Was Bandcamp the answer all along?

Is the answer to music's current woes hiding in plain sight?

I’ve been reading Liz Pelly’s excellent book Mood Machine for the past few weeks. It’s a painful read, not because of Pelly, who does an fantastic and comprehensive job getting into the weeds on Spotify’s conception, formation, expansion, influence and dominance. It’s painful because it paints a very bleak picture of the future of the music industry, at least for independent labels and artists. (If there is a chapter on why it’s all gonna be fine I haven't got to that bit yet. Though I did find the anecdote about Spotify being originally filled with music from The PirateBay very apt for the current state of AI models.)

Streaming’s impact goes beyond the meagre royalty rates, fundamentally changing listening behaviours from active to lean back, disconnecting the listener from the artist and their catalogue, and mashing music-as-content into a constant feed of soundalikes to keep users pacified. Despite their dominance and playlist priority lanes, even majors have realised this behavioural shift is damaging, as artists with millions of ‘listens’ can’t sell out tiny venues. Many don’t knows, and many don’t care, who they’re listening to. Expect this trend to continue.

All the while, artists are told the streaming era is a meritocratic one, as the ‘democratisation’ of discovery, distribution and music creation itself gives everyone the same chance to succeed. Can’t get a billion streams? Make better music. It’s exhausting rhetoric for artists, shouting into the void on both socials and streaming, begging to stumble on an algorithmic quirk that might allow their followers to actually see their posts. We’ve had this discussion many times on Future Filter, so I’ll leave it there in terms of setting the scene.

The Super Era

One of the solutions for this inconvenient truth – we’re told – is the humble superfan. Through everything from new subscription models, innovative startups, meet and greets, gated Discords, and other bespoke – sometimes convoluted – solutions, superfans are here to save the day and fill in the revenue gap created when sales became streams.

But are we overthinking it? Very few of these startups or initiatives present a simple, transactional way for artists to be paid real money for their work. Many artists, especially in electronic music, don’t feel comfortable with the idea of having fans at all, never mind super ones. They don’t want to create tokens, they don’t want to jump on a live stream, host a Q&A or start a Patreon. Of course, for some, it aligns perfectly with their personality and the artistic world they’ve built around their music. But for those less comfortable being the face of a community that requires constant attention, it can feel like yet another new ‘strand’ they’re being forced to engage with as the music they make continues to feel worthless.

What if—and bear with me on this—the answer isn’t yet another subscription tier, SaaS middleman, or walled garden data gatekeeper promising a superfan utopia? What if you could simply sell the music you make to those who want to buy it?

This One Time

Bandcamp was founded in 2008 by Ethan Diamond as an “alternative to MySpace: an easy-to-use website where bands could interact with fans and sell music”. While Bandcamp continued to grow year-on-year, providing artists, bands and labels the chance to sell their CDs, cassettes, merch and more directly to fans, it was a slow-burner, largely operating on the fringes as streaming took the attention of the masses.

But it captured the cultural zeitgeist when the company announced it was waiving its usual 15% fee from sales on Friday, March 20, 2020, to support artists during the COVID-19 pandemic. That day, fans bought $4.3m worth of music and merch, 15 times more than on a normal Friday. The next time Bandcamp waived its fees, $7.1m was spent in a single day. Since then, Bandcamp Fridays have earned artists $123m while the platform has paid out $1.47bn to date.

Bandcamp has had a fairly turbulent time since its COVID awakening, with a somewhat confusing acquisition by Epic Games in March 2022, followed by a series of layoffs and ultimately a sale to Songtradr in September 2023. Indie artists and labels would be forgiven for feeling uneasy about Bandcamp’s future given its rocky recent past. And while it might be hyperbolic to suggest that Bandcamp's future is intrinsically linked to the sustainable future of independent artists and labels, if the platform closed tomorrow, it would undoubtedly be a seismic blow to many electronic music producers, artists, labels, and DJs.

I sat down with Bandcamp’s European Artist and Label Representative Aly Gillani to assess Bandcamp’s current state and future direction over the next decade. I met Aly recording a podcast for fabric a few years ago, and he always struck me as a passionate and articulate guy. He also runs his own label First Word Records so is particularly well placed for this chat. We got into the weeds on the next generation of ownership, how artists can better leverage Bandcamp communities, the temptation to wade into the streaming debate, the superfan trend and much more.

