Bandcamp

Bandcamp is an internet music company founded in 2008 by Ethan Diamond and programmers Shawn Grunberger, Joe Holt and Neal Tucker.

Business model

Artists and labels upload their music to the Bandcamp site, then each artist and label can control how to manage their own music sales. This includes offering options for how customers or fans can pay more by selling merchandise or accessories from these artists and labels.

Customers can download the music they buy or can listen to it directly from the Bandcamp application or through the official website on a limited basis, with the option of buying certain coupons to be able to listen to music without restrictions.

Subscribers can also purchase these coupons as gifts, view song lyrics and save each song or album to a wish list. Uploading music to the Bandcamp site is free of charge, but the company takes a 15% commission on every sale made from its platform, then the commission will drop to 10% if sales have exceeded USD 5,000, plus service fees for transactions processed through third parties.

Song download options are offered in MP3 (LAME, 320k or V0), AAC and Ogg Vorvis compressed audio formats, as well as FLAC, ALAC, WAV and AIFF.[7] In addition to providing digital downloads, artists generally also offer to sell their music in the form of CDs and LPs.

Each artist has a sub-page within the Bandcamp site with detailed information about that artist and information about available songs and albums, including social media information and merchandise sales links. Artist sub-pages on the Bandcamp website can be changed in appearance and features by each artist or the label itself.