Bandcamp has announced that users can now build playlists from a collection of purchased music. Songs can be added from a track or album’s context menu or with one long press on a track. Playlists can also be downloaded for offline listening. Bandcamp promises more playlist features are in the works.
Fortnite has launched a new soundtrack option called Radio Underground, featuring indie music from all over the world, The Verge reports. The in-game radio station, curated by Bandcamp editors, is available now through March 8, when the game’s Battle Royale Chapter 4 Season 1 comes to an end. Fortnite’s creator, Epic Games, purchased Bandcamp in March 2022, and this new initiative marks the first integration between Epic’s flagship game and the indie music marketplace and service.
Pitchfork looks beyond the news about video-games company taking over beloved music streaming service. "Epic’s history suggests a pattern of reinvention, with several major realignments of priorities based on the gaming industry’s prevailing winds. Bandcamp’s growth has been relatively slow and steady, and runs counter to mainstream business models by putting the needs of artists first".
Epic Games, maker of hit video game 'Fortnite'' has acquired online music store Bandcamp, Stereogum reports. Previously, Epic acquired Harmonix, creator of Rock Band, pointing out at the time that they plan to "reimagine how music is experienced, created and distributed”. Ethan Diamond, CEO and co-founder of Bandcamp, said today that “Bandcamp’s mission is to help spread the healing power of music by building a community where artists thrive through the direct support of their fans".
A great thread by the Future of Music Coalition about Bandcamp Fridays, a day where the company waived its usual cut of the revenue to pass on more money to artists and rightsholders. In 15 Bandcamp Fridays since March 2020 fans paid artists/labels $61 million. The waived rev-share works out to an effective donation by Bandcamp of roughly $7 million.
A new study by Surfshark examined a variety of music sites to find which are the most invasive when it comes to tracking us online. They also looked at the safest. On Bandcamp five trackers were found. Rolling Stone on the other side 69 trackers were found.
Bandcamp has pledged to donate 100 percent of its share of sales made on June 18 for a 24-hour period. This year, the event will again coincide with the music platform's Bandcamp Fridays program. All the proceeds will go to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in honour of Juneteenth. This will be Bandcamp's second summer in a row to observe Juneteenth in this manner.
Acts of all levels use Bandcamp, but it has particularly suited working- and middle-class artists with few resources simply looking to make a decent living off their work, filling a void that has become more pronounced as the music industry has gone digital - Billboard writes about the beloved streaming service. They proved this in the last year with Bandcamp Fridays, when Bandcamp waives its cut of sales - 15% of digital, 10% of physical - and passes along all revenue to artists. With this initiative, Bandcamp directed $48.3 million toward artists and labels from over 800,000 customers, and that’s on top of the $148 million it has paid out from normal sales during that time frame. To date - Bandcamp was started in 2007 - it has paid out over $702 million to hundreds of thousands of artists and more than 9,000 labels that can receive the money relatively quickly.
Fast Company chooses 10 companies that are changing the face of the music industry. They are: Neon16 - a talent incubator and music label for Latin music, BeatStars - an online marketplace for producers to sell their beats to artists, Royalty Exchange - a marketplace allowing artists who are earning royalties to sell them to investors during online auctions, Audiomack - a music streaming and discovering platform aiming at Africa, Stem - a music distribution platform making it easier to artists, as well as Verzuz, Parkwood Entertainment, Harmonix, Bandcamp, and Dolby.
Indie-rock foursome Cloud Nothings were touring eight months a year, so when the pandemic had shut it all down, they started releasing all the music they could. They set up a Netflix-like subscription service on Bandcamp where fans could access exclusive projects recorded in the past year, releasing dozens of live recordings, and making several full-length albums. Band's frontman Dylan Baldi was pleasantly surprised by the response, as he's told The Ringer: "If you keep providing good, interesting things that you would want as a fan of a band or a fan of music, people will respond to it".
