Bandcamp

Bandcamp is an online music service and a platform for the promotion especially for independent artists. Artists Bandcamp have a variable microsite with the albums they upload. All titles can be played for free on the website and some artists offer free music downloads. Bandcamp takes a share of 15 % of production sold on the website, with the proportion after taking more than $ 5,000 through sales drops to 10%. Attendance at Band Camp is free.

When you download the music, customers can choose a variable bit rate MP3, FLAC, AAC, Ogg Vorbis with a constant bit rate of 192kb / s and between ALAC MP3 with a constant bit rate of 320kb / s. The upload wav in the format, AIFF or FLAC possible.

History

The idea for Band Camp was created in 2007 after Ethan Diamond, the founder of the site, a frustrating experience made ​​while trying to download the self-released album of a band. Then he left his previous employer Yahoo and founded 2008 Band Camp.

Bandcamp received attention in July 2010 when Amanda Palmer, Low Places, and Bedhed gave up their respective record labels and began their albums for sale on Bandcamp, where they made attention through Twitter. Amanda Palmer took it within three minutes after the publication of the EP Amanda Palmer Performs the Popular Hits of Radiohead on Her Magical Ukulele on Bandcamp $ 15,000 a. Sufjan Stevens also uses Bandcamp to sell its albums, and this alone through sales Bandcamp reached the Billboard 200 charts with the EP All Delighted People.

The popularity of the Internet increased in 2011, when some indie games developers published the soundtracks of their games on Bandcamp. These included Bastion, Sanctum, Machinarium, Terraria, Plants vs Zombies, Limbo, Super Meat Boy, To the Moon and Minecraft. In December 2011, the site made ​​for the first time within one month sales of one million U.S. dollars.

Distribution facilities

Bandcamp artists can determine exactly how the fans can relate to their music. First distinguishing criterion is whether any one download is possible. If this is desired, it can also be done for free, this is a quota of 200 free downloads available per month. For every $ 500 in sales, the quota is increased to 1,000 downloads. In addition, other downloads can be purchased for a price of 1.5 to 3 U.S. cents. Optionally, the free download can be coupled to specifying a valid e -mail address to which the download link will be sent. By the same token also download codes can be generated and assigned. In addition to setting a fixed price, it is also possible to determine the buyer how much he wants to pay. Here, a minimum but also be established that the download should be possible for free or for providing your e - mail address. The downloads can be supplemented with bonus material such as photos and videos. It can also be offered Fan articles where the pricing is analogous to the downloads.

Bandcamp also supports Creative Commons licenses. For each uploaded song next to " All rights reserved " also one of the six 3.0er licenses can be selected. It can even be used in a variety of licenses.