Frequently Asked Questions

What's Bandcamp?
Earlier this year, one of my favorite bands left their label, recorded a new album, and released it as a digital download from their own website. The hour it was due out, I headed to their site, and after several minutes of watching the page struggle to load, concluded that they were just slammed and made a note to check back the next day. But when I did, the site was, once again, excruciatingly slow. This time I was a bit more patient, made it to the checkout page, entered my billing info, and...the download didn't start. I checked my credit card statement, saw that I'd indeed been charged, and emailed the band. A few days later, the lead singer sent me an apology, along with a direct link to the album's zip file. I did not then forward that link on to my 200 closest friends, but I wondered how many did, and couldn't decide whether it was a good or bad thing that most fans had probably given up before getting this far.

Well the new record turned out to be even better than I'd hoped, but now, months later, I'm still running into other fans who don't have it. This just kills me, because here's a relatively unknown band that deserves all the success in the world, made the admirable decision to do an entirely independent release, yet was tripped up by the sorts of aggravating technical issues familiar to anyone who's ever tried to build out their own website. What choice did they have though? They could have put their music up on MySpace or any of its dozens of imitators, but all of those services offer bands what is essentially a sharecropping arrangement. They host your tunes, and in exchange it's their logo, their ads, their URL, their traffic, their identity. What if you want to build out a site that's very clearly yours? The only choice seems to be to do what the band did: hire a designer and engineer, buy or rent some servers, spend a lot of time and money, and risk ending up with something that either works poorly or not at all. Does it not seem crazy that if you're a blogger, you can create a rock-solid site that's your own in a matter of minutes (and for free), but if you happen to create music instead of text, your options just suck?

Seemed nuts to us, so we created Bandcamp, the best home on the web for your music. We're not yet another site wanting to host your tracks alongside the trailer for High School Musical 4: I'm Pregnant. Instead, we power a site that's truly yours, and hang out in the background handling all the technical issues you dread (and several you've probably never even considered). We keep your music streaming and downloading quickly and reliably, whether it's 3am on a Sunday, or the hour your new record drops and Pitchfork gives it a scathingly positive review. We make your tracks available in every format under the sun, so the audiophilic nerderati can have their FLAC and eat MP3 v2. We adorn your songs with all the right metadata, so they sail into iTunes with artwork, album, band and track names intact. We mutter the various incantations necessary to keep your site top-ranked in Google, so when your fans search for your hits, they find your music long before they find bonkersforlyrics.com or iMyFace. We give your fans easy ways to share your music with their friends, and we give you gorgeous tools that reveal exactly how your music is spreading, so you can fan the fire.

So what's Bandcamp then? We're a publishing platform for bands, or, anthropomorphically/arthropodically-speaking, your fifth, fully geeked-out Beatle -- the one who keeps your very own website humming and lets you get back to making great music and building your fan base. If this all sounds as highly satisfactory to you as we hope, we invite you to check out the screencast, or cut straight to the chase and sign up for a free account. Welcome!

How much does Bandcamp cost?
All the details are on our pricing page.

Does Bandcamp take any ownership rights in my music?
Nope. Full details are in our Terms of Use, but the short of it is that the only rights we take are the obvious ones we need to run the service. For example, the non-exclusive right to host the music you upload, sell it on your behalf (if you choose to enable paid downloads), display whatever lyrics and artwork you publish to the site, and so on.

Can I also sell my music on iTunes, Amazon, CDBaby, and so on?
Of course! We compete by making Bandcamp the place you want to send your fans, not by making it the place you have to send them. Exclusivity is for the birds.

My band already has its own official site, can I integrate it with Bandcamp? or,
What about all the other typical band site sections, like videos, photos, etc?
That's all on the to-do list, but we decided to start with the most important, and the most technically challenging, part first: music. If you already have an official site, we respectfully submit that Bandcamp might be an improvement upon its music section, and suggest you simply let your Bandcamp site be your music section. To do so, we recommend you link to Bandcamp, but make it a bit more seamless by customizing your design, and perhaps specifying an image map in your custom header as well, so that you can emulate your own site's navigation. What we don't recommend is dropping Bandcamp into an iframe. Doing so will harm your SEO (since tracks and albums will no longer have unique URLs) and break the payment flow in Internet Explorer.

