In case not everyone already knew all this, I’d like to explain a thing!
First I must say, I want people to be able to listen to & enjoy my songs whether or not you have money to spare, whether or not a song turns out to speak to you enough that you’d want to give money in honour of it… & whether you’re here as an enthusiast for the music or just because you’re slightly interested in what I’m up to :-) All the current SB stuff is available to play & download without any money.
But I did want to make sure you all know about Bandcamp and how it works, and why it’s currently the best music-sharing site I know of for musicians & people who enjoy original music. So now for the briefing on that:
- There’s tons of wonderful music on the Bandcamp site, tagged with themes and genres. Most musicians there have at least a few tracks up which are freely available to listen to without making an account. I think you also don’t need to make an account in order to download tracks or contribute money to someone – although if you put in your email address, it’ll link that song/album to the email address in case you want to download it again later.
- 80%+ of the money paid in by listeners on Bandcamp goes direct to the musician, unlike e.g. Spotify where the typical artist gets like 1p every now and again.
- You won’t be surprised to hear that Bandcamp is where I currently host my music. When you click on a page on this site to stream a song, it’s the Bandcamp site supplying that audio “behind the scenes”. And if you click through to download a song to keep, you arrive at the Bandcamp page for that song.
- Last year, the Bandcamp team started “Bandcamp Friday”: a day when they waive their revenue share so that an even higher percentage of the money goes to the musicians.
- One “Bandcamp Friday” is today, 2 April 2021 (which reminded me I wanted to explain about this), and the next is Friday 7 May. For UK people, the “day” actually extends a little way into the early hours of the next morning. A handy way of checking whether or not it’s happening right now is via the web site “Is it Bandcamp Friday” :-)
Before I sign off… Thanks to everyone who did already chip in with encouragement-money for one of my songs! I can’t deny it puts a smile on my face when one of those update emails arrives, and I’m very appreciative of people taking the trouble!
But either way please do carry on enjoying the music :-)