Bandcamp and Muxtape

Hey guys,

I just wanted to give a headsup to some emerging sites that benefit musicians. I recently checked out both Bandcamp.com and Muxtape.com and they are both doing some very cool things.

Bandcamp

Bandcamp has been around a while, and started by the same guys who did Oddpost. Google used a lot of their ideas when they launched Gmail, so they definitely have some credibility. Go to their site and check out the intro video which explains a lot. I've also reviewed them on my site.

Bandcamp features:

1. MINIMAL BRANDING. On a band page there is very little branding by bandcamp (only at the bottom of the page). Additionally you can use your own domain name yourband.com instead of yourband.bandcamp.com. Awesome.
2. GOOD LAYOUT. The standard layout is great and puts the emphasis on graphics and the music player, which is all that matters.
3. DOWNLOAD OPTIONS. A visitor can choose what format they want to download a track - OGG, FLAC, MP3, etc. You simply upload an uncompressed version of your track.
4. RETAIL OPTIONS. A band can give away a low quality MP3 but charge $1.00 or whatever they want for a higher quality download. Simple and effective. The band has total control over the pricing and options for selling their music. Credit cards, paypal accepted.
5. BAND TOOLS. This is where they've nailed it. They provide statistics for where songs are being linked from and who is listening to the songs and provide visual graphs over time. This allows a band to figure out how their music is spreading across the web and see trends. This is the void that has been missing from all previous music sites!
6. SOUNDSCAN REPORTING. They now submit weekly U.S., Canadian and international sales reports to Nielsen SoundScan, keepers of the Billboard charts.
7. SEMANTIC. They seem to do a good job at creating semantic URLs which is great for optimized search results and for deep linking.

Muxtape

Muxtape appears to still be in an alpha/beta state, but it sounds like they will soon launch with a very similar feature set as Bandcamp.
Naturally I see them also integrating cool playlist functionality, which was always their thing.

It's really great to see these sites popping up, 'cause they seem to "get it". I think Drupal could learn a lot from what these companies are doing, or try and integrate with their web services to create even more feature rich Drupal websites.

Anyway check 'em out and let me know what you think!