There Was This One Time at BandCamp...

One of the things I really like about running a small record label and sound design business is the fact that I am not shackled to any larger companies telling me what to do. This leaves me free to try out emerging technologies for launching music projects.

One of these such projects is a Web 2.0 site called Bandcamp. Bandcamp is a site that helps you promote and sell your music to new audiences. They have a few features that I am really keen on trying out.

Firstly they allow a listener to stream an entire album for free. This means I can finally get rid of those dodgy 30 second snippets from the Haunted House Records site. For certain releases I can say whether a listener can download the album for free or pay for it. When downloading an album you have a choice of different formats to choose from like mp3 through to FLAC and Apple lossless formats. This in it self is a great thing as I have had loads of people ask when my albums will be available in FLAC format.

The interesting aspect of the site is that you can allow a listener to pay what they like for an album over a set limit. I have set the limit to $5 min. So you can say what to pay over that. This should be an interesting experiment.

Since I set up the creature bandcamp page I have had loads of people download music from there all of which I can track through bandcamps stats system. This is really good considering I havn't even promoted the site to anyone yet.

For the next album (which is pretty much ready except for final CD artwork) I am going to take a 3 stage approach to its release an an experiment. First I will release it on bandcamp. Then the following month it will go onto the main paid for digital download stores like iTunes and Amazon. Then following that I will release the pysical CD version.

Anyway, check out the creature bandcamp page here.