Bandcamp has hit a new milestone. Thanks to our blog brother MaxR of Metal Bandcamp, we learned this morning that there are now 80 labels who have established beachheads on Bandcamp, with a total of 3,715 albums featured.
No one follows metal happenings on Bandcamp like MaxR. In addition to publishing reviews by a growing cadre of writers, he has methodically been assembling a list of all the metal labels who have availed themselves of the platform. Even better, he has compiled all the labels, alphabetically arranged, into a table with links that will take you to each label’s offerings. We’ve reproduced that table after the jump. This is a work in progress, and if you’d like to be notified by e-mail when he updates the listing of labels, go HERE and click the “Subscribe by email” link at the bottom
I suppose every true metal fan knows about Bandcamp by now, but I’ll say again what I’ve said many times before since discovering the existence of Bandcamp when it was in its infancy: Every band and every label needs to be there, at least for the purpose of streaming music, if not for selling it. Doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t have your music available elsewhere — it’s not an exclusive option. But it’s a very good one, and in this day and age, if you’re not giving fans a chance to hear your music before they buy, then you’re going to miss sales (wherever you sell your releases) and you’re inviting piracy even by some people who consider themselves scrupulous.
Many bands and labels don’t want to sell their music digitally — they’re going the vinyl-only or tape-only route. But that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t give fans a chance to hear the music first.
As for bands and labels who do want to sell digitally, Bandcamp will take a cut of the sales proceeds and you do have to be able to receive payments via PayPal (which is an option that’s foreclosed to some people and in some countries). But the last time I checked, the Bandcamp cut is less than what iTunes and Amazon MP3 take. Bandcamp also offers fans the option of following bands and labels and receiving e-mail alerts whenever new releases are added.
And creating a Bandcamp page for your releases is easy. I’ve done it for NCS (yes, we do have one release that’s available for free download), and if I can do it, then anyone over the age of 12 can do it. Okay, that may be a slight exaggeration. But seriously, it’s not that difficult. It would probably be even easier if someone would create a short step-by-step tutorial; I suspect someone already has, though I haven’t looked. And there are places on the net like this one with useful tips about how to make your Bandcamp presence even more effective.
Okay, enough with the promo pitch for Bandcamp. Here’s MaxR’s current table of labels on Bandcamp:
22 Responses to “METAL ON BANDCAMP: A NEW MILESTONE”
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DOPETHRONE should be on there!!!
never been to bandcamp….don’t see myself ever using it.
From the man who “doesn’t believe in buying music” this does not come across as the shock you may have meant it to be.
you really should give it a try; there are so many excellent bands there, and the digital downloads are very affordable.
Now that Bandcamp has a wishlist feature I can handily group all the music I need to buy so as not to forget about them. Quite a nifty feature and I already loved bandcamp as it was!
http://satanikrecordings.bandcamp.com/ nr 81
http://plagueisland.bandcamp.com/ nr 82
http://burningworldrecords.bandcamp.com/ nr 83
http://download.bonesbrigaderecords.com/ nr 84
http://tdonrecords.bandcamp.com/ nr85
I reckon this is getting pedantic to the brink of pathetic but you need check out these two as well:
http://alertaantifascistarecords.bandcamp.com/
http://moshpittragedy.bandcamp.com/
anarcho labels with lots of free stuff and some quality releases.
Moshpit Tragedy and Burning World are already on the list 🙂
I will check out the others. But in general I only add label Bandcamps where at least half the albums are “metal” (there are so many HC, punk labels out there). Moshpit Tragedy was a close call – Alerta Antifascitasa and TDON wil probably fall for that rule.
I guess Alerta Antifascista is very punk in esthetic and ideology but their music ranges from crust to doom to black metal. Anyway it’s your list, your call. I guess stoner rock doesn’t fit the criteria neither? Cause Small Stone records has a huge bandcamp page as well.
I will check out Alerta Antifascita. And for your question: Stoner rock no. Stoner metal yes.
I was going to ask when did the TDON roster become not shit (there’s more than just a couple of good bands on their bandcamp page, which is shocking)…
Then I realised that, looking down the list, they’ve just switched trends. Ah well.
Here are a few more to add to that list:
http://amputatedveinrecords.bandcamp.com/
http://myriadrecords.bandcamp.com/
http://totaldeathcore.bandcamp.com/
The ones posted on totaldeathcore’s page are where the band has started to branch out and carry artist like the monolith does, this is how I found The Zygoma Disposal. Myriad has great bands like The Schoenberg Automaton and Ever Forthright, while I know some people enjoy Slice The Cake as well. Amputated Vein has some fantastic bands on their roster. Slaughterbox anyone?
*where the site has started to…
Austin,
One of the problems with the list, is that it is tied to the rest of the site. Labels are added together with a review of one of the albums on their Bandcamp. Some labels are waiting for that to happen (Patac, Daemon Worship comes to mind). Others won’t be added unless someone besides me writes a review, as I have limited tolerance for core bands, and modern slam/tech/brutal stuff.
But I’ll check out Zygoma Disposal now.
Oh, and review submissions are always welcome 🙂
And yet Century Media, Metal Blade, Van Records, and probably other(s) that I am forgetting haven’t signed up. GET TO IT LABELS!
Nuclear Blast.
i was iffy about Bandcamp at first, but i’ve been purchasing music from there pretty regularly for the last couple months. it’s just an excellent resource for up and coming bands, and even some established acts.
This is awesome, Bandcamp has become my venue of choice for buying music. Down here in the dark depths of New Zealand it’s pretty rare you can find a copy of anything but mainstream metal in a store, which means having to import everything, pay for shipping, and wait 2 – 4 weeks. But with lossless FLAC downloads Bandcamp is just fucking awesome. My order of preference would be something like bandcamp > buy physical direct from band/label > buy physical from other online store > iTunes.
I only really use iTunes as a last resort – prefer to boycott them for their shitty geolocation blocking, where I can’t buy some releases because my credit card is registered in NZ, but releases aren’t available in the NZ store. Same goes for Amazon – no way to purchase digital releases from them while in NZ. Who knows, maybe there’s some way around it with Paypal and a DNS re-routing service, or if they start accepting Bitcoin. With this great worldwide digital distribution system known as the internet enabling anyone with a connection to buy your music digitally, it really seems like some dinosaur labels want you to pirate with all the loops you have to jump through based on your geographic location. Which brings me back to why Bandcamp is so awesome – there’s none of that shit.
3 more to add
http://nykta.bandcamp.com/
http://noisegoat.bandcamp.com/
http://razorbleed.bandcamp.com/
I won’t add Nykta, too many bands associated with NS. The other two looks promising, thanks.