Our conversation left me feeling more hopeful than I have in a long time about artists’ futures, and I hope it does the same for you.

We get straight into it because, well, there’s a lot to talk about.

Bandcamp’s European Artist and Label Representative Aly Gillani

Q&A with Aly Gillani

FF: There are so many platforms, initiatives and startups that have launched in recent years with a ‘direct-to-fan’ rhetoric, partly as an antidote to streaming, not owning or knowing your audience, not being able to communicate with them etc. But very few actually offer a clean way for artists to make money in the way Bandcamp does.

Aly Gillani: “Particularly if you’re dependent on another company to do that and at any point that company might change – we’re seeing that in real-time with Meta and Twitter. Suddenly, these communities you’ve spent years building and nurturing don’t really exist anymore and that’s a challenge.”

Are you hearing growing frustrations from labels and artists recently, given Meta’s mask slip and Twitter’s demise?

“I think there’s always been frustrations with those companies, that’s nothing new. Even before this crisis point, artists would have 10,000 followers, post something and it says 200 people saw it. The constantly shifting nature of how those businesses make money and want you to use them makes it really difficult. For us, we identify with the labels and artists we speak to. Artists are artists because of their self-expression.

“For us, it’s about providing something that’s really easy to use that allows you to make money and be part of the music industry, without having to learn entirely new skills. Unlike a lot of other platforms, the whole point of Bandcamp is that fans can pay you money, that’s the whole purpose of it. And speaking to artists, they’re fed up with doing things for exposure, or getting their Spotify numbers up so they can booked for a gig – it’s so exhausting for people.”

On a podcast we did together a few years ago, you mentioned that people often pay more than they’re asked on Bandcamp. That stuck with me as an example of how music fans will pay if they’re given the option—at least some of them will—but those options are dwindling further in favour of all-you-can-eat subscriptions. Is there an updated figure on how many people optionally pay more on Bandcamp?

“It’s around 25%. So a significant amount of time. Things like Bandcamp Fridays skew that somewhat, as people are putting up remixes, live versions or one-offs. There are a lot of charity releases on Bandcamp Friday too.

“One of my colleagues found a great thing on Reddit recently – an artist was hosting a track for £1 and someone had paid £100 for it. So they messaged the fan saying ‘I think you made a mistake’ and the fan replied, ‘It wasn’t a mistake, go buy yourself something sexy.’ Which was an amazing response.

“There are two things about Bandcamp that are really important. Aside from the initial aspect of ‘It’s a place where people pay for stuff’ – which is bizarrely a revolutionary thing in this day and age – but I think the two other key things are ‘curation’ and ‘community’. Curation with the editorial, which is different to a lot of other platforms, even though there’s not a lot out there at the moment. But also the community aspect of it – it’s a community of artists, labels and fans, and all three components play a role.

“When you foster a relationship between artists and fans, fans get it. They understand it’s hard for artists. They understand the majority of them aren’t going from the private jet into the limo, the majority are getting two night busses home after a gig. When you have that understanding, then you get [people paying £100 for a track] because [music] isn’t just wallpaper that happens in the background while you’re cooking, or at the gym or whatever. This is like; ‘I’m part of that artist’s career. I’m contributing to them being able to make more of the music I love’ and that’s a great thing, that’s what you want.”

“The majority of [artists] aren’t going from the private jet into the limo, the majority are getting two night busses home after a gig.”

How much of sales on Bandcamp are digital versus physical, i.e. vinyl, merch etc?

“In terms of revenue, it’s almost exactly 50/50 digital and physical. Physical would include vinyl, CDs, tapes, t-shirts, posters etc. Less than 20% of releases on Bandcamp have a physical attached to them, so the physical is doing a lot of the heavy lifting, which makes sense ’cause you have a ten-quid [album] download and a 25-quid vinyl record.

