Considering Bandcamp’s Changing Role in Music Industry Amid Layoffs

With ownership changes, what happens to an unparalleled source of underground music?

By Shealeigh Voitl

Much has been said about how broken the music streaming structure is for artists. Music insiders have long criticized services for their lack of transparency and disregard for songwriters and performers. Just last week, Music Business Worldwide reported that Spotify plans to slash its already meager royalty rates for its lowest-streaming artists.

In 2015, singer-songwriter Joanna Newsom, whose music has never appeared on the platform, called Spotify a “villainous cabal of major labels” that was “built from the ground up as a way to circumvent the idea of paying their artists.”

Apple Music, Spotify’s biggest rival, has made some improvements, increasing their payout to roughly a penny per stream. But most artists today won’t be able to make a “sustainable living out of (releasing) music,” Mark Mulligan, an analyst at Midia Research told the Guardian in 2021. “Streaming only adds up when you have billions, not millions, of streams,” Mulligan explained. Put simply, streaming benefits major record labels and superstars; others are often forced to forge a different path.

So, what’s different about Bandcamp, the online record store and distribution platform based out of Oakland, California? For one, Bandcamp allows artists and labels to upload their music directly to the site and set their prices for digital and physical products, with Bandcamp taking a 10-15 percent cut of the sales. Listeners can stream via Bandcamp, but can typically only enjoy unlimited streaming if they purchase the music.

On Bandcamp Fridays, which the company began at the start of the pandemic to help artists make up for a loss of touring income, the site waives its usual revenue share, allowing fans to directly support artists and labels once every month, with 82 percent of proceeds going to the artist/label any other time you buy from Bandcamp.

So, where Spotify and others may fail to adequately value art and the artists who create it, Bandcamp gives fans the opportunity to invest in the music and performers they love. Bandcamp also launched its online music publication, Bandcamp Daily, in 2016 for its robust music community, frequently featuring independent, relatively unknown artists and eclectic and experimental sounds from all over the world.

Read more at: https://www.projectcensored.org/considering-bandcamps-amid-layoffs/