Direct to fan platform Bandcamp has launched a set of
music discovery features that allow fans to showcase their Bandcamp music collections on a dedicated page, follow artists, explore music of like-minded fans and add to
wishlists. "In developing these features," said Bandcamp in a blog post, "we’ve been guided by one overriding objective: grow revenue for artists while keeping the core Bandcamp experience as simple and clean as possible". If the site's beta tests are any indicator, it's working.
High Friction Sharing Drives Spending Increase
There's a lot of buzz about the concept of “frictionless sharing”: play music and the activity is automatically shared with friends. Bandcamp For Fans is the opposite: a social music discovery system based on the high-friction concept of ownership. "If someone is passionate enough about a record to spend money on it – to actually support the artist who made it, and perhaps even write a bit about why they love it," says the startup, "- that makes me much more likely listen to that record, and perhaps add it to my collection as well."
Bandcamp says that high-friction sharing works: "During our beta, fans who created accounts increased their spending by 40% on average, and the small test group now drives as many sales to artists as all Twitter traffic to all Bandcamp sites combined."
To become part of Bandcamp For Fans, users must purcahse. If they’ve already made purchases through the site: http://bandcamp.com/fans and follow the instructions.
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