Bandcamp changes ahead?

Started by FreakAnimalFinland, October 09, 2023, 06:51:52 PM

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xdementia

My experience with bandcamp has been a very positive one.

As a fan:

I use the BandCamp wishlist to create a massive queue where I save any albums I'm interested in checking out. When I want to hear new music I turn to my bandcamp queue and start listening often listening to a track or two before promptly removing it from my wishlist and going to the next one. About 1 out of every 10 or so albums I end up keeping, maybe 1 out every 20 I end up purchasing. It's a very convenient place for about 90% of the new music I want to hear. I still buy physical off bandcamp as well as digital, all depending on the packaging, shipping costs, etc.

As an industrial/noise artist: I ran a label but never had an online shop that really got off the ground. I'd get maybe 2-6 sales per year online. Most of my sales were at live shows or through distros/shops. Signing up to BandCamp has increased my online sales to about 25-30 per year but one year I had about 95 sales (I was doing more promotion that year than the other years). So even though BandCamp gets a small cut of those sales it's WAY more worth it to maintain the site.

As a neofolk artist: My neofolk project is much newer but BandCamp has helped me grow the audience for the project as well as make sales.

Before I was using BandCamp I used BigCartel for merch sales and they would also take a cut of sales. I'm not sure if they offered digital but I never used it. Ever since I got my BandCamp pages up I haven't made ONE sale on the Big Cartel shop so it seems it is more or less obsolete.

Other Streaming Services: A few years ago I used CD Baby to distribute most of my music to the streaming services. I believe the service was about $65 one time fee to do it (there may have been a yearly amount too). After 2-3 years I saw not one cent from streaming while I was having steady orders from BandCamp coming in. So I canceled it. Streaming seems to be absolute shit for indie artists IMO.


xdementia

I know there are a lot of labels/artists that talk shit on BandCamp and I'm guessing these are people who enjoyed a modicum of success independently before BandCamp but saw a drop in sales when the platform became more popular and now might see the same amount of sales through the platform but have the BC fee subtracted from each transaction? Otherwise I'm not quite sure why people would talk shit on it since it seems like an artist-first album-first kind of approach to online music to me.

FreakAnimalFinland

I think the criticism has been quite well addressed by many, that would often (but not always) revolve around big companies who can dictate art and push expression or artform into undesired direction. From perspective of easy business, of course it may be the only(?) actually functional place where are can (or could) sell digital albums directly to fans?

Back in the day, there used to be even "mikseri noise skene" based around https://www.mikseri.net site. Finnish version of streaming services. Some pop ups are nuisance, but otherwise may be as good as many other things too.
E-mail: fanimal +a+ cfprod,com
MAGAZINE: http://www.special-interests.net
LABEL / DISTRIBUTION: FREAK ANIMAL http://www.nhfastore.net

DadaDrumming

I removed all releases from Bandcamp late 2022, not because the ROI was bad, it wasn't, but because I just flat did not want to maintain another platform. All releases that I make available digitally are available on Apple Music, Amazon, YouTube, Spotify and 100 others, so if you want to buy them you can find them easily enough, and stream to your hearts content. Rest assured Bandcamp will start banning things in the near future if it does not meet with their political or social stances. Same as everyone else. Changes come in slow drips, especially after a large corporate take-over where intellectual property is concerned and mediated.

I also do not use Discogs for the same reason, except as a customer to buy older tapes/CD's from people. Discogs seems very prone to ban things from being sold, and I don't believe in banning, even for things I don't like. Better for it to be available publicly than to be pushed further underground, the "Mein Kampf-principle". I recently was cleaning up my collection and found the Operation Miranda tape, and looked it and the label up at Discogs to find it was banned. Someone made that call, and can make that call against you one day. Should these companies dictate what/who can be sold? They sure can. Private space and all. Is it questionable content? Probably. Most likely. Should it have ever been released? The question answers itself. Same with N12. Should Hospital be banned because they released it once? Should FA be banned entirely? Of course not, but that's where it's heading. Good luck!   

FreakAnimalFinland

Bandcamp had already at least couple of "ban waves". At some point huge amount of obscene goregrind was banned. If you got vulgar song titles and obscene art, that was removed. Of course, there is fine line what is "real music" and what is just joke, and one could assume bc as company felt like we do not want to host this type of stuff what could get us in trouble.
A bit later there was purge in black metal. Relatively big bands would get get their pages deleted. Clandestine Blaze used to have site, but I had already removed everything else but (then) latest album, and it was free download. It was deleted before actual purges begin. A bit later Satanic Warmaster had everything removed. Then followed way way bigger and more popular names like Deathspell Omega, Funeral Mist, Destroyer666, etc... and even full label sites removed. Nobody would get any explanation what the "violation of terms" has been. Company would refuse to give any reason. For anyone who doesn't rely on them, no problem. Some others, who used it as source of income and suddenly kicked out with no explanation, it gives quite different view of how things work with bc. It's not like you would expect freedom to post whatever garbage or offenses, but if you can't trust platform due fact it could be just ruined by bunch of malicious anonymous reports, would it be very wise to start to build record label business on it? Already now I am quite surprised some of the veterans of harsh noise post so explicit material on it, since one would expect it just matter of time entire sites get taken down.

