I think Bandcamp does a great job bringing artists closer to the audience without any of those things like interviews, curation, IRL presence. Honestly, those things always rubbed me the wrong way since they felt like the kind of marketing that we get through traditional means (e.g., Rolling Stone articles), except with an indie flavor: some music nerd picked a winner and put them forward, and artists who didn't make the cut by the Bandcamp tastemakers take more effort to find.
I think the absence of that sort of "pick-a-winner-and-interview-them" does a lot for making things flat and fair for all. The primary people who get grumpy about getting rid of that are the people whose job it is to be curator/interviewer/etc. I'm not terribly sad if they go away.
I think the absence of that sort of "pick-a-winner-and-interview-them" does a lot for making things flat and fair for all. The primary people who get grumpy about getting rid of that are the people whose job it is to be curator/interviewer/etc. I'm not terribly sad if they go away.