Remember how Bandcamp waived its revenue share for 24 hours last week, which meant that all artists that sold something on the site would get 100% of the money? Yeah well the site had crunched the numbers and it turns out that collectively, musicians took in a whopping $7.38m over the sales.
In a blog post about the 24 hour COVID-19 sale, Bandcamp said that in a normal Friday it would probably sell around 47,000 items of music or merch on the site. Over the special sale on March 20, the site saw nearly 800,000 items fly out the metaphorical door. EIGHT. HUNDRED. THOUSAND.
That’s a bloody huge number, so go and give yourselves a big pat on the back for that one, mates.
At the peak of the sale, when people were going absolutely boonta on the plastic, Bandcamp was seeing 11 items per second going through the online checkouts. Hooly dooly. If anything, their servers must be fucken incredible to be able to withstand that level of traffic. Can someone get them to share their website secrets with the Aus government please? Lord knows they need the help.
Bandcamp were not super clear on whether this was going to be a one-off thing of if it’ll bring the sale back for another 24 hours of power while we’re all self-isolating and the industry is having to pivot to online gigs and sales, but it’s so good to know that our money has gone straight to the pockets of people that have seen the rug pulled out from underneath them.
Get around your faves, gotta love it.
