Bandcamp 'supported by' section

Just out of curiosity--anyone know how accurate the 'supported by' section on bandcamp is? I'm wondering if it is a good reflection on how much something has sold. My assumption is that if you don't have a bandcamp account, your purchase wouldn't show up there, but I'm not sure as I've never sold anything there. There are some albums on there on which the 'supported by' section seems pretty small compared to their popularity (The Swans album comes to mind, among others), so it seems like it's not a great indicator of how well an album has sold.

In my experience as a fan and dude who runs a label, the person who bought the album has to

1. have a bandcamp profile

2. click "yes" to having the album in their collection - i.e. the list of all the albums/music they bought

So that's why sometimes you'll have a fairly popular album with few "supported by" users whereas a silly free album will easily have dozens

That's why a Swans album - which many have bought on other digital sites or on vinyl - won't have many on bandcamp yet a vaporwave album no one outside that genre community might have hundreds

I bought some stuff prior to creating a profile with an avatar, etc. Pretty sure most people that buy stuff off of band camp don't go through the trouble of making a profile. Don't know why I did tbh.

  On 2/2/2016 at 4:07 PM, joshuatx said:

In my experience as a fan and dude who runs a label, the person who bought the album has to

 

1. have a bandcamp profile

2. click "yes" to having the album in their collection - i.e. the list of all the albums/music they bought

 

So that's why sometimes you'll have a fairly popular album with few "supported by" users whereas a silly free album will easily have dozens

 

That's why a Swans album - which many have bought on other digital sites or on vinyl - won't have many on bandcamp yet a vaporwave album no one outside that genre community might have hundreds

I've always wondered this so perhaps you can help....

As a Bandcamp artist / label, do you get stats on how many plays your releases get? Do you know how many downloads you get from users?

For example there are a few releases ive paid for, streamed many times, but not downloaded yet

  On 2/4/2016 at 9:44 PM, fletcher said:

 

  On 2/2/2016 at 4:07 PM, joshuatx said:

In my experience as a fan and dude who runs a label, the person who bought the album has to

 

1. have a bandcamp profile

2. click "yes" to having the album in their collection - i.e. the list of all the albums/music they bought

 

So that's why sometimes you'll have a fairly popular album with few "supported by" users whereas a silly free album will easily have dozens

 

That's why a Swans album - which many have bought on other digital sites or on vinyl - won't have many on bandcamp yet a vaporwave album no one outside that genre community might have hundreds

I've always wondered this so perhaps you can help....

 

As a Bandcamp artist / label, do you get stats on how many plays your releases get? Do you know how many downloads you get from users?

 

For example there are a few releases ive paid for, streamed many times, but not downloaded yet

 

Yeah it even breaks down which tracks, on which dates, and if they stopped listening at what point (approximately) - so it even tells you if people are skimming the music.

Also it tells you where people were directed from: embeds, page links, etc.

I look at purchasing solely to keep up with orders and paying back my artists on my label their cut.

as a side note, I just made a bandcamp account and all past purchases made with the email I registered with were automatically added to my collection