Spotify or Bandcamp: choosing industry or music4 reading minutes

Le Regard Libre N° 49 - Alexandre Wälti

How do you buy music? This may seem a simplistic question. But the consumption of streaming is constantly on the rise, and has turned musicians' incomes upside down. It's simpler. There's a vast choice. It's less restrictive than visiting a record store. A quick comparison between Spotify and Bandcamp.

In the 1990s, the Rolling Stones partnered the Tommy Hilfiger brand for a fake tour: the «No Security Tour». In 2010, the title Welcome Home, Sound by Radical Face found its way into everyone's ears thanks to a Nikon advertising campaign. These two partnerships are very different, but at the same time demonstrate the close ties that have always existed between brands and music. Journalist Naomi Klein's clear-sighted analysis of this branding in his book No Logo.

Both examples beg the same question: how do musicians make money when record sales revenues have been plummeting for several years? Spontaneously, we think of concerts. And it's true. Fees are going up. However, players like Spotify, Youtube Music and Apple Music have considerably revolutionized the way we listen to music. These three streaming dominate the market.

Other similar attempts, such as Jay Z's Tidal and France's Deezer, also exist. They are all driven by the infernal race for clicks. Today, the latter can be seen - sometimes wrongly - as a measure of the quality of a composition. We no longer listen to an album, but to tracks, or we compose playlists. What if we told you that streaming musical benefits private business interests far more than musicians?

Bandcamp: the ideal alternative?

Bandcamp appears to be the most credible option for fairer funding of musicians. The company's philosophy does not involve partnerships with brands. Quite the opposite, in fact. It's not marketing. It's a big music flea market. It's a platform that supports the artist rather than the industry. You probably know that Spotify was born of a joint initiative by the three biggest record companies today.

Bandcamp was founded in 2008 and has been profitable since 2012, as we learn from the fair trade policy explained on their website. How does it work? The company levies a percentage on all sales: 15% for digital items and 10% on physical goods. It also assures that, after deducting processing fees, «the remainder of sales revenue, i.e. around 80% to 85%, goes directly to the artists» it pays daily. This pecuniary transparency contrasts with the difficulty of estimating the precise sum an artist earns per track listened to via Spotify's services. The Swedish company readily talks of royalties, but never tackles the question of musicians' remuneration head-on.

Since 2013 and the announcement of a site for artists, the figure seems to have stagnated at an average of 0.007 CHF per listen, based on an estimate by a group of students from the School of management from Grenoble. In other words, if we omit the money that goes to all the middlemen in the music industry, and after a quick calculation, a musician who logs a thousand listens to a track on Spotify earns just 7 Swiss francs. On the other hand, if he sells a single digital album for 20 francs on Bandcamp, he will earn twice as much. If the American company's policy is true, then the exact amount would be 17 francs.

And let's not forget that a Spotify listen earns the musician an average of 0.007 francs, while a track sold for 1 franc on Bandcamp represents a profit of 80 centimes. So we understand that the two platforms don't share the same goal.

Two distinct platforms

Now it's time to distinguish between two different offers. On the one hand, Spotify works with majors and offers an income that depends directly on the number of listens. This obviously favors the enrichment of already «confirmed» artists, or the success of hits that are listened to over and over again without any real interest in the people who composed them. The Swedish company's algorithms don't always go in the direction of musical inventiveness. They also comfort users in their tastes and redirect them towards listening to the same type of music. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, even if we can't say that curiosity is really stimulated by the Swedish company.

On the other hand, Bandcamp gives the impression of being a record store with an almost infinite selection of independent music. A podcast Weekly also compiles the favorites of all users. The American company also seems to be betting on transparency, and offers a website where intermediaries - promotion, marketing, administrative, etc. - do not exist. These are direct sales from the musician to the listener.

While the business models are distinct, music listening also differs from one platform to another. For example, Spotify enables users to make playlists, Bandcamp does not offer this option. What's more, the Swedish company lets you download tracks for offline listening via the app for smartphone. In contrast, the Bandcamp application allows users to listen to purchased tracks only when the smartphone is connected. In short, the former platform offers greater freedom of use, while the latter goes a long way towards providing a decent income for the musician who has produced his or her music.

Write to the author: alexandre.waelti@leregardlibre.com