用户Wiki:Demobanker/reference page：Bandcamp

Here are some quirks about Bandcamp that might be useful when adding releases.

Some info comes from Bandcamp's FAQ, some from Metal Archive's rules and guidelines for Bandcamp releases, and some are from personal experiences.

Unfortunately, it seems the site has been blocked in China since Feb 2021 :(

Release Info

Title

Bandcamp adds zero-width spaces in the album or track title depending on which type of page you're on, and since sometimes in 2022 the website seem to be adding it in more arbitrary places, including:

around dot . characters (this used to be how it worked before 2022 - everything below should be new)
around half-width ( ) and -
around Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters

Zero-width spaces will not appear at the start or end of the title, and around half-width space characters. Those are hard to find, but the page creation process should warn you that they're in the page title. They appear as %E2%80%8B in the URL so you can use that to check if you deleted all of them.

Some examples, with zero-width spaces marked with a *:

東方. 永远. 낙원. -> 東*方*. 永*远*. 낙*원*.

（（（高））） -> （（（*高*）））

最後の庭園　BEST in the box 2011-2020 (note the full-width space) -> 最*後*の*庭*園*　*BEST in the box 2011*-*2020

H.J.Freaksの神妙旅楽団 Vol.1(REMASTERED) -> H***.***J***.***Freaks*の*神*妙*旅*楽*団 Vol*.*1*(*REMASTERED) (yes, this has 3 zero-with spaces in a row multiple times. Very annoying!)

Release Date

For the most part, the release date you see on the release page is accurate. However, artists can set the release date to something else. It's useful for things released before the start of the site (so pre-2008) or for a goof or two.

The source code of the page has more date info included, which include these:

release_date: The date that's displayed on the release page. Can be changed to whaterver.
publish_date: The date that the album or track is made available to the public. Note that the band can make releases private after publishing.
mod_date: The date where the album or track was last changed.

Sometimes an album can be in a pre-order state even though it's past the release date. That's because the artist has to manually release the album. The good thing is, if all the tracks are availble for download, then you can still buy the album. But...

Track Availability in Albums

If there's no song length listed besides a track, then it's not downloadable even if you purchase the whole album.

Cover Art

You can get the best quality images on many sites using the website Image Max URL, but you can also do things manually.

The default size cover art on a release page will have a filename ending in _16. I don't recommended uploading this one, since it's always at a 700x700 size, and crops artwork for non-square arts. If you click on the art, you can get the uncropped and larger version of it. These images will have a filename ending in _10.

Going a step further, if you change the ending to _0 and delete the file extension (for example, change aXXXXXXXXXXX_10.jpg to aXXXXXXXXXXX_0), you can get an even higher quality image. For albums, that's the file included in the download named cover. However, sometimes the image is a PNG that is too big for the file upload.

So, at the very least you should use the expanded version of the cover when uploading artwork. If the original quality image is not too big, you can use that.

Pricing

For releases not released at an event, it's better to use 售价/售价补充 fields instead of 会场售价/通贩售价/通贩售价补充 fields.

Bandcamp gives artist accounts 200 download credits every month. Those credits are spent when someone downloads a release for free, including releases that are name your price (NYP). Once they run out of download credits, all free/NYP releases are changed to paid releases. Those prices are usually low, like 1 USD or 100 Yen. Artists have to manually reset those albums back to their original pricing.

This happens even if the artist doesn't have a payment account associated with it. (where does the money go in that case? it's a mystery.)

For NYP releases, I suggest adding

（Bandcamp下载，价格自定，可能因特殊情况而改价）

to the 售价补充 field. It indicates that it is NYP, but the pricing can based on the whims of the artist or the site.

Where should I add the link?

Since Bandcamp is a shop site, you should add it in the 通贩列表 section. Doing that will put the release in the 在bandcamp上发售的同人作品 category, which can help people find new releases. (But go down for a better way to do that.) You can also add the link in the 官网页面 field since it can be the official info source for the release, but check if the artist made any announcements on social media first.

Album/Track Descriptions

Those aren't included in the download. If you want to keep track of them, you gotta copy and paste the info somewhere and add them to the download.

Any track that shows an info link will have a track description. However, if a track has both lyrics and track description, it only shows the lyrics link, which means if you want to keep a copy of track descriptions, you have to check the track page of every. track. with. lyrics. It's a very annoying quirk! Not sure how that hasn't been changed yet.

Release ID

There's no Bandcamp preview support on this wiki yet. However, with how the SoundCloud preview works, it's likely that you will need the album ID. Here's how to find it.

The easy way

Click that "Share/Embed" link under the cover art. Then click the "Embed this album" section and select any style. Copy the embed code and paste it somewhere. (You can get the ID at this step but Bandcamp makes you select the entire embed code. This is why you should paste it somewhere else.)

You should find album=[some number] or track=[some number] in the code, and that's the ID.

The reason you don't want to copy paste the embed code directly is because it makes the page source messier. It's true though that doing so is a lot easier than finding the ID.

The source code way

View the page's source code and go to the end. You should see a comment with "album id" or "track id", followed by the ID.

Alternatively, search for "album=" or "track=" depending on the type of page you're on. The number after that is the ID.

Searching for Releases

Using the Tag System

Each release on Bandcamp has tags associated with it that you can find at the bottom of the page. People can enter whatever they want as a tag... but that's part of the fun. You can click on the tag to get on the tag's page. The highlights tab shows some recently released albums that are popular, but the all releases tab is more useful for discovery.

On the all releases tab, you can filter releases by artist/label location, sort by popularity, release date, or get a random selection of albums (choose "surprise me!" on the best-selling/new arrivals dropdown). You can also add more tags to find albums with multiple tags.

Here are some useful tags to check, sorted in descending order by release date:

touhou
touhou arrangement
touhou music
touhou project
touhou remix
touhou style
touhou vocal
toho
zunstyle
東方
東方project
東方style
东方
东方project
东方style
東方風自作曲
东方风自作曲

also worth a shot:

тохо
동방
동방프로젝트

Before multiple tag search was implemented on the site, I used the website Camp Explorer.

Note: Valid Releases

Since ACG culture aesthetics have become popular globally, there are albums that can have Touhou characters on the cover but wouldn't be eligible for the wiki. In particular, pay attention if the release has the following tags: vapor, vaporwave, future funk, plunderphonics, lolicore, mashcore, nightcore, hexd.

Misc.

How can I find newest releases that are added to the wiki?

Here's a nice query for that.

Empty Releases

Sometimes you can encounter "empty" releases, which have no tracks associated with them and no merch to purchase. Artists and labels can use them for various purposes, including

separator between different years or categories (especially useful for artists with a huge discography)
placeholder for future releases or releases that are no longer available
placeholder to redirect people to the artist's new page
page to link to the artist's other works, like books or games (I've seen people use the site as their art portfolio, which is an interesting way to use the site)

On the darker side of things, there are spammers who take over artists' sites, delete everything and replace it with spam! Please report the hijacked pages and notify the artist if possible.

Added a Bandcamp link to the wiki?

Artists can see how people got to their page, so if you want the artist to know you've added their release, give it a click!