As the music industry continues to figure out new ways to monetize its product, Bandcamp has reached a pretty cool milestone: paying out $100 million to musicians since launching in 2008.
The independent music and streaming service announced the news earlier this month, and on Friday sent out an email to its users detailing its growth over the past seven years. Bandcamp allows unsigned artists to set up a profile and get paid for their music and merchandise. Last November it launched a subscription service.
Here’s the message from Bandcamp CEO and founder Ethan Diamond, which can also be found on a Bandcamp blog post titled “Dolla Dolla Bill, Y’All”:
Fans give artists $3.5 million every month on the site, and buy more than 16,000 records a day, which works out to about one every five seconds, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year (there goes one now). In terms of units sold, Bandcamp’s share of the record industry is roughly the same as BMW’s share of the auto market back when Steve Jobs said this. Furthermore, sales on Bandcamp are up 30% in the last 12 months, at a time when the rest of the industry is down 11%. We see this growth as proof that if you give fans easy ways to directly support the artists they love, they’ll take you up on it every time. So a big, big thanks to everyone supporting artists on Bandcamp, and to all the artists and labels posting great music too. We wouldn’t be here without you.
As the Guardian notes, Bandcamp “takes a 15% cut of the income musicians earn from selling music, merchandise and subscriptions on its site, with this dropping to 10% once they reach $5,000 in total sales.”
Many Bandcamp profiles feature a pay-what-you-want service, allowing fans to determine how much to shell out for a digital single, EP, or LP. And the site allows artists to sell vinyl and other physical releases, as well.
Among the high-profile users of Bandcamp include Thom Yorke, Courtney Barnett, Sufjan Stevens, Sleater-Kinney and Sleaford Mods. Independent labels like Sub Pop and Ninja Tune host profiles on the site, and from 2011 to 2013, our very own Vanya Records used it as a source for releases by Boston bands Bearstronaut, Andre Obin, the New Highway Hymnal, and Confessions.