What's with the WAV/AIFF/FLAC upload requirement? Why don't you just accept MP3s?
It's all about maximizing flexibility for you and your fans. WAV, AIFF and FLAC are high-fidelity (lossless) formats. By starting with the highest possible quality source, we're able to convert your track into a bunch of different format and quality combinations, including MP3 (320, VBR V0), Ogg Vorbis, Apple Lossless, FLAC and AAC (aka .m4a or iTunes store format). Sure, most fans will just want the MP3 and won't know or care about anything else, but there's a rabid minority out there who'll love that you're giving them a choice. And if a new format/quality becomes à la mode (like when Amazon's MP3 store made iTunes' 128k AACs seem antiquated), we'll transcode to that too, without you having to do a thing.

Here’s what you can upload:

lossless WAV, AIFF and FLAC files
16 and 24-bit samples
44.1, 48, 88.2, 96, 176.4 and 192kHz sample rates
stereo and mono

We don't do any audio processing to your uploaded files except whatever's necessary to fit into the download format. For example, for MP3 downloads the audio is resampled to 44.1kHz. FLAC downloads on the other hand are bit-for-bit identical to the audio you upload, all the way to 24/192. When your fans get their mitts on this they’ll bounce around like 6-year-olds hopped up on Pixy Stix!

But lossless files are freaking huge!
Please phrase that in the form of a question.

But lossless files are freaking huge?
Yeah, they're bigger than MP3s, but you only have to upload them once, and we think the goodness it buys you is plenty worth it. We'll also allow batch uploading pretty soon, so you'll be able to queue up your entire oeuvre for import while you're off at practice. Until then, you can upload two tracks at a time by just opening up two track edit tabs or windows (two is the limit though -- three or more won't work).

Sold! So how do I get my tracks into WAV or AIFF?
New tracks (from the studio) are probably already in WAV or AIFF or can easily be saved in one of those formats by your audio editing software. And if you're importing old tracks from CD, it's pretty easy too: just rip the tracks to WAV or AIFF using iTunes. Select "Preferences..." from the iTunes menu, click the Import Settings... button in the General tab (for versions of iTunes earlier than 8.0, click the Advanced tab and select "Importing"), and next to "Import Using:" choose "AIFF Encoder" or "WAV Encoder."

And what about FLAC?
iTunes doesn't support FLAC conversion, but plenty of other tools do. If you're wondering why you'd want to bother, it's because FLAC is a compressed lossless format, so a FLAC file will sound exactly the same but take about half the time to upload as the same track in AIFF or WAV (which also means it can be twice as long and still be under our max upload size). Speaking of which...

What's the maximum upload size?
It's 291MB, or more precisely, 305,088,054 bytes (that's 297,937.6 kibibytes or 290.95 mebibytes to you, Lieutenant Commander La Forge). That is of course the exact size of "Inamorata and Narration by Conrad Roberts" from side 4 of Miles Davis' Live-Evil (assuming we're talking 16/44.1, which we always are). If you have something to say that's longer/larger than that, you are likely a jam band and we cannot be a party to the dissemination of your output (j/k jam bands, we love you too -- but please take a quick hacky-sack break at 26:29).
Update September 8th, 2010: Some Serious Ambient Artists have helped us realize that our thinking on this issue was very uptight, so we've modified our policy: once you've made a few sales through Bandcamp (totaling $20 USD or more), we'll increase your upload limit to 600 megs (that's like, one whole LaserDisc!).

Did I know that Bandcamp automatically adds metadata to all of my downloadable tracks?
No, you did not! And it's totally bitchin'! We can't tell you how many times we've downloaded music from some band's site, only to bring it into iTunes and find that it has no cover art, a name like "Master 2 (final).mp3" and no information about who it's by or what album it's from. Annoying, but not really surprising when you learn what a pain in the ass it is for a band to add all that information to a track themselves. Well, we've got you covered. As you add information to your site, we automatically attach that data to the underlying tracks, so that when your fans download and import them into iTunes or anywhere else, they come with their title, artist, lyrics, album, track number, release date, and artwork intact. Smoove.

Did I know that I can collect a fan's email address when I let them download a free track or album?
This too somehow escaped your seemingly limitless capacity for knowledge! And yet it is true! Simply enter "0" for the price, then tick the "require email address" checkbox that magically appears on the Edit Track or Album page, and when a fan downloads your music, Bandcamp will ask them for their vitals and email them a link to the goods. You may then extract that solid gold nugget of data from our servers with a flick of your mouse: on the right side of the navigation bar at the top of the screen, click Tools, and under the section titled Mailing List, click Export. You'll not only get the fan's email address, but their country, zip/postal code, and even the date they signed up. Given the power to use that information for good, or for awesome, we trust you will choose the latter.

