Can an Artist Upload Songs to Bandcamp Through the Phone

Bandcamp is a global platform for hosting and selling music, used predominantly past small independent musicians. It's splendid for its purpose, but it'due south also a crowded platform. How tin can you brand effective use of Bandcamp for music promotion? Let's talk about it.

About Bandcamp

Using Bandcamp is gratis and pretty like shooting fish in a barrel for musicians and artists. Sign-up is a quick and painless process, as is uploading music. Music fans can create accounts and follow individual artists, maintain wishlists, and explore similar music to what they already like. Artists can sell directly, with consummate control over pricing and how accessible the music is to stream. I've seen some albums available on Bandcamp with unlimited streaming, and others that merely allow each runway to be played 2-3 times before it'due south locked behind a purchase. Bandcamp also works directly with some music labels, and information technology can exist a nifty discovery platform.

Since we're talking about selling music, I'm going to wait at things from the perspective of an artist looking to sell. So hither's what Bandcamp offers musicians:

• Easy accessibility for fans. The website and mobile apps let unlimited streaming of purchased music in high quality formats.
• Total control. You tin charge any price and change prices whenever. You can accuse a minimum cost and allow users pay more if they cull. You can even require nothing more than an e-mail address.
• Global availability. Bandcamp accepts 18 different currencies from effectually the world.
• Analytics. Bandcamp offers fairly rich analytics nigh links to albums, music embeds, rails popularity, purchasing, search terms, and more.
• Product sales. You can parcel music sales with physical items, ranging from CDs or vinyl to apparel to whatever else you want to sell. You can fifty-fifty sell tickets to your shows direct through Bandcamp.
• Chart access. Bandcamp submits sales reports to several global music charts, meaning y'all can identify on them if yous're popular enough.
• Search engine visibility. Everything is indexed, so band names, lyrics, and song titles can all evidence up on Google'due south results folio.
• Album codes. Artist accounts come up with the ability to generate 200 codes for free albums to send out and give away. You earn more than by selling, an additional 1000 codes for every $500 in sales, or y'all tin buy more straight for a few cents each.
• Customizable band and anthology pages. You tin can make your pages look pretty dang slick with minimal attempt.

Plus, of course, in that location's the element of trust. Bandcamp is a trusted platform that processes millions of dollars in payments on a monthly basis. Users know that if they pay for something on the platform, they'll get it.

The just major downside to Bandcamp is them taking a cutting of the profits off any album sold. That's not a big surprise, though; every platform and every record label, manager, and anyone else involved in selling music is going to want their cut. Bandcamp merely takes 15% of digital sales and x% of merch sales, which decreases once you top $5k in total sales. That's a lot less than a lot of other alternatives.

Bandcamp also has a Pro version, for artists who want to pay a fee to proceeds admission to boosted features.

• Batch uploads, to queue up uploading an entire album + avails all at one time instead of runway by runway.
• Messaging to achieve fans, with geographic targeting and other features.
• Private streaming organization, y'all can send invites to specific people via email, message, or any other contact method, and stream to a DIY audition.
• Video hosting without ads.
• A custom domain name for your Bandcamp profile folio.
• More advanced analytics, and Google Analytics integration.
• The power to disable streaming for specific tracks.

All of this comes at the cost of $10 per calendar month, which is pretty reasonable if you're getting whatever sales at all from the platform. Which, if you follow the tips I've accumulated below, you lot should be!

Tips for Bandcamp Success

I'm going to carve up upwards these tips into a few categories to make things simpler. For case, this showtime category is off-site benefits.

Y'all desire to establish a presence outside of Bandcamp, considering no one platform alone (except mayhap Facebook) can reach enough people to become a great success.

1. Build a website. You desire at least one web presence that you 100% command on your own. You can do it through a website architect like Squarespace, you lot can set up a WordPress template and run on a cheap web host, you can pay for a web programmer and gear up a custom site, it doesn't really affair. What matters is that you lot accept a bandname.com URL people can use to find you and find information almost your ring, your show dates and locations, your albums, and then on.

2. Build social media profiles. Social media is how millions of people interact with the bands, brands, and people they want to engage with on a daily ground. At the bare minimum, you should have a Facebook band page and a Twitter profile. You lot might as well consider an Instagram account, possibly something like Snapchat, and – depending on how modern savvy you are – something like 1 of the new platforms, similar TikTok.

3. Build a mailing list. It might seem strange for a ring to keep an email newsletter going, but a mailing list is a great way to ensure your fans ever know when yous're touring, playing shows, or releasing new music. Y'all don't have to rely on going viral or reaching the front page of some suggested music feed; y'all accept your fans already at your fingertips. It's pretty simple to set up something similar Mailchimp to maintain a list and send out a new newsletter one time a month.

4. Run a blog. Much like a newsletter, you don't often recollect of a blog when yous call up of a band, but a blog can get a long way towards increasing visibility. Yous don't take to write frequently, even once a calendar month is fine; simply enough to keep fans aware of what yous're doing and remind people y'all're alive. Share stores of being on the route, of composing, of performing, or fifty-fifty just life. Your fans won't complain.

5. Set up your Bandcamp pages. Bandcamp is very easy to go up and running, and you can customize your anthology pages with colors and uploaded imagery quite nicely. Do and then, and brand sure to upload your albums and configure them properly. Writing anthology descriptions, uploading anthology covers, and a proper credits department are all quite useful for helping your music stand out.

