On a typical day, fans use Bandcamp to purchase about 81,000 pieces of music and merch. That's resulted in more than $1.8 billion in sales with about 85% of that going straight to independent artist and labels.
Multiple times each year, Bandcamp also waives its fees. So far in 2026, Bandcamp Friday have led to more than $7 million in sales for indies.
We wondered what can artists do to get their share? So we asked J. Edward Keyes, Bandcamp Editorial Director, how music and artists get discovered on the world's busiest indie music platform.
In addition to his years helping guide Bandcamp, Keyes has written about music for Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, SPIN, Entertainment Weekly, the Village Voice, and more.
HYPEBOT: Bandcamp is unique in their support of independent artists and labels. It's easy to see is as a vital marketplace, but how does it also work as a place for music discovery?
KEYES: In so many ways. At Bandcamp, we believe in human discovery, and so all of the methods we have to discover new music are driven by people rather than formulas. So if you want a quick and easy way to find something new, you can go to Bandcamp's Discover page where you'll find the albums and merch items other Bandcamp fans are buying. You can filter by genre, region, merch type--if you want vinyl, tapes, CDs, T-Shirts--you can get lost in that page for hours. I would know--I have.
We also have a ton of ways to discover music through Bandcamp Daily. For the last 10 years, we've been covering music from all over the world, whether it's via Scene Reports, artist interviews, genre guides… And if you just want a quick roundup of the week's best releases, our Essential Releases column continues to be one of our most popular features. The Bandcamp Daily homepage is the spot to start digging in.
But people discover music all kinds of ways, and so Bandcamp Daily has a whole bunch of different ways for people to explore.
We've got a lineup of radio shows, spotlighting electronic music, metal, hip-hop, indie rock, and video game music, as well as our jazz and soul-focused show Bandcamp Selects. Every show is built around an artist interview and features killer new music in its specific genre.
We've also expanded into video - so if you follow Bandcamp on Instagram, not only will you see a gallery of great merch photos and album art, we've also got a recurring video series A Day in the Life, giving viewers a look into what it's like to be an independent artist or label today. We've got our new unboxing series showcasing fantastic merch, and we've got short-form video content that adapts some of our Bandcamp Daily stories.
We also turn some of our monthly genre columns into short-form videos as well. And we've also got a rapidly growing Substack. Every Wednesday we run something called Cool Band Alert, where we spotlight one artist we're really excited about.
On the first Friday of every month we run a piece called "I Love this Record," where we ask a writer to introduce our readers to an album they really love. And on the last Friday of every month we have The Helpline, where we answer questions sent in by our readers.
So basically: However you like to find out about new music, we've got a way for you to do it.
HYPEBOT: Beyond just putting their music and merch up, what should artists do to cultivate new fans on Bandcamp?
KEYES: The simplest way is by making Bandcamp the primary place you direct fans to support your music.
If fans are buying your music on Bandcamp, you get into that Discover page--which leads to more people finding it--you show up in our Now Selling ticker…
You can also "follow" other fans on Bandcamp, and we send out a newsletter rounding up all of the things the people you follow on Bandcamp have purchased. So if one of your fans buys your music on Bandcamp, everyone who follows them will be able to see that and check it out for themselves.
We also recommend our hugely popular Listening Parties feature--you can invite people to come listen to your new album together, and hang out in the chat and talk to them as the album plays. They can buy merch as they listen to the album, but even beyond that, it's another great way to foster that human connection that's so important at Bandcamp.
HYPEBOT: As Bandcamp's Daily Editorial Director, do you get tired of the constant hype around playlists, algorithms and social media for marketing music, as if editorial no longer matters?
KEYES: Not really, because it just doesn't bear out in what I'm seeing at Bandcamp.
We've got a growing number of readers both to the Daily and to our Substack, a growing Instagram following, and we've expanded our radio show offerings over the last year.
I think if you want to dig in your heels and define editorial as just written pieces you can do that, but I think it's narrow in scope.
Editorial to me is human-powered discovery - something that I think is truly of growing importance in the looming shadow of AI. That human-powered discovery can take many forms, just as it has for decades.
Not only that, Bandcamp isn't really for the "lean back" listener. We're for the people who really engage with music and--above all else--who care about artists being fairly compensated for their work.
That kind of listener isn't really a "chill vibes playlist" type of person--they want to dig into actual information about the artist, whether that's listening to or reading an interview with them, or accompanying them via video as they go about their day. Those are the kinds of connections that make for a more meaningful, long-lasting relationship with music, and those are the kinds of people we're interested in serving with what we do.
We're looking for people who care about music as much as we do.