How do I collect a fan's email address for paid downloads or packages?
That happens automatically. Again, just go to your Tools page to export them.

Do you offer label accounts?
No, but various label features are in the works. For now, we recommend that you sign up for individual accounts for each of your artists (sounds more painful than it is -- you really only need separate usernames for each account -- they can all use the same email address, PayPal account, and, if you're crazy like that, even password). We also suggest that you sign up for a separate account just for your label, and use that to create any sampler/compilation albums (editing each track's artist field so that the metadata is correct).

I've heard that SEO is important, but I don't even know what it is. What is it?
Thank you shill! "SEO" stands for Search Engine Optimization, and Bandcamp greases yours up smoother than pomade-dipped velour. For example, check out what happens when you Google this track by 20 Minute Loop. Notice their Bandcamp-powered site is at or near the top, ahead of GarageBand, iLike, CDBaby, eMusic, Rhapsody, and the rest. That means 20 Minute Loop has first crack at engaging and ultimately, profiting from, their fans. Contrast that with the typical Flash-based band site -- you know, the expensive one with the shadowy crow that cries blood-red teardrops as it flies across the screen between page transitions. Totally invisible to Google. Might as well not even exist. The fact is, we're living in a Google world, and if your fans aren't finding you when they search for your track names, lyrics and so on, you're throwing away an opportunity.

Does Bandcamp place my music into iTunes, Amazon, etc?
No, we're not a digital distributor. Bandcamp is a service for selling your music through your own site, directly to your fans. If you're looking for digital distribution, check out TuneCore.

Can I upload covers, mixtapes, mashups or just straight-up Ray of Light to Bandcamp?
Our Terms of Use require you to own or otherwise control all rights to the content you upload. Click here for more info.

What format/quality are the streams on Bandcamp?
Close your eyes and guess. Wrong! They're MP3-128s.

One of my fans showed me a totally easy way that someone could STEAL my music off of Bandcamp using RealPlayer 14.1 beta 3, or RipTheWeb.com, or by going into Temporary Internet Files and renaming blah blah blah. What are you doing about this grave problem?
Nothing. Since streams on Bandcamp are full-length, rather than 30-second snippets, it's correct that someone could use one of the above methods to access the underlying MP3-128. And sure, we could throw some technical hurdles in their way, but if they hit one of those hurdles, it's not like they'd slap their forehead and open their wallet. Instead, they'd just move on to some other site where those restrictions aren't in place, and you'll have squandered the chance to make your own site the premier destination for those seemingly cheap, but enthusiastic, word-spreading, and potentially later money-spending fans. In other words, the few people employing the above methods are better thought of as an opportunity, not a lost sale. If you're still skeptical, Andrew Dubber's post on the topic of music piracy is a must-read.

OK, but how about making the streams on Bandcamp 30-second snippets?
We again refer you to the wise words of Andrew Dubber. Here's the abridged version:

"Music is pretty much unique when it comes to media consumption. You don’t buy a movie ticket because you liked the film so much, and while you might buy a book because you enjoyed reading it so much at the library, typically you’ll purchase first, then consume...But music is different — and radio proves that. By far the most reliable way to promote music is to have people hear it. Repeatedly, if possible — and for free. After a while, if you’re lucky, people get to know and love the music. Sooner or later, they’re going to want to own it...whether it’s a pop tune, a heavily political punk album, or an experimental, avant-garde suite — the key is very simple: people have to hear music, then they will grow to like it, and then finally, if you’re lucky, they will engage in an economic relationship in order to consume (not just buy and listen to) that music. That’s the order it has to happen in. It can’t happen in any other order. There’s no point in hoping that people will buy the music, then hear it, then like it. They just won’t. Nobody really wants to buy a piece of music they don’t know — let alone one they haven’t heard. Especially if it’s by someone who lies outside their usual frame of reference. And a 30-second sample is a waste of your time and bandwidth. It’s worse than useless. That’s not enough to get to like your music. Let them hear it, keep it, live with it. And then bring them back as a fan."

