My bandcamp strategy for 2025
Bandcamp recently announced their Bandcamp Friday schedule for 2025. I’m honestly just happy this is still a thing at all; Songtradr (Bandcamp’s owner) could easily have shut it down after they laid off half the Bandcamp staff upon acquisition. But they seem to want to keep the goodwill of their artist community (thankfully), so we still get this nice thing — even if it’s not all year round.
As a reminder, Bandcamp Friday is a day on which Bandcamp waives its normally 15% revenue cut – instead, if someone buys your music or merch on a Bandcamp Friday, all the money (other than credit card fees, usually 3-4%) go to you, the artist. If you don’t want to read their blurb, here are the Bandcamp Friday dates worth remembering in 2025:
- February 7 (This is not technically a Bandcamp Friday, but they’re donating their revenue share to California wildfire relief, which is admirable and important)
- March 7
- May 2
- August 1
- September 5
- October 3
- December 5
My plan for Bandcamp Fridays
As I wrote last year, I (got lucky and) backed into a strategy that somewhat worked for me, combining:
- A backlog of music I could trickle out over the course of the year
- Intentionally-timed big releases lining up with Bandcamp Fridays
- Finding good causes to donate Bandcamp Friday proceeds
- Promoting all of this organically, almost entirely on Threads
I think I can largely repeat this in 2025, with a few tweaks.
Incorporate Bluesky & Reddit as promotional channels. I still have a decently large (for me) audience on Threads, but I also see the platform waning a bit as a place to cultivate community. The recent policy changes and the imminent introduction of ads feel icky but more importantly mean that Threads will become (to a degree) a place where the loudest and richest capture the most attention. Reddit still seems like a place for healthy discourse (I think?) and most of my music contacts have migrated to Bluesky.
Slow it down. I was releasing something every 2 weeks in 2024. This was really exciting and I think helped me amass my audience quickly, but it came at the expense of my exhaustion. And I suspect my small audience may have gotten tired of me a bit. I want to try releasing less frequently on Bandcamp, perhaps monthly, and focus most of my “promo” on this cadence. I’ll still release to streaming services, but I’ve found that almost no value has come from focusing my promo on the streaming releases (without paying for ads, which I have an aversion to for increasing reasons).
Milk my previous work. I released 3 full-length albums in 18 months. This was awesome but probably overkill and not a realistic pace to keep up. I have a few singles I may put out this year, but 2025 may be best suited for some companion releases building on those 3 albums in a new way.
- I put out an album of piano music last year, and I am keen to do more of these. This has been a great way to test an even shorter record-to-release timeframe (I can record solo piano music quite easily) and mix tons of different source material into a cohesive work.
- I also commissioned a compilation of covers of some of my songs made by indie artists I’ve met online. I loved the experience of making this, and I’m keen to do similar things projects again. The last one was covers — the next one will be an album of remixes.
- I had so much fun covering my buddies Death Waits, and I have a few ideas for covers of other artist friendlies of mine. This could make for either a few single releases or a covers EP – I’ve got options!
All of this allows me to have a consistent set of releases and not commit to a full-length album. I’m buying myself time.
Here’s what I’m thinking for 2025: Have something to release the first (or second) Friday of each month. Not everything warrants a Bandcamp release, but at least have something for the Bandcamp Fridays. Every other month can be for trickling out releases to streaming. Here’s a current sketch:
- Jan 10: “empty me” (death waits cover) single release
- Feb 7: “please please please listen to me I’m begging” single release
- Mar 7: the LP3 remix album
- Throughout March & April: trickle out LP3 remixes to the streaming services
- May 2: a new piano music collection
- May through July: trickle out piano music and outstanding remixes to the streaming services
- Aug 1: perhaps another cover single
- Sep 5: new original single
- Oct 3: some kind of EP release
- Throughout October and November: trickle out the EP to streaming
- Dec 5: holiday single???
I hope this inspires some ideas for you, fellow struggling independent musicians!
