All the while, artists are told the streaming era is a meritocratic one, as the ‘democratisation’ of discovery, distribution and music creation itself gives everyone the same chance to succeed. Can’t get a billion streams? Make better music. It’s exhausting rhetoric for artists, shouting into the void on both socials and streaming, begging to stumble on an algorithmic quirk that might allow their followers to actually see their posts. We’ve had this discussion many times on Future Filter, so I’ll leave it there in terms of setting the scene.
One of the solutions for this inconvenient truth – we’re told – is the humble superfan. Through everything from new subscription models, innovative startups, meet and greets, gated Discords, and other bespoke – sometimes convoluted – solutions, superfans are here to save the day and fill in the revenue gap created when sales became streams. But are we overthinking it? Very few of these startups or initiatives present a simple, transactional way for artists to be paid real money for their work. Many artists, especially in electronic music, don’t feel comfortable with the idea of having fans at all, never mind super ones. They don’t want to create tokens, they don’t want to jump on a live stream, host a Q&A or start a Patreon. Of course, for some, it aligns perfectly with their personality and the artistic world they’ve built around their music. But for those less comfortable being the face of a community that requires constant attention, it can feel like yet another new ‘strand’ they’re being forced to engage with as the music they make continues to feel worthless.
Electronic artists in particular discover creation through deep engagement with the features and ergonomics of their tools — finding beauty in the novel is more compelling than finding audience through promotion. This extends to the process of creation itself: does inspiration come from human elements of story and expression, or from the machine? How comfortable an artist feels embodying creative work may depend on how human the source material and the community represented through that work actually are.Unlike a lot of other platforms, the whole point of Bandcamp is that fans can pay you money, that’s the whole purpose of it. And speaking to artists, they’re fed up with doing things for exposure, or getting their Spotify numbers up so they can booked for a gig – it’s so exhausting for people.”
“One of my colleagues found it a great thing on Reddit recently – an artist was hosting a track for £1 and someone had paid £100 for it. So they messaged the fan saying ‘I think you made a mistake’ and the fan replied, ‘It wasn’t a mistake, go buy yourself something sexy.’ Which was an amazing response.
“There are two things about Bandcamp that are really important. Aside from the initial aspect of ‘It’s a place where people pay for stuff’ – which is bizarrely a revolutionary thing in this day and age – but I think the two other key things are ‘curation’ and ‘community’. Curation with the editorial, which is different to a lot of other platforms, even though there’s not a lot out there at the moment. But also the community aspect of it – it’s a community of artists, labels and fans, and all three components play a role. “When you foster a relationship between artists and fans, fans get it. They understand it’s hard for artists. They understand the majority of them aren’t going from the private jet into the limo, the majority are getting two night busses home after a gig. When you have that understanding, then you get [people paying £100 for a track] because [music] isn’t just wallpaper that happens in the background while you’re cooking, or at the gym or whatever. This is like; ‘I’m part of that artist’s career. I’
But they do have a passionate relationship with music. How are you thinking about them as you approach the next decade of Bandcamp? “Five or six months ago we launched on TikTok so we’ve got some creators who are highlighting albums our editorial team have picked out. So those are some tentative first steps into that space. I have a 14-year-old daughter who for her birthday got a Taylor Swift record and for Christmas got a Cigarettes After Sex record, we’re going to see Lana Del Rey in the summer and she bought the vinyl. As much as I think it’s a bit mad that there are nine different versions of a Taylor Swift [vinyl], the positive there is it’s bringing an audience into that space and making them understand they can own the physical music.
There may be a representational desire at work — the gap between how people see the content they consume and who they are. Paying for music, owning a physical copy, becomes a way to mirror identity back to oneself. The artifact is not just the music but a token of self-recognition.it was a deliberate decision not to display follower numbers as you just end up in this race to the bottom and we all know those numbers can be massaged in different ways. I think the biggest thing we give that can help them is the ability to email your audience and create your own mailing list [off platform]. Being able to say ‘I have 300 fans in Madrid who all bought something from me – and I can email them’ – that’s effective. Particularly going back to social media and the frailty of that, building an email list is just so important. We have messaging within Bandcamp too. Those are your fans, they’re not ours.