What two objects does Sam have in his hands when he emerges from Shelob's cave?
The Light of Eärendil and Sting, loser.

I love Bandcamp so much that I want to put a shiny Bandcamp button on my website. Do you have one?
Yes, right over here.

I love Bandcamp so much that I want to put the logo on my poster, flyer, etc. Hi-res file plz!?
Please note that if "etc" includes anything this stupid, we'll close your account immediately and have a long chat with your mom or legal guardian. No? OK. Here. You. Go. Go! (That last one smells lemony and reveals an exciting image when held over a lightbulb.)

Who is Bandcamp?

Ethan Diamond co-founded Oddpost, the web-based email service universally recognized as the Eighth Greatest Achievement in the History of the Web, rightly beating out eBay, Craigslist and even JenniCam yet inexplicably trailing behind Mosaic and Amazon. Oddpost was acquired by Yahoo! in 2004, and three years later Ethan left to start Bandcamp. Prior to Oddpost, Ethan worked at Adobe, where he met Neal and Joe throwing things off the roof, and then Halfbrain, where he and Shawn pioneered the use of Ajax in the reimplementation of absolutely everything that gramps tells you was already working just fine as a desktop app. Ethan’s interests are HTML and DHTML. He is a graduate. Listen to Ethan’s Bandcamp collection.

Before helping to engineer Yahoo! Mail, Oddpost and Halfbrain.com, Shawn Grunberger helped negotiate the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. It was nontrivial. Listen to Shawn’s Bandcamp collection.

Joe Holt is a programmer. California-bred, he labored for two decades at Apple and Adobe, but only a fool believes his claims that he co-wrote the very first version of Acrobat, four versions of Illustrator, iMovie and an assortment of unshippable chefs-d'œuvre. In addition to working with Bandcamp, Joe is a professor at Bennington College, Vermont where he creates clones. He didn’t teach Shawn everything he knows. Working with Ethan is a second honeymoon. Listen to Joe’s Bandcamp collection.

Neal Tucker is one of the few people on Earth with the distinction of having been sentenced to 40 hours of community service by his own company's HR department. After leaving Adobe under murky circumstances, he spent 9 years being "the unix guy" on various teams at Microsoft, which forever brands him "the Windows guy" everywhere else. Much of his career has been spent writing software for embedded devices, so he's looking forward to stretching his legs on web server code for a while. Neal lives in Seattle, where his hobbies include welding, being comfortable, and trying to convince his wife that it's normal to wear pajamas until 3pm. Listen to Neal’s Bandcamp collection.

Kevin Johnston started his software engineering career at CompuServe, in the late 80s when AOL was the new punk on the block. He moved to Silicon Valley and worked for three years on Adobe Photoshop, in the general vicinity of Joe and Neal. He then worked on Final Cut Pro at Macromedia and Apple for four years. A brief stint working on online spreadsheets and presentations at Halfbrain.com (ten years before Office Online) gave him his first experience working with Shawn and Ethan. A couple years later he reunited with them at Oddpost, and helped them transform online email at Yahoo for four years. Kevin does not currently believe he is a musician, but he does actively maintain several fantasy lives, including astronaut, oil rig firefighter, and internationally famous raconteur. Listen to Kevin’s Bandcamp collection.

Robbie Scott (né Robert) worked as a software engineer with the good fellows of Oddpost. He was also at Surfline (after it was Swell), Platinum (after it was CA), and Microsoft (when they still used the blibbet). Like Miles, he has changed music "five or six times".* Listen to Robbie’s Bandcamp collection.
*Not true.

After working in public health for several years, Jennifer Elias co-founded a company making games to learn about wine, chocolate, sex, coffee, and other passions. When she sold it she realized music had been left out. As penance, she now works with the entrepreneurial artists and labels on Bandcamp. She played piano as a child, but her music teacher had a nervous breakdown. For everyone’s mental health, she’s stayed away from playing an instrument ever since. Listen to Jennifer’s Bandcamp collection.

Leigh Dyer is a mild-mannered sysadmin and developer by day, but by night, he transforms magically in to an equally mild-mannered electro musician. He's been using Linux since before it was cool (assuming that, at some point, it did actually become cool), and has strong opinions on those things that Linux people like to discuss, though he's too nice a guy to tell you that you're wrong. Leigh lives in Melbourne, Australia, which has few snakes or spiders to contend with, though he swears there's a bat living in his backyard. Listen to Leigh’s Bandcamp collection.

