Do You Have to Upload Music to Start a Bandcamp Page?

Given the number of online music streaming services that take opened over the past decade – and the steady reject in CD sales since 1999 with the advent of peer-to-peer sharing (Napster, KaZaa, etc.) – there'southward no questioning the huge, and steadily growing, demand for improve alternatives to streaming services for albums you can download and purchase yourself.

For today's musicians, the importance of making your music accessible to a growing online audition is paramount. One popular music promotion tool for contained and up-and-coming artists is Bandcamp, an online music market place and gratuitous streaming service that allows artists to share (and get paid for) their music at very piffling toll to the creative person.

Our online music promotion service offers indie musicians some basic tips on how to use Bandcamp to sell your music directly to fans on they net, including how to brand a successful Bandcamp page, how to heave profits from Bandcamp, and an overview of and guide to participating in the BandCamp Friday plan, which allows artists to keep an even higher pct of their profits from digital and physical CDs and albums.

WHY TO Make A BANDCAMP Artist Business relationship

Since it was established in 2007, approximately 350,000 artists take signed up with Bandcamp. According to their website, by Summertime 2021, "Fans have paid artists $788 million USD using Bandcamp, and $16.2 one thousand thousand in the last 30 days lone."

And contributing to those figures, fans bought around "5m digital albums, 2m tracks, 1m vinyl albums, 600k CDs, 300k cassettes and 250k t-shirts."

Bandcamp is specially useful for artists who are focused on trying to sell albums rather than singles, with its website stating, "Albums outsell tracks 5 to i on Bandcamp (in the balance of the music buying world, tracks outsell albums sixteen to one)."

In brusk, if yous're an emerging artist, you should strongly consider making a Bandcamp account if you don't have i already. It'due south free to join, quick and painless, intuitive to ready, and easy to apply as an artist, so there's no real reason non to at to the lowest degree give it a try.

Just exist enlightened that, while it'southward complimentary to upload music to Bandcamp, the site takes a xv% cut of digital sales and a 10% cut of any merch sales you brand (like selling posters or t-shirts). However, once you reach $5,000 in sales, the cut Bandcamp takes drops from 15% downwardly to 10%.

HOW TO SET Upward AND CUSTOMIZE YOUR PROFILE ON BANDCAMP

Signing up for Bandcamp is fast, easy, and doesn't toll anything on the front end. All you have to exercise to make a Bandcamp profile is follow these steps:

Visit the Bandcamp website at https://bandcamp.com/

1.) In the meridian right hand corner of the page, click "Sign Up".

ii.) Click "Sign upwardly equally an artist", you lot will then run into a page touting all they have to offer, and although it looks like a lot, we suggest you read through and take note of the amazing services bandcamp provides.

3.) So, either in the right manus corner, or at the bottom of that folio, click "Sign Up" over again.

4.) Now you will be at the sign upward folio where you will enter your creative person name, email, and other pertinent info. Now y'all're ready to upload music and customize you folio!

As with whatever other online presence for a band or artist, looks matter, then it's not enough to put in the bare minimum effort. In order to make your Bandcamp folio as appealing and complete as possible, you should spend some time customizing your contour to make it easy on the eye and memorable.

The artfully moody Bandcamp profile of artist Lori Scacco

Customizing the imagery on your Bandcamp profile might accept a bit of experimentation, but because of how many functions and options in that location are. You can accommodate colors, add together a groundwork image, modify the header, and even embed an interactive image map to necktie your website and contour together.

Uploading your music, which is the last step, is every bit easy equally sending an email with attachments. Merely follow these steps, and you're good to go:

Select the files you wish to make available. Importantly, all music files must be in .wav, .aiff, or .flac format, considering Bandcamp doesn't allow .mp3 uploads.

Add a detailed clarification: credits of who played, who worked on information technology, and where information technology was mixed and mastered. You tin can fifty-fifty upload all the lyrics, fans really like this characteristic to be available, so put in the extra time.

Upload an image for the cover. The paradigm must be at lest 1400 ten 1400 at minimum, though Bandcamp encourages artists to use bigger files where possible. Just make sure the image is foursquare-shaped (or cropped into a square) so that cypher important gets cutting off.

