Bandcamp

Artists and labels upload music to Bandcamp and control how they sell it, setting their own prices, offering fans the option to pay more[7] and selling merchandise.

Fans are able to download their purchases or stream their music on the Bandcamp app/site only once or unlimited times by preserving the purchase voucher. They can also send purchased music as a gift,[8] view lyrics, and save individual songs or albums to a wish list. Uploading music to Bandcamp is free, and the company takes a 15% cut of sales made from their website (in addition to payment processing fees), which drops to 10% after an artist's sales surpass $5,000.[9]

Downloads are offered both in lossy formats as MP3 (320k or V0), AAC and Ogg Vorbis and in lossless formats as FLAC, ALAC, WAV and AIFF.[10] In addition to digital downloads artists may offer the purchase of their music on physical media such as CD or vinyl.

Bandcamp's website offers users access to an artist's page featuring information on the artist, social media links, merchandising links and listing their available music. Artists can change the look of their page and customize its features.[11] In 2010, the site enabled embedded/shared links in other social media sites.[12]

As of August 2020, half of Bandcamp's revenue was from sales for physical products.[13]

In November 2020, Bandcamp launched Bandcamp Live, a ticketed live streaming service for artists. The service is an integrated feature of the Bandcamp website. Fees on tickets will be waived until March 31, 2021, with the entirety of ticket sales going to artists until then.[14][15]

During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Bandcamp announced that they would be waiving their share of revenue and donating all sales to artists for 24 hours on March 20.[16] They repeated the initiative in the following months[17] and began calling these days "Bandcamp Fridays";[18] they are scheduled once every month and the website Is It Bandcamp Friday?[19] was established to provide timing clarity to those outside the Pacific time zone. After raising more than $40 million for its musicians in 2020 through Bandcamp Fridays, the platform extended the program to four additional dates in 2021.[20]

In response to the protests that took place following the death of George Floyd as well as multiple other African Americans who had died to police violence, Bandcamp announced for 24 hours on June 19, they will donate 100% of profits to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.[21]

Bandcamp gained much attention in July 2010 when Amanda Palmer, Low Places and Bedhed gave up their record labels and started selling albums on Bandcamp, using Twitter for promotion.[22][23]

Will Toledo initially released his 2011 studio album Twin Fantasy on Bandcamp. The album has since gained a cult following, thanks to Online forums Reddit and 4chan, and has been downloaded over 33,000 times.

Several indie game developers published their game soundtracks on Bandcamp, including the creators of Aquaria, Bastion, Sanctum, Machinarium, Terraria, Plants vs. Zombies, Limbo, Super Meat Boy, To the Moon, Fez, and Minecraft.

In December 2014, Bandcamp for Labels was launched. Popular independent labels such as Sub Pop, Fat Wreck Chords, Relapse Records and Epitaph Records launched their own Bandcamp pages.[24]

In November 2019, Peter Gabriel added his complete solo catalog to Bandcamp.[25]

On June 18, 2020, Björk published her discography on the platform.[26]

In the summer of 2016, the company launched Bandcamp Daily, an online music publication which expanded its editorial content and offers articles about artists on the platform.[27][28] The publication is based in New York.[6] Its managing editor is Jes Skolnik, a writer for Pitchfork, BuzzFeed and The New York Times, as well as former author of punk zines.[29] Among Bandcamp Daily's columnists there have been writers of Wired,[30] Vice,[31] NPR Music,[32] Pitchfork[33] and Paste.[34]

On August 4, 2017, the staff of Bandcamp Daily donated all the sales proceeds from the day to the Transgender Law Center, a civil rights organization for transgender people.[35]

In February 2018, the audience of Bandcamp Daily had increased by 84% since the previous year.[28][36]

• "Bandcamp Daily".