Ryan Moran is a malformed Joe Holt clone. Following a dreamy spell of algorithmic composition and language games, he toiled for a time developing information systems that help your kids get into college. Euphoric to be among brilliant folks who hold listening to music all day as an occupational requirement, he now rests on his laurels as the drummer of a champion Pink Floyd cover-air-band. Listen to Ryan’s Bandcamp collection.

Moni Orife is a designer who is passionate about creating great experiences. He honed his skills at video games companies and startups, but also while scouring the web for music and digging in seemingly endless bins of records. In high school he attended band camp and swore never to do that again – fortunately this is Bandcamp and something entirely more pleasurable. He wrote his first programs on the family ZX Spectrum alongside his sister. He is also into bicycles, printing and synthesizers. Listen to Moni’s Bandcamp collection.

Unlike most people who play guitar, Daniel Dickison doesn't sing, but he does play the theremin. Earlier, he did research-related things at a math company founded by AI researchers, which has left him with an unusual appreciation of parentheses and prefix notation. He misses being able to recommend Bandcamp to his musician friends without prefacing it with "shameless plug". Listen to Daniel’s Bandcamp collection.

Michael Beaver came to Bandcamp after a long stint as a software engineer at IBM. One of his proudest achievements there was when he was stuffed into a box with nothing but hard-copies of Wikipedia articles that he used to defeat 2 Jeopardy champs on the popular gameshow. Michael keeps dreading the day when he wakes up and realizes that he doesn't really get to play with cool code and listen to music all day long. Listen to Michael’s Bandcamp collection.

Ben Walker has played pianos and organs with literally several bands, the latest of which is Little Fish, who did the major label thing and made it out alive. He writes 12-second songs, hand-codes websites for fun and ~~dreams about publishing~~ publishes an art zine called GENE in his home town of Oxford. He had a Bandcamp sticker on his Amstrad CPC464 back in 1985. Listen to Ben’s Bandcamp collection.

Help! My stuff won't upload!

Are you looking at your file browser and all your tracks are grayed out? Like the text that's directly next to the upload audio link says, that's because we require lossless (.aiff, .wav or .flac) files -- no .mp3's. Here's why.
Does your upload just never start? On modern browsers we use HTML5 for uploading, so make sure your browser is up to date. If you're stuck with an older browser (or IE 8), make sure you have a recent version of Flash installed.
Is the upload starting, but just never finishing? Or does the progress bar zip across the screen quickly and then the upload fails? Bandcamp upload doesn't work with all sorts of third-party anti-virus programs. If you're using AVG, you'll need to disable the Web Shield and LinkScanner. If you're using Kaspersky Internet Security, you'll need to either disable it entirely, or just turn off their port 80 filtering. If you're using Avast, you'll have to disable it. If you're using something not listed here...you guessed it, try turning it off.
Still no joy? If you're on a wireless connection, try plugging directly in. Lossless audio files can be big, and even a brief wireless hiccup can cause your upload to fail.
If you're already on a direct connection, and some uploads are failing and some are succeeding, just try, try again.
If the failures are consistent, upload a tiny test file. If that works, then the issue is your connection and we suggest trying a different one, if possible. If the tiny test upload fails, then take a look at our system status. If it says that uploads are working normally, then the issue is with your particular setup, and we suggest double-checking that none of the aforementioned anti-virus programs are interfering. You might also try uploading from a different machine to try to narrow things down.

How do I change the order of the albums and tracks in the discography sidebar?
By default, your discography is ordered by release date, with the most recent release shown first. You can customize the order by visiting your profile page, and in the section titled "Discography", selecting "Custom order".

How do I change the order of an album's tracks?
Make sure you’re logged in. Then, on the album page, click the yellow Edit button, approximately here. That’ll take you to the Edit Album page, where on the left-hand side you’ll see your track listing. When you roll over a track in the list you'll see a square icon that looks like three horizontal bars. Click and drag that icon to move the track up or down within the list. When you are satisfied, click Update, and you’re done.

How do I edit or delete a track?
If you're on the track's page, just click the yellow-y Edit or Delete button. If you're on an album page, click the track's name in the track listing. That will navigate to the track's page, where you should then click the Edit or Delete button.

How do I delete my account?
Visit your Profile page and click the link that says "permanently delete this account..."

