A buddy of mine asked me a few days ago what service to use to distribute his mixtape for free. I drew a blank. For all the social sites I pride myself in knowing, I didn’t have a “cool” answer. I told him to try the torrents or even zip the file and use Box.net or another file sharing service, but there was that element of a music specific site missing.

Tonight as I was flying through e-mails I got a message from Ethan Diamond at Bandcamp telling me about some sweet updates and the growth to version 1.0. Then it dawned on me that I had completely forgot about potentially the most innovative site for digital music to come along in the Web 2.0 world. I tested the site out a few months ago and fell in love. They had some big names giving away their music for free or with the Radiohead “Pay What You Want” model. I remember downloading former Outcast protege Killer Mike and today on the homepage they had a new feature from Del the Funky Homosapien.

Essentially what Bandcamp has done is created a platform for musicians, bands and artists to distribute music on their own terms, how they want, in the quality and the price that they want.

In jumping to version 1.0, they made a few upgrades including:

• Download codes! Reward your biggest fans with free downloads of tracks or albums that they’d otherwise have to pay for. Email them out, or print them up and bundle them with merch. more info
• New customizable players! Select from a variety of sharp-looking, customizable embedded music players. Fans will soon be spreading your euphonic agenda across every square inch of the globosphere. more info
• Speed! Gravitas! We’ve greased up the tubes to make your sites load with blistering speed, and moved from bandcamp.mu to bandcamp.com to give the whole dang enterprise the weighty air it so richly deserves. more info

Check out a quick video from Ethan explaining some more about Bandcamp:

I am going to get some tests going asap on the site and see what damage we can create with this tool. Will keep all you Rock Stars posted.

If anyone has used Bandcamp for their music, let me know about your experience, any stats and view points for others looking to use the service. Fore more on Bandcamp, read their blog (also featured in our Artist Services Section) or chat with them on Twitter.

-Greg