Another great thing Bandcamp is doing - the streaming company is going to press vinyl runs for 10,000 different artists on their platform, as their director Ethan Diamond has announced. The company will also ship records, fulfill digital, and handle customer service, all while letting the artist choose their own design and set the price. And another thing - these vinyls will be financed by the fans who order them (vinyl batches start around $2,000 mark). So, Bandcamp is turning itself into a record label - they are the manufacturer, the distributor, and the logistics team - without taking any ownership of the records themselves.
Music fans spent $40 million through Bandcamp Friday, monthly promotions where the platform was waiving its percentage cut for sales made on the first Friday of each month. Nearly 800,000 fans participated in the platform Bandcamp Fridays this year, which means that fans spent an average of $39. The company has announced an extension of the program through May 2021.
Bandcamp Live will allow artists to set up ticketed live-stream performances, with the online shows integrated within the Bandcamp ecosystem, with a virtual “merch table”, and real-time chat. 80-85% of ticket sales will go directly to the artist, and the company has announced it will waive its fees on tickets until March 31, 2021, meaning 100% of ticket sales will go to artists until then, Bandcamp announced. Bandcamp live-streams have already begun with a gig by David Allred, and artists like Cloud Nothings, Liv.e, Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, Madison McFerrin, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Hatchie, and Pedro the Lion have already confirmed future shows on Bandcamp Live.
“We sell an extraordinary amount of records on Bandcamp Friday. It’s enough for me to pay for a month’s worth of groceries. It keeps lights on in my house” - Nashville singer-songwriter Emma Swift told the LA Times about how much Bandcamp means to her. In August she earned $1,400 through the platform, and another $1,500 on the first Friday of September. On each first Friday Bandcamps forgoes its regular 15% cut on digital sales to artists. Since then, fans have paid artists nearly $100 million. The platform has generated $584 million for artists since 2008.
NPR wonders how are listening future will look like, taking two of the biggest services as examples: "Spotify and Bandcamp could not be more opposite. Where Spotify highlights playlists, most often of its own creation, Bandcamp sticks to the album. Where Spotify pays royalties according to little-understood formulas that can only be analyzed by reverse calculation, Bandcamp lets artists and labels choose their own prices. Where Spotify requires working through a limited number of distributors to access their services, Bandcamp is open to anyone. Where Spotify has revenue streams dependent on ads and data, Bandcamp operates on a simple revenue share with artists and collects no information on its users".
"Bandcamp’s artist-first mentality trickles down to the zealousness of their userbase. Their comments and music collections are just as important as the money coming in, establishing a connection, and encouraging digital diggers to explore and expand their palettes "- DJ Booth argues in favor of the lovely music service / social network (rap has been a more of a Soundcloud kind of genre). There's good music there, and - "in a world kept separate by the still-raging coronavirus... Engaging with musicians breeds a different kind of intimacy".
andcamp is extending its Bandcamp Friday program, in which it is waiving its revenues the first Friday of every month, through the end of the year, Rolling Stone reports. The series started as a one-off at the end of March to help get extra money to artists after the COVID-19 pandemic brought touring to a halt and forced independent record stores to close. It continued through the summer. The next five will take place August 7th, September 4th, October 2nd, November 6th and December 4th.
"I understand that streaming is what people use, but in terms of artists getting direct benefits from their art immediately, Bandcamp, I would say, is obviously the superior tool for that" - Wyatt Stevens, founder of Haus of Altr label, told Resident Advisory about his favourite streaming service. Bandcamp's founder Ethan Diamond told RA they get support from many sides - "If there's one thing I hear more than anything else, it's 'please, don't change'". People say stuff like, 'I was able to quit my job to focus on music full-time because of the money I made from fans through Bandcamp. I was able to focus on my label full-time. You're the last hope.' Extreme stuff like that. I definitely take the trust that artists have put in Bandcamp over the last decade very seriously and try to remember that in pretty much everything that we do".
