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Bandwagon is Bringing Music Sales to the Fediverse
(wedistribute.org)
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this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2025
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They are not "losing money", they are making use of the service anyway. Any type of venture you are building incurs costs and risks, why should it be different for someone that is running an online presence?
If the developers of bandwagon were to carving exceptions for other users, pretty soon they would be taking the risks themselves of dealing with loss-leaders customers and would have to find other ways to make up for it. 10€/month is an absolute bargain for a service that will provide you a storefront and a distribution channel that can reach anyone in the world and demands absolutely nothing in return from you.
Fair enough. But musicians are not really "any type of venture".
Bandwagon is already taking on a risk by hosting music for free for listening. If they could find ways in which both them and the artists could profit from music published on the platform that lacks the commercial potential to justify a €10 subscription, this would be a win/win. Considering that it seems they are already hosting the music for free.
If they are looking for a way to make money out of their work, it is. And it is totally fine.
Flip the equation here. The subscription is something to fund development of the platform. So anyone that wants to have a viable libre alternative to Spotify that can be useful to all indie artists should consider paying for it, even if they are not intending to sell stuff.
Sure, but that doesn't take away from the fact that under this model, small artists with little money seem to have a strong incentive not to put their music up for sale, which will cost both them and Bandcamp potential profits.
Maybe they could offer fans to sponsor a membership for artists if they want to unlock premium features.
I wouldn't say it's a bargain for the artist when there's plenty of services that offer that for free.
From a purely money perspective a small artist would probably lose money here while it may earn money in places like Tidal, which have much more audience.
Let's not lie people. It's not a bargain. $10 a month is a lot for that service. Maybe from a "San Francisco" or other rich American city that is Pocket change, but from most of the world $10 a month is a considerable expense.
Other thing is if you want to morally support ot because you really like that model for whatever reason.
To be honest, I don't much see the point. Of you are going for the complicated route (aka not using established platforms) are you are even considering self hosting, putting out your own website to sell music is easier and cheaper. And it's actually very common for artists to have their own website. You can find static hosting for a few bucks.
The world's income per capita is around $10000 a year. In South Europe is 25k€/year. In Northern Europe, 55k€/year. In the United States, $80k/year.
120 dollars per year is 0.5 percent of the income of the average citizen living in the (relatively) poorer part of developed world. That means that are plenty of people who can afford it, and it's not just the top of the top.