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Bandcamp

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For band practice camps, see band camp.
Bandcamp, Inc.
Type of site
Privately held company
FoundedSeptember 16, 2008; 16 years ago (2008-09-16)
HeadquartersOakland, California, U.S.
Founder(s)
  • Ethan Diamond
  • Shawn Grunberger
  • Joe Holt
  • Neal Tucker
Key peopleEthan Diamond (CEO)
Shawn Grunberger (CTO)
IndustryMusic streaming, music purchasing
URLbandcamp.com

Bandcamp is an Internet music company. It was founded in 2008 by Oddpost co-founder Ethan Diamond and programmers Shawn Grunberger, Joe Holt and Neal Tucker;[1][2][3][4][5] the company is headquartered in Oakland, California.[6]

Business model

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 can download their purchases or stream their music on the Bandcamp application or website only once or, by preserving the purchase voucher, unlimited times. 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]

Charity

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]

Notable artists and labels

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]

Bandcamp Daily

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]

References

  1. ^ Baio, Andy (September 16, 2008). "Oddpost Co-Founder Launches Bandcamp, Publishing Platform for Musicians". Maxy.
  2. ^ John, Tozzi (November 17, 2011). "Helping Indie Musicians Market Their Tunes". Bloomberg News.
  3. ^ "Private Company Financial Report on Bandcamp, Inc". PrivCo.
  4. ^ Sam, Clearman (October 1, 2008). "An interview with Joe Holt". The HTML Times. Retrieved 28 December 2013.
  5. ^ Ethan, Maffey (July 18, 2012). "The Best of Bandcamp: Get in on the ground floor with these sell-it-yourself bands". The Source Weekly. Retrieved 28 December 2013. Web developers and friends Ethan Diamond, Shawn Grunberger, Joe Holt and Neal Tucker launched Bandcamp in 2008
  6. ^ a b Lefebvre, Sam (January 17, 2019). "Inside Bandcamp's New Oakland Venue, Record Shop and Office". KQED. Archived from the original on May 21, 2019. Retrieved February 6, 2019.
  7. ^ "Bandcamp Help". Bandcamp. Retrieved 17 September 2018.
  8. ^ "Thank You, It's a Gift". The Bandcamp Blog. 2013-11-26. Retrieved 2014-06-19.
  9. ^ James Shotwell (2010-06-20). "Bandcamp.com changes business model". Alt Press.
  10. ^ Bandcamp - In which formats can I download my purchases, retrieved 2019-02-19
  11. ^ Deitz, Ben (2011-01-24). "Bandcamp Decoded: An Indie Musician's Best (and Most Profitable) Friend". Switched.com. Retrieved 2014-06-19.
  12. ^ "Full Tracklist Players, Facebook Love". The Bandcamp Blog. Retrieved 2014-06-19.
  13. ^ "A Tale Of Two Ecosystems: On Bandcamp, Spotify And The Wide-Open Future". NPR.org. Retrieved 2020-08-19.
  14. ^ Yoo, Noah (November 17, 2020). "Bandcamp Launches New Livestreaming Service for Artists". Pitchfork. Retrieved November 17, 2020.
  15. ^ Tatiana, Cirisano (November 17, 2020). "Here's How Bandcamp's New Livestreaming Platform Stacks Up". Billboard. Retrieved November 17, 2020.
  16. ^ Aswad, Jem (2020-03-20). "Online Music Retailer Bandcamp Is Waiving Its Share of Sales Today – 100% Goes to Musicians". Variety. Retrieved 2020-07-10.
  17. ^ Galil, Leor (July 1, 2020). "Another chance for a Bandcamp binge to help musicians". Chicago Reader.
  18. ^ https://daily.bandcamp.com/features/bandcamp-covid-19-fundraiser
  19. ^ https://isitbandcampfriday.com/
  20. ^ Turman, Katherine (December 15, 2020). "'Bandcamp Fridays' Raised $40 Million for Artists, Will Continue in 2021". Spin. Retrieved December 15, 2020.
  21. ^ https://pitchfork.com/news/bandcamp-directing-profits-to-naacp-legal-defense-fund/
  22. ^ Caroline Klibanoff (2010-07-27). "Amanda Palmer Brings in $15,000 on Bandcamp in Three Minutes". Paste Magazine.
  23. ^ Glenn Peoples (2010-06-22). "Amanda Palmer Sells $15K Worth Of Music, Merch In Three Min". Billboard.biz.
  24. ^ "Fat Wreck, Epitaph, Sub-Pop Get Bandcamp Pages". Riffyou.com. December 17, 2014. Retrieved 2014-12-18.
  25. ^ "Peter Gabriel's Solo Discography Comes to Bandcamp". Bandcamp Daily. 2019-11-15. Retrieved 2020-04-22.
  26. ^ "The Björk Discography Comes to Bandcamp; Proceeds Being Donated to Black Lives Matter UK". Bandcamp Daily. 2020-06-18. Retrieved 2020-07-07.
  27. ^ Ratliff, Ben (August 19, 2016). "Is Bandcamp the Holy Grail of Online Record Stores?". The New York Times. Archived from the original on August 19, 2016. Retrieved May 20, 2019.
  28. ^ a b Mahadevan, Tara (February 14, 2018). "Musicians Earned Over $270 Million From Bandcamp Last Year". Complex. Archived from the original on May 21, 2019. Retrieved May 21, 2019.
  29. ^ Serota, Maggie (November 10, 2017). "It's OK If You Don't Have Your Career Figured Out by 30". Glamour. Archived from the original on November 11, 2017. Retrieved May 21, 2019.
  30. ^ Chandler, Simon. "Outsourcing Police Investigations to Google Risks Privacy and Justice". Truthout. Retrieved May 21, 2020.
  31. ^ "Zachary Lipez's Articles". Inc.com. Retrieved May 21, 2020.
  32. ^ "Subscribe to The Hash Podcast — New Season January 8th!". December 20, 2018. Retrieved May 21, 2020.
  33. ^ Siebert, Michael. "Dennis Cooper doesn't want you to look away". The Outline. Retrieved May 21, 2020.
  34. ^ "Channel Tres' blend of G-Funk and minimal house is the rap risk we've been waiting for". August 8, 2018. Retrieved May 21, 2020.
  35. ^ Sodomsky, Sam (July 31, 2017). "Bandcamp Donating Proceeds to Transgender Law Center This Friday". Pitchfork. Archived from the original on July 31, 2017. Retrieved May 21, 2019.
  36. ^ Stutz, Colin (February 13, 2018). "Bandcamp Paid Musicians Over $70M in 2017". Billboard. Archived from the original on February 14, 2018. Retrieved May 20, 2019.
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