Bandcamp Adds Subsonic
When we all gave up our physical formats and MP3 collections to embrace streaming, we didn’t realize how an album could be snatched away from us, leaving giant holes in our playlists. By the time we spotted the weakness of renting our music, most of us had let go of our own collections.
Rebuilding your owned digital music collection does come with a drawback, it’s slightly more difficult to listen to your stuff. You have it on disk, and backed up to your Proton Drive or whatever, but you want to listen on your phone and other devices. Brace yourselves for a bunch of people telling you to set up a home server… and when you wake up the problem is still unsolved.
This is the background to Subsonic, an open API standard that can sit in front of your music collection and allow different apps to access and play your music. This is important, because it let’s lots of listening apps to emerge independently of where you get your music. This week, Bandcamp announced they are testing out Subsonic support. To use it, head to fan settings, scroll down, and enable Subsonic.
Picking a Subsonic App
Bandcamp are officially supporting Amperfy (iOS), Feishin (Mac, Linux), and Submariner (Mac). That does leave out Android users, but I tested out six apps that offer Subsonic API support and found that Subsonic Player (Android) does connect up to Bandcamp, so you’re not left out.
You’ll know what features you use the most on streaming, so you’ll know what to look out for, but playlists, shuffle, and repeat are the things I use the most and Subsonic Player has these. When you switch from streaming to one of these apps, you’ll likely find everything you need, but in a different place.
For example, Subsonic Player doesn’t show a “Shuffle all” at the playlist level, but you can hit the shuffle option once you start playing a playlist or album to mix up the tracks. The waveform is a neat addition and if lyrics are available they are also displayed when the track plays.
You’ll notice Amcfy, Miscolet, Castafiore, Substream, and Symofinium shortcuts. None of these connected to Bandcamp but they may work later on.
Bandcamp’s Crucial Advantage
Bandcamp lets you buy music. My collection isn’t just on Bandcamp, I’ve downloaded the files and they’re mine, just like when I buy audio books on Libro FM I can download them and they’re mine. Nobody can make them disappear. That’s ownership.
What the Subsonic API provides is a streaming experience over the collection, which makes it easy to listen to your stuff on whatevver device you have to hand.
Owning your collection is paramount, but being able to easily listen to your stuff is a crucial part of switching away from the streaming trap.
Written by Fenton on