If I set a release date to some time in the future, will my music be hidden until then?
No, your release date does not affect visibility. When you first create an album it is hidden from the public as a Draft, and will remain so until you are ready to release it (by clicking “Publish” in the album editor). If at any time you’d like to hide your album from public view after it has been released, select the “Private” option, then click “Update.”

How do I add or edit shows in the sidebar?
Your shows are pulled in from Songkick, and you can update them easily using their Tourbox site.

I set my default page to the index, how do I switch it back to my latest release?
Visit your Profile page, and in the section titled "Home page" select "go to my latest release."

I can't log in.
First off, make sure you're entering your username, not your email address, on the login page. If you've forgotten your username (or your password), go here, enter the email address that you provided when you signed up, and we'll send you a password reset. If you've forgotten your email address, or think you've got it right but the reset email just isn't arriving, then send your Bandcamp URL (e.g., "amnesia.bandcamp.com") to us here and we'll help you figure it out.

Is it possible to sell physical items (like vinyl, CDs, and bullet-shaped USB sticks) alongside downloads?
Yes! Please read this.

If a fan buys two or more physical items, how are the shipping costs calculated?
Let's look at the simplest case first. If a fan buys two or more of the same item from you, then in the package editor, under "shipping and handling," we use the base shipping (the value that you specify in the "for 1 unit" field), and add the incremental shipping (the value you specify in the "more per additional unit" field):

For example, if you sold three 12" EPs with the above shipping settings, total shipping would be $4 + $2 + $2 = $8.

When a fan buys two or more different merch items, we calculate the shipping by taking whichever item has the highest base shipping, and then adding the incremental shipping fees for the other items. For example, let's say you had three items with the following shipping settings:

12" EP
Base shipping: $4
Incremental shipping: $2

Compact Disc
Base shipping: $2
Incremental shipping: $0.75

T-shirt
Base shipping: $3
Incremental shipping: $0.50

If a fan purchased all three items together, their total shipping cost would be $4 + $0.75 + $0.50 = $5.25. This is the highest base shipping cost of the three items (the 12" EP, $4), plus the incremental shipping costs of the other items (the compact disc, $0.75, and the t-shirt: $0.50).

How come my album has the wrong artwork/title when I post it on Facebook?
Here's what's likely going on: Facebook hasn't yet refreshed its cache, so it is still holding on to an earlier player you may have embedded. Enter the Bandcamp URL you're sharing here to zap the stale files instantly:

Once you've done that (ignore what it says on the debug page), try sharing your link on Facebook again. If it doesn't work the first time around, try using the specific track or album URL.

I made an album download email-required, but when I click to download it I'm not prompted for an email address. What's up?
Would it not be a lousy user experience if a fan gave you their email address, downloaded your album, then returned to download another track or album that you also made email-required, only to have to enter their email address again? YES IT WOULD. That's why once a fan (or conscientious band-member testing their site) provides an email address for a download, they never have to do it again (at least not from that same browser, for that same band, unless they clear their cookies). For this same reason, stats spelunkers may notice the number of downloads exceeding the number of email addresses collected.

I made a track or album email-required, how do I export those emails?
Go to your Tools page (click "tools" in the upper right of your page). In the section titled "Mailing list", you'll see links to export your full list, or just the addresses added since your last export.

Can I restrict sales on Bandcamp by geographic region?
Sorry, no. No plans to add it in the future either.

Would you please change my subdomain for me?
Sorry, no. We may allow you to change your subdomain yourself down the line, but for now you'll have to live with it.

Would you please change my username for me?
Sorry, no. We may allow you to change your username yourself down the line, but for now you'll have to live with it or just create a new account.

I hear a warbling sound, or maybe it's more of a low rumble, when I play my tracks back on Bandcamp. Do you hear it too?
Let's talk about streaming. We use MP3-128 for the streaming format, and for quiet passages there can be a noticeable warbly sound (other synonyms: muddiness, low fluttering wavy stuff, distortion in the bottom end, compression artifacts). This is a fact of life with MP3 at low bit rates. Using a compression filter on your source audio will also exaggerate the MP3-128 funkiness in not a good way. Aside from actually encoding into the various formats, we don't do anything to your upload: no EQ, boosting or multi-band companding, and definitely no two-pole Butterworth band-pass/band-reject filtering (so tempting).

