"Indie releases" are increasing, and more artists are self-releasing (or basically doing so with a dedicated label owned by their patron). Allmusic is unable to capture many indie releases, because they usually aren't distributed by major distributors. Since Allmusic doesn't accept data contributions from users, I suggest at least adding Bandcamp as a data feed to partially address this data need.
This is a solid idea but to my knowledge, Bandcamp doesn't offer a daily feed of their metadata (new releases, album covers, tracklistings, UPCs, format info) in the same way that the major labels and traditional distributors do.
That's the kind of thing we'd need have available in order for us to to ingest the hundreds(?) thousands(?) of albums that are released on Bandcamp each week, and then we'd need to weed out the duplicates for albums that are available both on Bandcamp AND via a more traditional distributor.
It's a good idea for sure, but I don't think the mechanisms are in place from them currently.
Zac, Allmusic had many indie releases that were distributed by CD Baby. Allmusic needs to solve its data needs, because I'm increasingly going to Discogs to find indie releases.
CD Baby actually used to send us a physical copy of every CD they pressed up.
We'll see if there is a way to work more closely with Bandcamp. I agree that the coverage of indie releases has gone down as new and more individualized methods of distribution have become more and more commonplace.
(I was referring to the albums that CD Baby sold and that were provided by artists.) CD Baby has outsourced disc services to Disc Makers, which apparently stopped sending a physical copy of their pressings to Allmusic in 2012.
Yes, some albums on Bandcamp may duplicate those from traditional distributors. But if the duplication would be at release-level, I think it's okay to have duplicates at that level. (Allmusic already has duplicates at the album-level that weren't from Bandcamp.)
