Corey Mwamba

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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.