The Exchanges

Q artists make most of their money off live touring, and they're, you know, very few of them are making a lot of money off Spotify. Obviously, the biggest ones are. How did you know? I mean, how did you know that people would be willing to pay for this music? Or did you know? I mean, were you at any point worried that people just wouldn't, wouldn't pay for it?

A Yeah. I know that was definitely the hunch at the beginning, because I, that's what I wanted personally. You know, I wanted to have that direct relationship with an artist and directly support them. And I figured there's gotta be other people, um, Out there who want to do it this way and who want to, um, directly support ours, but there's just, there's no way to do it. It's not easy to do. And there was a moment, um, early on that I think where everything clicked. And that was, um, when we were looking at the search terms that people were using to get to Bandcamp that ultimately ended in a sale. And we found, uh, again, 2008, 2009. So we, what we were competing with, right, as you said, was like LimeWire. Right. Hook share and stuff like that. So we looked at those search terms and it was the name of an album plus the word torrent or the name of an artist plus, you know, free MP three or something like that. And so, you know, I don't know that the people who were using those search terms were necessarily thinking to themselves, I want to get this music for free or steal this music. But when they got to a place, Bandcamp, where it was clear that they, if they bought here, they were directly supporting an artist, that actually led to a sale. So that moment where we saw those kinds of surge terms resulting in money getting to artists was really the moment where it felt like, oh ye…

AI assessment note: “that was definitely the hunch at the beginning, because I, that's what I wanted personally.”

Q media interface where you can see what other people are buying and listening to. And the community, I mean, especially when you talk about independent music, Like, they, uh, they have strong views on what it means to sell out and to compromise. Um, so how much does the community, I mean, how much does the community matter in terms of how you guys think of what, what you do?

A Yeah, this, this gets back to your earlier question about, um, about, you know, the high fidelity and, you know, being that record store. Because when we started off, because MySpace was kind of the reference point where the community Had devolved essentially into people spamming each other's pages with their own flyers and saying, thanks for the ad and things like that. Um, we decided that there wasn't going to be no community on Bandcamp. Zero. You know, there's, there was just, we were essentially a white label service. In those early days, we were a white label service for artists, and that was it. You know, after a couple years of doing this, and there were, there were enough artists on the site where people started to say, you know, hey, could you tell me, you know, what are the other, like, math rock Uh, bands that are on Bandcamp. And my reaction at first was, you know, why do you, I don't understand why you care, you know, just use, use Google, type Math Rock into Google and go find other bands, right? And, but then once, you know, once we'd gone from maybe 10,000 bands to a 100,000 bands, it started to really make sense to me that there was an opportunity here, that there was a group of people of like-minded fans who want to directly support artists and directly connect with them in this way, and that we have, A chance to help facilitate that, right? So we started bui…

AI assessment note: “we started building the community up, but very carefully and around the idea”

Q How do you think, Ethan, the music industry will change in, in a post-pandemic world, if, if at all?

A I think there's, um, good news and bad news about that. You know, I, I'll start with the bad news. I think, uh, you know, a lot of venues have closed, uh, during the pandemic. And I think a lot more are likely to close because, uh, the, the save our stages act that passed, but the money hasn't been distributed yet. So I worry about what's going to happen to, um, to all those venues. And in the meantime, you know, one of the crazier monopolies that exists between live nation, biggest venue owner, promoter, manager of artists and ticket master, um, and, you know, clear channel slash I heart media that owns radio, right. You know, live nation has, uh, there's, Their stock has tripled during the pandemic. Um, and you know, you kind of wonder like, well, why, why is that right? What's going on? They haven't had a concert in, in a year. And I think that's just because everybody, well, the market anyway, is expecting the sort of the stranglehold to only get worse, which isn't good for us, you know, music fans, right? The tickets will get more expensive. I think there'll be less diversity in music as a result, but, um, but you know, the laws are changing, right? Uh, Uh, there's a lot of activity, antitrust activity that, uh, that I'm, you know, cautiously optimistic about. But, you know, the, the other, the other part of the industry, I would say that the good news is that I think a lo…

AI assessment note: “I think there's, um, good news and bad news about that.”