We chose MP3-128 for streaming as a compromise. It allows your tracks to stream quickly from even the putziest of networks, yet is significantly higher quality than that-other-place-that-used-to-host-your-music. Agreed that streaming can be a mere shadow of the goodness of your music that's available for download, which you can be sure sounds as great as possible (the lossless formats are exactly as you uploaded them).

Does Bandcamp support gapless albums?
We pay attention to the exact timing of the tracks that you upload and this is preserved where possible in the download formats. Unfortunately MP3 is not one of those formats. The MP3 format does bizarro things with the start and end of tracks and in other ways messes up gap timing, as a byproduct of the compression process. For a player to play back the gapless transition between MP3s that info has to be recreated and half-guessed at. That's why iTunes does that "figuring gapless playback" step when you add tracks to iTunes. The good news is that iTunes does a pretty good job. No guarantees with other players, but at least you're not alone. The lossless download formats we support -- FLAC and Apple Lossless -- don't have this problem. Their gapless info is preserved in the downloaded files and they play back perfectly.

Why is my Bandcamp-powered site not the first result in Google?
If you're not seeing your site at all, much less highly-ranked, first confirm that Google has at least indexed it. You can do this by changing your search term from "my band or album name or whatever" to "my band or album name or whatever site:bandcamp.com". If you still don't get a result, make sure that 1) it's been at least 24 hours since you signed up, and 2) you've uploaded cover art to your latest release (otherwise it won't show up on the general artist index, which is the fastest way search engines find Bandcamp sites).

Are you showing up in the results, but your rank is just lower than you'd like it to be? We do everything possible on our end to help your page rank, but you can help too. Probably the biggest impact you can have is by simply linking to your site from elsewhere on the web (your blog, official site, etc). Note that if your band has been around for a while, it's likely that there are loads of links out there pointing to your old sites/hosts, and it may just take some time before your new presence catches on. Finally, and perhaps this goes without saying, but the more general the search term, the more difficult it will be to own a top spot. No matter how hot your new single is, if it's called "Lost Love," your site is likely to be lost on result page 17.

When I went to sleep my band had 593 Facebook Likes, but when I woke up this afternoon there were only 3. What gives?
The Like count is controlled entirely by Facebook -- we're just displaying the data they give us. We've seen Like counts drop in the past, and they've always recovered not long after. If your counts don't, give Facebook customer support a shout.

What file types can I include as bonus items in an album download?
The usual: png, jpg, gif, pdf, doc, docx, txt, ppt, pptx, mp4, m4v, m4r, mov, wmv, avi, mpg, mpeg, swf, flv, torrent, cue, afm, amxd, otf, sib, ptb, mid, midi, gp5, gpx, fxp, fxb, vst, mod, it, xm, mtm, nsf and ttf. Most music file types are deliberately not included. If you want to include a track as a bonus item in an album download, upload it like any other track, but check "bonus track".

How can I use Bandcamp to do a pre-order?
Please follow the instructions here.

How do I send out download codes via email? Do I have to copy/paste each code individually?
No no no. You just do this.

Can I make download codes email-required?
On our to-do, but no, not yet.

I made a discount code, but there's nowhere for people to enter it. How come?
Discount Codes work with any item with a price greater than zero. This includes items where you allow the buyer to pay more; in this case, the discount simply adjusts the minimum price. If you're not seeing a place to enter a discount code, it's probably because the item is free.

How do I make the shared player autostart?
Welcome home! We trust your 8 year expedition to the heart of the Amazon was a great success. SO much has happened since you left. The first Delawarean was elected Vice President of the United States, the Chronicles of Riddick defied box office expectations, and tabbed browsers became commonplace. As a result, many web enthusiasts now open tabs as they surf. Autostarting media players don't play well with this behavior, since they put you in a position of wondering whoah, where is that sound coming from and then force you to play find-the-tab-making-your-eardrums-bleed. AUTOSTART IS EVIL is a fairly common refrain nowadays, and who are we to disagree?

Where's the volume control?
There isn't one. If your fans want to change the volume of the audio on Bandcamp, they adjust their computer's volume -- simple as that. We're not trying to build the ultimate platform for them to stream your albums while they play World of Warcraft in another window (which we completely agree would require an independent volume control). The streams on Bandcamp are there so visitors can listen to your music, decide if they like it, and if so, download it. Nothing more.

