The File Is the Record

Bandcamp Fridays began in March 2020, when venues were shut and the company waived its revenue share so the money from those days went to artists and labels. Bandcamp Daily, announcing the 2024 dates on 28 April 2024, said the Fridays had sent more than $120 million to labels and musicians, and that 3 May 2024 would be the fortieth. The next ones that year were 6 September, 4 October and 6 December. Epic Games bought Bandcamp in March 2022 and sold it to Songtradr. Songtradr’s acquisition was announced as closed on Bandcamp’s own blog on 22 November 2023. Through the sale, both companies said the Fridays would continue. Rolling Stone reported that half the staff did not move over. The till, publicly, stayed.

In the same years a person who wanted a new independent record on vinyl was often buying a pre-order. Pressing plants were backed up by the boom and by major-label represses, and shipping dates slipped. The music, if you had paid for it, was already a file. PinkPantheress’s To Hell With It, released in October 2021, made that sequence obvious at pop scale: short songs, garage drums, a mixtape that was finished when the files were finished. The plant decides whether a particular edition exists. The song was already finished. A download bought on a morning when the platform’s share was waived sits on a drive you control. A stream does not. Those are different objects, and the Friday was a way of pointing at the difference once a month.

Songtradr said it would keep the artist-first share, the Daily, and the Fridays. That is a corporate sentence and, checked against the 2024 announcement, a sentence they then kept. The argument for listeners is smaller than the acquisition. If you wanted the music in 2021 and the 12-inch was a tracking number, you already had a copy. When the box came, it was a second object with a different job: a shelf, a ritual, a mix you do with your hands. Both can be real. The Friday was the day the checkout admitted which one the artist could be paid for immediately.

Sources

• Bandcamp Daily, 28 April 2024: Fridays began in March 2020, more than $120 million paid to artists and labels, and the 2024 dates.
• Bandcamp blog, 22 November 2023: Songtradr acquires Bandcamp from Epic and says the marketplace and the artist-first share continue.
• Rolling Stone on the layoffs after the sale closed, and on Songtradr keeping Bandcamp Fridays.
• To Hell With It: PinkPantheress, October 2021.