Like thousands of artists, Nashville singer and songwriter Emma Swift faced a reckoning in March after all of her gigs were scrapped.
Born in Oakland with profits in part from the sale of an email start-up company, Bandcamp has thrived during a moment when the challenges facing musicians couldn’t be greater. Starved of road money and feeling abused or ignored by major services such as Spotify, Apple Music, Pandora and YouTube that pay fractions of a penny per spin, artists have flocked to Bandcamp and fans have followed.
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.How did Bandcamp become the only music platform that everyone likes?media research company Midia Research
It doesn’t hurt when Spotify’s Ek seems to blame artists for the oft-miniscule checks sent out by Spotify. In August, he took heat for stating that “some artists that used to do well in the past may not do well in this future landscape, where you can’t record music once every three to four years and think that’s going to be enough.”
“Eight Indie Bands to Know From Daegu, South Korea.” “How Galya Bisengalieva Mapped a Soviet Ecological Disaster With Her Violin.” “Seven Heavy Records Inspired by ‘Magic: The Gathering.’” “Skyzoo’s Hyper-Lyrical Underground Rap Is Still Going Strong After 20 Years.”Hearing some of those headlines recited out loud, Diamond laughs. “I think sometimes that stuff can veer towards parody,” he says. “If it were only what you just said, then I would be like, ‘OK, this is ridiculous.
J. Edward Keyes, Bandcamp’s director of content, said that the goal of Bandcamp Daily when it launched was to steer the conversations toward avenues other than indie rock. The intent was “to build a platform that showcases the wide variety, not only of music that’s available on the site, but of the people who live in countries all over the world who are making their music available.”
Short version, they helped their artists actually get paid. Something Spotify fails to ever do.