It's unfortunate that Bandcamp platform has been so badly mismanaged over the course of its lifetime. Since its founding in 2007, it has (arguably?) led the way as the best artist-to-fan platform out there. It has allowed artists easy access to sell their products and communicate with their fans and all of the marketing info that comes with it.
Bandcamp has also been a relatively fair player with the artists themselves. As a fan, Bandcamp Fridays have long been a point of pride for those of us on the platform.
"Bandcamp Fridays are recurring, designated days—usually the first Friday of the month—where the Bandcamp platform waives its revenue share to ensure artists and labels receive 100% of their sales revenue (minus payment processor fees). Launched in 2020 to support artists during the pandemic, these events have generated over $150 million for independent musicians."
For those who may have missed it, Songtradr, a music licensing marketplace, acquired Bandcamp from Epic Games in September 2023. This sale occurred just over a year after Epic Games initially purchased the platform in March 2022.
Although my love for BC goes way back, the new ownership (just like Epic Games before it) has me thinking that it will never live up to the promise of its potential.
BC is, despite all the mentioned above, still the best option for independent artist. Hopeful for Subvert, a co-op platform with a bandcamp model, also nina protocol etc
The downside of Bandcamp from my point of view was shipping. Being in Australia, it would cost as much, if not more on shipping to buy a cd from an artist.
I’m all for supporting the artist as directly as I can.
I am a playlist creator and I have moved my folkmylife playlist exclusively to Bandcamp, where artists can control how many free plays a new fan gets and when you love something, A song costs couple of dollars. You would need to listen to that song continuously for a week to pay the artist a single dollar....
To be fair, all 'curators' are biased. That's what makes them different. I actually think Bandcamp's curation (Daily & Radio) is some of the best right now because it actually stands different than a lot of the major label-pushed publications that still exist. There's a lot of good curation out there in other spots, but it's always going to be an issue that not every artist that makes good music can be covered, especially in an era that music writing is not as valued as it used to be.
There’s an opposing point of view which is that having lots of separate TV services is leading to none of them being worth the money. Netflix, Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Discovery Plus, Paramount, etc… and that’s just streaming. If you follow a football (soccer) team in the UK you’re also looking at Sky Sports, TNT Sports and Premier Sports, on top of the mandatory BBC licence fee, just to see your team in all competitions. You can easily spend £2k a year watching television. And even then, it’s often full of adverts. (Sky Sports is absolutely dreadful for this).
I only have Netflix and I reckon I’ll be giving it the boot in a few weeks because the content is mostly boring, binge watching slop - e.g. tedious 10 part serials and formulaic own brand films. I’ve watched all the decent content and there’s hardly anything new appearing.
If there was a “Spotify TV” that had everything on it, I might pay fairly good money for it. But right now, no one TV service even comes close to being worth the money.
Please don’t let music go the same way. I’m middle aged and Tidal has introduced me to far more new music than I ever heard when I was at university 25-30 years ago. I even gave DJing a go, using Tidal to find music and Beatport to purchase it. That process has led to me finding house music from the last 20 years that I never knew existed. I listen to a vast range of music of other genres as well. And the quality is the same as CD, and sometimes better where the record label has provided the full 192kHz/24-bit high resolution audio to Tidal. Yes of course vinyl sounds as good, maybe even better, as long as it’s in perfect condition and the turntable is set up properly. But I would need to get on a train and travel an hour to the nearest big city to find independent vinyl shops, and do this on a regular basis. And I haven’t got time for that anymore - I have a full time job, and hobbies and family commitments at weekends.
Certainly something needs to happen if the streaming services aren’t viable and if artists don’t get the exposure and the income they deserve. But please let’s not make the same mistakes as the TV industry.
