They had direct or indirect scene connections and got reliably high quality material. Lots of it. Like Oink amounts.

That's what I liked about the early service, they had so much obscure and niche stuff that it was fun and interesting to just browse and discover. Then the entertainment mafia bought in and they deleted huge portions of the catalogue, and I never returned.

Bandcamp was good until recently, now it's turning into a garbage dump for "AI" gunk.

At least Bandcamp has days where 100% of the money goes to the artist if I buy something of them.

It's fine if they do it like Facebook - just leech.

You still get C&D for your IP bring in the swarm. Uh, this is useful information to know.

Also have Facebook's money and army of lawyers.