Indie Sustainability Ep. 05: Bandcamp

Bandcamp: the digital music platform that went left while everyone else was going right. One of the first digital platforms to offer a fair deal to smaller artists, when nobody was really thinking to do that.

Their revenue percentage has gone up over the years, but not that much and it’s still fair. Currently popular for waiving their revenue share on certain Fridays, to support artists during the pandemic.

Bandcamp has made its name on putting the artist first, which is always a nice thing to see.

It’s also nice to see that this approach has become mainstream enough that, if you’re an artist of any size, you probably have a Bandcamp account. If you don’t, I’d sure recommend starting one. A very fair platform, as far as platforms go.

Bandcamp is also a great place to find production credits and liner notes for your fav records. Why isn’t this as easy to do everywhere??

There are some additional not so positive edges to this sword that aren’t discussed much.

~

1) Difficulty in standing out either in presentation, or convenience of musical delivery.

As a platform, Bandcamp needs to be scaleable and lean in order to survive, and they’ve built their tech accordingly.

This means that we all know what the typical Bandcamp page looks like, and no matter what you do to try and make it more creative, it just kind of looks like a drab Bandcamp page. Blah.

2) Functionality is pretty minimal, and customization options are few.

This just makes it even harder for your music to stand out in an already crowded field, and when music doesn’t stand out, it dies. There’s just too many other options everywhere.

There’s a lot of amazing music by smaller indie artists to be found on Bandcamp, but just as many gravesites where great music has gone to die. To be fair, this is not a problem unique to Bandcamp, but their visual aesthetic does not help you, as the artist, in this regard.

3) Streaming app is less popular than other options.

The Bandcamp streaming service through their app is a nice idea, but I’m not convinced it’s actually super useful for artists or fans in practice. It could be argued that Bandcamp provides value as a more focused streaming provider, i.e. fans that are streaming your music on Bandcamp are more likely to be passionate supporters that stand a better chance of becoming direct paid supporters. The value of this concept is hard to measure directly, and will be dependent on your specific fanbase.

~

We all love Bandcamp! But, it doesn’t seem wise to rely on them as the only thing you’re doing. Using this platform is likely more effective as part of a multifacted approach.

Many of the artists currently doing well on Bandcamp became established through other means first, whether that’s label support, touring, very popular mainsteam releases, etc.

Potential exceptions arise in acts like Car Seat Headrest, but I’d say they are the exception rather than the rule.