Of course other platforms may not be hugely better. Like mentioned in other topic, Jukka Siikala has his entire youtube account deleted, so did Infinity Land Press (Martin Bladh & Karolina Urbaniak). Both no warning, not just deleting supposedly offensive video. Just channel taken down, and "ban for life" type of message from youtube. Reason "violation of terms".
E-mail: fanimal +a+ cfprod,com
MAGAZINE: http://www.special-interests.net
LABEL / DISTRIBUTION: FREAK ANIMAL http://www.nhfastore.net

xdementia

Quote from: DadaDrumming on October 30, 2023, 06:00:59 PMI removed all releases from Bandcamp late 2022, not because the ROI was bad, it wasn't, but because I just flat did not want to maintain another platform. All releases that I make available digitally are available on Apple Music, Amazon, YouTube, Spotify and 100 others, so if you want to buy them you can find them easily enough, and stream to your hearts content. Rest assured Bandcamp will start banning things in the near future if it does not meet with their political or social stances. Same as everyone else. Changes come in slow drips, especially after a large corporate take-over where intellectual property is concerned and mediated.

I also do not use Discogs for the same reason, except as a customer to buy older tapes/CD's from people. Discogs seems very prone to ban things from being sold, and I don't believe in banning, even for things I don't like. Better for it to be available publicly than to be pushed further underground, the "Mein Kampf-principle". I recently was cleaning up my collection and found the Operation Miranda tape, and looked it and the label up at Discogs to find it was banned. Someone made that call, and can make that call against you one day. Should these companies dictate what/who can be sold? They sure can. Private space and all. Is it questionable content? Probably. Most likely. Should it have ever been released? The question answers itself. Same with N12. Should Hospital be banned because they released it once? Should FA be banned entirely? Of course not, but that's where it's heading. Good luck!   

More bad news for you https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/jon-stewart-the-problem-canceled-apple-creative-differences-1235623235/

xdementia

Quote from: FreakAnimalFinland on October 31, 2023, 09:00:11 AMBandcamp had already at least couple of "ban waves". At some point huge amount of obscene goregrind was banned. If you got vulgar song titles and obscene art, that was removed. Of course, there is fine line what is "real music" and what is just joke, and one could assume bc as company felt like we do not want to host this type of stuff what could get us in trouble.
A bit later there was purge in black metal. Relatively big bands would get get their pages deleted. Clandestine Blaze used to have site, but I had already removed everything else but (then) latest album, and it was free download. It was deleted before actual purges begin. A bit later Satanic Warmaster had everything removed. Then followed way way bigger and more popular names like Deathspell Omega, Funeral Mist, Destroyer666, etc... and even full label sites removed. Nobody would get any explanation what the "violation of terms" has been. Company would refuse to give any reason. For anyone who doesn't rely on them, no problem. Some others, who used it as source of income and suddenly kicked out with no explanation, it gives quite different view of how things work with bc. It's not like you would expect freedom to post whatever garbage or offenses, but if you can't trust platform due fact it could be just ruined by bunch of malicious anonymous reports, would it be very wise to start to build record label business on it? Already now I am quite surprised some of the veterans of harsh noise post so explicit material on it, since one would expect it just matter of time entire sites get taken down.

Of course other platforms may not be hugely better. Like mentioned in other topic, Jukka Siikala has his entire youtube account deleted, so did Infinity Land Press (Martin Bladh & Karolina Urbaniak). Both no warning, not just deleting supposedly offensive video. Just channel taken down, and "ban for life" type of message from youtube. Reason "violation of terms".

Yea I agree I don't want to get too attached to any certain platform which is why I still maintain my website. There was a brief few days in the last few years where Facebook and all related platforms went down and everyone was freaking out because they couldn't promote and I was just pointed people to my website. Although I think it doesn't matter much these days I like to just have it for emergencies and a feeling of independence. I think moving my merch to a new platform if needed shouldn't be too big of a deal (I'm not doing distro or anything so it's not a huge database of releases).

The thing about streaming platform is that I have not made ONE DIME off of them and to me that seem like a subtle lurking evil to independent musicians. I have chosen out of principle not to put any more music Spotify.

Cranial Blast

#22
Quote from: DadaDrumming on October 30, 2023, 06:00:59 PMI removed all releases from Bandcamp late 2022, not because the ROI was bad, it wasn't, but because I just flat did not want to maintain another platform. All releases that I make available digitally are available on Apple Music, Amazon, YouTube, Spotify and 100 others, so if you want to buy them you can find them easily enough, and stream to your hearts content. Rest assured Bandcamp will start banning things in the near future if it does not meet with their political or social stances. Same as everyone else. Changes come in slow drips, especially after a large corporate take-over where intellectual property is concerned and mediated.

I also do not use Discogs for the same reason, except as a customer to buy older tapes/CD's from people. Discogs seems very prone to ban things from being sold, and I don't believe in banning, even for things I don't like. Better for it to be available publicly than to be pushed further underground, the "Mein Kampf-principle". I recently was cleaning up my collection and found the Operation Miranda tape, and looked it and the label up at Discogs to find it was banned. Someone made that call, and can make that call against you one day. Should these companies dictate what/who can be sold? They sure can. Private space and all. Is it questionable content? Probably. Most likely. Should it have ever been released? The question answers itself. Same with N12. Should Hospital be banned because they released it once? Should FA be banned entirely? Of course not, but that's where it's heading. Good luck!   

That was a big deciding factor for me in why I never started a bandcamp. They are too big now and will eventually engage with censorship as time rolls on. They already kind of do now and I've noticed they like to donate funds to political scams and what not. I would imagine soundcloud isn't a whole lot better either if I decided to take off the blinders and investigate further. Bandcamp's format looks nice and seems user friendly enough though.

Discogs is a totally out of control with the banning of music, there is no barometer either! It just gets banned, no questions asked and that's it! I agree with you, whether one agrees with something or not, it still needs to be free and left alone. Like you say, pretty soon it's like well this bad, so let's ban this and let's ban this thing to because this was once affiliated with this other thing ever so loosely and let's now ban this thing of a thing cause this was affiliated with that thing that was loosely affiliated one time many years ago...it becomes fucking pure insanity after a while!