Now it’s easier than ever to fine-tune your Bandcamp players

Posted on 24 June 2012 in Music, Web Dev bcembed

Is your player not working? In October 2012, Bandcamp changed the way they handle layout files. If you created a custom layout prior to this time and it’s not working, you’ll have to make a new one, I’m afraid.

Back in 2010, I created a handy little app to generate JSON code for the Bandcamp API. The API lets you customise your bandcamp players, offering detailed options beyond the standard five or six layouts.

Now, I’ve completely rewritten the app to make it faster and easier to use. You don’t need to know a thing about JSON anymore, nor do you need your own server to upload the layout files. It’s just point, click, copy, and paste.

Having complete control over the look and feel of your embedded Bandcamp players has never been easier. So head on over and try it out!

http://bandcamp.samnabi.com

And by the way, you can generate players for any album on Bandcamp, including big name artists like Sufjan Stevens and Coeur de Pirate. Awesome, eh?


  • Gabadilla

    Thanks for putting this together. Do you know if the following is possible?
    - Replacing or styling the play button (looks really out of place on a dark layout)
    - Change the color of the current song title (unreadable on a black background)
     

    • samnabi

      The play button is a standard image provided by Bandcamp and cannot be changed.
      The colour of the current song title should be the same as the link colour you speciy in the general settings.

      • Gabadilla

        Bummer about the play button. For some reason, the current song title doesn’t match the link color when I used your customizer. It’s actually not a link at all. 

        • samnabi

          You’re right – the custom layout styles unfortunately don’t let you specify a colour for that text (nor the light-grey numbers, or the track time). So you’ll have to make do with grey – I wish there were more options too!

  • Mitch

    This was an awesome app and worked great until recently, but as of a few days ago the only thing that will show are the next and previous buttons. Any ideas?

    • samnabi

      I’m looking into it – perhaps the API has changed, but I can’t find anything about it on the Bandcamp website. It seems to be affecting existing players as well. I’ll let you know when I find a fix!

    • samnabi

      Hi Mitch, the issue has been resolved. If you’re still running into problems please email me the embed code you’re using (sam@samnabi.com) and I can fix it manually.

      • Mitch

        Sam, thank you for looking into this. I, and I’m sure many others really appreciate your work on this app. I’m still having some issues, so I’ll be sending an email your way. Thanks again!

  • http://gentlerobot.com Chapel Hill NC Rock Band

    This is absolutely wonderful. My only question is why doesn’t the “Large” artwork option (150×150) work any more?

    • samnabi

      Hi there! The large size seems to be working for me. Can you give me some more details?

      • http://gentlerobot.com Chapel Hill NC Rock Band

        It works, but it’s just a stretched 100x100px image

        • samnabi

          Hmm. Have you tried to see fi the issue persists with other albums? The album art is served straight from Bandcamp so I have no control over what image to fetch.

          Are you using a retina screen maybe?

  • Justin K

    Thank you for this amazing tool. One suggestion: prepopulate or suggest values for some of the fields. For example, it wasn’t immediately clear that I had to enter a horizontal offset and was wondering where my buttons were. Same for font size of the current song title. Maybe have some hints too like “Play button (30x30px)” or whatever the actual size is. The ruler is very helpful of course!

    • Sam

      Thanks Justin, I’ll definitely put that on the to-do list!

    • samnabi

      Great suggestions, Justin. I’ll put them on the to-do list!

  • wirebalaclava

    Hi there, this is such a great tool – I was just wondering, is it possible to have a transparent background?

    • samnabi

      Within your iframe code, there is a property called bgcol. Replace the 6 characters that follow the equal sign with ‘transparent’ (without the quotes). I’ll find a way to incorporate this into the generator, but until then you can do it manually.

  • Ryan

    Seems like the play buttons and next and previous do not work :(

    • samnabi

      Have you adjusted the horizontal and vertical offsets to make sure the buttons aren’t hidden under other elements (like the album artwork)?

  • JM

    Unfortunately the font sizes on “current time” and “actual time” don’t seem to be working. Everything else is great though.

    • JM

      Actually, would there be any way to fix that?

  • hobotech

    you rule. this is friggin awesome.

  • Jonny

    this is so useful, thank you. i’m using this lots on my site, is there a way of saving a template to reuse for different albums rather than entering new info each time?

    • samnabi

      Not easily, though that’s a feature I should add. For now, what you can do is this: in the code that you copy, replace this:

      album=2708620741

      with another album number.