I enjoyed Amelie Lens and Charlotte de Witte so much yesterday at work, I logged back into my Bandcamp account. It’s been a while, and I forgot what it means to own music.
I have a music folder in my Synology, which mostly contains electronic FLAC files I bought from Bandcamp. Because these are artists who passed the “OK, you’re actually worth my money” threshold, it obviously means I have a good selection there to choose from. In contrast, YouTube Music (yes, it’s my streaming service since I got grandfathered in along with my YouTube account for a cheap price) considers what’s popular, and what’s popular is not always what’s good.
While I did find Lens and de Witte on YouTube Music yesterday in my office, it’s not the best place for discovery, especially when you just go through their mixes and lists trying to find something. Exploring music takes time. It’s something I enjoyed doing with Bandcamp, until they were bought by Epic, anyway. I’m not sure what I’ll do when Bandcamp goes away in its current form—as I always say, it’s not a matter of if, but of when.
There are two kinds of music I usually spend more time, money, and effort on. Classical Music (I took some time to learn about it, it’s best approached as a history class) and Electronic Music. Both genres are too big for their own definitions (Classical music may also be current, so by definition it can’t still be “classic”, Electronic music basically means anything done with a computer, which today means everything…), and I love getting lost and discovering new music. At some point, I even considered getting into Electronic music myself, but the path there is too long and intimidating (and expensive). Still, if there’s one area in my life I feel I’m missing out on right now, it’s this.