“For a long time that 50-50 split has been pretty stable. It’s really interesting to me because when I’m doing my pitch to labels I tell them: ‘You’ve gotta get your merch on there, physical is important, get your vinyl on there etc,’ but what’s interesting now is that we paid out $194m to artists and labels last year. Half of that – $97 million – was digital. Digital downloads were almost $100m in 2024. I think 10 years ago people would have said that was impossible: ‘Why would you need downloads? You’ve got streaming, no one’s downloading anymore’.

“But I think for some people there’s the overwhelm of ‘I can listen to anything, [so] I don’t know what you listen to’. Then there’s the supporting the artist side [of Bandcamp]. We’re seeing a lot of growth in electronic music and single-track downloads, and that’s DJs using Bandcamp – whether it’s radio or club – probably the same way they’re using Beatport and Traxsource.”

Would you see those downloads dropping off if and when streaming becomes the de facto DJ format?

“Possibly – but we have streaming within Bandcamp as well. We obviously don’t have any integrations with rekordbox, or anything like that at the moment, but who knows down the line. Something to look at.” [Ed note: please do this!!]

There’s a viral post from a few years ago that does the rounds now and again from Posthuman that says: “Buying an album on Bandcamp is the equivalent of streaming that artists’ music every day for three years.” Do you ever get tempted to engage with that rhetoric as a company? Because you know it would attract a lot of attention, potentially new customers. Bandcamp is very agnostic – I’m sure intentionally – but I’m just curious if you feel tempted to push those numbers a bit more from your side.

“I think it’s better when other people do that for us. And a lot of people do, and that’s great. What other companies do is their business. We just focus on what we’re doing, and we know it’s valuable, we know it’s sustainable. On a personal level, I see all of the arguments saying: ‘We need this new model of streaming, we need this artist-centric model’. But I think ultimately the issue is, the numbers don’t add up.

“And another thing the industry isn't very good at saying is that streaming is great for consumers. If you were a music fan twenty years ago, you buy say two maybe three albums a month, maybe three or four singles. You’re spending 50- or 60-quid plus. Now, 10, nine quid a month and you’re consuming the same amount of music. So that’s obviously very attractive to fans. But it’s worth reiterating that for artists to carry on making the art you love, you have to pay them. And there are a few ways of doing that – going to shows, buying merch, buying music directly from them. And Bandcamp is a really good way of doing that.

“But Bandcamp is still a company – OK we have different goals and aims than those other companies, but we’re still a company. It’s disingenuous to start claiming the moral high ground. It’s better to just show that it’s good. If artists know it’s good for them, they’ll talk about it. I prefer to focus on what we’re doing and not worrying what [streaming companies are] doing. You’re not comparing like-for-like.

“What is interesting to me is the industry’s big focus recently on superfans. It’s quite funny seeing everyone’s talk about new ways of [engaging superfans] and we’re like ‘Hey, we’re right here, you don’t need to build anything new’.”

“It’s quite funny seeing everyone talk about new ways of [engaging superfans] and we’re like ‘Hey, we’re right here, you don’t need to build anything new’.”

Looking into the future, there’s a whole new generation of music fans who grew up with streaming and don’t have that relationship with ownership, they’ve never bought an MP3, they never used iTunes etc. But they do have a passionate relationship with music. How are you thinking about them as you approach the next decade of Bandcamp?

“Five or six months ago we launched on TikTok so we’ve got some creators who are highlighting albums our editorial team have picked out. So those are some tentative first steps into that space. I have a 14-year-old daughter who for her birthday got a Taylor Swift record and for Christmas got a Cigarettes After Sex record, we’re going to see Lana Del Rey in the summer and she bought the vinyl. As much as I think it’s a bit mad that there are nine different versions of a Taylor Swift [vinyl], the positive there is it’s bringing an audience into that space and making them understand they can own the physical music.

“Teenage fans have always wanted to have stuff in their room that shows who are as a person whether it’s a band, a movie, a TV show, or a celebrity. So that merch side is always gonna be there. There are big bands, with big followings that are much younger and are on Bandcamp. And if we keep doing things right, and the way we’re doing it, the next generation of bands will be on Bandcamp and they’ll bring their audiences with them.

