(written by Islander)

Reading year-end lists that someone other than you made tend to provoke mixed feelings of validation, perplexity (which sometimes verges into anger), and discovery. The opportunity for discovery is the main reason we here at NCS devote so much space to our annual LISTMANIA extravaganza, even though we know those other feelings will also be in the mix of reactions. The list we’re re-publishing from Bandcamp Daily will probably be no different in any of these respects.

Bandcamp, of course, has become a vital platform for the digital release of music of all stripes (and physical merchandise as well) since its founding in 2007. Bandcamp used to release an annual compilation of performance statistics, but I haven’t found a similar report since the one they released for 2017. However, the main Bandcamp page today reports that “Fans have paid artists $1.42 billion using Bandcamp, and $194 million in the last year.”

Those are staggering totals, and some part of those enormous sums has been the result of Bandcamp’s laudable decision to continue the monthly tradition of “Bandcamp Fridays” that they began during the height of the pandemic. The last of those for 2024 occurred last week. We won’t know for a while whether it will be continued in 2025. It better be, or else! Continue reading »

Reading year-end lists that someone other than you made tend to provoke mixed feelings of validation, perplexity (which sometimes verges into anger), and discovery. The opportunity for discovery is the main reason we here at NCS devote so much space to our annual LISTMANIA extravaganza, even though we know those other feelings will also be in the mix of reactions. The list we’re re-publishing from Bandcamp Daily will probably be no different in any of these respects.

Bandcamp, of course, has become a vital platform for the digital release of music of all stripes (and physical merchandise as well) since its founding in 2007. Bandcamp used to release an annual compilation of performance statistics, but I haven’t found a similar report since the one they released for 2017. However, the main Bandcamp page today reports that “Fans have paid artists $1.03 billion using Bandcamp, and $187 million in the last year”.

Those are staggering totals, and some part of those enormous sums has been the result of Bandcamp’s laudable decision to continue the monthly tradition of “Bandcamp Fridays” that they began during the height of the pandemic.

In the summer of 2016, the company launched Bandcamp Daily, an online music publication about artists on the platform. Bandcamp Daily regularly publishes articles of relevance to metalheads, though metal is of course only one of hundreds of music genres represented on Bandcamp. Recently Bandcamp Daily once again published its list of the year’s Best Metal Albums, again under the byline of Brad Sanders, who writes the monthly metal column for Bandcamp. Continue reading »

Our year-end LISTMANIA series usually consists of a mix of lists compiled by cross-genre sites and zines much larger than our own, and year-end favorites assembled by our own staff and guests. This next list, however, doesn’t really fall into either category, but I thought it was worth including last year, and I’m doing it again this year.

Bandcamp, of course, has become a vital platform for the digital release of music of all stripes (and physical merchandise as well) since its founding in 2007. Bandcamp used to release an annual compilation of performance statistics, but I haven’t found a similar report since the one they released for 2017. However, the main Bandcamp page today reports that “[f]ans have paid artists $441 million using Bandcamp, and $9.2 million in the last 30 days alone.”

In the summer of 2016, the company launched Bandcamp Daily, “an online music publication which expanded its editorial content and offers articles about artists on the platform” (to quote The Font of All Human Knowledge). Bandcamp Daily regularly publishes articles of relevance to metalheads, though metal is of course only one of hundreds of music genres represented on Bandcamp. Yesterday Bandcamp Daily published its list of “The Best Metal Albums of 2019“. Continue reading »