Bandcamp vs Google Play Music

Once you buy (or support) a song/album from an artist on Bandcamp, you get to open a fan account and unlimited streaming and downloads from your purchases.

The Bandcamp discovery site has multiple filters making it easy to find exactly what you want. If you're looking for Best-Selling Electronic albums on vinyl from 3 weeks ago, Discover has you covered.

When artists upload their music, the can add their own tags to their albums or songs. This leads to some very unique finds and allows you to find interesting music.

Downloading songs (you bought) lets you download in multiple choices of codecs/formats, like MP3, FLAC, AIFF, AAC and many more to make sure you get to hear what you want to hear.

Listen to songs as many times as you want.

Bandcamp's share is 15% on digital items, and 10% on physical goods. Payment processor fees are separate and vary depending on the size of the transaction, but for an average size purchase, amount to an additional 4-7%. The remainder, usually 80-85%, goes directly to the artist, and they pay out daily. Since they only make money when artists make a lot more money, their interests remain aligned with those of the community they serve. It’s a straightforward approach, and it works well.

Google Play Music is a free service for storing and streaming ones library that has zero advertisements in the interface as well as the playing music.

Google Play Music can make smart recommendations for playlist by the user just picking an artist or song they want recommendations formed from.

GPM can be used as a normal music player but also as a streaming service like Spotify.

Plays local music as well as from DLNA sources, so I can play from my home servers as well.

Google has added the option of uploading songs through the browser with the help of a Chrome extension download as well as directly through the desktop Chrome app.