It is Bandcamp Friday Once Again and Boy Are My Arms Tired
Hey two quick reminders if you're new here or have mainly been reading this blog for the blog (no shade)
Hello hi, I'm MSD: in addition to the photographer, artist and blogger I am here, I am also the frontperson of this chiptune/orchestral indie music band collective thing called Curious Quail (hence the blog's name) and incredibly bad at promoting our music as time goes on so I'm gonna frontload. If you don't want to buy music I totally get it, you can skip down to the first cat photo - but in the off-chance you're into overly fuzzy guitars, Erin and I harmonizing voices as often as possible, a drummer with access to an entire percussion store and a violinist violently dueling with my nintendo gameboys well, shit; I think we might be worth a listen.
Ok we good?
Cat topic cleanser:
Photo unrelated. It's a cat named Gargoyle.
Not a lot has changed, has it?
We're more than halfway through 2026 and I gotta admit, when I sat down to start writing this it hit me how much from my last big Bandcamp Friday blog post is still accurate / the status quo - and that was covering the final entry of 2025. The industry landscape around music sales and the platforms therein hasn't really changed, Bandcamp as a company hasn't been bought and sold multiple times, "Bandcamp Friday Fatigue" still looms, hell...the only major change is that Bandcamp has taken a public stance against AI bullshit invading their space which objectively fucking rules.
Otherwise, Spotify continues to be evil in every possible way, Mirlo still exists trying to carve out a niche as a co-op alternative, Subvert's co-op launched publicly, Itch.io still allows music sales, and yet the incursion of payment processors as a moral judge on what is/isn't purchasable is still going so who knows if any of the above indie platforms can really thrive.
I'm also in a weird middle ground right now since, as mentioned yesterday, I'm in the middle of prepping for a cross country move from New England back to the desert and given how long this takes, we likely are looking at the next Curious Quail release in like mid-2027 at the earliest. But even though I don't have anything "new" to promote right now, I still deeply care about fellow musicians and not returning to an apartment on fire when our next thing is ready.
Garg with a large contingent of packed boxes behind her
Most importantly though, another thing that hasn't changed from last time is that the best way you can support musicians (outside of just handing them bank robber bags of money directly) is telling others about them. The number of times I gave a band a shot because a friend tipped me off vs clicking an ad or seeing a show flyer is probably too high to count. Word of mouth has always been huge but in the dark age of the algorithm, it's more important than ever. If you've got an independent artist you like the work of, tell others about 'em because that increases the likelihood of their survival.
Anyway speaking of, here's an up-to-date recommendation list for stuff available on Bandcamp that I think you should check out. Yes I'm friends or at least acquaintances with most of these musicians but I promise, it's the good shit.
Oh and for good measure, here is your end-of-post cat(s). It's Kindy and Trout, snugging. Trout has this thing where he wants every cat to be his dad and most of them are (I mean this affectionately) absolutely not the fuck up to that challenge. Kindy comes in close though.
