Don’t get me wrong, I love Bandcamp. It’s a platform that’s often a primary source of income for my music-related content. The convenience is great for both musicians and fans, but it’s seriously lacking. I appreciate the simplicity and wouldn’t want them to make drastic changes. However, a few simple improvements would be a huge help for artists and labels. I think these small investments could prolong the platform’s life, especially given its recent business performance.
Bandcamp, which was founded in 2008, has had a few worrying changes in ownership. It was acquired by Epic Games in March 2022 and then sold to Songtradr, another music platform, in 2023.
Luckily, these companies haven’t completely ruined the platform, but they haven’t done much to the overall features besides the new “Bandcamp Clubs” and “subscribe-to-own” features. While those are welcome ideas, there are other small improvements that would be even better.
For $10 USD a month (or $20 for labels, which upgrades every artist under your label), you can upgrade to Bandcamp Pro which lets you upload tracks in bulk, but given the very few additional features, it’s a bit pricey.
After the sale to Songtradr, there were some unsettling decisions that make the platform’s future a bit of a worry. On September 28, 2023, Epic Games announced that it was laying off about 16% of its total workforce, which was 870 workers. As a result of this restructuring, Epic Games sold Bandcamp to Songtradr. The deal officially closed on October 16, 2023, and Songtradr revealed that it only offered jobs to 60 of Bandcamp’s 118 employees. This meant nearly 50% of the staff were laid off. Notably, many of the employees who were let go were involved in the effort to unionise under the Office and Professional Employees International Union (OPEIU) in March 2023. Songtradr’s CEO, Paul Wiltshire, claimed in an internal message that Bandcamp was struggling financially due to rising operating costs, despite the platform’s consistent profitability. After the layoffs, both users and artists voiced concerns about Bandcamp’s future. As of December 2023, Songtradr had not yet formally recognised Bandcamp’s union.
Another change is the upcoming switch from PayPal to Stripe as the payment platform. This transition is happening between June and September of 2025. Bandcamp is moving from a legacy payout system built on PayPal to a new one powered by Stripe.
This change isn’t too inconvenient and should be better in the long run. The new system offers benefits like flexible payout timing, improved payout and payment method support, and direct payouts to bank accounts. While your overall cost per sale will stay about the same, the main downside is that you can’t sell in one currency and receive a payout in your local currency without paying conversion fees. For example, you can’t list albums in USD and receive your money in GBP.
Suggested Improvements
I’ve previously written about how I think itch.io is a great alternative to Bandcamp, and I am sure Bandcamp could take a look at the upload process and gain some inspiration..
I have a few simple improvements that I think would help the platform continue to be the best for independent artists. While the company likely won’t launch a feature suggestion system, here are some ideas:
Formatting Support: Simple rich text options like bold and italic text would vastly improve the readability of artist releases on store listings. Take a look at the listing pictured. How likely are you to have noticed the information under the tracklist?
Improved Release Pages: The inclusion of tabs would work well for things like descriptions and credits, making release pages cleaner and more organised.
Automatic Track Naming: It’s a bit time-consuming to manually copy and paste track titles. The platform should automatically fill the song title field from the uploaded file name, especially for files like “05 – Song Name”.
Multiple Versions: Allowing additional ‘tiers’ of a release would be a great way to tidy things up. For example, a user could visit a release page and choose between the standard, deluxe, or instrumental versions.
Multichannel Music: I’m dreaming of a day when Bandcamp adds features like the ability to upload multichannel music, especially with the growth of Dolby ATMOS mixes.
Do you have any other ideas for how Bandcamp could improve?