As a new subscriber to your Substack, I have some observations on being a musician and a consumer, first the musician part,
I have been a composer and musician for a bit and am on the unknown side of the game, I used to get nice engagement on Bandcamp, this is from 2014-2017, then it seemingly just stopped, my engagement on Spotify somehow got “high” and when I say that, it’s peanuts, but I have a few hundred streams weekly (I know it’s nothing) I take years to put out albums and I rarely promote my music these days but I still record and release because, for me, it’s just what making music has always been about, doing this for me, I would like to remove my music from Spotify but I would be a hypocrite to do so because I use the platform for personal consumption and like I said, at the end of the day I want anyone and everyone to hear what I do.
The consumer observation
I have had a Spotify account since 2012, I actually never even started using it daily until about 2017, I have been buying records and tapes since I was teenager and for me physical media has always come first. Any time I would buy something off of Bandcamp I would download it directly to my laptop and throw it in iTunes and sync it to my phone, “my music” completely hardwired to me for me, it’s not going anywhere. I have a giant music collection both digitally and physically, I couldn’t keep up hardwiring everything to my laptop and phone so I finally gave way to using Spotify, I had an attachment to only listening to music that was “mine” it felt superficial to just casually stream. Fast forward to now, I still feel this way but realized I can’t keep up with that mentality of hardwiring everything, I keep around 40 gigs of music hardwired on my phone incase some situation occurs where streaming my not exist anymore but my main point of explaining my observation as being a consumer is, I will buy every single album I like physically, it’s rare I will buy a digital album unless it’s not available anywhere to hear it, but when I do buy an album physically and I’m not given a download like Bandcamp does, when I have to listen on Spotify I feel at ease knowing I own this the right way, physically, when it’s the other way around I don’t feel tethered to it which makes it a superficial experience for me.
I know this is a long comment but I’ve always wanted to share this perspective.
Truth is, convenience will always trump doing the right thing. It's great that you have all the music hardwired because relying on a single source for all your music leaves you vulnerable. Appreciate you sharing your journey because I'm sure there are many others that have similar experiences.
I appreciate you reading my comment, this subject is something I think about often and something I find super interesting, I look forward to more of your content!
The KPOP world is a bit ahead on some of this. Weverse is an app where fans can interact with their idols, buy merch, and share playlists. It's currently integrated with Spotify, but if it were to have its own streaming service within, it would be entirely ideal. Paid memberships get you access to more content and tour pre-sales, etc. The incentive is there for fans and artists alike!
At a recent gig for a small Indy band I saw a queue of people lining up to buy DIY homemade cds of a demo the band made. I was impressed that the audience were so engaged. It made a real impression, that you have to create products for the core audience and look after them so that they can look after you.
I found your 2 articles interesting and generally agree with most of your points, but there's one elephant in the room that I haven't seen mentioned in your article or much in the comments, and that's YouTube. I don't really think the streaming sites are competing with each other (as they all provide literally the same thing) but all of them are competing against YT, which is a much more community focused and artist/listener interactive platform. Do you think any of the DSPs will start offering similar video services in the future to try to be more interactive to compete with YT?
It's a good point. Spotify video services is already in Beta and they are rolling it out. I'm curious to see how they'll be able to keep up with the infinite uploads of this without having their cost of servers going way up. We'll have to see.
How do you define what constitutes being a “passionate fan”? While I appreciate the idea, I’ve been a bit skeptical of it since it entered the discourse many years ago. I would also be curious to know how you think education (with all of the promises and pitfalls of institutional, academic spaces as well as more patron-based models) and live performance (with often prohibitively high ticket costs and unjust revenue splits due to live nation etc) factor into the equation for artists and fans. Perhaps you could profile an artist or group who has achieved success in this “1,000 true fans” model for a future article?
A passionate fan would be one that will go see you play every time you’re in their city. One who would buy merch or read about your story. Basically any fan that wants to learn more about you beyond the discovery layer of simply making it on their playlist could be a potential passionate fan. I can definitely do that again, I have written an article about how Fred Again does it perfectly if you go into my archive. Thanks for being here Chase!!
I was born 1977 and grew up without mobile phone or internet, so music was my life. Making music, discussing about music, discussing about artists, listen to music together with others, analyzing it etc. etc. We did nothing else literally.
