MSI, Del, Glen Phillips and Speed, Speed, Speed

We’re declaring ourselves 1.0 today! This is the first of three posts about the release, the others are here and here.

Woo hoo! Bandcamp is now proudly powering the site of NYC-based electronic punk outfit Mindless Self Indulgence. We couldn’t be more excited about that, unless we contemplate the fact that we’re also hosting the full catalog of seminal Oakland hip hop artist Del the Funky Homosapien (whose new album, FUNKMAN, will be available as a free download on April 7th, exclusively from Bandcamp). And as if that weren’t enough, Glen Phillips (of Toad the Wet Sprocket fame) recently began using Bandcamp for his solo work, and fantastic Plover and RemoteTreeChildren projects. He saw fit to send us the following Internet letter:

“What I appreciate most about Bandcamp is how elegant it is. Uploading is simple, the automatic conversion into multiple formats works flawlessly, and out of many thousands of plays and downloads, I’ve had only one email where somebody had an issue (and it was user error). I also love getting to see where tracks are embedded and played. It’s invaluable for seeing which campaigns are effective and which aren’t, and it’s cool finding out about a review by tracing song plays and sales directly back to a website. You set out to do one thing and do it well, and you’ve succeeded admirably. It’s a great tool in the arsenal of any musician.”

Glen’s RemoteTreeChildren bandmate John Askew said it somewhat differently:

“From inside our pod we hover about, cutting up, dicing, tracking, … the tweaking and twiddling of knobs finds a home on Bandcamp…and into the whereabouts thereof. Our perfect audio machine is Bandcamp! We love Bandcamp! There is no place like home.”

Right on. John also sent in this shot of he and Glen hard at work in the pod:

We’re not sure who’s who, but are so very stoked to receive these accolades — thank you comrades!

In addition to the cool-by-association factor, we’re thrilled to see artists such as these using Bandcamp because of their uncanny ability to stretch out the system. Mindless Self Indulgence, for example, has 158 tracks across their various albums and EPs, and sure enough, that exposed a problem where sites loaded slowly for bands with mega discographies. But, we made a few tweaks, and now their site loads 10x faster than before (and yours loads faster too, even if you’re not quite as prolific).