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For the rest of 2021, Bandcamp Friday is back on the first Friday of every month (including today). That's one of many reasons I recommend checking out Bandcamp as a solid digital music storefront.
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The digital music universe has come a long way since the
Napster
era, and these days, that means a good number of paid subscription services are angling to serve all the music you could imagine in a legally acceptable package. But getting music-subscription dollars into your favorite musicians' hands remains a sticking point.
Further Reading
It only took 17 years: Metallica’s full catalog is now on Napster
As far as musicians are concerned,
Apple Music
is still one of the better payout services, with the company officially estimating
as much as one penny paid per streamed song
, while
Spotify
maxes out at less than half a penny per stream—and those payouts can drop based on whatever wacky spreadsheet-calculus each service runs in the background. Either way, that math checks out; your $10 or $15 per month can only be divided so far between hundreds of song streams.
If you're willing to open your wallet a little wider for downloaded music, today's return of the
Bandcamp Fridays
promotion is a massive counterbalance to underpaying subscription services. And it's a good excuse to point to
Bandcamp
as a feature-rich, mobile-friendly option for buying music online.
You down with OGG?
Bandcamp Fridays launched in early 2020 as a way to drive more money into bands' and artists' pockets, especially after so many COVID-19 tour cancellations. Buy any digital-only content via Bandcamp on the first Friday of a month when the promotion is active, and the service waives
its normal cut of artist revenue
(which is 15 percent by default and 10 percent once a user exceeds $5,000 USD in revenue over the past 12 months). The promotion stuck to its every-first-Friday cadence for nearly a year before skipping some months in seemingly unpredictable fashion. This week, Bandcamp has confirmed that the Bandcamp Friday promotion will resume for the rest of 2021.
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If you want nothing to do with Bandcamp's app, buying albums via the service's web interface works great—and offers tons of easy download options, instead of making you download raw files and compress them yourself.
Tapping through my recent purchases via the Android app.
"Download album" works as you might hope.
My "featured" roll reminded me that Noveller, an experimental musician who I am a huge fan of, has a brand-new album today. Targeted advertising that I don't actually mind.
An example of Bandcamp Radio.
An example of Bandcamp Radio.
From a digital-rights perspective, it's easy to recommend Bandcamp as a storefront, since any purchase includes unlimited downloads of DRM-free audio files—and you can choose between lossless FLAC, uncompressed WAV, and a variety of other lossy and lossless formats. If you're not ready to buy, Bandcamp also makes it easy for artists to enable uninterrupted preview listens of their songs and albums, along with an optional "you've listened enough, maybe buy it" nag after a single machine uses the preview feature a few times. And once you buy anything via Bandcamp, you can use the service's mobile app on Android and iOS to download offline copies, see news updates from artists you've bought from previously, and access Bandcamp-curated playlists. This app, in particular, has matured greatly over the past year on both feature and stability fronts.
Further Reading
Car Seat Headrest is an ideal product of the Bandcamp generation
Bandcamp's normal 15 percent revenue cut is certainly competitive compared to other popular digital storefronts, including gaming services like Steam and Epic Games Store. That's made me more likely to buy on days other than the first Friday of a month, though I'll admit that Bandcamp Fridays drove me to the service as a way to pay my favorite artists when I can't see them in concert. Since then, Bandcamp has won me over as a preferred music service and app for daily use. (And if you're an international user, you can shop at Bandcamp using
a wide range of compatible currencies
, whether using its built-in payment processing or Paypal, which I appreciate.) You have until midnight Pacific Time today to take advantage of this month's waived-fee promotion.
