We do not have Bandcamp account. We use free personal Spotify account to create playlists using songs already on Spotify.
If you take part in our compilation – you can rest assured we won’t release your music where you sell it yourself.
Another words you have nothing to loose.
Look at example compilation release in our store – we actively send people to your Bandcamp, Spotify and social media.
As we are not pressed to be profitable, we have luxury of doing things our way. And this is our way:
We want to help bands, not to compete with them
Releasing on these platforms means managing copyright. By selling music on say Bandcamp we would be competing with… bands who created this music.
Of course it is possible to assign song ownership to artist ids on Spotify and pay a share of Bandcamp revenue to bands but this adds a completely redundant layer of complexity.
We want to focus on promoting music, not to become accountants.
We don’t want to get labels in the way
We want to be able to work with any band, signed to a label or independent.
There are some labels that manage bands’ Bandcamps and streaming. As their bottom line depends on it, they will protect this revenue even if this will hurt bands in the long run.
This is because they know their relationship with band will end once the band is popular enough to be ok on their own.
If we use Bandcamp etc., we would create conflict of interest, some licensing issues and all this legal/financial cocojambo we don’t need.
So if some concerned label representative reads this – there is nothing to worry about. We won’t be competing with you on Bandcamp and other corporate-owned outlets.
We are helping you – the label – to do your job. Meaning we help to promote the band. In our sharing system, we actively send traffic to platforms where you – the label – make money.
Do you see any downsides?
We believe bands should own and manage Bandcamp and streaming themselves
In the ideal world, bands should own their music, always. This means they should own and manage their Bandcamp and streaming by themselves. And of course they should keep all the money it makes.
If they are too big and busy, they can hire somebody (a label for example) to manage that for them. But the band should be in charge.
Where there is money, there is drama
Our running costs are low and we have day jobs. We do not need to make money to exist, we are a hobby, not a business. We have no employees, energy and phone bills, no office.
What we make on our CD-R sales is enough to keep us going, buy some ads sometimes. We have businesses that help us out by printing for us, paying for our hosting and whatnot.
We can sell literally nothing, survive and keep doing what we do. Free time is the only limiting factor for us.
No money – no drama. Thank you, this is how we want it to be.
What about people who listen to music only on Spotify?
There are people for whom the main source of music is Spotify – and they won’t use anything else.
It would be stupid to miss the opportunity to reach them.
While we do not release music on Spotify, we create playlists using music that is already there. Then we advertise these playlists on our release pages on our website.
Nowadays most musicians publish their songs on Spotify themselves or through a label.
If the song is added to a playlist – especially a popular one – this not only boosts the plays and streaming revenue, but also is a signal to Spotify algorithm to give the song a bit more of organic reach.
People pay for being included on playlists, there is whole business branch based on paid Spotify playlist adds.
Our Spotify playlists try to re-create our compilations based on what already is on Spotify. If certain song is not there, we try to find another from the same artist.
Our approach is optimal – we do not loose opportunity to reach Spotify-owned audience, but we do not compete with bands.
We actually help them to do better on Spotify.
We do not need Bandcamp and Spotify’s functionalities
We have our own homebrew music sharing system. It is no match for Bandcamp or Spotify (how could it be), but it has advantages.
It does what is good for the bands, not what corporations want. Corpos won’t link to certain things, wont display certain things as they compete with one another.
A fan leaving their platform is a failure so they do whatever they can to keep your fans on their platform – even if it hurts you as a musician. They create walled gardens – Tiktok being the most extreme example.
Unlike them, we can do whatever we think is good for bands.
Moreover, we think that paying through the nose to the corpos and giving away your fans’ private data just to have some basic music streaming and sharing capabilities is insane.
We don’t have to use them, so we wont.
We dislike corporations, for real
Many musicians in our scene sing about disliking corporations. We do something about it: we simply do not use their stuff where we can.
Because when something is “free” you and your privacy are the product being sold.
For example if you buy a CD from us, we encourage payment through bank transfer – no card processor fee. These fees are your money down the drain. On Bandcamp it can be 23% of transaction’s total, on average. Almost a quarter.
We understand most musicians do not have such luxury.
A precentage of both Bandcamp and Spotify is owned by Chinese company Tencent. Do you think that the largest Chinese media corporation does anything that the freedom-loving people of Communist Party of China do not approve of?
Get real.
No point doing what anyone can do
Anyone can open accounts and start using Bandcamp or streaming. Doing so requires no skill, no knowledge, no creativity. This is why these things are so popular.
But things that are easy to do hardly ever have value. And why should they, if anyone can do it? So maybe there is no such tremendous value in these corporate services as people think?
Maybe it is not the only way to promote music these days?
We are going to find out and will be perfectly happy to fail.
We value privacy
Again if you like privacy, then stay away from corporations wherever you can. Especially those located in countries that do not safeguard privacy.
It is a balancing act, sometimes you can just inconvenience yourself completely in vain.
This is not an ideal world, we use privacy-paid services where we have to.
We are independent, so we can to do things our way
Is not releasing on Bandcamp & Spotify a crazy thing nowadays? It probably is.
But is not the music we like somewhat crazy? A noisy pounding techno with some psychopathic dwarf on the vocals?
When a hobby becomes a job, the joy is usually over. We want to keep enjoying being in the scene. And we want to do things the way we do, whether it makes sense or not.
Why don’t you make some nice rap or pop tunes? Maybe you could earn some real bucks? Instead, you do this crazy techno of yours.
Well we like it too, hopefully we can work together to promote it some time. Even if all this makes no sense at all as all of us will die in the end.