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Bandcamp
Online global music community
- 201-500 employees
- B2C
- B2B
- Music
- Social
- Social Media
- eCommerce
- Downtown, Oakland, CA
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Company mission
To help spread the healing power of music by building a community where artists thrive through the direct support of their fans, and where fans gather to explore the amazing musical universe that their direct support helps create.
Our take
Founded in 2007, Bandcamp was initially designed to compete with MySpace, allowing bands to easily interact with fans and sell their music. MySpace fell in its competition with Facebook, but the more single-minded focus of Bandcamp as a sales platform, taking a cut of transactions in return for carrying out the promotion and admin work for creators, gave it a strong niche that it continues to occupy today.
Bandcamp now competes with Spotify, an enormous company that offers nearly any music on demand to its customers and promotes artists with highly personalised playlists generated based on listener preferences. However, Bandcamp is still holding its own with a steadily growing music library and userbase. While it can't match the sheer range of music available on Spotify, Bandcamp differentiates itself by the high payout it makes to artists: more than 80% of every sale goes to creators, compared to the tiny amount paid to artists per listen on other platforms.
Bandcamp was acquired by Epic Games in 2022, which has not shown much intention of altering Bandcamp's business model or its relationship with artists and fans. It will use the backing of its parent company to improve its offering, including adding music discovery features to allow it to more directly compete with the likes of Spotify. It is also further developing its mobile app and merchandising tools.
Steph
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Leadership
Ethan Diamond
(CEO)Co-founded Bandcamp in 2007.