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Excuse me for being direct, but do you work for a record label? Bandcamp takes 15%/10% (depending on your yearly sales). Combined with the payment processing f

Excuse me for being direct, but do you work for a record label? Bandcamp takes 15%/10% (depending on your yearly sales). Combined with the payment processing fees, that gives a return of around 80%, as mentioned in another reply to your post. I think that's perfectly fair, considering the hosting costs for thousands and thousands of hours of music, and their entire platform. What Bandcamp offers is a sales channel that is already configured, all you have to to is give it a theme, upload your music in a lossless format, name the songs and choose a price. Bandcamp handles the layouts, the tagging, the multiple formats, the embedded album art and the whole shopping experience. You do the art, they do the technical stuff. You're spinning a yarn that the traditional labels are necessary in order to do marketing, but with the rise of social media and the huge trust people have in word of mouth, the big in-your-face advertising campaigns of yesteryear are simply outdated. The only reason the big labels still have some kind of clout is that they own all the big radio stations. But the rise of streaming and internet radio has eroded that power. And even if what you say was true, it only holds up for mainstream pop artists, not the much more interesting indie artists out there.

jonathanstrange 9y ago
Excuse me for being direct, but do you work for a record label? Not at all, I'm an independent artist at Bandcamp. What I am saying is that without marketing you have 0 sales. I'm also not saying that there are no artists who can do the marketing themselves (through social media, etc., as you mention). Most artists, however, neither have the time nor the connections to do that. It's the same effect as with app stores, where also just a very small number of developers make any money. You're right that Bandcamp offers a sales channel,of course. That's essentially all that these alternative distribution channels offer. We can debate whether that's worth 15% of the sales, though. As I've said, it works for some people who are well-connected and have a natural talent for self-marketing. For most of the artists, it doesn't work.
- KozmoNau7 9y ago
  It has always been just a small segment of artists who could actually make money directly from their art. Most artists in history had a patron of some kind, either a rich person or royalty, or the church (or other religious institution). The sales pitch from the big labels is that they will use their connections to get you noticed, but the prerequisite is that you should already be reasonably established before they want to pick you up, or ridiculously lucky that you just caught the right person's attention at the right time. The best way to get your name out there is still to play tons of smaller shows, build a local fanbase, and get on festival lineups, either through competitions or because your fanbase pesters the promoters into booking you.

jonathanstrange 9y ago

Excuse me for being direct, but do you work for a record label? Not at all, I'm an independent artist at Bandcamp. What I am saying is that without marketing you have 0 sales. I'm also not saying that there are no artists who can do the marketing themselves (through social media, etc., as you mention). Most artists, however, neither have the time nor the connections to do that. It's the same effect as with app stores, where also just a very small number of developers make any money. You're right that Bandcamp offers a sales channel,of course. That's essentially all that these alternative distribution channels offer. We can debate whether that's worth 15% of the sales, though. As I've said, it works for some people who are well-connected and have a natural talent for self-marketing. For most of the artists, it doesn't work.

KozmoNau7 9y ago
It has always been just a small segment of artists who could actually make money directly from their art. Most artists in history had a patron of some kind, either a rich person or royalty, or the church (or other religious institution). The sales pitch from the big labels is that they will use their connections to get you noticed, but the prerequisite is that you should already be reasonably established before they want to pick you up, or ridiculously lucky that you just caught the right person's attention at the right time. The best way to get your name out there is still to play tons of smaller shows, build a local fanbase, and get on festival lineups, either through competitions or because your fanbase pesters the promoters into booking you.