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:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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.
#Bandcamp #BandcampFriday ]]>Bandcamp have recently made some default pricing changes and based on their reasoning I have opted to change my own pricing strategy (as hinted at previously). Previously I had a kind of complicated and largely vibes-based approach to pricing, but it was doing me no favors. From now on, all of my albums will be $1/track up to $9, and individual songs will be $1.50/track, with occasional exceptions for certain considerations.
Anyway, for this Bandcamp Friday, you can get 25% off anything in my catalog (including my full discography, which is also always discounted) with the discount code “MAYDAY25.”
Also, as usual, here’s some of the stuff I’ll be buying this month:
And here’s some of my other recommendations for things I already own:
#Bandcamp #BandcampFriday #Recommendations #Discounts ]]>To that end, I have a new album out, which you might be interested in if you’re seeing this post.
Other than that, there’s what I’ll be buying today:
Sharing is caring!
#BandcampFriday #Recommendations ]]>I of course have my latest album, Transitions, and quite a few other albums available, including with a deep discount if you opt to buy my entire discography all at once.
There are also a lot of other artists that I think you should consider supporting!
Here are the things I’m planning on buying this month:
46bliss is one of those bands that I learned about in the early days of CDBaby, and I loved their original album, “Pistachio Home.” They’re a band I lost track of after that release, and I’m surprised to learn they’re still around! Several of the songs on The Recollection are remixes or remasters of songs from Pistachio Home but there’s also a lot of new-to-me songs on it as well.
They have a bunch of other albums that have come out in the interim but they don’t appear to be available anywhere at the moment.
err:Rawr’s latest releases
He has released a bunch of stuff since the last time I updated my collection of his work. He’s a good bean and a fellow member of the Red Means Recording Patreon Discord.
Astronomy Nights by Whispering Cosmos
I don’t know a lot about this artist and I’m not sure how it ended up on my list, but that’s fine. I could always use more chill ambient music in my life.
This artist is a friend of mine who is always the first to support others, and they are, again, a good bean. Their music is also great, with these fun lush soundscapes that are also full of delicious dissonance and weird processed vocals that give it an uncanny feeling of being music from another universe.
Another good bean, who I also know from the Red Means Recording community. I always especially love supporting people who produce music for Novembeat, especially when it’s as high-quality as this.
This is aggressively minimal beat-based music, and it’s also Novembeat, one of only two submissions this year.
moult’s discography
Hey look, it’s another furry musician who refuses to stick to a single genre. I especially like Cupples.
I also have plenty of other recommendations from months past (I will eventually backfill them onto this site), and for even more independent music, you could just look at my Bandcamp collection. Which is, uh, quite large.
#Bandcamp #BandcampFriday #Recommendations ]]>