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Bandcamp launched in 2008 as a way for musicians to run their own online stores selling their music, and has since paid out more than $87m to those artists. Now it\u2019s preparing to help them run their own subscription services too. \u201cWe\u2019re giving every artist the ability to create a subscription service of their own on the site,\u201d Bandcamp chief executive Ethan Diamond told the Guardian, ahead of announcing the new feature at the SF MusicTech Summit conference today. <\/p>\n
Artists will be able to set their own price for subscriptions, with all their new music made available to paying fans through Bandcamp\u2019s app as soon as it\u2019s released. \u201cIt\u2019s kinda like what U2 and Apple did, except that it\u2019s music that you actually want!\u201d said Diamond.<\/p>\n
Subscribing fans will still be able to download music files as if they\u2019d bought them individually, but Diamond said that Bandcamp\u2019s mobile app is now being used by hundreds of thousands of people as a way to access all the music they have purchased.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnother element of this is that any artist can choose any number of items from their back catalogue to give to subscribers as a bonus when they subscribe. We have 12 million tracks on the site and 1.6 million albums, so it\u2019s an easy way for artists to start.\u201d<\/p>\n
Musicians will also be able to choose to release music to subscribers only \u2013 either temporarily or permanently \u2013 as well as giving them a blanket discount on merchandise that they are selling on their stores.<\/p>\n
Bandcamp will take the same revenue share as it does for digital sales: 15%, dropping to 10% once an artist reaches $5,000 in sales. Diamond said that in tests of the new subscriptions feature, artists have opted for a range of prices.<\/p>\n
British band Candy Says, for example, are selling their subscription for \u00a320 a year. \u201cWe heard from another label who represents an artist who is really prolific, and for whom they don\u2019t even know what to do with the quantity of music the person is giving them. They were talking about $200 a year,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re excited to open it to everybody and see what happens: I suspect it\u2019ll be all over the map.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bandcamp is keen for the new feature to be seen as a way for fans to support artists, at a time when the debate around how musicians make money \u2013 particularly from streaming services like Spotify \u2013 is more heated than ever.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe whole motivation here is that when you get to a point that you love an artist \u2013 when you go from liking them to being a real true fan of theirs \u2013 at some point you just want everything they make. You just want to support everything that they do,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs an artist, serving that type of fan can be really challenging: you can talk about a new release, but you\u2019re competing with somebody\u2019s social media firehose \u2013 with sponsored posts and their 1,000 closest Facebook friends. So how do you even get the information to them that there\u2019s a new release?\u201d<\/p>\n
Artists will also be able to use Bandcamp\u2019s app to post messages and photos to their subscribers, which will appear at the top of those fans\u2019 news feeds within the app.<\/p>\n
Diamond suggested this will be an artist-friendly alternative to social networks like Facebook, where posts from a musician\u2019s page may only be shown to a minority of their fans.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re trying to create a channel for artists and their biggest fans where they aren\u2019t having to compete with the other things,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019ll be no \u2018boost a post\u2019 nonsense like Facebook. We\u2019re not going to do anything like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bandcamp\u2019s new feature is the latest attempt to offer musicians a way to earn a regular income from their fans. One alternative is crowdfunding service Patreon<\/a>, where fans sign up to pay small amounts whenever a creator \u2013 musicians, but also YouTubers, filmmakers and journalists \u2013 releases a new piece of content.<\/p>\n Another service, Drip.fm<\/a>, focuses more on independent labels, with clients including Domino Records, Ninja Tune and Sub Pop using it to run monthly subscriptions for fans. It has also attracted a few independent artists, including Mike Doughty and Christopher Willits.<\/p>\n Diamond compared Bandcamp\u2019s new feature to the one-off crowdfunding campaigns found on sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo, with their rewards for donations made by fans.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I\u2019ve contributed to a crowdfunding campaign and got something in the mail for it as a reward, I\u2019ve always felt surprised. It was almost unnecessary,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t want the artists I love to be knitting me beer koozies! I want their music. I\u2019m not interested in funding studio time for just one album, I\u2019m interested in funding them generally.\u201d<\/p>\n Diamond also hopes that Bandcamp subscriptions will show that streaming music \u2013 as used in the company\u2019s mobile apps \u2013 can help rather than harm artists\u2019 careers, in the wake of the row over Taylor Swift pulling her albums from Spotify<\/a>, and wider discussion about that service\u2019s impact on musicians.<\/p>\n \u201cThe subscription streaming services are presenting a false dichotomy between downloads and streaming, as they\u2019re conflating the idea that downloads versus streaming is the exact same as saying downloads versus subscription-based streaming,\u201d said Diamond.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat they\u2019re actually saying is \u2018our particular model of streaming \u2013 subscription-based \u2013 is the future, and anybody that doesn\u2019t agree with that is living in the past\u2019. The reality is that streaming is of course the future: people are going to download less and less. But that particular model of subscription-based streaming isn\u2019t the only model. There is this other model where you support the artist.\u201d<\/p>\n Diamond added that he thinks the latter is what Apple is working on as it prepares to relaunch its recently-acquired Beats Music streaming service in 2015. \u201cI suspect Beats and iTunes radio will become the discovery system for ultimately making a purchase and getting access to your music,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n But Bandcamp is evolving in that direction as well. The latest release of its mobile app allows users to listen to anything in its catalogue twice before being prompted to pay to add it to their collection, for example.<\/p>\n \u201cYou get a little nag saying it\u2019s time to support this artist, and get unlimited streaming plus the satisfaction of knowing you\u2019re directly supporting the artist,\u201d said Diamond.<\/p>\n \u201cSo you can use the app as a discovery tool, but at a certain point it\u2019s saying if you want to add this to your collection, you need to buy it. And we\u2019re going to give artists complete control over the number of times something can be streamed before they get that prompt.\u201d<\/p>\n Bandcamp\u2019s $87m of payouts to artists may be small compared to the $2bn in payouts to labels and publishers reported by Spotify<\/a>, but Diamond said it is an increasingly meaningful platform for independent artists, paying out $3.1m more every month.<\/p>\n\u2018We\u2019re going to give artists complete control\u2019<\/h2>\n