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It's completely understandable not just for the usual streaming services (like youtube, etc.) and the grievances there (payouts per play, whichever way it goes, be it that artists getting stiffed or people refusing to come up with even a fraction of a cent), but for something like bandcamp as well, which is kind of 'almost but not quite a streaming service' and more accurately described in a literal way like 'it lets you play music and buy it', from which apps like this just remove the 'buying music' portion completely. For something like youtube, there's hardly any qualms whether it's ethical or exploitative to sidestep that whole thing and whatever else artists may put out around their music (even something like links in video descriptions), because it is just a mess and people just roll with it anyway. But for bandcamp it leans a bit more towards 'taking it for a ride', when an app like this completely removes the aspect of buying music. Perhaps some people might not even get a slightest clue that's even possible cause there is just no such suggestion in the app at all. And if you wanted to get there, it kind of makes it harder to do so, because there's no prominent links to the original pages of songs and albums in the app. Finding or copying a link is a bit non-trivial because there's no such option in album view or track items, there is in playing queue but it's also kinda buried there. It's just the way that something like this completely obscures the fact that you could buy music from bandcamp, or sometimes even download it for free (depending on what artists have set up). It's one of the better platforms for artists, so it's kind of odd to see this 'fuck you got mine' approach to it. It's also kind of just crummy and shoddily made, so even bandcamp webpages seem like a better browsing and listening experience. Bandcamp website isn't the worst for finding and playing music (it may be plain but it's snappy, and their discovery tools are pretty nice), but it's remarkable to make something that works even worse, perhaps just because bandcamp doesn't even have that much going on. |