Why Free Isn’t Free, Nor Is It Forever: Reactions To Bandcamp Charging For Free Downloads
Great services such as Bandcamp can’t stay free forever.
In an attempt to diversify their revenue streams and create a more sustainable future for their service, the company switched from a free to a paid model. So too, in hoping to unburden their system of the users that were using the site as a means to give away free downloads, instead of the ecommerce platform that its intended to be; they’ve also decided to start charging for free downloads.
This move opened up an interesting conversation within the Hypebot community and many interesting points were made by readers of the site.
Bob Cramer, Chairman and CEO of Nimbit, asserted, “offering everything free, forever isn't the real world.” He went onto say that “the realities of business are pretty simple—the only way to continue to build great products for customers is to stay in business; and the only way to stay in business is to find a way to make ‘enough money’ to survive and thrive.”
Curator of Fingertips Music Jeremy Schlosberg agreed with Cramer wholeheartedly. He says he looks “forward to when the web community matures past the type of 'magical thinking' that would deny this. A company offering a valued service deserves financial support, not groans of dismay.”
Perhaps due to the affinity that artists on Bandcamp have for the service, not too many complaints were to be found. One commenter chimed in to say that SoundCloud is looking better and better each day, while another said that they weren’t sure if Bandcamp is “worth it” anymore for emerging artists.
Constantine Roussos of .MUSIC reasoned that, “If a band is not willing to invest 2 Starbucks coffees a month in their band then there is an inherent problem. It is probably a lack of confidence in themselves and their music.” To which Roussos concluded, “If people think that Bandcamp is not worth more than free then they should not pay. If they believe that they are getting value and the site is worth something perhaps they should speak to Bandcamp and explain what is preventing them from paying and why they believe they should pay nothing to Bandcamp for the service they are getting and is helping them.”
Still, other members of the Hypebot community remained positive. Jared said that, “Bandcamp is an awesome service and is probably worth what they are asking…” But, he says, this is “a site that sold itself (and allowed others to sell it as) being a costless platform without advertising etc.” Though, Ictus75 summed this situation up best, “Nothing free lasts forever. While I'd love for all Bandcamp services to remain free, I'm realistic that somewhere they need to make money so they can keep offering their services."
Free isn’t free, nor is it forever. As a business, Bandcamp needs to remain profitable, to ensure their future and continued use of their product. If that means charging for free downloads, then so be it. Schlosberg, however, does raise an interesting question: Do we exist in a web community, founded on a type of "magical thinking," that would deny Bandcamp this attempt to generate more revenue and stay afloat?
Of course it does. The bottom line is, people want as much service as possible for free.
The high-quality options for no cost whatsoever is what led people to the site.
Many folks will quit the site, but I still think it’s a good move for them. Bandcamp is awesome, and will be utilized by serious musicians for a while.
(My projects get a few thousand listens…but me being a broke student I may be forced to move for my next project. Or make money off of it. Whichever is easier)
I completely disagree with Bob about offering free isn’t the real world. There are many open source sites which flourish such as a Wikipedia and of course Google. It is such a one track mind to think revenue can only come from sales of music. Typical of why we’re in this mess.
Secondly, music is so vulnerable after being digitalized that the value of a song is almost $0. Money will be exchanged for quality content. If Bandcamp can offer that, brilliant. I hope it works for them!
We’re bring out a new service at the end of October using the freemium model aimed at independent and unsigned artists, but with a twist… I’m gonna be watching bandcamp (and the hundered other rollercoaster platforms) very closely.
p.s. any queries regarding this exciting new project email me shea@thetapmusic.com
I would like to ask musicians this question:
“How do you expect to make money on the web if you are not willing to invest in premium services to increase the chances of getting paid, and save money on your time management?”
On the other side of the spectrum is the consumer. They want free music. So the greatest majority of musicians want free services and most of the consumers want to get free music. This is why anyone selling content is having problems.
I suggest more music companies start offering better premium services and charge for it. The musicians who think free is better than services that can save them time and make them money can use average free services.
The artists that are all about “free” really do not understand the value of their time and services that can increase their sales and decrease time spent on online endeavors. Even a small percentage increase of sales using premium services can offset the price you pay per month. If services can help you sell more, then by doing the math it is obvious there is value there.
