Forget Spotify – I’m Going All-In on Bandcamp for Music in 2025, Here’s Why You Should Too
Now that the Spotify Wrapped hype is dying down, I’ve had a chance to reflect on my music consumption habits over the past year. I’ve listened to over 48,000 minutes of music on Spotify alone this year, accounting for about 14% of my waking hours.
That’s a lot of time and a lot of streams, but as we all know, that doesn’t necessarily mean a lot of money ends up in artists’ pockets. How could it be? I pay the equivalent of $14 a month for my Spotify premium membership, and at a going rate of around 800 streams a month, there’s room for a penny or two per play at most.
According to Ditto Music, Spotify pays a maximum of $0.005 per stream. I’m not the first person to think this is a bit unfair – we’ve seen calls for boycotts of, among others Neil Young And Joni Mitchellwhile others like the late ones Prince their discographies have been removed (although this was later restored.)
But no matter how crooked I find Spotify’s payout mechanism, I can’t stay mad at consumers who got a good deal. Spotify is cheap, easy to use, and one of the most supported apps in modern technology history, found on smartphones, tablets, browsers, TVs, smart speakers, cars, and even refrigerators.
An album purchased for $10 can be worth more than weeks or even months of streams
Fortunately, there is an alternative: Bandcamp.
For those unfamiliar, Bandcamp is an online music store with some streaming features that primarily serve as a way for artists to distribute their music at a fairer price. The site is owned by Songtradr, a major music licensing company, so is not completely ‘independent’, but still offers artists an 85/15 revenue split in favor of the digital music artist. This means that an album purchased for $10 could be worth more than weeks or even months of streams from an individual listener.
I started using Bandcamp years ago as a way to find independent artists and collect higher quality versions of some of my favorite underground albums, and have since transitioned to using it to find songs for DJs. But in 2025, I’ll do my best to use Bandcamp more for casual listening and deep genre dives, as well as as a source of new material.
Top tips for getting started with Bandcamp
1. Create a free account
Bandcamp allows users to create free fan and artist accounts to purchase and upload music. You can also link different accounts under one email address, so you can keep your collections separated by genre or era if desired.
2. Scroll down to the digging area
If you scroll through the homepage, you will see a cluster of genre tags. Clicking on it will take you to the search area, where you can browse both bestsellers and new releases. You can preview the standout tracks from each release, or click on them to go to the artist page.
3. Start your collection
Once you’ve found some releases you’re looking for, head to the checkout to add them to your collection. You get instant access to unlimited streaming, the ability to download in a variety of formats (including lossless WAV and FLAC), and the knowledge that your money has (mostly) gone straight to the artists who created the music.
We have reached a point where digital media has a very low monetary value, which also affects its perceived value. Listening to 800 songs a month costs $14, playing 800 hours of a discounted video game costs $10, and watching 800 hours of video on YouTube costs nothing. This is often related to a lack of tangibility, of physicality. But speaking from experience, even having a digital copy of an album or song in your purchased collection offers a sense of investment that is simply missing from streaming. It makes you want to connect with the music and discover the value of your purchase.
For reference, Bandcamp’s homepage proudly states that fans have paid $1.42 billion to artists since the site launched in 2007.
There are other benefits to buying from Bandcamp too: the site only allows artists to upload lossless files, so you know you’re getting a high-quality version of whatever song you download. I’m no audiophile – I’ve previously written about my affinity for listening through phone speakers – but if you do want a nice set of speakers or headphones, an album downloaded from Bandcamp will smoke anything on Spotify in terms of quality.
And, as my use of Bandcamp tracks for DJing implies, you can do whatever you want with the music: put it on any device, remix it with music software, stick it to a USB and play it through any number of decks. Spotify and similar apps relegate the listening experience to one place, but Bandcamp actively encourages you to think bigger.
If you still want to get a nice set of speakers or headphones, an album downloaded from Bandcamp will rival anything on Spotify in terms of quality.
There’s also something to be said about escaping the algorithm apocalypse. Spotify’s recommendation algorithms are so precise and so powerful that even when I search for new music, I often feel like I’m finding subtle variations on what I already know. Bandcamp’s search feature has three main tabs: Best Selling, New Releases, and Surprise Me, with the latter seemingly combining the first two.
I’ve found some really bizarre and excellent music with this combination of choices – especially since there are a lot of smaller and more mysterious artists on Bandcamp that you won’t find anywhere else. My latest obsession is the German techno author Skee maskwho removed his discography from Spotify years ago for political reasons.
If I had never hopped on Bandcamp, there’s a chance I would never have heard Skee’s uniquely ethereal take on dance music, or followed him to a live show in London last month. It certainly feels like a much more organic progression than clicking on a sponsored playlist on Spotify’s landing page.
All that said, I probably won’t be leaving Spotify anytime soon. Bandcamp still misses many mainstream heavy hitters, artists like Beyonce or Kendrick Lamar who earn enough from standard distribution. Spotify remains the most cost-effective way to create daily playlists and share music with friends. Building a Bandcamp collection can quickly become an expensive endeavor, and there’s no way to resell a digital collection like there is with CDs or vinyl.
Regardless, I consider Bandcamp to be a champion of the value of music in an age of digital overload, and I’m happy to make it the centerpiece of my 2025 tech resolution. Spotify CEO Daniel Ek is worth more than $7 billion; he is richer than any musician in history. Let me say it again: no musician has done that ever made as much money as Spotify’s CEO. I am not calling for a large-scale boycott, as the consumer cannot be blamed for getting a good deal, but I do believe that as a music lover you can be proud of siphoning money out of the pockets of billionaires and towards the artists themselves.