I NEVER listen to those playlists that Spotify creates for me. I hate them. They are not made for real music lovers. They are only for consumers. BUT I DO listen to Radio France. There are real DJs, real humans, who make the playlists. It's deluxe. It's a premium selection of music. And THERE I discover new artists. I never discovered any new artist on Spotify.
I am in Tech, so I vibe coded an app that connects with the Spotify App. It is very easy to do that. You can access all of your playlists without any problem. You just cannot use this API for others, but everyone can use this API for private use and they can do access their own playlists.
What I want to say: There is no technical barrier. Everything is possible. I would be thrilled to have a world wide online community about music genre that I love, with artists and people who share the same passion. And I am sure others would be too.
So why not starting something new, like you described. I do not see a technical barrier.
Well written—but whenever I can't read words as equity, ethic re-distribution, increasing artists’ shares, moral ownership, or compassion for the difficult lives of highly skilled and talented artists, I can’t help feeling uneasy.
To me, this otherwise thoughtful article feels like it’s sidestepping the deeper issue: the business model itself is no longer sustainable. And honestly, that makes me sad.
I'll just remember this:
The System That Nobody Likes but Everyone Depends on. We should be able to change this.
You have good points and I agree, but the average consumer doesn’t care about these things unfortunately. It’s about accessibility and user experience. Sucks
Which is why it is so difficult to get anyone use a service or product that isn't Google Search/Chrome/Gmail, and help restrain Google's monopoly a bit, by the way.
I guess you're saying an open SDK would be a data security risk which they couldn't effectively control at a manageable cost. But also music streaming involves complex licensing agreements with labels and rights holders, which could complicate open integrations right ?
I love Bandcamp. My family has Apple Music-convenience. I, though, love to listen and purchase music on Bandcamp. The sound quality is better and I really like supporting the artist directly. Music is expensive so streaming something first can be helpful. I like streaming AND having the hands on experience. I think this is growing. My son is 17 and he has friends that collect vinyl-yay!!
You position these services as oppositional and one or the other. That seems wrong. These are streamers AND options. Streamers grow your audience and get you exposed to people who might be supporters on other platforms. Maybe you offer exclusives on other platforms, but what smart artist turns down radio play? And that’s what streamers are now.
Also, some of these platforms may run into problems in terms of royalties. If you put a cover song or something with sampling on it, how does the platform manage royalties owed to other songwriters? That might not be a problem now, but eventually, platforms like Patreon will have to create rules and restrictions around song distribution and they aren’t likely to favor small artists.
Thanks for the note. Most platforms run through the PRO pipeline and do abide by copyright laws, meaning royalties do get paid out for the creators. I don't think that having exclusive music on some platforms rules out radio play, why would it?
It wouldn’t rule out radio play any more than it rules out streamer play. Which is why I think most artists will find them to be synergistic. You might not make much money from streamers directly, but you get audiences.
To me, the risk bands take with platforms like Patreon is burnout. I know writers who have used it and made good money, but they’re trapped because they have to constantly produce new content for subscribers. I hope bands figure out how to find balance with their new revenue streams instead of discovering their new boss might look like them in the mirror, but is just as ruthless.
It's unfortunate that Bandcamp platform has been so badly mismanaged over the course of its lifetime. Since its founding in 2007, it has (arguably?) led the way as the best artist-to-fan platform out there. It has allowed artists easy access to sell their products and communicate with their fans and all of the marketing info that comes with it.
Bandcamp has also been a relatively fair player with the artists themselves. As a fan, Bandcamp Fridays have long been a point of pride for those of us on the platform.
"Bandcamp Fridays are recurring, designated days—usually the first Friday of the month—where the Bandcamp platform waives its revenue share to ensure artists and labels receive 100% of their sales revenue (minus payment processor fees). Launched in 2020 to support artists during the pandemic, these events have generated over $150 million for independent musicians."