How do I give away a low quality format of my music, but charge for the high quality versions? You know, like is shown in the demo video?
Sorry, we no longer offer that option, just haven't updated the demo video yet. While it sounded great in theory, in practice it did nothing to increase sales (but plenty to complicate the interface).

I found a bug! In your face! FAIL! PWN! LOLCANO! Bandcamp suxxors! You suxxors! Tell me old chum, is there perchance anything I could do to assist in the resolution of the issue? Twould be my pleasure.
Smashing old pineapple, that's ever so kind of you. Please email a description of the problem to us here. Cheers.

I want to sell my music on Bandcamp. How?
By following the instructions here.

What pricing performs best?
Please take what we’re about to tell you with a grain of salt. Part of what makes Bandcamp Bandcamp is that you, not some corporate behemoth, set your own pricing. And that’s really as it should be, since the most effective price just isn’t the same for every artist, and you know your fans better than anyone. That said, we have the advantage of a metric crap-ton of data, and that data tells us a few things:

For digital albums of seven tracks or more, most artists will maximize their earnings by charging $7 USD. For EP-length albums (six tracks or fewer), $4 USD is the sweet spot. But again, there are exceptions, and if you’re an established artist who has seen recent success charging $18 for your digital albums, go for it. However, in all cases, leaving “let fans pay more if they want” checked is key: fans pay more than the minimum a whopping 40% of the time, driving up the average price paid by nearly 50% (in fact, every day, we see überfans paying $50, $100, $200 for albums priced far lower).

While we have your attention, we would like to discourage you from doing one-penny-off pricing (e.g., $0.99, $9.99, $11.99). Though it may be an effective tactic for selling waterbeds, cell phone plans, and Angry Birds 34, when we see that sort of pricing on an artist’s own website, we do not think “gosh, this is a good deal” but rather “what we previously thought was a person/band is actually a marketing department, and they’re subtly telling us they think we’re idiots.” Present a straightforward price, let fans pay more if they want, and they’ll reward you.

How much is PayPal's transaction fee?
PayPal's standard transaction fee is 2.9% + $0.30 USD. There are two ways you can lower that fee:

PayPal offers a micropayments rate of 5% and 5¢ per transaction, which ends up being a better deal if most of your transactions are $12 USD or less. You can sign up for micropayments at any time. There's nothing to do on Bandcamp; just head to the PayPal Micropayments site and sign up (note that PayPal’s micropayments site doesn’t work properly in Safari -- you’ll need to use either Firefox or IE). You can switch back to the standard rate at any time by contacting PayPal.

Also, be aware that PayPal allows you to use only one rate at a time. After you switch a PayPal account to micropayments, all items sold via that account (through Bandcamp or elsewhere) will use the new rate. If you happen to sell a lot of items priced more than $12 USD, you'll notice the micropayments fee will be a bit higher than the standard fee. (One way to work around this restriction is to use two PayPal accounts, one with micropayments for your Bandcamp sales and another with the standard rate for the other, higher-priced transactions.)
Apply for merchant rate pricing. Depending on your monthly volume, PayPal's rate can be as low as 1.9% + $0.30 USD.

Why are some of my orders not showing up in my PayPal account?
Please visit our Pricing page, and be sure to check out the question titled "Then How Does Bandcamp Get Paid?" You will not receive a PayPal receipt when a sale goes to Bandcamp to cover your revenue share balance. For most artists this doesn't matter, but if you're selling physical goods and are used to only looking at PayPal to see who to send orders to, you'll need to change your routine up a bit. The best approach is to use your merch orders page (linked to from your Tools page), but you can also rely on the email receipts you get from Bandcamp (or you can always just export your sales history, also linked to from your Tools page).

What about taxes?
It is your responsibility and solely your responsibility to remit the appropriate taxes (income, sales, VAT, property, estate or otherwise) to the appropriate taxing agency. We recommend that you consult your personal tax advisor regarding the best approach. And with that obligatory bit of text out of the way, we'd like to add that if you're in the U.S. and choose to charge sales tax on your physical goods, we do something super neato: we look at the location specified on your Profile page, compare it to the buyer's location, and if taxes apply (e.g., you're both in the same state) we dynamically pull in the up-to-the-minute tax rate for the buyer's city/county. Other online shops expect you to create and maintain a bunch of tax profiles, but with so many rates, and increases happening all the time, that is just kuh-razy. This here's the stuff 'puters were made fer!