“The album array on the home page is very cumbersome. When I add a new release, if I want it to appear on the top left, I have to manually shift all 15 of my other albums over. Huge hassle.” –Mark D.
Agreed. And fixed:
The new discography page automatically displays your releases from newest to oldest, and also lets you easily reorder them using drag and drop. The sidebar (which used to only show up on album and track pages) is also shown, so fans will always see your image, bio, links, shows, and so on.
By default, a fan visiting you.bandcamp.com will see your full discography. To instead take fans right to your latest release, go to your profile, and under Home Page, choose “When a fan visits my site: go to my latest release” (bonus: you also now have the option to go directly to your merch grid).
What happened to the index page? The discography replaces it.
The index page let me showcase just a few of my releases, and leave out everything else. Can I still do that? No. Most people used the index page as a full discography and were frustrated that it didn’t simply auto-fill, and this change is about fixing that problem. We’re considering adding a separate landing page option where you could feature a specific release, an image, a video, or a merch item, but no ETA just yet.
Hmm, I’m not seeing any of this, what gives? If you’re a label, you likely use the index page to link to individual Bandcamp artist sites. That is how-you-should-be-doing-it, so we haven’t touched your index page at all. However, we know you want the improvements mentioned here too, so stay tuned, a label solution is on the way.
this is indeed handier to manage if you use the standard way of using the index. but is there a way to indicate how many columns you want? personally, i prefer 3, so the images are a bit bigger, even if that means more scrolling.
also too bad that it’s not mentioned when it’s a different artist anymore. you can’t tell on the discography page if it’s a sideproject or not… that a bit confusing on pages where one artist brings together several projects….
> is there a way to indicate how many columns you want?
No, the number of columns is dynamic, depending on the screen size and number of releases (same for the merch grid).
> too bad that it’s not mentioned when it’s a different artist
Thanks, that’s fixed now.
thanks for taking care of this so fast!
I agree with Wim 3 columns looks far nicer than 4, choice of layout was one of the best features of the index from a simple design point of view, also the ability to leave gaps made the design of each site more interesting and unique.
Hi Andrew, the fact that lots of artists were confused and frustrated that the index page didn’t just act as an auto-populating discography is only half the story. The index page was one of the oldest pieces of UI on Bandcamp. It was designed and launched before phones and tablets led to an explosion in resolutions, and over time we saw more and more carefully planned layouts for desktop that simply made no sense for mobile. The new adaptive layout is less customizable on desktop (though plenty easy to make look unique, see https://ladi6.bandcamp.com/music and https://expansionscollective.bandcamp.com/music), but it presents a more consistent experience for fans across all the the different devices they use today.
Great change! Re-arranging tracks and albums was indeed a hassle.
I would say it is a BAD change in my case. For example I have a release, which is a one-track release and I simply don’t want it to appear on the index page. I cannot remove it. I also have release which is kind of experimental one, and I don’t treat it as one of my albums – just something people can download and use the samples. I cannot remove that.
In case of a few releases – 3 columns are OK, but in case of labels? Which have more releases 4 columns is sometimes a must!
I really did not complain when I had to rearrange things in there. People are so lazy nowadays.
> I also have release which is kind of experimental one, and I don’t treat it as one of my albums – just something people can download and use the samples.
Hi bojanek, if you don’t want a release to appear in your discography, set it to private. If you want people to be able to find a release, but you consider it a minor one, drag and drop it to the bottom of the page.
> In case of a few releases – 3 columns are OK, but in case of labels? Which have more releases 4 columns is sometimes a must!
Yep, that’s how it works already. The number of columns is dynamic based on the number of releases and device resolution. For example, take a look at https://recordkicks.bandcamp.com.
Yay! Thanks for making this change. I don’t release often but when I do, that was a major pain.