For those who may have missed it, Songtradr, a music licensing marketplace, acquired Bandcamp from Epic Games in September 2023. This sale occurred just over a year after Epic Games initially purchased the platform in March 2022.
Although my love for BC goes way back, the new ownership (just like Epic Games before it) has me thinking that it will never live up to the promise of its potential.
Agreed- Bandcamp is incredible in theory but clunky in practice. Thanks for the note!
BC is, despite all the mentioned above, still the best option for independent artist. Hopeful for Subvert, a co-op platform with a bandcamp model, also nina protocol etc
The downside of Bandcamp from my point of view was shipping. Being in Australia, it would cost as much, if not more on shipping to buy a cd from an artist.
I’m all for supporting the artist as directly as I can.
That’s not really Bandcamp’s problem it’s the way shipping costs have rocketed over the last few years.
You're right that it's not their problem, but it is a problem they have to navigate.
So the downside in using BC is that it was acquired by Songtradr and Epic Games before that?
I still hope BC can make it. It is the best out there. Now they are moving their payment system on Stripe. Still my fav anyway
I am a playlist creator and I have moved my folkmylife playlist exclusively to Bandcamp, where artists can control how many free plays a new fan gets and when you love something, A song costs couple of dollars. You would need to listen to that song continuously for a week to pay the artist a single dollar....
Totally agree T J
Agree- I wish it was better
To be fair, all 'curators' are biased. That's what makes them different. I actually think Bandcamp's curation (Daily & Radio) is some of the best right now because it actually stands different than a lot of the major label-pushed publications that still exist. There's a lot of good curation out there in other spots, but it's always going to be an issue that not every artist that makes good music can be covered, especially in an era that music writing is not as valued as it used to be.
Biased how?
There’s an opposing point of view which is that having lots of separate TV services is leading to none of them being worth the money. Netflix, Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Discovery Plus, Paramount, etc… and that’s just streaming. If you follow a football (soccer) team in the UK you’re also looking at Sky Sports, TNT Sports and Premier Sports, on top of the mandatory BBC licence fee, just to see your team in all competitions. You can easily spend £2k a year watching television. And even then, it’s often full of adverts. (Sky Sports is absolutely dreadful for this).
I only have Netflix and I reckon I’ll be giving it the boot in a few weeks because the content is mostly boring, binge watching slop - e.g. tedious 10 part serials and formulaic own brand films. I’ve watched all the decent content and there’s hardly anything new appearing.
If there was a “Spotify TV” that had everything on it, I might pay fairly good money for it. But right now, no one TV service even comes close to being worth the money.
Please don’t let music go the same way. I’m middle aged and Tidal has introduced me to far more new music than I ever heard when I was at university 25-30 years ago. I even gave DJing a go, using Tidal to find music and Beatport to purchase it. That process has led to me finding house music from the last 20 years that I never knew existed. I listen to a vast range of music of other genres as well. And the quality is the same as CD, and sometimes better where the record label has provided the full 192kHz/24-bit high resolution audio to Tidal. Yes of course vinyl sounds as good, maybe even better, as long as it’s in perfect condition and the turntable is set up properly. But I would need to get on a train and travel an hour to the nearest big city to find independent vinyl shops, and do this on a regular basis. And I haven’t got time for that anymore - I have a full time job, and hobbies and family commitments at weekends.
Certainly something needs to happen if the streaming services aren’t viable and if artists don’t get the exposure and the income they deserve. But please let’s not make the same mistakes as the TV industry.
Interesting points, thank you
As a new subscriber to your Substack, I have some observations on being a musician and a consumer, first the musician part,
I have been a composer and musician for a bit and am on the unknown side of the game, I used to get nice engagement on Bandcamp, this is from 2014-2017, then it seemingly just stopped, my engagement on Spotify somehow got “high” and when I say that, it’s peanuts, but I have a few hundred streams weekly (I know it’s nothing) I take years to put out albums and I rarely promote my music these days but I still record and release because, for me, it’s just what making music has always been about, doing this for me, I would like to remove my music from Spotify but I would be a hypocrite to do so because I use the platform for personal consumption and like I said, at the end of the day I want anyone and everyone to hear what I do.
