Apparently great[1] and profitable since 2012[2].
[1] https://daily.bandcamp.com/2017/01/24/everything-is-terrific...
That said, music is extremely portable, so it's easy to buy from several online shops and combine it all in your own library later.
Based on that I sometimes remind myself that, unlike streaming services, where you are forced to put all your eggs in one basket and can only have one source, with music sales there might be other options too. There's actually a free market out there!
That's extremely rare on today's internet, and I want to support that. Therefore I consciously try to buy stuff from other sources too, like Ninjashop, 7 digital, Waste, etc. But it's just very easy to come back to bandcamp.
This is completely at odds with securely streaming unreleased music, as a preview for the final album. They always have charged producers, and now are charging both sides for (in many cases) the same content.
This shifted their product focus and shafted producers who didn't have a major label deal that could afford the streaming SoundCloud partnership deal. Basically giving the finger to the early community that made them popular.
I would have focused on the producers and dissemination of their tracks that led to more and better discovery. I believe producers would pay a premium for that -- they already do with other forms of media delivery.
The truth is that users are not loyal. If you are offering something for free, they will be happy to take it, and they will have no qualms about moving on when you stop giving them the free stuff that they came for. Selling eyeballs is a very tough business. People who want a realistic chance to make money should have plans besides "sell ads".
Yep. There's simply no money in just "pushing bits" anymore. That business has been consolidated by people like Google and Amazon.
You have to both provide a valuable service, as well as create a "network effect" around your product. Otherwise you're easily susceptible to being out competed.
Couldn't the whole internet be generalized as "file hosting with a bunch of links"? A "file host" is a company whose primary purpose is for you to upload a file and give the link to someone else; they're a middleman that exists only because a more convenient/direct means of distribution to the intended network isn't available. This does not make the company nearly loud enough to establish its own identity/user base.
Facebook has always been its own repository of people intelligence. It was never just an "upload your photos here". Such platforms, like Photobucket or Imgur, sometimes prosper for a while, until the communication channels that reach the intended audience directly offer something easier. (imgur is going down now as reddit introduced its own image host last year)
(Not that I use it.)
Realise that the flipside of such services is their real customers -- the adverts side. For online advertising, the two largest agencies claim over 60% of the market, and are named "Google" and "Facebook".
Everyone else is an also-ran. Which for any ads purchaser means "a lot more work for a lot less reach".
It‘s my impression that the Bandcamp userbase is very loyal and full of music enthusiasts - at. least I buy there weekly, about 5-10 releases.
bandcamp has a very different business model from soundcloud. it's set up to cater to artists selling music, and they take a cut of any music sold through bandcamp. This is a valuable service and they charge a straightforward fee for providing it. the downside of this model is that it assumes people will buy music. Which, to be clear, they very much do today. Streaming is popular but there are still tons of people actually buying music.
soundcloud's early business model was for artists to pay for more storage, or something, and in recent years, I'm honestly not sure what their business model is.
So, not surprising that bandcamp is profitable and doing well and has apparently not raised tons of money yet gotten to profitability, and also not surprising that soundcloud, which has taken a lot of VC capital, is not going to be betting on a business model that seems to be going away (but in the meantime is presumably quite profitable).
Does SoundCloud see itself as an audio streaming service now, as opposed to an audio hosting service? That seems like a focus shift away from where they started, and puts them up against behemoths like Spotify. Maybe that's related to why they're struggling.
Tangentially: does anyone have any idea of how Bandcamp is doing?