(Hypebot) — Bandcamp marked its 6th straight year as a profitable company in 2017 with revenue and usage on the indie music platform rising by double digits across multiple categories, including the sale of physical goods. Industry-wide, physical goods sales fell 20% last year.
Bandcamp is reporting a record year for 2017.
Here are some highlights:
Digital album sales were up 16% vs. a 20% industry decline
Track sales up 33% vs. a 23% industry decline
Merch sales up 36%.
Growth in physical sales was led by vinyl (up 54%)
CD sales up 18%
Cassette sales rose 41%
Revenue from the 3,500 independent labels on Bandcamp grew 73%
More than 600,000 artists have now sold something through the site
The Bandcamp Daily blog grew its audience by 84%
All-time payments to artists through Bandcamp reached $270 million
A new app for artists and labels
Successful fundraisers for the ACLU and TLC, and we’ll soon mark six straight years as a profitable company that only makes money when artists make a lot more money.
Counterweight To Music Monopolies
“Meanwhile, standalone music streaming companies continued to lose money in 2017,” the company wrote in a blog post chronicling its “stellar” year. ” The seemingly inevitable upshot of these two trends is that the majority of music consumption will eventually take place within the subscription rental services of two or three enormous corporations, who can afford to lose money on music because it attracts customers to the parts of their businesses that are profitable.”
“standalone music streaming companies continued to lose money.”
Bandcamp sees itself as a counterweight to these dangerous monopolies. “Bandcamp serves as an honest-to-goodness, proof-in-the-pudding bulwark against the creep of artistic monoculture fueled by the consolidation of digital life into the hands of a few companies,” NPR Music’s Andrew Flanagan wrote “Maybe the future isn’t a dumpster fire after all.”