Set your price, keeping in mind that Bandcamp takes a 10% to 15% cut depending on 1) how much yous've made in sales and 2) whether the transaction involves music or merchandise.

The "Discover" area of the website is also a great space for gaining exposure. This section highlights artists and lets fans stream music they might not accept known almost otherwise. Music can be narrowed by genre, new arrivals, and best-sellers, amongst other criteria. And so make certain when you upload your album, you make sure to choose which song you want featured in their algorithm. All you lot have to practice is click to the left of the song y'all wan to be featured, and make sure a greenish star appears next to it.

HOW TO MAKE MONEY FROM BANDCAMP

If yous've ever bought music online, Bandcamp may already be familiar to you from the "fan" side of the site. In essence, Bandcamp functions as an online music distribution platform where fans can download music or guild merchandise directly from the artist or their squad.

So what are Bandcamp'southward payment options? When do artists get paid for Bandcamp transactions? And how much should you charge for your music on Bandcamp?

HOW TO RECEIVE PAYMENTS ON BANDCAMP

After Bandcamp deducts a certain percentage, the money for the transaction gets transferred to your PayPal business relationship, then make sure you lot have a contour on PayPal if y'all don't already. (Like Bandcamp accounts, PayPal accounts are fast and easy to ready up.) To reiterate, this percentage is 15% for digital sales, until the creative person reaches $five,000, at which point the commission for digital content drops to x%. For merchandise sales, the commission is too x%.

The money is delivered to your PayPal account with 24 to 48 hours of the sale (though the process may have up to 14 days for purchases of $500 or more). This is far faster than DistroKid or TuneCore evangelize for their streaming clients, and bands love this nigh bandcamp.

As for the payment processing fees, bandcamp explains they "are separate and vary past transaction size, but typically range between 4 and 6%. Delight see the details for digital items here, and concrete items hither, including tips on what yous can do to minimize those fees."

 And for those with higher priced items: boxsets, beats, etc., they say:

"Because expensive items are sometimes sold through Bandcamp (like palatial packages and beat licenses), and because superfans occasionally use name-your-price to pay hundreds of dollars for a single album or track, the revenue share applies to the first $100 of an particular only (or the item full when more than than one of that particular is purchased)."

Then, more importantly. . .

WHAT PRICE SHOULD YOU Charge ON BANDCAMP?

Yous might be tempted to set a steep price for the digital album you spent months or years pouring your heart, soul, fourth dimension, and labor into. The central is to think to price digital albums differently than a physical CD or Vinyl. No i wants to buy digital files for the same toll every bit a physical object. Here's how to think virtually it:

Digital Albums

For brusque albums such as EPs and singles with B-sides, a dollar per vocal is recognized as a fair corporeality, so iii songs for $3, or 5 for $five. Some bands who are more pop volition sometimes sell a digital EP for a higher number, perhaps $8, simply it depends on how devoted their fans are to collecting online releases.

For a digital full length, a dollar per vocal is a good model upwards until about 12 to fifteen songs. $12 dollars for 12 songs feels fair, whereas $15 for 20 may be better than asking for a whole twenty dollar bill. The central hither is to recollect the medium right now is a digital download.

Concrete Albums

The peachy thing virtually bandcamp is it is not just a way to sell digital music, merely is the best place to see your physical merch equally well. Bands sell CDs, vinyls, and even wearing apparel through bandcamp, while only having to pay a small pct to bandcamp and PayPal for facilitating the transactions.

For a physical CD, information technology isn't absurd to charge $xv or $20, they are things that cost coin to create across just mixing and mastering, and the folks who want to buy a Cd empathize that and volition pay, maybe more if you allow "pay what you desire". More on that later.

For a vinyl, it is totally fair to charge $25, $35, I've fifty-fifty seen $40 and up for super small-scale pressings of very cool colored, splatter vinyl with very intricate dye-cut cases. Just charge for how much time and effort you put into the physical production. If someone merely wants the songs, they can pay $12 for the digital anthology, no sweat.