“One of our biggest sellers of last year was the Cindy Lee record that had this really interesting rollout, and people just love that record, all kinds of different people. So you’ve got that and then another one of our top sellers is a label that does vinyl-only pressings of East Coast rap records with super high-end artwork. There’s a real mix of things going on, and the key for us is if we make sure it’s as easy as possible to use, they’ll come and use it. Every band is gonna have fans who want that kinda stuff, that’s just how fandom has always worked.”

I spoke to some artists before I spoke to you and a few of them said the same thing, which was that they have relative success on Bandcamp, doing well and making money, but they don’t know how to turn that Bandcamp success into success elsewhere in the music industry.

For example, if you have 1,000,000 followers on Spotify, it’s public and it incentivises promoters to book you. If you have a dedicated loyal following on Bandcamp, nothing is public in terms of numbers. I know not making metrics public is a conscious decision and I think a positive one, but it does create this closed ecosystem in some ways, where the artist can’t leverage that audience elsewhere, and forces them to still engage with socials and other platforms when their audience might not see their posts anyway, or maybe the audience doesn’t even live there at all.

How do you think about that conflict?

“It’s a good question and yes, it was a deliberate decision not to display follower numbers as you just end up in this race to the bottom and we all know those numbers can be massaged in different ways. I think the biggest thing we give that can help them is the ability to email your audience and create your own mailing list [off platform]. Being able to say ‘I have 300 fans in Madrid who all bought something from me – and I can email them’ – that’s effective. Particularly going back to social media and the frailty of that, building an email list is just so important. We have messaging within Bandcamp too. Those are your fans, they’re not ours.

“With streaming, you can be on a massive playlist, get a load of numbers, get lots of streams, but there’s no way to know who those people are. OK you can pull some demographic information, which you’ll then pay Meta or Google to advertise to. But also, if those fans don’t look at their phone while that track is on, they don’t even know that they’ve listened to you. When someone buys something on Bandcamp, not only do they definitely know who you are because they’re just paid you money, but you have their contact information and you can message them.”

The problem those artists are facing may be a problem with promoters as much as Bandcamp or streaming.

“I’ve got a lot of friends who work in festival booking and it’s really, really competitive and really, really hard to sell tickets and make money. Especially when you have the multi-national promotion companies doing it as well as the DIY indie space.”

Can you mention any of the product features coming this year?

“Sharable playlists are coming which is great. Schedulable releases are also a much-requested feature so that’s good. We are doing a big bit of work on a payment system to make it easier to pay in different ways, not just PayPal and the same credit card. Not the most exciting thing, but if we can remove more friction between someone thinking ‘This sounds pretty good’ to actually paying the artist money then I think that’s pretty powerful.”

What advice would you give a new artist who wants to use Bandcamp but might not have a following to port over from other platforms?

“We have a really useful guide which is just Bandcamp.com/guide which has tonnes of information about setting up your page for the first time. My key rule of thumb is to personalise it – if there’s a box to put some text, make sure you put images, change the colours, make it look like your own, and don’t go with our defaults. I would never say don’t be on other platforms. If you’re starting out you should be everywhere people might discover you, but you do have to make a decision about where to send people who are interested in you, and Bandcamp is a great place because you can build that database of emails and contact info. Limited edition merch is really great. I've seen people selling CD-Rs where they do the artwork by hand. Very, very personalised things [work well].”

It’s a very cynical time for both electronic music and music in general. How optimistic do you feel about the future of both?

“I’m very optimistic about Bandcamp. And how important we are for artists. That’s really important for me on a personal level and I’ve got no reason to think that’s gonna change. It’s ultimately never been a better time to be an artist and never been a worse time to be an artist. Before, if you wanted to get your music out, you had to sign a label of some kind and they had to do everything for you. Now you can do a label services deal, you can do a DIY deal with a TuneCore or Distrokid, you can go with a small label or you can create your own. The options are endless. But the thing is, regardless of those options, there’s still the same work that needs to be done, and someone’s gotta do it.

“It’s a tough time for sure, but I still think people are always gonna be passionate about music, go to a dark room to forget about their worries or have something to soundtrack their lives in whatever way that might be. It’s up to all of us in the industry to make that sustainable for as many people as possible.”