![]() ![]() I don’t have a way to post messages.”īandcamp’s Oakland offices. I have no way to communicate with anyone who streams our music. “With Spotify, it wouldn’t be possible to do any fundraising because everything is so siloed off. “It was really important for our community to feel like we could get together and do something, even though we were all stuck in our houses separately,” he says. ![]() Along with sales from his own label, he ended up giving £2,000. ![]() Miles Opland, head of Bristol-based experimental dub label Bokeh Versions, got together with his Avon Terror Corps collective to donate sales from a “name your price” compilation to homeless charities in his city. Those independent labels aren’t big, mega-funded corporations they’re small businesses, and that was amazing to see.” ![]() Sometimes, besides just passing the money on to their artists, they gave to food banks and other organisations. “A lot of the independent labels waived their fees as well. “I had no idea what to expect, but the whole thing was inspiring,” Diamond says. On 1 May, fans splurged $7.1m millions more were spent on 5 June, with another waiver day coming up on 3 July. Bandcamp announced three more fee-waiver days. On 20 March, fans bought 800,000 records on Bandcamp in 24 hours, totalling $4.3m of music and merchandise – 15 times more than a typical Friday. When Covid-19 hit, Bandcamp announced it would waive its usual 15% fee for one day in order to support artists affected by the shutdown of live music. Those labels aren't big corporations … that was amazing to see Some gave to food banks and other organisations. “This year will be the first year where there’s a noticeable change in the growth rate, and that is because of the pandemic and the awareness that has been raised around the need for fans to directly support artists.” A lot of independent labels waived their fees as well. For 11 years it’s a line like this,” says Diamond, holding his hand out at a gentle incline. “The growth of the company has been almost comically steady. As well as downloads, about half of Bandcamp’s sales are for physical items – vinyl, CDs, cassettes, T-shirts, posters, USB sticks, even MiniDiscs. The early years of the site were defined by outsiderdom – video game soundtracks, internet-born genres such as vaporwave and seapunk, music for the “ furries” subculture of people who dress as animals – and you can still find pretty much anything, from pirate metal to eco-grime. Meanwhile, Bandcamp has become the rarest of Silicon Valley stories: a slow-burn success. ‘Artists have to come first’ … Ethan Diamond, founder of Bandcamp. Spotify has rarely turned a net profit, but it has 130 million paid subscribers and managed to scrape together $100m for a recent deal to host podcaster Joe Rogan exclusively. Who would want dusty vinyl or external hard drives if they could have all the music they wanted on their phone or laptop for a low subscription price? The result of this shift, as musicians from Taylor Swift to Thom Yorke to Joanna Newsom have complained, has been paltry payouts for artists and a consolidation of power among tech companies. Streaming services – including YouTube, Apple Music, Deezer and Tidal – signalled that the era of ownership was over. In the decade afterwards, the music industry remade itself in Spotify’s image. Spotify would be “better than piracy”, thought its 23-year-old creator, Daniel Ek. Five thousand miles away from Oakland, California, another startup millionaire was launching his own music service in Stockholm, one that would give listeners access to everything ever recorded. Bandcamp would take care of the fiddly stuff – transcoding music into different formats, payments, analytics – and take a 15% cut of every sale. From Progressive Metal to Post-Rock/Progressive Rock music, mixing groovy heaviness with melodic guitar phrasing in a unique way.W hen Ethan Diamond founded Bandcamp in 2008, he imagined it an alternative to MySpace: an easy-to-use website where bands could interact with fans and sell music. Thessa is a one man band project from Anglet, France. ![]()
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