What is Bandcamp?

  • Bandcamp is an online music store as well as a platform for artist promotion that many independent artists are using to sell their music and merchandise direct to consumers in digital and physical formats.

    It is also free to join, and there's no limit as to how much audio and information you can upload to the site. There are many ways to customize how your artist page operates. You can specify a set cost per track that you wish to sell, or you can specify a minimum cost and allow fans of your band to pay more.

    Bandcamp doesn't just allow for digital downloads, you can also sell physical merchandise as well as CD's, Vinyl, T-shirts, and posters.

    If you are running a promotion or campaign to help push your music, you can create discount vouchers or download codes and allocate them to your songs for friends or competition winners to access. If you want users to take a ‘try before you buy' approach, you can offer a smaller compressed lower quality audio file for fans to preview and download before they purchase the full quality audio file.

    You can upload compressed and uncompressed audio files, and even let the user preview your songs in a range of different file formats.

    You can customize the look of your artist page by adding your own images and backgrounds to their microsite template. It's simple and concise and there's very little Bandcamp branding which keeps your page nice, tidy, and minimal.

    If you have an album for sale, you can upload bonus items with the download to make it a complete package. This could be PDF files which contain the artwork and liner notes, videos, or any extra stuff that will give the user an extra incentive to check out your music.

    Like Soundcloud once you have uploaded your music you continue to own your own publishing and copyright and can elect a creative commons license. Bandcamp allows 200 downloads from your page per month, but you can offer more downloads for an additional fee.

    Much like Trademe, Bandcamp will take a small percentage depending on how much you have sold through the site. Check with the Bandcamp website as their commission may change over time.

    Once you have set up your profile, you can designate a web address specific to your artist name so users can find you easily while being search engine optimized at the same time. This feature helps you out with a better search rank in Google.

    Bandcamp also has a player widget you can embed through social networking sites. These widgets are customizable to your tastes and will help you boost your page ranking through your own viral distribution.

    Bandcamp is simple, smart, easy to use, and gives independent artists and labels a worldwide distribution platform to utilize as they choose.

     

    What is Bandcamp?