Bandcamp
Platform · this deep dive is built from the official pages of the platform itself and of the tools that support it.
Overview
Bandcamp is a music store where an artist's page doubles as a storefront: a listener can play a whole album and then buy it as files or on physical media. The platform describes itself briefly — "Discover amazing music and directly support the artists who make it" — and builds its entire economy around the purchase rather than the play.
The main difference from streaming services is that the platform's cut is published openly, as a number, on a help page, rather than hidden in a contract. The rates are known in advance, and you can work out what a sale will earn you before your first upload. The second difference is that settlement goes straight into the artist's wallet rather than through a distributor.
The platform reports its own results: fans have paid artists and labels $1.77 billion, $223 million of that over the past year. This is the platform's statement about itself, not an independent measurement.
Who's here
Bandcamp does not disclose user numbers publicly — instead of audience figures the platform publishes purchase volumes. For the past year it cites 15.7 million digital albums, 11.4 million individual tracks, 1.6 million vinyl records, 850 thousand CDs, 250 thousand cassettes and 50 thousand T-shirts. The page does not tie the "past year" period to any specific dates.
Currencies: the artists page mentions support for sales in more than fifteen currencies, but the pages we checked carry no list of countries where payouts are available.
On language: the markup of the home page declares English as the interface language. One technical detail is worth noting — when fetched by an ordinary downloader that does not run scripts, the site returns a browser check page.
Getting started
An artist account is free to open, and no separate approval from the platform is needed to start selling. From there you choose between three tiers.
Free. A store, an embeddable player, pre-orders, discount codes, stats and access to buyer data — the artists page counts all of this as basic features.
Bandcamp Pro. The platform states the price outright: $10 US per month. That buys batch album uploads, ad-free video, private links for the press, Shopify sync, Google Analytics integration, stats down to the city and the source of a sale, and also file uploads of up to 2 GB per track.
Label account. The rates are published: $20 US per month for a label with up to 15 artists and $50 per month for an unlimited number. A label additionally gets DDEX delivery, consolidated reporting and API access.
What you can publish
The audio requirements are strict and easy to follow. You have to upload files of at least 16-bit / 44.1 kHz in WAV, AIFF or FLAC, in stereo — mono and multichannel audio are not accepted. Re-saving an MP3 as a WAV is pointless and against the rules: the platform warns that the resulting audio will be poor and a fan who expected a quality download will be left disappointed.
Higher resolutions are supported with caveats: 16 and 24 bit in FLAC, WAV, AIFF and ALAC at sample rates up to 48 kHz; 32-bit files are not supported. The same page gives a practical tip — leave at least 0.5 dB of headroom, so that transcoding does not produce clipping.
The buyer picks the format. The platform serves MP3 V0, MP3 320, FLAC, AAC, Ogg Vorbis, ALAC, WAV and AIFF; the default on offer is variable-bitrate MP3, and the rest is "for audiophiles and nerds", as the help centre itself puts it.
Rights to what you upload: what you give away
The wording of the agreement removes the artist's main fear: "The Company will not have any ownership rights in any element of an artist's music". The rights stay with you.
In exchange you grant a licence: "Each artist who uploads music to the Service grants the Company and its authorised sublicensees and distributors, if any, a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free right and licence to reproduce, distribute, publicly perform (including by means of digital audio transmission), publicly display, create derivative works from, make available to the public, synchronise and otherwise use the artist's music and to operate the Service on the artist's behalf". The specific actions are then listed in parentheses: copying and storing on servers, transcoding, streaming, playback.
One clause, rare for music platforms, stands on its own: "Bandcamp will not use, and will not allow others to use, any artist's music to train models that generate sound recordings, videos synchronised to sound recordings, or other audiovisual works, without that artist's express permission".
Responsibility for rights is yours: the agreement requires you to own all rights to what you upload, and to have written permission for covers. False information about authorship counts as a breach of the agreement.
How to grow
The platform describes no algorithmic feed that would bring you listeners on its own. The growth tools it does list are all about working with the audience you already have: automatic notifications to followers about new releases, editorial coverage, live streams and "listening party" sessions with merch sold during the broadcast, pre-orders, download codes.
