibe today. Sure it's possible for non-artists to find and purchase music on there but it kinda has that insular bubble quality too. Myspace was genius because it let fans and artists connect directly and easily for the first time

The same thing is ALMOST possible right now with bandcamp and twitter. But you can't share a bandcamp playlist on twitter because there's no way to make a playlist on bandcamp