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

Previously, Bandcamp added zero-width spaces in the album or track title around characters like . and -. However, as of February 2025 it seems they no longer do that. Hooray!

In case it comes back, you can remove them with this userscript.

隐藏框标题

// ==UserScript== // @name Bandcamp remove zero-width space from title // @version 0.1 // @description Remove zero-width spaces from album and track titles on Bandcamp // @match https://*.bandcamp.com/* // @grant none // ==/UserScript== (function() { 'use strict'; // remove zero-width spaces from title const title_element = document.getElementsByClassName('trackTitle')[0]; if (title_element) { title_element.innerHTML = title_element.innerHTML.replace(/[\u200B-\u200D\uFEFF]/g, ''); } })();

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 / datePublished

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 / dateModified

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.

Hidden Tracks

Use this browser extension to show the number of hidden tracks on the album page.

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 and Track Descriptions and Credits, Custom Track Arts

This section is more relevant to archival than wiki editing but I figure it'd be useful to someone.

When you download an album from Bandcamp, the following items are included alongside the music files:

• The full-size cover uploaded by the artist
• lyrics embedded in the metadata (though only if the artist adds it to the lyrics section. I've seen people put them in track description instead, or put them in a separate text file)
• smaller size custom track art embedded in the metadata
• Any extra files the artist included in the download, which may include extra artwork, liner notes (in text, image or pdf form), alternate audio formats (more common in chiptune and tracker music)

Album and track description and credits as well as the full-size custom track arts aren't included, so I personally go out of my way to save them to my local copy so I can have a bit more context when listening.

Note that the browser and mobile versions of the site displays track info differently. On browser, tracks with custom description and credit will have an info link appear when you hover over it. However, this is overridden by if the track has lyrics. In that case, when you click the link it shows the lyrics, but not the description and credit. What's more, if a track has custom track art but no description or lyrics, the site doesn't show anything when you hover over the track. You can still see them if you go to the track page, however. The mobile site is slightly more helpful because it shows an icon beside any track that has lyrics, track description or custom track art, and you can click on the icon to see them. Because of this, I recommend you open a copy of the album on mobile so you can check if there are any track credits you might have missed.

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!