The consumer observation
I have had a Spotify account since 2012, I actually never even started using it daily until about 2017, I have been buying records and tapes since I was teenager and for me physical media has always come first. Any time I would buy something off of Bandcamp I would download it directly to my laptop and throw it in iTunes and sync it to my phone, “my music” completely hardwired to me for me, it’s not going anywhere. I have a giant music collection both digitally and physically, I couldn’t keep up hardwiring everything to my laptop and phone so I finally gave way to using Spotify, I had an attachment to only listening to music that was “mine” it felt superficial to just casually stream. Fast forward to now, I still feel this way but realized I can’t keep up with that mentality of hardwiring everything, I keep around 40 gigs of music hardwired on my phone incase some situation occurs where streaming my not exist anymore but my main point of explaining my observation as being a consumer is, I will buy every single album I like physically, it’s rare I will buy a digital album unless it’s not available anywhere to hear it, but when I do buy an album physically and I’m not given a download like Bandcamp does, when I have to listen on Spotify I feel at ease knowing I own this the right way, physically, when it’s the other way around I don’t feel tethered to it which makes it a superficial experience for me.
I know this is a long comment but I’ve always wanted to share this perspective.
Thanks for being here David!!
Truth is, convenience will always trump doing the right thing. It's great that you have all the music hardwired because relying on a single source for all your music leaves you vulnerable. Appreciate you sharing your journey because I'm sure there are many others that have similar experiences.
I appreciate you reading my comment, this subject is something I think about often and something I find super interesting, I look forward to more of your content!
I’ll always read all the comments :) appreciate you
I could pretty much have written the same comment with only minor adjustments. Makes sense to me!
That subtitle is chef’s kiss
Appreciate you
The KPOP world is a bit ahead on some of this. Weverse is an app where fans can interact with their idols, buy merch, and share playlists. It's currently integrated with Spotify, but if it were to have its own streaming service within, it would be entirely ideal. Paid memberships get you access to more content and tour pre-sales, etc. The incentive is there for fans and artists alike!
Bingo- talking about KPOP and Asian Pop fandom in general is on my queue of articles that will be written in the future. Thanks for being here!
At a recent gig for a small Indy band I saw a queue of people lining up to buy DIY homemade cds of a demo the band made. I was impressed that the audience were so engaged. It made a real impression, that you have to create products for the core audience and look after them so that they can look after you.
Exactly, it needs to be available for them to even consider it!
I found your 2 articles interesting and generally agree with most of your points, but there's one elephant in the room that I haven't seen mentioned in your article or much in the comments, and that's YouTube. I don't really think the streaming sites are competing with each other (as they all provide literally the same thing) but all of them are competing against YT, which is a much more community focused and artist/listener interactive platform. Do you think any of the DSPs will start offering similar video services in the future to try to be more interactive to compete with YT?
It's a good point. Spotify video services is already in Beta and they are rolling it out. I'm curious to see how they'll be able to keep up with the infinite uploads of this without having their cost of servers going way up. We'll have to see.
How do you define what constitutes being a “passionate fan”? While I appreciate the idea, I’ve been a bit skeptical of it since it entered the discourse many years ago. I would also be curious to know how you think education (with all of the promises and pitfalls of institutional, academic spaces as well as more patron-based models) and live performance (with often prohibitively high ticket costs and unjust revenue splits due to live nation etc) factor into the equation for artists and fans. Perhaps you could profile an artist or group who has achieved success in this “1,000 true fans” model for a future article?
A passionate fan would be one that will go see you play every time you’re in their city. One who would buy merch or read about your story. Basically any fan that wants to learn more about you beyond the discovery layer of simply making it on their playlist could be a potential passionate fan. I can definitely do that again, I have written an article about how Fred Again does it perfectly if you go into my archive. Thanks for being here Chase!!
Amazing, everything you mentioned is on the Vocana app!
