Around January of 2025, I was implementing an MCP client for an internal agent-building framework and had one hell of a time because so many resources focused on building servers, but not clients. Everyone was figuring out best practices, use cases that made sense, and how to actually distribute clients and servers.
So I started writing, then kept writing (then wrote even more after several major spec and SDK changed), and it turned into AI Agents with MCP, which is now available as an ebook and should be available in dead tree form any day now.
They actually do a lot for discovery. Bandcamp weekly, notifications when labels you've bought from release something from another artist, playlists, and they have genre-focused blogs as well.
People just like saying something doesn't exist when they just didn't bother to look at their emails.
So I've been a bandcamp user since close to the dawn of the service. The issues I commented on above don't relate to their curation emails but the poverty of the interface itself. Bandcamp has been widely and roundly, not to mention accurately criticised for it's technical / UX failures for a long time. It also has no social features whatsoever. Unfortunately a curated email isn't a replacement for proper recommendations based on similar users listening (as lastfm used to to, see above anecdote), content based recommendations, or genuine social recommendations. Not to mention the fact that half the writing staff were fired several years ago, and the quality of their curation fell off a cliff after that point.
The app and site are awful, and even finding stuff you've bought to play or download can be a nightmare if you own a lot of material. To site a specific example - I bought a back catalogue of sound effects records for work reasons. They have many dozens of individual releases - which makes navigating my other purchased records much more difficult.
Bandcamp also only allow you to 'uncover' the download links for tracks or albums one at a time, presumably to save bandwidth costs. I could go on and on.
It's a hypothetically great service that's absolutely crippled by not having been improved for a decade.
I think me and you use Bandcamp in totally different ways, and this is why you see a problem where I don‘t. I am not judging btw (unlike your parent) just pointing out the differences.
My primary (and now only) use case of Bandcamp is as a marketplace between me and the artist/label. I use it as a super convenient record store. And like a good record store, bandcamp also has the equivalent of music magazine which you can read in the store, and helpful staff willing to point you to new releases. and just like in a record store, the staff won‘t play what they recommended for you, you have to take the sample CD to the listening station, put on the headphones, and hit play your self. I see their streaming feature as basically a super convenient listening station at the record store. I usually stream an album before I decide whether or not to buy it.
After purchasing I never listen to it again in app, but rather download the files and upload to my MP3 player, or wait for the physical media to arrive and listen to it in my living room’s stereo system.
Bandcamp also has the equivalent of a radio station’s music oriented talk show with their podcasts, this is more then your average record store. E.g. I think Easy Street in Seattle nor Lucky Records in Reykjavík have a regular podcast, although I can see it could be amazing if they did.
That makes sense. Viewed as just a store, it isn't the worst.
However - a store is no longer the competition. In terms of promoting independent music and giving the artists both control over distribution and profit, Bandcamp is almost the only game in town. However the complimentary service is streaming and the typical user is on mobile. It's awful for both mobile streaming and browsing. As well as recommendations in general.
If we were still in 2003 and Napster and it's successors were the alternative, bandcamp would be great. But record stores (outside of a few independent marquee stores like Amoeba in hip, high income cities) are now glorified merch stands and music is gatekept on evil services like spotify.
Just loaded up the bandcamp app for the first time in a while and my goodness is it godawful. Worse than I remember. Arcane icons, unclear features, total lack of centring the music I've already bought or the artists I've bought it from. It's a shop and that's not been enough for a very long time.
Lets bear in mind that most folks don't even have an mp3 player client on their phone. The distribution platform must - to stay useful, also be a listening solution. Bandcamp fails at even that.
Just to be clear - I very much want Bandcamp to succeed. Hell if I could roll back all technology to a point in the mid-late 2000s just before the smartphone I would. But in todays climate it has to improve or eventually become irrelevant.
I applaud bandcamp radio's existence, but their player doesn't even have a jog function. It's shocking.
Speaking of record stores, my last trip to Easy Street in Seattle my vinyl purchases had 0/3 download codes in the sleeves. Luckily all the albums were for sale as digital albums on Bandcamp and I could buy a second copy there for fairly cheap. In fact It probably saved me money buying the physical copy at a physical store and the digital copy at the digital store, as the records were slightly cheaper in Easy Street and I didn’t have to pay shipping.
This has never gone away though, you just chose to stop doing it. I go to local shows pretty frequently, have made tons of friends (in bands and not) in the process, found new bands - some that produce an EP and breakup, others who chug along locally for years, others who tour nationally regularly but stay playing intimate shows here at home.
I've discovered so much wonderful music and even better people this way, it flummoxes me when people act like you can't go to a show or a record store or even use Soulseek and find new music.
I can explain it. I graduated college, got a job, got married, had kids. Going to shows just didn’t happen.
Now I am getting back into it with my teenager.
On the flip side, I was part of an irc group back in the day where with permission of local bands, I would take their cds and get them released by music piracy groups. I would rip and release them. It got more ears on their music. This was all in the heavy metal scene.
I haven't tried it (I thought my comment made that clear, but sorry if it didn't). I definitely did look at the page and watch some of the videos though. Maybe I'm missing something but to me:
- It describes itself early in the page as an "Agent multiplexer" (not a terminal multiplexer)
- It describes itself in the videos as "tmux for agents" (again, suggesting that it's designed for use specifically for agents, rather than as a general purpose multiplexer)
- The "compare" page of the website box is focused extremely heavily on integration with agents
Sorry if I'm coming across as snarky, but your reply seems to be making out that I didn't read any of the content and just made a drive by "this seems to be designed for integration with agents, rather than as a general purpose mutliplexer" comment without any research - but that's literally the entire sell of this project as far as I can see? I'm not arguing you wouldn't be able to use it as a general purpose multiplexer, but that clearly isn't their intention, and the web page and associated videos and content make that really clear.
Are you seeing anything on the website at all that does suggest they have the use case of "general purpose multiplexer" in mind?
So I started writing, then kept writing (then wrote even more after several major spec and SDK changed), and it turned into AI Agents with MCP, which is now available as an ebook and should be available in dead tree form any day now.