20th Apr 2018, 5:13am
Yesterday.
"This looks great. Did you use Spotify data for the artists?"
"No... people entered the data themselves."
"Oh. But maybe we could link up the artists to a Spotify query..."
"I reckon more of them would be on Bandcamp."
"Does BC have an API?"
"Not any more," I said.
The original API allowed you to search for artists, embed players of other people, &c. But now the artist is a commerce point: the API focuses on one person and what they sell.
I should clarify what I've previously said. If I had a developer account, I could look at the bands I have under my account, my sales report, and my merchandise orders. That's it.
And that focus is sadly very inward-looking.
This is not a new conversation. I asked BC about the decision to remove the API in 2015(? maybe earlier), and had a pleasant but ultimately fruitless exchange (by e-mail): the API was going, and it wasn't coming back.
Yet here it is: http://bandcamp.com/developer
And it is in no way an improvement on version 1.
There are several things I could say about music companies and the characterisation of users as either vendors or consumers, but I am not wanting a "whatabout xyz" battle today.
I just want Bandcamp to have a decent and useful API again.