I'm wasting $1,000 betting against Bandcamp just by being here on this website. That said, I turned up something interesting when re-uploading a January 2022 video to my YouTube channel. Now, in 2025, Bandcamp's ticker says, "Fans have paid artists $1.43 billion using Bandcamp, and $194 million in the last year." That's versus $0.881 billion / $209 million in my screenshot from the video. That's fascinating!
Bandcamp is shrinking, and the share of its all-time sales that have happened in the past year is more than 50% smaller. Did the pig in the python of 2020/21 pass through with no chance of return? Looks like Bandcamp's founders sold at a peak!
My top takeaways from this realization are:
- Don't blame any label whose Bandcamp revenue peaked in 2020/21 and has stagnated since; that's the baseline.
- I'm short Bandcamp as a platform myself, even though I work with labels who depend on it. Assuming my own capital is at stake, I'd migrate away from Bandcamp now to avoid a bigger technical debt bill later when it crashes and you need to migrate. There's a platform called Ochre that I've seen around lately, but I'm sticking with my Canadian company of choice here on this website: Shopify.
- Most people under 20 have never heard of Bandcamp and couldn't fathom using it as a fan.