The value of expression
For over a decade, I’ve found some of my favorite music on Bandcamp by clicking through someone’s collection. Bandcamp’s general manager described it:
If I see a fan whose taste I generally like, and they buy an album. I can click on it. If I like it, I’m gonna buy it. The value of that is huge.
But, figuring out whether someone’s taste is worth trusting takes work — you’re scrolling through potentially hundreds of albums, looking for something interesting.
The social infrastructure is there: you can follow people, collections are public. The problem is… a collection of purchases isn’t the same as a signal of taste.
You can see everything someone owns, but you can’t see what they care about.
A collection of everything you ever bought, in reverse-chronological order.
Followers tab just shows people you follow, nothing else!
Bandcamp has a feed — but it's organized around purchases, not people.
Getting the feeling right
The most obvious solution is pinning: let users surface a few albums at the top of their collection. It’s a familiar pattern, and the instinct is right: lead with what represents you. But a pinned album looks the same as any other album in the grid. There’s no frame for what it means.
Playlists were explored too, and Bandcamp already has them in beta. The curatorial aspect is right, but a playlist needs someplace to reside to matter.
Recently played removes the effort entirely, automatically updating. But it captures behavior, not intent. You don’t necessarily want everything you played to represent you.
The answer was somewhere in between: the curatorial act of a playlist, the prominence of pinning, but with a frame that implies identity rather than output. Identity and history needed to be separate surfaces.
In Rotation
In Rotation lets you pin a small set of albums from your collection. A deliberate, curated shelf that sits next to your collection and travels with your profile. A pinned playlist with broader reach.
Customizing your In Rotation: dragging albums from your collection.
That shelf follows you across the platform — visible on your profile, in hover cards, wherever your name appears. When someone encounters your taste and wants to dig deeper, your rotation is already there waiting.
Expression of taste: In Rotation appears when in Following Tab and when hovering over usernames.
They can play it directly, explore your collection, or follow you to see what else they discover.
What's In Rotation: albums appear queued in a playlist for listening.
In Reflection
Designing In Rotation meant seeing Bandcamp as a whole. The homepage is built for broad audiences, not personal taste. The discovery page surfaces volume over relevance. The feed is a record of albums and purchases, not people. In Rotation doesn’t solve any of that, but it starts from the belief that music travels best through people.