The Bandcamp Revolution

Bandcamp is great. Lots of stuff on there that I never would've found otherwise. They do a great job all around with keeping it simple and solid,

 

I've got an artist and a fan account, so hopefully they'll fix that one day soon.

 

My fan account is bandcamp.com/araucariaceae and my music is at tsrono.bandcamp.com

I've used it from the very start, back when they didn't even have a pricing plan in place. It's a great site, very user friendly, minimal, no-fuss. I can see why everyone like's it and I think their heart is in the right place. I was a bit worried about the increasing social integrations they've been doing, but in the end, I think it actually worked out for the better. People seem to genuinely care about their bandcamp collections, just like people care about their Steam game library etc.. the staff also (used to) send you a nice email if you were the top-selling artist on the site, which I am fortunate enough to have been a few times in the past.

 

It's not perfect though, at least for people who sell music.

 

I do think that from an artists standpoint, putting batch-uploading behind a premium paywall is a shit move though. It literally costs them nothing extra to implement (and it was their #1 requested feature long before it was implemented) but because they know people want it, it's an easy way to gouge money out of people. It's not something fans/music listeners need to worry about, but it did concern me that if they can do something like this, then they might do similar things in the future. I guess we'll have to see.

 

15% is quite a reasonable cut for digital sales. It drops to 10% once you sell $5000 worth of music there. I do still think that them taking 10% of all merch/physical sales is a bit hard to stomach though. If like me you're selling vinyl, then 10% can be quite a considerable dent in your sales, especially since bandcamp don't actually do much from their end. The artist/label is the one who has to manufacture the record, promote it, package it, ship it etc.. for me, it was costing me hundreds in lost revenue, so I went with Limited Run instead for the physical side of things. They charge a flat rate per-month or per-sale, but it's absolutely tiny for physical sales. As an artist, it's a no-brainer for me as I could either lose £200 in revenue with bandcamp doing a 100 batch vinyl run, or pay £6 to Limited Run.

Haven't spent a huge amount on Bandcamp but I've liked the experience each time. I've been happy to buy physical off there and will continue to do so, although my order from Mindtrick (Holland) cost more for them to ship than what I paid.

 

Great service for consumers, maybe not as much for the artists.

 

Here's my small collection if anyone cares.

https://bandcamp.com/spratters

I recently got hooked on buying tapes on Bandcamp, for as little as 0.72 (including delivery). I love that there's almost another level of the underground/diy scene going on there.

 

Most of the physical releases I buy come with an array of goodies including stickers and posters and even hand written letters. One artist saw one of my photos and asked me could they use it for their next release.

 

A lot of the artists will contact you personally to genuinely thank you for your support. I get the sense from some that they just want to make music and put it out there, not bothered about being discovered by a label or anything, just leave it out there and let people discover the music for themselves. I go through periods where I enjoy listening to the stuff I've discovered on BC, completely unknown to the world more than well known artists.

 

Don't we all get a kick out of discovering an artist nobody else has ever heard of?

Still got big love for bandcamp. Also love the underground "DIY" scene and finding stuff I would never find anywhere else.

 

Here's my collection thus far:-

 

https://bandcamp.com/SolomanTump

 

Anyone else from here I don't already follow? Always keen to see what other people are buying / discovering.

  On 8/24/2015 at 10:09 PM, fletcher said:

Still got big love for bandcamp. Also love the underground "DIY" scene and finding stuff I would never find anywhere else.

 

Here's my collection thus far:-

 

https://bandcamp.com/SolomanTump

 

Anyone else from here I don't already follow? Always keen to see what other people are buying / discovering.

Followed :)

 

Here's mine: https://bandcamp.com/herrjan

 

This is still pretty much the only site I buy digital music from (except for rephlex.com), it's still pretty flawless imo.

Can you see who follows you? I got the app recently but it doesn't make it any easier to download stuff you've purchased to your mobile - I have to go through the website and use some unzip app. Minor ballache though.

https://bandcamp.com/davidallen

 

Mine

gripped stacks of records i've been meaning to purchase for ages & randoms flacs that putting off owning was becoming borderline sinful

 

its like anything, once you start cross-referencing artists/labels etc you can find some incredible gear and for obscure electronica its exceedingly hard to find a better retailer. Fuck knows the business model, but you have to wade thru waaaaaaaaaaaay too much wank on juno for it to be a productive worthwhile & fun exercise like BC is

 

long may it continue

Yo, check my bandcamp breh

bandcamp streaming has completely replaced my itunes, even on my iphone. love it.

Well, I'm already following all of today's posters. I spend too much time/money (both of which I don't have enough of) on Bandcamp. It's addictive. But being addicted to new choonz ain't a bad thing, I've only got a few things that I've purchased and later regretted.

 

Mine's here: https://bandcamp.com/araucariaceae

yo bro check out my bandcamp bro

 

http://feralsound.bandcamp.com

  On 8/24/2015 at 10:19 PM, Herr Jan said:

 

  On 8/24/2015 at 10:09 PM, fletcher said:

Still got big love for bandcamp. Also love the underground "DIY" scene and finding stuff I would never find anywhere else.

 

Here's my collection thus far:-

 

https://bandcamp.com/SolomanTump

 

Anyone else from here I don't already follow? Always keen to see what other people are buying / discovering.

Followed :)

 

Here's mine: https://bandcamp.com/herrjan

 

This is still pretty much the only site I buy digital music from (except for rephlex.com), it's still pretty flawless imo.

 

 

I was expecting your collection to be in the thousands

 

I am disappointed

How hardcore is Bandcamp's takedown policy on uncleared samples?  I'm resuming work on some straight plunderphonics type stuff, but even if I put them up for free download, do they have automated copyright protection like youtoobs and soundcloud?  I usually manipulate the samples pretty well, but things like drum beats are sometimes clean from the source, albeit sometimes rearranged.  thx for any info.

enklav.bandcamp.com

 

on bandcamp since 2012

i love it 

  On 8/29/2016 at 9:12 AM, Rubin Farr said:

How hardcore is Bandcamp's takedown policy on uncleared samples? I'm resuming work on some straight plunderphonics type stuff, but even if I put them up for free download, do they have automated copyright protection like youtoobs and soundcloud? I usually manipulate the samples pretty well, but things like drum beats are sometimes clean from the source, albeit sometimes rearranged. thx for any info.

Dunno if they even have one or really enforce it. There's like a million vaporwave albums on there and many are quite blatant in their sampling. As far as I know there's no automatic detection algorithm like on soundcloud for samples.

There's nothing like that on Bandcamp and let's not jinx it by talking about it yeah?

  On 8/29/2016 at 1:27 PM, purlieu said:

There's nothing like that on Bandcamp and let's not jinx it by talking about it yeah?