Operating a business for free is worst idea known to man unless you want to get eyeballs and sell to a 3rd party. Running a business on the idea of making money through an exit strategy is disastrous.
My recommendation: Build better tools, offer better services, help musicians make money easier, faster and more conveniently. Offer tools that surpass the free counterparts. Then charge them for that value. If the artists think it is worth it they will pay for it. All they need to know is that the “payback” of the premium fee surpasses the “payback” of the premium every month.
I think it would be an opportunity to weed out the “chaos” and the sucky bands who do not have the confidence in themselves to invest something for them to go to the next level. Your time is valuable. More time = more time to write better songs and less time spent performing online work.
By the way, Reverbnation is not free. If you are a serious musician with an email list, there is a premium monthly fee of $9.95 for up to 1000 people. $2.95/month to increase your “per song” size from 8MB to 25MB. Also their sitebuilder is $17.95 per month. They have a business model for their serious musicians. Bandcamp is making a great move. If you want companies like these to be innovating in order to help musicians, then it is naive to expect that venture capital or investor dollar should be enough. The sense of entitlement of some musicians is quite amazing, especially for small fees.
The value proposition has to be great. If it is worth paying for it, then pay for it. If not, then give that company feedback how they can improve their services so that you would be willing to pay.
Constantine Roussos
.music
http://music.us
I’m a big fan of Bandcamp’s product, despite the fact that (disclaimer) we partly compete with them with our Bandzoogle store features.
I think the major grudge that some people hold against their latest announcements is that they built their customer base of tens of thousands around a VC-money-fueled free service, offering little transparency as to how they would end up monetizing (probably wasn’t clear to the founders either, as they got started). Only after people had invested time and resources in building and promoting their Bandcamp page do they find out how much it will cost them.
The freemium revenue model that they announced seems reasonable and responsible, but it means that they now charge users for something that they offered for free before. From experience, this is always much harder to do, than, say, developing new features and offering those at a premium (not free).
“Do we exist in a web community, founded on a type of “magical thinking,” that would deny Bandcamp this attempt to generate more revenue and stay afloat?”
Maybe yes for some people who would rather have a full column of ads for “sexy singles in your area”, next to their tracks and artwork, rather than pay for a simple and elegant service.
When building their online presence, artists need to figure out what will work for them in terms of features, but also in terms of how the cost will be structured. Services like Bandzoogle and Tunecore, for example are a fixed cost (per month, or per release, with no % of sales). Bandcamp is freemium with variable revenue-share (and now, premium services). SoundCloud is freemium with premium levels of membership. MySpace and Facebook are free services, but ad-supported, etc…
endless topics for Hypebot articles 😉
I totally agree with Constantine, it really isn’t a lot of money being asked for considering the value that Bandcamp can potentially add for musicians – it’s just a bit of friction caused by the transition (mostly to those who are not receiving that value from Bandcamp for one reason or another).
Maybe a freemium model would have been a smoother change for that group, but I think for most this cost is well justified and in the long run, no big deal.
There is one huge problem with the way Bandcamp is doing this. Bands do not know how effective a free promotion will be so they might have a runaway huge hit that ends up killing them financially. I would have preferred a monthly fee for those wanting to give music away that could have been eliminated if the band met certain commercial thresholds.
The idea of paying for Bandcamp’s services is not the problem, their logic on how to bill for it is poorly considered and not scalable. If anyone from bandcamp is reading this, call me, I like your services some of my bands use you like kidneythieves and Krister Linder. This move is in my opinion, the wrong strategy to a legitimate end goal.
if bandcamp started out by charging people to distribute their music for free, how many artists would have taken the plunge? zero. because there are plenty of previously established services out there that allow you to offer free downloads to your fans but charge you a fee on the back end to do so. i don’t fault bandcamp for trying to monetize this, as many of their competitors have done, what i take issue with is how they made the switch.
artists have invested time and resources into the bandcamp product offerings, getting the word out there not just for their own career, but at the same time, building the band camp brand and market awareness. affiliating their artist name with bandcamp. exposing their fans to bandcamp. getting signups for bandcamp. are these benefits to band camp NOT worth the few pennies a download they charge for “free” downloads?
these bandcamp guys are shortsighted, and totally f’ed their loyal customers. i promise you. in 12 months, no one, and i mean NO ONE will be using band camp.
the guy nailed it who said that band camp should have kept that service free while up-selling premium service offerings. band camp should hire that dude as a consultant with that huge revenue stream that the paid free downloads are generating. bravo d*bags. there’s no going back. you’ve lost your value and your cred. can’t wait to see who replaces band camp as leader of the pride.
