Bandcamp is bringing back its Bandcamp Fridays promotion, forgoing all the money you spend buying music from artists or their labels on its marketplace. Historically, the company held the promotion on the first Friday of every month, and that seems to be the case this time around. According to the update pageit has Bandcamp Fridays scheduled for September 2, October 7, November 4, and December 2.
Bandcamp says that if you buy music during a Bandcamp Friday, an average of 93 percent of that money goes to the artist or label (the rest goes to payment processing fees). That’s compared to an average of 82 percent the rest of the time. It the promotion started in 2020 in response to the impact of the pandemic on tours and concerts.
As far as I know, it’s been a few months since the last Bandcamp Friday – according to a cursory search of my email inbox, archives of Bandcamp’s update page for the promotion, and some math (the page now says the promotion was run 21 times, where it used to be 17 times with four future dates listed), the last being on May 6. After that, the company mostly quiet about the future of Bandcamp Fridays.
To be fair, there was probably a lot going on earlier this year. In March, Epic Games announced it would be taking over the music market, saying that Bandcamp would “continue to operate as a standalone marketplace and music community,” but that it would “play an important role in Epic’s vision of becoming a creators’ marketplace- build content ecosystem”. , technology, games, art, music and more.”
At the time, Bandcamp’s co-founder and CEO, Ethan Diamond, said it would be more or less business as usual for its users. He even promised that Bandcamp Fridays would continue, which they did for a while anyway.
Although the company did not immediately respond to The edge‘s request for comment on why it took a hiatus, I’m especially happy to hear they’re back. Personally, there are some Manchester Orchestra and Car Seat Headrest albums that I’ve been eyeing, and this is a perfect excuse to pick them up. And you?