Bandcamp Tips for Musicians
Bandcamp is a great way for musicians to promote and sell their music. On average, 82% of sales go directly to the musician. During Bandcamp Friday campaigns, which have been hugely successful, an average of 93% goes to the musician. There are four more Bandcamp Fridays coming up this year: February 5th, March 5th, April 2nd, and May 7th.
Are you a musician wondering how to set up a new Bandcamp page for success, reach a wider audience, and best leverage Bandcamp to promote your music? Last week, Jackson Clawson, website designer at Bandcamp, hosted a Q&A with Ministry of Folk artists and answered these questions. We’ve summarized some tips he shared, but you should check out Bandcamp’s Artist Guide for more detail!
Personalize Your Artist or Album Page
One of Bandcamp’s features that set it apart from other streaming sites like Spotify is that you can really personalize your artist and album pages. From a slick background, to stories about the songs you’ve recorded….
Customize the Design
Play with site design, change colors, customize images, and change the background of you artist profile and album pages. Learn how to do that here. Here are some customized pages that we love from Ministry of Folk artists!
Give people something to read or watch
Add lyrics, liner notes, and link videos of live performances on album pages. On Ballads Vol. I, Iona Fyfe provides some historical background on these selected ballads, and includes full lyrics for each track. On Burden Lake, Kevin Henderson provides notes and stories behind these traditional and original compositions. To accompany the title track off their duo album, Half Light, Andrew Finn Magill and Seán Gray have included the official music video.
Sell Physical Merch
Add any merchandise you have to sell to your pages, especially CDs and vinyl. Try to get a good photo of the merch, it really does help! Did you know that on Bandcamp, “merch now makes up half the sales on the site and is growing quickly. Vinyl sales, for example, are up 613% in the past five years, cassettes 349%, and t-shirts 492%.” If you have photos, you can use the Artist App to add them right from your phone, or use a Bandcamp template to mock up a design.
Be Strategic About Releasing New Music
Think about your release date strategically - maybe it makes sense to release on one of the Bandcamp Fridays, when there’s more traffic and hype on the site anyway. Plus, people might remember your release date more easily. Think about promotional opportunities through Bandcamp early. If you want to submit your music to one of the editors at least 8 weeks before release, pitching them a good story. Think about building your followers on Bandcamp - they’ll get an email when your music is released. Think about previewing your album on a website through an Exclusive Embed to stream tracks that you aren’t streaming from your public album page.
Pre-Order
Add your album as a pre-order on Bandcamp with album art and a list of tracks, some of them stream-able, to let people know it’s coming. You can also have people pay when they pre-order to help fund the album.
Submit to Bandcamp Daily
Submit soon-to-be-released albums to Bandcamp Daily, the journalistic arm of the site. Pitch them a story about your music, you might be featured in their round-ups of new releases, albums of the day, or album recommendations. Read their tips about submitting to the Daily here.
Build Your Following
Work on getting followers before releasing an album, especially if you are new to Bandcamp. Your followers will be notified when the album is released. (Read more about Followers below.)
Make Your Music Discoverable
Bandcamp is putting more focus on search and discover on the platform. Tag your music, for example with genres or locations. Users can now search Bandcamp tag pages (for example bandcamp.com/tag/folk) to browse by genre or other key words. The Bandcamp feed tells users when new releases are out and will suggest new releases based on what the user likes to listen to, so tagging your music and identifying related artists helps put your new releases in front of potential new fans. Bandcamp also has an Album of the Day that they promote along with a list of New and Notable albums. To get listed in one of these you can send an email to the editorial staff (see Artist Guide for more info).
Add Recommendations & Similar Artists
Customize the recommended albums in the footer of album pages. When you choose artists who you are similar to, those artists get notified and can select you as a related artist as well, making it easier for fans to discover you on related artist’s pages.
In this example, Ethan Setiawan has recommended some albums from friends and musical collaborators, and under similar artists, his band Corner House is featured prominently. He’s also included tags to help potential fans find this album.
Here, Hanneke Cassel has recommended some of her close collaborators, Keith Murphy and Mike Block. She’s also included tags to help fans discover her music.
Invest in Your Followers
Having followers on Bandcamp is super valuable. Unlike other social media platforms, on Bandcamp you don’t have to pay to get your content in front of your fans. Your followers get an email when you release new music or merchandise, and your music shows up on their feed. You can also communicate directly with your followers through email newsletters, and you can learn more about the geographic breakdown of your followers through the Artist App. The platform also supports a subscription service (similar to Patreon) where your fans can support you on a monthly basis: users can sign up to give a recurring monthly or annual fee that you choose and in return they receive exclusive content, like access to existing albums, live music recordings, limited edition merch, and more.
Other perks of having followers:
There is a follower mailing list in your Bandcamp tools, which is easy to export to your emailing platform.
You can filter followers by how much they have spent, and send special discounts to your most invested fans.
You can filter followers by location and notify them when you’ll be touring in their area.
If a user has a Bandcamp account, they will automatically become your follower if they buy an album or other merchandise from you.
Encourage people to follow you on Bandcamp
Send a direct link for users to sign up as a follower (see Artist Guide). This will be your profile web address ending in “/follow_me” [e.g. https://katiemcnallyfiddle.bandcamp.com/follow_me]
Embed the link in a newsletter, in a post on social media, or at the end of YouTube videos
Add a Bandcamp Follow button to your website
Add a Bandcamp button to the footer of your newsletters and emails with the rest of your social links
We hope this blog post helps you get familiar with the Bandcamp platform and keep getting the word about your music out to new listeners. Remember to tell your community about upcoming Bandcamp Fridays, and check us out on Bandcamp to see our collection of Ministry of Folk artists and albums!
