That approach has made it the rarest of tech companies: a beloved business that upends the market while coming across like some combination of consummately curated record store, laudably progressive nonprofit group and supersize first-generation music blog.

We only make money if the artist makes a whole lot more.” “If I love a piece of music, how do I get as close as possible to directly handing the artist some money? How do I do that and create that relationship with them?” He then repeats a mantra he’s recited in countless interviews: “Our success is tied to the artist’s success. Indicting Spotify’s billionaire founder and Chief Executive Daniel Ek as what she called “a morally reprehensible human being,” she added, “the music industry is in a really unfortunate situation where artists feel like they have to use those platforms or they’re not going to get their music heard.”īandcamp, by comparison, was founded on a basic question, says 49-year-old co-founder and Chief Executive Ethan Diamond.

“Spotify didn’t do anything to actually improve the financial situation for musicians out of their own pocket,” Swift said. Since then, fans have paid artists nearly $100 million.Īll told, according to a tally prominently displayed on Bandcamp’s landing page, the platform has generated $584 million for artists since 2008. Underscoring musicians’ needs, Bandcamp announced in March that once monthly, on each first Friday through the end of 2020, it would forgo its regular 15% cut on digital sales (and 10% cut of physical sales), in effect channeling 100% of money directly from fan to artist, often with as little as a two-day turnaround.

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