One time you have your presence established, you need to become down to optimizing your presence on Bandcamp. One element besides many musicians miss is the opportunity to optimize the little details that can have a big bear upon.

Specifically, these details can help you accomplish the Discovery section of Bandcamp, which means front page exposure and a lot of new listeners.

6. Choose a Main Genre and Sub-Genres. You have to understand your own music and, more chiefly, the style others categorize your music. Maybe you experience like "Audio-visual" equally a genre fits you, but if nigh people think of you as Folk, yous want to tag yourself as Folk so y'all can show up in those searches. Your selection of Primary Genre is incredible important, as yous can only have i, and it dictates your sub-genre choices too. If you lot try to pick sub-genres that are outside of the main genre, y'all get zero visibility for them. Make sure to exercise enough of research, and consider reading up on some example studies for ideas of how the Bandcamp algorithm works.

7. Pick a geographic location. Bandcamp's Notice section has city sections in it, but only a limited selection of cities. Browse through their bachelor cities and run into if one of them is close to you lot. If information technology is, cull that as your habitation urban center. It'south ideal if y'all can visit the urban center on a regular footing, particularly for tours and establishing a presence. And so, if you take off, you can be one of the pinnacle musicians in your genre in that urban center, which is a great jumping off signal for future gigs, bookings, local press, and other benefits. It's likewise why y'all shouldn't cull a urban center you tin can't visit; what if they want to interview you, see your studio, or take you perform, only you chose a urban center across the land?

8. Pay attention to your album art. Album fine art is quite important, as it's an introduction to your album and your aesthetic. People choose whether or not to tap on something from the discovery queue based on imagery, since there aren't audio previews. You should also make certain your album art works at a small scale, since a lot of users will exist seeing a scaled-down version of it displayed on a smartphone screen. If your art loses a lot of fine detail, y'all lose out on those potential listeners.

9. Specify your lyrics. If your songs take lyrics, that is. I know a lot of musicians use ambient and electronic or even just instrumental music as the footing of their albums, with lyrics a rarity. Still, any song that has lyrics, yous should upload the authentic, proof-read, typo-corrected lyrics. This helps you bear witness up in Google search for the lyrics whenever someone wants to find a song they half-call back, plus it fills out your album folio and allows users to follow along with the song more accurately.

10. Choose your pricing. I don't have a wealth of pricing data available, but yous should be able to see what prices have worked the all-time in the past, and you tin do some enquiry into recommendations from other successful artists. One great recommendation, though, is enable flexible payments. If y'all set a minimum at $v for an album but allow users to pay more than the minimum if they desire to support yous, chances are a sizable number of users volition. Bandcamp themselves say a whopping l% of purchasers pay more than the minimum when they purchase, and I've done information technology myself.

11. Apply epitome maps for links. Bandcamp allows you to put an image map on your page header. This converts sections of the header paradigm into clickable links. Pattern your header to include symbols or words that call out your website, social profiles, storefront for merch, tour dates, and whatsoever other critical pages. And so use the image map to map links to those pages on the relevant parts of the image. Essentially, you lot're making acme-bar navigation out of a header prototype.

Now permit'southward go into a few of the more traditional marketing tips that help bring users to your folio.

And then we can convert those users into paying customers.

12. Have advantage of your free album copies. As I mentioned to a higher place, Bandcamp gives you a scattering of codes for free copies of your album. Run contests and giveaways, reward band ambassadors, and ship previews to influencers to make the most of these codes.
13. Share new music posts, web log posts, and newsletters on social media. Bandcamp'southward algorithms aren't quite as focused on traffic as other social networks and storefronts, but more than traffic means more than listeners, more listeners ways more than buyers, and more buyers means more take chances to end up on best seller lists in your genre and in your metropolis. It can't be overstated: catastrophe upwardly on a discover listing is one of the best things that can happen to an artist on Bandcamp. Information technology opens a lot of doors.

14. Offer discount codes. Discounts on an album you lot release, which go directly to your newsletter, reward your fans. This works quite well in conjunction with flexible pricing; many users will pay full price or more, even with a discount code!

15. Learn your listener persona. Who is listening to your music? More importantly, who is paying for your music? Learn about those people, and use that noesis to adjust your imagery to appeal specifically to them. Exist cynical about it, and don't be afraid to sell out. Everyone needs to eat.

16. Consider divide testing. Carve up testing is when yous run 1 option for a while, run across how it works, and then run an alternative and compare the results. You can split exam album imagery and tags on your albums in an ongoing process to capture the virtually attention. Unlike more chronologically-focused social networks, Bandcamp will happily throw a years-old album in the discovery queue for a new tag but added to it.

17. Make certain your content is high quality. Very loftier quality sound recordings can exist downscaled for streaming, but please the audiophiles amid your audience. In that location'south no reason not to upload high quality masters.

18. Consider applying for PayPal's micropayments. Since Bandcamp is likely a lot of small payments, the PayPal fees can eat upwards a lot of your potential profits. Micropayments allow you lot to process low-value transactions at a lower cost.

What are your favorite or most successful ways you've sold your music on Bandcamp? Let us know in the comment department to share with others!

Written by Kenny Novak

Kenny is an SEM and SEO professional. He uses blogging and content marketing as a launchpad for small businesses looking to abound their online presence.

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Source: https://growtraffic.com/blog/2018/11/ways-promote-music-bandcamp

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