Searching For Champions

Indie musicians and the gutting of our beloved Bandcamp

One thing I’ve realized on this long indie music journey I’m on is that champions of your art come and go.

And the road of an indie musician can be a lonely one.

Like most musicians and artists, I was feeling particularly adrift during the pandemic and the independent music platform Bandcamp help fill a void. It was a place I could release my music, connect with other musicians, feel inspired and keep in touch with my followers.

And in turn, those folks would reach back, purchase, download and generally let me know there were real listeners out there, enjoying the music. Their support was a quiet way of telling me to keep on.

When Bandcamp Fridays emerged during the last few years to support musicians even further, I doubled down. I had new targets on the calendar to release my music and it felt like regularly scheduled mini-parties for all of us in this community.

I took advantage of the Fridays to keep my writing and recording on schedule and even used the platform to raise money for food banks and other charitable organizations of my choosing.

Bandcamp was building a community of goodwill and it felt like we all had a new champion.

But when the company was sold recently, I started to hear grumblings from my friends about the platform ‘selling out to billionaires’. Epic Games was the company that bought Bandcamp and the move didn’t make a lot of sense to anyone.

And when Bandcamp was flipped again this week and subsequently gutted, my heart really sank. Half of the workforce lost their jobs and the indie musician community was losing their faith.

“It’s business as usual”, claimed the new owner.

But Deerhoof put it best: “It's not just that this "business as usual" statement is clearly spoken by someone to whom Bandcamp was never anything more than some inert numerals on a ledger sheet. It's the sickening "good news" tone that assumes that that's all BC ever was to any of us. Rich people are weird”

My Bandcamp page. Stop by and follow!

Yes, I will continue releasing music on Bandcamp. I don’t see another vehicle that works this well and frankly, we’re so embedded in the thing it would be an awful drag for indie musicians to pull up stakes.

That said, we at ‘meltingplastic records’ did decide to stop paying Bandcamp the monthly fees for the ‘pro’ account. It’s a small protest, I realize. But perhaps that monthly fee could be best spent on a more worthy cause. I’ll figure that out.

In the meantime, I realize it wasn’t the platform that was my champion. It was simply the vehicle to get my music to the folks who care to listen. The ones who regularly take the time to support my work. And it would be hard to continue without them.

They are my real champions.