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[jefflewis]

I'm trying an experiment and offering a bunch of my album for sale on Bandcamp.com which seems like a convenient new way for artists to sell stuff and for people to buy music. Like iTunes, you have the option of buying individual tracks for a dollar each or whole albums for 8 or 10 dollars or other amounts. UNlike iTunes, the sales money just goes directly into the artists' Paypal account, with Bandcamp taking only 15% of it, which is a much better deal for artists than iTunes or pretty much any record label - which in turn allows artists to sell stuff for cheaper. I'm sure there's a catch, it seems too simple and effective! It seems VERY easy for artists to put their work up for sale - this would be a GREAT way for somebody like Andre Herman Dune/Stanley Brinks to keep all of his huge discography available, for example, without having to manufacture physical copies.
Anyway, my page there is
www.JeffreyLewis.Bandcamp.com
and I'll keep experimenting with what albums are available, and what adjustments I can make to the page layout, artwork, links, bonus materials, etc.
In fact this could be a good way to have old out-of-print recordings be forever available to people that want them...
the more I think about it, the more ideas I have for this!
I'm sure you guys will come up with some ideas too - and if any of you post your own albums on Bandcamp maybe you'll have some interesting experiences and tips to share.

[granfalloon]

very neat! I hope you make some good money with this.

I'm curious... how much does the song-maker get from iTunes sales? though if there is one I guess you'd have to factor in what the label decided to give you.

[scott]

I've been happy with bandcamp so far. Though i've made very few sales, I haven't had any troubles. It's definitely easy and convenient to use, plus I never understood how iTunes worked. And regarding Stanley Brinks, I recently discovered he had a bandcamp with quite a few of his albums available which is great. If only I could find more!
_________________
http://scottcherties.com

[jefflewis]

As far as I know I've never gotten any money from iTunes!
AND it seems to be a complicated process to make your music available at the iTunes store AND I think iTunes takes a pretty big cut of the money AND you can't customize your own artist page at the iTunes store like you can with Bandcamp. With Bandcamp you're supposed to be able to customize your page so much that it just becomes exactly like any other page on your own website, with all the same design elements and colors and links etc. I just haven't figured out how to do this yet!
I'm currently in the process of putting "Tapes From The Crypt" up on Bandcamp since I'm all out of CD copies.

[granfalloon]

that's laughable.

and now I feel extremely bitter over those two songs of yours I bought with gift card money.

[lauragek]

Well, it looks good so far! I feel very lucky that I bought a "real" copy of Tapes From The Crypt just two weeks ago, though

Is it possible to put in the little booklets that come with the cds on Bandcamp as well, because that is a really big reason for me to want a "real" copy of every cd, instead of a download.

[jefflewis]

About putting the booklets on Bandcamp -

I did indeed upload the booklet for Tapes From the Crypt as an experiment, so people who buy it on Bandcamp will theoretically be able to download the little comic book and the little page of liner notes. Not sure how satisfying this is to look at on a screen, and certainly not as cool as buying an album and opening it up to discover that it folds out with some nice art and/or information inside.

Tapes From the Crypt is actually a perfect example of an album that i SHOULD have up on Bandcamp, because I think Major Matt at Olive Juice might have only a few physical copies left to sell, and I think I only have a few copies of my own left at home. That means when those last 4 or 5 physical copies sell, I'm faced with the choice of spending about a thousand dollars to manufacture another batch, with the artwork, etc, at the CD-pressing plant. NOW with Bandcamp I can let the physical copies sell out and not worry about having to spend more money to make a new printing!
BUT maybe it makes a little less sense to use Bandcamp for my other albums, like Come On Board, because I just spent a lot of money to make real CD copies of the album, so maybe it makes more sense for me to be concentrating on selling those real copies rather than giving people the easier option of downloading and thus perhaps leaving me (and Major Matt at Olive Juice) stuck with a big pile of CDs that people are less likely to buy?
I just have to see how this experiment unfolds.
I've only had the Bandcamp page up for about 3 days, and already I've sold 3 albums from it, so there's about 25 dollars suddenly now magically sitting in my Paypal account! That's basically like sitting at home doing nothing while $ for food for the day magically appears for me!

To clarify about iTunes - When I said that I've never gotten any money from iTunes I didn't mean that iTunes is stealing all my money from the sales of my albums/songs at the iTunes store. Since my record label Rough Trade does the dealing with iTunes, whatever money iTunes makes from my sales goes to Rough Trade I imagine, and then Rough Trade uses that money to pay themselves back for the costs of my last CD and when there's any leftover money/profit Rough Trade splits that with me 50/50. Which means that by the time it gets to me, if it ever gets to me, it's a lot less than the Bandcamp system of having the money go directly to the artist from the buyer.

Right now Rough Trade still owns the limited licenses for 3 of my albums, so I can't put those albums up on Bandcamp because I'd be violating Rough Trade's license rights, until the license expires. But that's okay, because I have all the other albums.