Photograph by Andre Moura from Pexels

three Ways TO Increase PROFITS FROM BANDCAMP Album SALES

At present that your profile is upwardly and running, here are three tips to boost your revenue.

Offering discount codes. More fans might exist willing to buy your music if y'all offer fans a deal by using a disbelieve code. You lot tin distribute your Bandcamp disbelieve codes using any method you like, including Twitter, electronic mail, Instagram, or elementary word-of-rima oris. The heir-apparent enters the code at checkout, and the discount is practical to the transaction.

Suit your PayPal fee. PayPal charges a standard commission of 2.9% plus $0.xxx for physical merchandise sales. If most of your stuff is priced nether $12, perhaps you'd similar to apply for the micro-payments rate of 5% plus $0.05 per transaction. You can do then past contacting PayPal directly. If your volumes are loftier enough, y'all tin also look into the merchant-rate pricing, which is 1.9% plus $0.xxx.

Enable pay what you want. If you've already established a price for your trade and music, you can allow fans to give a higher corporeality if they wish as a "pay what y'all desire" system.  According to the site'south statistics, fans will enter higher amounts for the transaction 40% of the time if they're given an choice.

WHAT Actress FEATURES Exercise MUSICIANS Get WITH BANDCAMP PRO?

Similar many websites, Bandcamp really has 2 versions: the basic version that'due south gratis to employ, and a premium version yous need to pay to access. The premium version is called "Bandcamp Pro."

While you don't necessarily need Bandcamp Pro to become good mileage out of the website, it never hurts to have access to boosted features if you can swing it in your budget. Fortunately, Bandcamp Pro only costs $10 per calendar month – about the toll of a few coffees from Starbucks, or a couple slices of pizza – so yous don't have to sacrifice much to unlock a ton of absurd, useful features for musicians.

So, what features does Bandcamp Pro include? Hither are just a few examples:

Batch uploads. This user-friendly fourth dimension-saver allows you to upload an entire album's worth of music at once.

Advertising-gratis video hosting. With Bandcamp Pro, fans won't meet advertisements when they play your music or scan your merch.

Private streaming . Wish y'all could share a rail with only a handful of select people, like family members and maybe a few journalists? With Bandcamp Pro, you lot tin can. All you have to do is shoot a bulletin to the intended recipient.

Detailed statistics. Bandcamp Pro lets artists see what cities and towns their paying fans are located in. Musicians can too run across the source of the sale (such equally a Google or a music web log). These stats help artists visualize where and how sales are coming in – information that exist can be used to drive sales and heave your bands' profits.

BANDCAMP Friday

The final tip for band camp apply is taking advantage of Bandcamp Friday, an initiative started in Spring of 2020 as COVID hit musicians and creators so hard. They decided that once a calendar month they would waive their percentage fee and permit the artists keep all the coin (except for PayPal fees) for all purchases within the fix 24 hour menses.

This means PROMOTE PROMOTE PROMOTE in the days leading upward a scheduled Bandcamp Friday. They e'er announce when it will be and many artists purposely choose to release a single or a whole new album specifically on Bandcamp Fridays considering and so many more people are using the site and looking around for new cracking music, why shouldn't information technology be yours they're finding?

For example, in 2021 Bandcamp will host Bandcamp Friday on September tertiary and each first Friday until the end of the year. After that, look up their plans for 2022.

ONLINE MUSIC PROMOTION FOR BANDS AND SOLO ARTISTS

If you're serious about achieving a professional online presence for your music, get in touch with Planetary Group nigh radio promotion, consulting for musicians, or our other services for independent artists. Founded in 1996, we have more than than 20 years of feel helping singers, rappers, and DJs reach larger audiences, become airplay, state interviews, enter festivals, book gigs, and score record deals. While nosotros're based in L.A., we piece of work with bands and solo performers from all over the U.s.a.. We also handle international music promotion.

To larn more almost how Planetary Group can assist you polish your image and advance your music career, call our professional music promoters at (323) 952-5050 today.

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Source: https://www.planetarygroup.com/music-promotion-guide/using-bandcamp-to-promote-your-music/

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