Some thoughts on Bandcamp Friday
Bandcamp Friday is a thing that Bandcamp started in the midst of the 2020 pandemic, primarily to help out performing musicians who no longer had access to live performance venues due to the COVID lockdowns. It was a very nice gesture on their part, to help offset some of the suck of the world affecting musicians by waiving their cut of the purchase price.
As someone who wasn’t a performing musician at the time, I still benefitted from it, as it gave me an occasional tiny boost to my (already tiny) music income.
But at this point it’s an entrenched tradition and it’s actually causing more harm than good. It might be time for it to end, or at least be reconsidered.
Because of Bandcamp Friday, there are two unfortunate tendencies which end up amplifying one another:
- Many musicians are now withholding their releases until Bandcamp Friday so that they can get the biggest cut of their sales, meaning that all listeners are now overwhelmed with an absolute torrent of release and marketing notices on that one day, causing their music to be lost in the fray
- Many listeners are now withholding their purchases until Bandcamp Friday with the well-meaning intention of supporting the musicians as best they can
Both of these tendencies compound, badly. For example, a significant amount of Bandcamp attention ostensibly comes through the release-window charting. It should be a good thing for musicians to stagger their releases out so that they aren’t competing for visibility and purchases within their release window. At the same time, it’s better for charting purposes for listeners to buy an album when it first releases, rather than waiting up to two months for it to happen later.
This has also likely had a much more profound impact on Bandcamp’s bottom line than expected. Bandcamp hasn’t been public about how much the impact has been, but there’s been a couple of hints about this; for example, a couple of times they’ve ended up in sponsorship arrangements with other companies (such as one with Roland), presumably to help defray their own losses on those days. It did not do anyone any favors.
But they’ve also gotten stuck; on months where they don’t do a Bandcamp Friday, people complain!
Bandcamp has their own share of expenses in running the company, so obviously they can’t just remove their cut permanently. But they’ve effectively ended up in a situation where they’re constantly having to compete with themselves; there’s roughly one day out of sixty when they make no money, but those days also have an outsized influence. If they’re able to afford that, perhaps they could reevaluate what their normal sales cut is and just do a permanent reduction all around.
Mirlo allows musicians to select how much of a cut Mirlo gets, and they suggest 7% as the amount that covers Mirlo’s expenses at a break-even level. Bandcamp’s cut is currently 15% for “long-tail” artists and 10% for artists who generate at least $5000 per year. There are a lot of factors that would go either way in terms of Bandcamp’s actual costs compared to Mirlo’s, but perhaps Bandcamp could change their cut permanently to be 10% for long-tail and 7% after the $5000 threshold.
My own sales over the past year have broken down as follows:
- Total gross revenue, whole year: $942.57
- Total gross revenue on Bandcamp Friday: $754.64
- Bandcamp’s total collected share: $63.32 (6.7%)
- Payment processor fees: $41.15
- Sales tax: $58.07
- My net revenue: $777.03
If they’d change their fee structure instead of having these periodic loss-leading sales events, then assuming the same number of sales for me throughout the year it would have been more like:
- Total gross revenue, whole year: $942.57
- Bandcamp’s total collected share: $94.26 (10%)
- Payment processor fees: $41.15
- Sales tax: $58.07
- My net revenue: $749.09
I’d have only made a little bit less, but Bandcamp would have made a bit more, but also, that’s only assuming the same number of sales happened. If it weren’t for the dynamics of Bandcamp Friday, it’s quite possible that I’d have made more sales overall, and in particular since more sales would have come during the release window of my albums, it could have led to charting and the increased promotion that came as a result of it. I have absolutely no idea how to reasonably estimate that, but assuming I made even 15% more in sales as a result of the changed dynamic ($1084), then at a 10% cut it would look something like:
- Gross revenue: $1084
- Bandcamp split: $108.40 (10%)
- Payment processor fees: $47.32
- Sales tax: $66.78
- Net revenue: $861.50
This would have benefitted both me and Bandcamp. And heck, even if Bandcamp were to keep their 15% cut I’d still be better off:
- Gross revenue: $1084
- Bandcamp split: $162.60 (15%)
- Payment processor fees: $47.32
- Sales tax: $66.78
- Net revenue: $807.30
As things currently stand, though, we have more and more musicians fighting for an even smaller slice of the pie, and listeners are getting annoyed.
At this point Bandcamp Friday isn’t really helping anyone and it is probably long past time that it came to an end.
Bandcamp have already committed to a few more Bandcamp Fridays this year but I honestly hope that they do not continue it into 2026. It’s doing more harm than good.