Let the Reader help with your Bandcamp shopping list

In the past few weeks, we’ve recommended three dozen Bandcamp releases—and this Friday, the service will again pass its share of revenue along to artists.

On Friday, March 20, music site Bandcamp waived its revenue share for all sales through its website. When Bandcamp announced that it would take this step, COVID-19 had only begun to upend the music industry’s fragile economic ecosystem—the first wave of Chicago concert cancellations, for instance, had arrived in mid-March. Bandcamp’s gesture was hardly enough to make everyone solvent, but it did help many independent artists and labels who use its services—not least because the surrounding surge of publicity encouraged fans to target that Friday with their purchases. Bandcamp rang up $4.3 million in sales for digital music and physical merchandise, 15 times its ordinary Friday numbers.

This past Monday, Bandcamp announced that it would waive its take again on Friday, May 1—as well as on the first Fridays in June and July. Because live music has come to a halt, the Reader has converted its usual weekly collection of concert previews into a bunch of reviews of new records, and lots of those records are available on Bandcamp. If you want to support independent artists and labels on Friday and don’t already have a shopping list too long to get through, then this batch of Reader-recommended Bandcamp releases might help. Album names below link to the accompanying Reader reviews, and each review includes a Bandcamp embed that will take you to the page for the release:

Blacks’ Myths, Blacks’ Myths II

Gerald Cleaver, Signs

Deeper, Auto-Pain

DJ Hank, Traffic Control

Dool, Summerland

Drama, Dance Without Me

Facs, Void Moments

Feminazgûl, No Dawn for Men

Friend/Enemy, HIH NO/ON

(Sandy) Alex G, House of Sugar

Helen Money, Atomic

Human Impact, Human Impact