Cheers!
don fabio
The amount of money to top up your free downloads is insignificant and Bandcamp continues to provide an awesome service.
My initial reaction was that I felt a little duped but it’s a business, a really good business, and they make a very professional service available to musicians like myself who are not raking in the big bucks.
I think they need to keep upping their game though. It’s fair that they take a cut from sales and limit free downloads but Bandcamp need to offer more customisation of their tools to stay ahead.
I’ll stick with them for now because they provide a ‘polished’ way for me to display my wares but I’ll definitely keep my eye open for other options now though. I suspect if I was starting from scratch today I’d go straight to someone like Bandzoogle.
P.S. If anyone from Bandcamp reads this PLEASE include a ‘Name’ field in the email signup section. It’s rubbish not being able to address subcribers by name.
i’m positively relieved that bandcamp has finally implemented a way of making money.
all the time and effort i’ve put into our bandcamp page would be wasted if they ran out of money now and had to shut the service down.
i’ve been a user for nearly two years. at the time of signing up there was no ambiguity – they were looking for the best way to make money whilst getting a kick-ass product up and running.
the revenue share + download cost approach is actually ideal for artists just starting out. i simply pay based on my own usage levels and i’m not lumped into some artificially constructed subscription model.
its a matter of pride for me that my music is presented beautifully for our fans, so this is a small investment worth making.
“i promise you. in 12 months, no one, and i mean NO ONE will be using band camp.”
I will be. It’s a good service, the pricing is reasonable, and 1000 free downloads per 500USD in sales means many people won’t even need to put any extra money in to continue giving away free tracks.
oooooooook guys look, lets just keep this simple.
Most artists don’t get paid for the music they create, even though they have to pay for studio time, or mixing and mastering costs. Most musicians that are starting in this industry are broke, most musicians don’t want to pay for something if is not going to at the very least pay for itself. So I as an artist feel like I should not have to pay third party company’s to sell my product, and make a profit from me, for just adding my music to their platform. Having said that, bandcamp was great and It will be greatly missed. But the fact of the matter is that a lot of people are now going to look for a service that IS free.
And their image as professional musicians will suffer for it unless they can find something as sleek and polished looking as Bandcamp.
I would agree with you, but if bandcamp did exist and was successful, there will be others, everyday I see similiar companies poping up everywere.
No one seems to be mentioning the key caveat to Bandcamp’s “pay for free downloads” scheme: for every $500 you drive in sales, they give you another 1,000 free download. This tells me that their aim isn’t to squeeze artists for cash by holding their free-downloads hostage — it’s to push artists to take the service seriously, sell stuff, and grow a business. The freeloaders are eating up a ton of bandwidth, which costs Bandcamp money. Giving artists a little nudge to take some initiative and make some money helps reduce their costs and still keeps their service essentially free. Whether it’s a smart business idea or not, we’ll see. But it’s certainly not an “evil” move, and Bandcamp is not “screwing” anybody by making it.
No one seems to be mentioning the key caveat to Bandcamp’s “pay for free downloads” scheme: for every $500 you drive in sales, they give you another 1,000 free download. This tells me that their aim isn’t to squeeze artists for cash by holding their free-downloads hostage — it’s to push artists to take the service seriously, sell stuff, and grow a business. The freeloaders are eating up a ton of bandwidth, which costs Bandcamp money. Giving artists a little nudge to take some initiative and make some money helps reduce their costs and still keeps their service essentially free. Whether it’s a smart business idea or not, we’ll see. But it’s certainly not an “evil” move, and Bandcamp is not “screwing” anybody by making it.
You’re totally right Jason
I’ve been trying to work out where I stand on the whole free downloads/freemium/pay what you want/set price downloads debate over the last year.
I swung too far in the direction of “all downloads should be free” but I’ve moved back to the strategy of not restricting any kind of online streaming but at least getting an email address in exchange for downloads. I’ll probably move towards cheap paid downloads/free with email address in the future.
Free downloads should be used but they should be used as part of a bigger strategy.