Stats are a strong point: the full sales history and buyer data, track popularity and referral sources in real time, and on Pro also the payer's city and the source of every sale. Direct mailings to fans can be targeted by location and level of support.
On the pages we checked Bandcamp offers no advertising dashboard of its own. Promotion here means emails to your own subscribers and external traffic, not buying impressions inside the platform.
Path to monetization
The fees are published as numbers, and that is a rarity.
One-off sales. 15% on digital goods, with the rate dropping to 10% as soon as you reach $5,000 US in sales; 10% on physical goods. The payment processor's fee is charged separately — usually 4 to 6%, depending on the size of the transaction. For expensive items there is a ceiling: the platform's cut is taken only from the first $100 of an item's price, and tips on top of the price do not fall under it.
The help article on a smaller-than-expected payout spells out the upper bound: once balances are settled the platform will not withhold more than 15% from a given sale (unless you are selling a physical item alongside it). The same page names the PayPal fee — 1% of the payout amount.
Fan subscriptions. On the payment side: the standard Stripe fee of 2.9% plus $0.30 US, which may differ depending on location.
The bottom line. The platform reduces it all to a single figure: on average 82% of the buyer's money goes to the artist, the rest covering Bandcamp's share and the payment processor's fee; its own policy phrases this as "typically 80–85%".
How the money arrives. Payouts go to a PayPal account, usually 24–48 hours after a sale is processed; expensive purchases may go through a manual review of up to 14 days, and you can switch to a monthly payout on the first of the month. The same page states the tax requirement: marketplaces are obliged to collect tax details from every account that has sold more than $5,000 US in a calendar year.
Tools and automation
There is an official API, but access to it is restricted. The platform offers an Account API, a Sales Report API and a Merch Orders API and states plainly who is admitted: "Labels and merch fulfilment partners can work with their accounts through the Bandcamp API". Registration is not self-service: you have to write to the platform and attach a description of how you intend to use the access.
Technically this is OAuth 2.0: the client ID and secret appear in the API Access tab of your account settings after approval, the token is requested with a POST to bandcamp.com/oauth_token, the token's lifetime is one hour, and after that it is renewed with a refresh token. The platform warns that sharing someone else's credentials can lead to permanent removal of API access.
For labels there is a bulk upload route that is not automated: delivery of releases via DDEX. An ordinary artist on Pro gets batch album uploads.
Limits and rules
- Files. At least 16-bit / 44.1 kHz, WAV, AIFF or FLAC, stereo only; 32-bit is not supported, sample rate up to 48 kHz.
- Track file size. Up to 2 GB is a Pro subscription feature; the help centre names no limit for the free account.
- Fees. 15% digital, 10% physical, 10% digital after $5,000 in sales, plus 4–6% for the payment processor.
- Rights. You may upload only your own material; covers require written permission, and misrepresenting authorship breaches the agreement.
- Refunds and chargebacks. The agreement places on the artist responsibility for chargebacks and the costs of reversed transactions.
- Taxes. Collecting tax details is mandatory for sales above $5,000 US in a calendar year.
Who it's for
It suits an independent artist or a small label that sells recordings directly to its own audience and wants to know who that audience is: access to buyer data and mailing addresses is built in here. It suits those for whom transparency matters: the fee rate is published, and you can calculate it before you launch.
It suits lovers of physical media — vinyl, cassettes, CDs: the platform describes inventory tracking, label printing and Shopify sync as standard tools.
It does not suit you if you are counting on an algorithmic influx of listeners: the platform describes no mechanism that would bring you a new audience by itself. It does not suit you if you have no masters in their original quality: MP3s cannot be uploaded here. And it does not suit an ordinary artist who wants automated catalogue management: the API is opened up to labels and fulfilment partners.
Verified data
The checked data this deep dive rests on.
About the platform
the platform describes itself this way: "Discover amazing music and directly support the artists who make it."
This is the platform's statement about itself, not an independent assessment
source, checked 2026-07-28
Languages
the interface language of the home page: en
The language is taken from the markup attribute, the versions from hreflang
source, checked 2026-07-28
Catalogue section: all similar See also: catalogue index · region: USA and Canada · scheduler comparison · find by situation · platform restrictions