Thoughts on Band Camp (bandcamp)

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Bandcamp is a record label, it is a different kind of record label than the old skool mega-corporations but a record label none the less.
Do not be fooled into thinking it is something different or something new, or that it is there for the benefit of the artist or the punters listeners.

Its purpose is to make money for owners of Bandcamp, just as EMI's purpose is to make money for EMI's owners and Sony's purpose is to make money for Sony's owners - the business model is exactly the same: they charge the artists on their roster a percentage commission for every track sold - the payment method looks different, but it is exactly the same - sell one item, the band gets a percentage and the label gets a percentage - done deal. 

The difference is Bandcamp does not finance the artist to make the recordings or manufacture the product, the artist has to pay all that themselves. This means that all the best selling artists no longer have to pay for all the poor selling artists, it means that albums like Tubular Bells and Rubicon would never have paid for those Hatfield & The North, Slapp Happy and Tom Newman albums to be recorded. Genesis would never have survived passed Trespass without Lindisfarne and The Nice selling a tidy few albums to keep the record label going in those lean early years of Genesis. It means that if you can sell you get a bigger cut and if you don't sell it's all your fault.

This is a really clever business plan that I would imagine the big labels are kicking themselves for not thinking of first. The catch is they would never have gotten away with it because we distrust "the men in suits" and we would have gone into the deal with our eyes open:

"So, you pay for the recording, all the studio time, production, engineering and mastering, you then pay for the artwork design and the manufacture of the product. You then put it on our website, go out and do all the promotion and publicity for it all by yourself and when you sell some you have to parcel them up and post them to the customer one at a tiime and any sales you manage to make we take all the money and give you a percentage... no, sorry, that's not right... we *collect* all the money on your behalf and you pay us a *small, teeny-tiny, itsty-bitsy* percentage, no really it's really small, no more than 10%, promise, well maybe 15%, but that's sooo small compared to your 85% and you're going to sell millions boy, trust me, I know what I'm talking about because we've got Amanda Palmer and Pelican and they sell loads right? so give us your album for free, we'll do nothing with it and you can pay us for every one you manage to sell, 'cos you know, it could be made into a monster if we all pull together as a team..."
Every band on this planet would have run a mile if Virgin or Island records came at them with a recording contract like that. Even the stupid ones.

Yet somehow this has become regarded as the great "good thing", and for all those artists who in a million years would have never been signed to even a minor label back in the day then this certainly is "a good thing" because they can now reach a possible market for their music. The same market that buys all those Amanda Palmer and Pelican tracks...

Ah, but that's where I'm wrong you see, this isn't a virtual record label, it's a community, a nice friendly community of like-minded musicians that has built this great and marvellous and f*cking wonderful Musical Utopia of Tomorrow where everyone really is equal, even Pelican and Amanda Palmer. Right?

And there is the problem with this: the big boys have moved in. The physical record labels are using Bandcamp and the signed artists are using Bandcamp. Pelican have not stuck it to the man, they are signed to a physical record label that pays for their albums to be recorded, and finances the production and manufacture of their CDs, and funds all the advertising, street teams and promotion, they send out the review copies to the magazines and ezines and blogs, and they stick the album on Bandcamp for streaming alongside the album by a 14-year-old who makes funny noises in his bedroom on an iPad and thinks he can sell as many copies as Pelican because this is the Musical Utopia of Tomorrow where everyone is equal and all can sell their creations all over the world and it is great and marvellous and f*cking wonderful. And by some strange co-incidence Pelican sell truck loads of tracks and the 14-year old sells one, (...to himself because he wanted to see if the "Buy" button worked). And all this is egalitarian and wonderful because the kid has his album listed alongside Forever Becoming and that would never have happened in the old days. Never-mind that this kid will never sell a second track, let alone a whole album's worth, that's not the point, the point is he can do it and from his bedroom in the 'burbs of Backwater, Connecticut, he can reach out across the globe and be ignored by millions of Bandcamp users. And once the big boys start making serious money for the owners of Bandcamp then it will get really interesting... just not for the little guys.

Bought (into) that?

Good.

Now, I've got a tanker full of snake oil you might be interested in...