Why I've chosen Bandcamp for my musical Dream Journal

Another post wherein I explain the reasons for my actions, with the aim of providing insight into my choices and how they could benefit you, if you possess likemindedness.

I've tried many, many sites which allow playing and embedding music. Some I wrestle too much with (MySpace), others continually have widget bugs (Facebook), but the #1 reason why I don't get into a site is if its TTL — Time To Live — is too lengthy. That means there's too much bothersome latency and steps in the way of uploading a track and sharing it with the world. I abhor a tedious sequence of mandatory fields, and love batch upload.

Out of everything I've tried, Bandcamp wins for me, right now.

I like SoundCloud's waveforms and it's been good for getting my Fringe Theme performance out there (despite their pie chart stats looking wrecky), but free accounts have upload limits and while I appreciate sociality, it has too many unnecessary features.

Bandcamp's usability is also very nice. Clean, essential — and their FAQ is one of the best I've seen. I'd love to see it inspire many more companies to inject info with humor for the sake of memorability; it does say something about the hearts & souls of who made it.

I tend to favor the most direct path from idea to execution: I've developed a UMP (Unified Mastering Process) for my tunes, which like any great progress began experimentally. I may elaborate on this in the future. The point is: after mixdown, I can simply render then upload. This is beneficial to my screwed-up hearing.

Bandcamp allows lossless uploads, like WAV, which in turn allows me to skip the intermediary "encode to MP3" step. This would've slayed my old dial-up connection, but thankfully broadband continues to be ample. Thus, in a few clicks and waiting of no more than 2 minutes, my new entry is uploaded to my musical Dream Journal. (And, metadata is filled in automatically!)

What could be improved with my Bandcamp experience:

1. I don't quite understand why, but Bandcamp's Flash uploader, unlike every other single one I've tried, requires permission upon uploading each track. These are clicks I could do without.
2. Album selection doesn't remember the last choice selected, meaning Bandcamp always selects my pianoverse album even though the newest and desired target is Dream Journal. I emailed them about this and Ethan was responsively helpful: "Yeah, that isn't sticky just yet. Sorry!"

Aside from this, Bandcamp is helping me accomplish my goals: I don't have an interest in releasing a fixed-format album, I simply want to continue expressing my ongoing visions through the sonic arts by audifying the madcap imagery which graces my sleep.

(Otherwise, I'll be unable to concentrate on other life activities, and shall 'splode.)