Would be cool to check out
Google Play Store says not available in México. Sigh.
I was born 1977 and grew up without mobile phone or internet, so music was my life. Making music, discussing about music, discussing about artists, listen to music together with others, analyzing it etc. etc. We did nothing else literally.
I NEVER listen to those playlists that Spotify creates for me. I hate them. They are not made for real music lovers. They are only for consumers. BUT I DO listen to Radio France. There are real DJs, real humans, who make the playlists. It's deluxe. It's a premium selection of music. And THERE I discover new artists. I never discovered any new artist on Spotify.
I am in Tech, so I vibe coded an app that connects with the Spotify App. It is very easy to do that. You can access all of your playlists without any problem. You just cannot use this API for others, but everyone can use this API for private use and they can do access their own playlists.
What I want to say: There is no technical barrier. Everything is possible. I would be thrilled to have a world wide online community about music genre that I love, with artists and people who share the same passion. And I am sure others would be too.
So why not starting something new, like you described. I do not see a technical barrier.
Brilliant. Thanks for sharing Bianca, I’d love to hear more?? This sounds so cool. We should chat!!
Sent you some dms
Well written—but whenever I can't read words as equity, ethic re-distribution, increasing artists’ shares, moral ownership, or compassion for the difficult lives of highly skilled and talented artists, I can’t help feeling uneasy.
To me, this otherwise thoughtful article feels like it’s sidestepping the deeper issue: the business model itself is no longer sustainable. And honestly, that makes me sad.
I'll just remember this:
The System That Nobody Likes but Everyone Depends on. We should be able to change this.
You have good points and I agree, but the average consumer doesn’t care about these things unfortunately. It’s about accessibility and user experience. Sucks
I think you're right too but I like to think that it can change^^
Which is why it is so difficult to get anyone use a service or product that isn't Google Search/Chrome/Gmail, and help restrain Google's monopoly a bit, by the way.
15 years of Spotify - cancelled! Thanks for the push. Subscription+ less connection was always brewing in the background for me
✊
I guess you're saying an open SDK would be a data security risk which they couldn't effectively control at a manageable cost. But also music streaming involves complex licensing agreements with labels and rights holders, which could complicate open integrations right ?
I'm not sure. Can you explain a bit more?
Simply put... Spotify is the new public radio station not the record store. This 100% makes sense to me.
You simplified this to the tee. Thank you!
I love Bandcamp. My family has Apple Music-convenience. I, though, love to listen and purchase music on Bandcamp. The sound quality is better and I really like supporting the artist directly. Music is expensive so streaming something first can be helpful. I like streaming AND having the hands on experience. I think this is growing. My son is 17 and he has friends that collect vinyl-yay!!
Yay indeed!! Thanks for the note
You position these services as oppositional and one or the other. That seems wrong. These are streamers AND options. Streamers grow your audience and get you exposed to people who might be supporters on other platforms. Maybe you offer exclusives on other platforms, but what smart artist turns down radio play? And that’s what streamers are now.
Also, some of these platforms may run into problems in terms of royalties. If you put a cover song or something with sampling on it, how does the platform manage royalties owed to other songwriters? That might not be a problem now, but eventually, platforms like Patreon will have to create rules and restrictions around song distribution and they aren’t likely to favor small artists.
Thanks for the note. Most platforms run through the PRO pipeline and do abide by copyright laws, meaning royalties do get paid out for the creators. I don't think that having exclusive music on some platforms rules out radio play, why would it?
It wouldn’t rule out radio play any more than it rules out streamer play. Which is why I think most artists will find them to be synergistic. You might not make much money from streamers directly, but you get audiences.
To me, the risk bands take with platforms like Patreon is burnout. I know writers who have used it and made good money, but they’re trapped because they have to constantly produce new content for subscribers. I hope bands figure out how to find balance with their new revenue streams instead of discovering their new boss might look like them in the mirror, but is just as ruthless.
You're right about that. It takes a ton of output to keep a fanbase entertained, but that's unfortunately what we're faced with right now