Q when I was a younger man, it was high fidelity. I love that book by Nick Hornby. I even liked the movie, even though it took place in Chicago, not in the UK. Um, And so, was that you? Like, you launched this in 2007. Were you that guy? Were you like, I'm gonna launch an independent record store online, and what, how did you come up with the idea?

A Yeah. I don't know if, uh, it wasn't quite the thought initially wasn't really a record store. It evolved into that. So I'll take you through it. So basically what happened is, uh, about 13 years ago, there was a band, uh, that I loved and they decided that, um, you know, they were going to sell their new record, uh, directly to their fans on their own website. And on the day that that record came out, I went to their site and the site just didn't load at all at all. And I thought, oh, they must, you know, they must be slammed. I'll come back the next time. And, uh, and the site loaded on that day, but it loaded very, very slowly. Um, this was also in the days of flash. Everything was flat. So, you know, it took a while to figure out exactly what was going on on the site, but eventually I bought the album and, but then I didn't actually get anything. You know, the transaction went through, but no, no music.

AI assessment note: “the thought initially wasn't really a record store. It evolved into that.”

Q catalog is on Bandcamp, and Peter Gabriel, um, some of his, his work is on Bandcamp, and it may be difficult for you to answer this question. You may not know, but, um, given the Etsy, uh, comparison, is it, On average, I mean, do artists make a living off of their work on Bandcamp, or is it sort of part of a bigger ecosystem of the things they do?

A I would say that any artist should be doing a lot of, a lot of things. You know, they should be on Bandcamp, and they should be in a lot of other places as well, and I think that's the approach that almost all of them take. But yeah, I mean, a lot of artists that are on Bandcamp are making a significant amount of money. We hear all the time, mostly through Twitter, that, you know, the The money that artists make, uh, through Bandcamp is orders of magnitude bigger than what they're making from streaming services, um, that it's how they're, you know, paying rent and getting equipment and, uh, buying groceries and all of, all of that. So it's clear that we're, to me, a part of, um, how a ton of artists are sustaining themselves, and that's, that is great. Um, I love, you know, I love hearing that. But, you know, the focus, uh, for us has never been on, like, measuring How many people are making over this amount? How many people are making over this amount? Because part of what makes Bandcamp Bandcamp is that, you know, anybody can sign up for it. You can sign up for it tomorrow and start five different bands. And, you know, thinking about what that would mean for like the average that each artist makes, it just starts to not make any sense that, that you would, uh, that we would measure it that way. Instead, what we really are measuring is like the total amount that fans are payin…

AI assessment note: “any artist should be doing a lot of, a lot of things”

Q record store in Oakland, California, and a live venue space there, and presumably it's, it's been challenging to keep those open. Um, but I wonder, Given the consolidation in the industry, especially when it comes to live events, is there a In a post-pandemic world enters that space and somehow creates venues, uh, for, you know, or, or partners with people to create more independent venues for, for live events?

A We've thought about it for sure, and I think it's, it would be really interesting to get into, you know, our, our, our, I guess toe dip into this world is our new live streaming service, um, that we really just launched. We've rolled it out now to, um, it's in, About a 100,000 artists have been enabled with this, and it allows you to stream to anybody. So, you know, you can, you publish a show. It goes out to all of your followers. You can have an integrated merch table. Being some of those early shows, it's very exciting to me because people are buying the merch. There's a chat that's very active, and when somebody buys something, it shows up in the chat, hey, this person actually just bought this vinyl record, and then that kind of Triggers more people to do that, and when I think about how many artists are on Bandcamp, and it seems inevitable that we'll get to this point where all these, there'll be shows happening constantly, and you'll be able to have that experience of, you know, when you go to a town that's a music town, like Austin or New Orleans, right, and you walk down the street, and you just hear music everywhere around you, and you pop your head in and see what's going on, and potentially fall in love with a new artist, right? That That's the experience that, um, that I think we'll soon have on Bandcamp.

AI assessment note: “We've thought about it for sure... our toe dip into this world is our new live streaming service”