I’ve had Bandcamp.com on my radar for a few months now since Andrew Dubber brought it to my attention during an unconsultancy event up here in Manchester. Little did I know that it would be the key to saving the launch party of a (previously) Liverpool based artist Lindsey. I got the call from Lindsey a week before the launch party to say that her CD duplicator had called her up to say that his Eastern European manufacturing plant couldn’t fulfill the order in time due to some problems with the artwork. Faced with the prospect of having a launch party without anything to launch we went through the alternatives and decided that Bandcamp’s digital download card service could come to the rescue.

The idea was to offer fans at the party digital download cards as merchandise in place of the delayed CDs, the promise being that if you bought a card you’d get a copy of the CD forwarded to you within the next few weeks. Each card would have an individual download code printed on it that would be good for a one time use, once entered at the web address (also printed on the card) the fan would be able to download the album in full in the format of their choice. Any left over cards could then be sold at future gigs as a digital alternative to the physical products.

The Mini Moo Card we designed for Lindsey

After getting the tracks sent over I set up a free account for her at Bandcamp and within half an hour had customised it with some of her own artwork, colour scheme etc. Once the tracks were uploaded it was easy to get them all in the right order and add all of the necessary track information. Then came the process of getting the cards printed up, this should have also of been easy but sadly this is where we hit our one big problem! Bandcamp have a partnership with Moo Cards who deal with all of their printing. Basically the way the system works is that Bandcamp’s website lets you upload your artwork for the front of the cards, magically in the background it then creates all of the individually numbered codes for you and produces artwork for the back of each card containing the individual codes. It then transfers all of that across to Moo Cards via their API and allows you to then complete your order via their website by choosing quantities to print, delivery options etc. It’s a lot like the way Flickr uses a similar system to allow you to print your Flickr pictures on a variety of Moo Cards products.

The problem came when during this last step we were transferred to the American rather than the UK Moo Cards website which meant that the cards would be printed in the US and then shipped over. Not only was that more expensive but it would also have taken too long and we’d of missed the party. I contacted Bandcamp and they said that it was a problem with the Moo Cards API and unfortunately there was currently no way around it.

Undeterred we used another of Bandcamp’s features which allows you to download the single use download codes as an Excel spreadsheet file. Ordinarily this would be used for mail merging into promo emails to fans or for selling codes via your own online store but we decided to do things the long way around and just copy and paste the codes into our own artwork and make a couple of hundred .jpegs all with the individual codes on. It was then just a matter of uploading the files into Moo Card’s UK website to get the minicards printed up.

The cards arrived a couple of days before the launch party, they looked great and the idea worked a treat. Fans bought them and others were used as free promos to give to the press and reviewers.The party was saved!

I think the most important lesson I’d take away from this experience is to ask any independent artist who is just starting off on their career “Why is it important for you to make physical CDs?” The cost of making a standard run of 1000 CDs can costs hundreds, if not thousands of pounds when you include your artwork costs. Why spend that money when you don’t have to? Sites like Bandcamp now offer such fantastic solutions for next to nothing (the total cost of this project was under £20 and allowed us to get the email of every person who downloaded), it’s worth thinking outside of the box to see what alternatives you can come up with. Producing large runs of physical products is an old skool major label way of thinking which is out of step with being an independent artist in the digital age. Independent artists need to keep their costs down and maximize the return on their investments. Selling professionally manufactured glass mastered CDs at a gig for £10 each may look good but I think we’ll find that selling things like digital download cards at a fraction of that cost will be the way of the future.

UPDATE: Since I drafted this Bandcamp have now announced that you can sell physical products through their website along with digital downloads. Similar to our idea it means that the fan can access the digital music files straight away and have the rest of the products (eg. posters, vinyls, CDs) posted out to them. If you don’t already sell your merchandise directly through your own website shop then I’d highly recommend having a look at what Bandcamp has to offer you as it continues to go from strength to strength.