<bandcamp-player> Web Component

A dependency-free Web Component that generates a Bandcamp embedded player.

🎶 🎧 See <bandcamp-player> in action!

Getting <bandcamp-player>

You've got several options for adding this Web Component to your project:

• Download a release from GitHub and do it yourself (old school).
• Install using npm: npm install @jgarber/bandcamp-player --save
• Install using Yarn: yarn add @jgarber/bandcamp-player

Usage

First, add this <script> element to your page which defines the <bandcamp-player> Web Component:

<script type="module" src="bandcamp-player.js"></script>

Embed an entire album using the album attribute:

<bandcamp-player album="3656183138"></bandcamp-player>

Alternatively, embed a single track using the track attribute:

<bandcamp-player track="3220102216"></bandcamp-player>

The album and track attributes may be used in combination to embed an entire album and set the featured track:

<bandcamp-player album="3656183138" track="3220102216"></bandcamp-player>

Tip

You may include HTML within the <bandcamp-player> Web Component. This is good practice—hooray, progressive enhancement!—and provides initial content in cases where JavaScript is unavailable or in circumstances where the Web Component fails to initialize.

For example:

<bandcamp-player track="3220102216">
  <p>Listen to <cite><a href="https://theorchid.bandcamp.com/track/the-astronaut-escape-velocity">The Astronaut (Escape Velocity)</a></cite> by <a href="https://theorchid.bandcamp.com">The Orchid</a> on Bandcamp.</p>
</bandcamp-player>

Important

At least one of the album or track attributes must be provided!

Bandcamp album and track IDs

As noted above, this Web Component requires an album or track ID (or both!). Those values aren't the easiest thing to come by as Bandcamp doesn't expose them via their URLs or via an official API (which, sadly, they no longer have…).

You can get these values by inspecting the HTML of any album or track page. Album and track identifiers are littered throughout the markup and inlined JSON data. It's a mess.

As of this writing, there's a <meta name="bc-page-properties"> element at the top of each album or track page. Buried in its encoded content attribute value is a ten(ish)-digit item_id.

If you're feeling bold, you can enter the following command in your Web browser's developer tools to retrieve the item_id:

JSON.parse(document.querySelector(`meta[name="bc-page-properties"]`).content).item_id

Optional Attributes

This Web Component supports the following optional attributes.

Name	Default	Values
accent	0687f5	A hexadecimal color code
artwork	none	none, large, small
size	large	large,small
theme	light	light, dark, auto

Tip

The theme attribute's auto value sets the Bandcamp embedded player's background color using the prefers-color-scheme CSS media feature.

Note

When using the size="small" and artwork attributes, any allowed value other than none for the artwork attribute will display an album or track thumbnail.

Custom Styling

You may want to set the <bandcamp-player> Web Component's display property for cases where the component is undefined:

bandcamp-player:not(:defined) {
  display: block;
}

Once defined, the <bandcamp-player> Web Component's display property is set to block. This may be customized to suit your layout's needs using CSS custom properties:

bandcamp-player {
  --bp-host-display: flex;
}

You may similarly style some properties of the Bandcamp embedded player's <iframe>:

bandcamp-player {
  --bp-frame-border: 0.25rem solid #0687f5;
  --bp-frame-height: 12rem;
  --bp-frame-width: 20rem;
}

Note

Styling the width and height of the Bandcamp embedded player requires some foreknowledge of the content rendered within the <iframe>.

JavaScript API

You may also create instances of this Web Component using JavaScript:

const player = document.createElement("bandcamp-player");

player.album = "3656183138";
player.track = "3220102216";

player.accent = "aa8b54";
player.theme = "dark";

document.body.append(player);

Tip

Once attached to the DOM, changes to player's properties and attributes will trigger a re-render of the Web Compoment.

Notes and Limitations

This Web Component currently offers a subset of the Bandcamp embedded player's features. Open the "Share / Embed" widget on any Bandcamp album or track page and click the "Embed this…" link for a look at the full range of customizations.

The reliance on Shadow DOM here is of questionable utility. This Web Component could've just as easily leveraged the DOM (more recently rebranded as, "Light DOM" 🙄) and been an HTML web component. Further, perhaps your use case doesn't require this Web Component at all! The direct-from-Bandcamp <iframe> code snippet will work just as well.

License

The <bandcamp-player> Web Component is freely available under the MIT License.