D.I.Y.

Merge Tumblr And Bandcamp With TumblrCamp

Tumblrcamp-logoThough services like Tumblr and Bandcamp have made it relatively easy for DIY musicians without web design or development skills to get up and running with professional looking sites, they've also dispersed musical identities across multiple sites. TumblrCamp is part of an emerging breed of options for knitting those pieces back together using the combination of custom themes in tandem with the features provided by, in this case, Tumblr and Bandcamp.

TumblrCamp is reasonably priced at $49.00 and is oriented to those without HTML or related skills. It's also designed with musicians' needs in mind. My one concern at this stage is that the initial video tutorials were posted 6 months ago and planned tutorials have not been added since, not an encouraging sign for ongoing development and support.

What Is TumblrCamp?

TumblrCamp is organized around a Tumblr template that's easy to install and is designed to be customized by musicians. For example, customization options include a sidebar that is already set up for links to YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other sites that musicians tend to use.

What one purchases is a template plus some bonus files that support Tumblr customization and integration with Bandcamp. Part of the strength of the offering is that the bonus files and video tutorials linked below allow a beginner to do things that are trivial to the experienced but daunting if one has little or no web design experience.

Video Tutorials:

Installing TumblrCamp Theme on Tumblr

Customize TumblrCamp Theme on Tumblr

Connect and Integrate Tumblr Blog with Bandcamp

The video tutorials give you a pretty good sense of TumblrCamp's basic capabilities and what you get for your purchase. As previously noted, the fact that additional tutorials are listed on the demo site but have yet to be uploaded to Vimeo does worry me a bit. Any time a development pathway is presented to the general public and not followed through or updated is a possible sign of concern for users.

This is especially troubling because, as a product designed for beginners who want to get set up without spending a lot of time puzzling out the details, TumblrCamp is dependent on those tutorials to provide a whole product. And providing a whole product that doesn't require additional services or expense is the primary reason to use TumblrCamp.

For more info, check out the demo site.

If you're using Tumblr and/or Bandcamp and wondering whether or not TumblrCamp is right for you, check out the video tutorials.

Hypebot Senior Contributor Clyde Smith (@fluxresearch) blogs about music crowdfunding at Crowdfunding For Musicians (@CrowdfundingM). To suggest topics for Hypebot, contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.

Guest Post on 09/24/2012 in D.I.Y. | Permalink | Comments (12)
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12 Comments

  2. Agreed. I think he’ll have to drop the price a bit. It seems worth the money, but with so many free tools I would think it’d be hard for a non-technical artist to justify spending the money. Cool idea tho!

  3. I think the price will be a tough sale given that the whole product hasn’t been developed.
    I’d say more but since we’re all involved with music I don’t have to point out the difficulties of getting anybody to pay for anything. Musicians are just as bad as anybody else on that score!
    Unfortunately TumblrCamp is more at the great idea stage for people that need to be walked through the whole process, which is the market being targeted.

  6. You can make more money from selling artists the dream of making money than you can from selling your own music (example: TumblrCamp).

  7. This guy acts like he was giving an impromptu video interview about his product when he probably went through lots of takes trying to come off as authentic and humble.
    Also, Bandcamp, while highly useful and functional, is pretty terrible when it comes to design. There’s simplified (e.g., Apple) and then there’s simplistic (Bandcamp). It looks like it was designed by programmers. Why anyone would want their tumblr blog to match their bandcamp layout is beyond me. Seriously, Bandcamp uses imagemaps like it’s still 1995.
    All that being said, I’m still a huge fan of Bandcamp and would rather just pay them, instead of this guy, a subscription fee that would allow me 100% customization.

  10. This is cool but I’m having second thoughts to buy this, it’s too expensive. The fact that one can have other choices that are far cheaper. It should be priced as to what it can offer.

  11. Ha, so true! That really has been the approach for so long. Musicians / artist need to take the reigns and start figuring out how to make their own money…
    Why isn’t anyone looking at new ideas? Like engaging the fans more? Offering something of value more than just music, for example?
    Instead of scraping whatever bucks you can get from random fans, why is nobody looking into the ways of adding value to the fan experience, y’know?

  12. Ed, one tip: your website address is already linked via your name.
    When you go and simply post your link again in yr comments, instead of adding some value to the discussion, it just looks kinda spammy.
    For your health!
    😉

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