Bandcamp Best Practises

Pages are easy to customise, so make sure that your label pages, and your artist’s pages, look as stellar as your music sounds. Upload photos or logos, headers, background images, and bios directly to your pages. Use the design tab to dial in colour ways.

Be sure to fill out all the fields on label and/or artist profile pages. Location and genre help your releases show up in the discovery section of the homepage and in our app. Enter links to your own websites, and use the Songkick plugin so that gigs automatically show-up on band’s pages.

Upload videos, and also add info about your releases (like liner notes), credits, and lyrics on the edit pages for each release. Not only does that info appear on your release page, but supporting fans will be able to read about your releases when they listen via the app. It also helps our editorial staff if they want to feature your releases on the Bandcamp Daily. Handy tip – while you’re on the edit page, don’t forget to add UPC codes so that we can report your sales to Soundscan, etc, and add catalog numbers if you’d like those to show up in your sales report.

You should charge what you think is fair, but don’t feel obligated to charge 9.99 (or anything .99) round it up, or try a round number that’s a little lower, find the sweet spot and be sure to enable the “or pay more function” for fans who are feeling generous. Fans pay more than the minimum 40% of the time, driving up the average price paid by nearly 50%.

Sell your merch on Bandcamp directly on the album release page. Read this and make mo’ money! Include pictures of your merch, don’t just re-upload the album art – show us the finished product. These images will appear in buying-fans collections thus tempting more fans to support you and your label.

Always have at least one track streaming when you make your pre-order public. Doing so will mean you’ll reap the most benefits from the new release notifications that Bandcamp sends to your fans. When fans buy your release your streaming track(s) will appear in the music feed which accounts for approximately 20% of sales on Bandcamp. No streaming tracks? No music feed! More important info on setting up pre-orders is here

Take advantage of existing accounts. If you’re working with an artist who has previously self-released, or released projects via multiple labels, use the artist’s existing account to release your project and notify the band’s existing fan base. Do this by selecting “add artist” and “add existing artist” when adding an artist to your label account. Label accounts enable artists to have multiple paypal addresses associated with their accounts, so that artists and labels will be paid for the appropriate releases.

If you’re setting up accounts on behalf of artists be sure to use the “give access” button (it pops up when you hover over the artist’s image on your artist page) to give your artists the opportunity to be involved and add their own releases, help with page design, etc.

They’re simple, customizable, and make it easy for you, your fans and the press to promote your music across the web. You can also create exclusive players to premier an album on whichever sites you choose.