One way for musicians to reach their fans directly and sell their music and merchandise is through the website www.bandcamp.com.
Wordplay T. Jay has used this site ever since he started his music career, and he stands by what the service offers.
“It’s a platform to sell music and merchandise directly to your fans and without a middleman,” he said. “I love how it’s direct, and bandcamp is not disruptive in the selling process.”
When an artist sets up a page, the default goes to the latest promotion, which for T. Jay is his latest album, “Over:Time.” On the music tab, it displays all the music T. Jay has entered in chronological order, with the most recent featured on the home page. When logged in, T. Jay can also rearrange the order.
“You can sell music as downloads or streams with the bandcamp app,” T. Jay said. “You can also set your own prices for music, or allow people to choose what they want to pay.”
The back-end benefits to bandcamp include real-time stats for streams and sales over certain periods of time, attaching merchandise options to albums or songs, search optimization through lyrics, upload of high-def audio files, stream tracking through ISRC codes and more, like website embed tools for songs and mailing lists for fans.
A pro version, at a cost of $10 per month, also gives the following features: creating download codes, tracking campaigns with Google analytics, batch uploads, targeted messaging, private streams, launching a personal bandcamp domain, deeper statistics and optional streaming tools.
Just like any other promotional tool, people have to know an artist has a bandcamp page for it to be successful. To boost views and sell items, T. Jay suggests promotions via social media.
“Put the link in posts on your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or TikTok and make sure the link is in your bio so people can get to it,” he said. “You can also use Facebook ads to promote the bandcamp page.”
Bandcamp takes a 15 percent cut on digital downloads, dropping to 10 percent after $5,000 in annual sales.
For more features and to see the website in action, check out the video below!