“It can’t be that music is a commodity, or content to use to sell advertising or a subscription plan. Artists have to come first” - Bandcamp founder Ethan Diamond said in a Guardian interview about his service. It's his second internet project actually - he sold his first company, an email service called Oddpost, to Yahoo in 2004. Unlike streaming services, Bandcamp takes the idea of ownership as crucial to its success - “by doing that it makes [fans] feel like they’re part of that music’s creation”. Diamond, a musician himself - saxophone player - believes music “is essential for humanity. If you’re serious about that, then the welfare of artists is essential”. This year he practiced his beliefs by waiving Bandcamp's fees in favor of artists...
The Future of Music Coalition explained in a great Twitter thread how is it possible for Bandcamp to waive its share of revenue, and still make it work for itself. A few arguments: a "niche-oriented" business model; a decision to do only one round of VC funding; a commitment to iteratively asking artists what they need. What lies behind it - "smart, idealistic music-loving people". Pitchfork investigates how much more money artists make on Bandcamp, compared to streaming services - experimental hip-hop duo 75 Dollar Bill put out a digital-only album, 'Live at Tubby’s', exclusively on Bandcamp on May 1 and made $4,200 in just two days - more than they made through streaming services like Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube over the last six years.
Death Row Records is now on Bandcamp, which means Dr. Dre's 'The Chronic' is on Bandcamp, as is Snoop Dogg's 'Doggystyle', 2Pac's 'All Eyes On Me', Tha Dogg Pound's 'Dogg Food', and more - check it out all here. The release is just in time for this month's Bandcamp First Fridays fundraiser, Exclaim reports. Death Row was bought by eOne music in 2013, and then acquired by toy company Hasbro when Hasbro bought eOne for $3.8 billion last year.
Bandcamp will be donating 100% of its share of sales on Freedom Day to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. The music company said that this move is in response to “the ongoing state-sanctioned violence against black people in the US". Bandcamp is also continuing their tradition of revenue waiving day - this Friday (6/5) all the money made from purchases at Bandcamp will go to artists.
On May 1, Bandcamp waived its revenue shares, directing 100% of revenue to artists in an effort to help musicians affected by COVID-19 and quarantine. That 100% ended up being record $7.1 million. Bandcamp first waived its revenue shares on March 20, which resulted in $4.3 million of sales, what was then the biggest sales day in Bandcamp’s history. The project goes on - on June 5 and July 3, customers can once again ensure that the money they spent on Bandcamp will directly support artists.
Bandcamp plans to forgo its entire revenue share on Friday, May 1st, so that artists can receive 100% of all profits made that day, in an effort to assist artists during these unprecedented times, Resident Advisor reports. Bandcamp did the same thing last month, which ended up pulling in $4.3 million dollars, all of which went directly to the platform’s musician.
Last Friday (March 20), Bandcamp waived its revenue share on music sales for a 24-hour period to help artists impacted by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, and music fans reacted generously to generosity. On a typical Friday, as Bandcamp explained, fans buy about 47,000 items, but this past Friday fans bought nearly 800,000, or $4.3 million worth of music and merch, more than 15 times Bandcamp's normal Friday. In the last 30 days, fans have paid $15.3 million to artists via Bandcamp.
Bandcamp is waiving their cut of all sales through the website for one day (today, March 20), which is a good opportunity to support artists directly and 100% in the time of the shutdown. Brooklyn Vegan recommends 30 albums from 2020 - Bill Fay, Caribou, Denzel Curry & Kenny Beats, Irreversible Entanglements, Katey Gately, Moses Sumney, and 15 metal albums (aren't those albums too?!?) - Envy, Sightless Pit, Yatra.... Stereogum recommends 15 albums - Okay Kaya, JFDR, Dogled, Facs... The Quietus is expectedly more avant-garde in their choice - Lyra Pramuk, The Silver Field, Lingua Ignota, Aya...
Bandcamp announced that this Friday (March 20) from midnight PST to midnight PST, they’ll be waiving their revenue share from digital sales and merchandise in an effort to support artists during the coronavirus pandemic (the company typically takes 15% on digital sales and 10% on merchandise). Bandcamp co-founder and CEO Ethan Diamond said in a statement: “It may sound simple, but the best way to help artists is with your direct financial support".
