So a music video popped up on my Facebook feed the other day for a band I like. I love this new song of theirs, it’s a great video and I felt suitably enthused to purchase it.  But I didn’t.  Why?  Well, after a bit of investigating the infobox of the video advised me as follows “Download this song from our Bandcamp page” .  This is something I didn’t want to do.

The drawback with music hosting sites like Bandcamp and Reverbnation for DIY artists is they can ‘ghetto-ise’ your music.  You need your music to be hosted where the majority of people listen to, search for and consume music and that’s YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, iTunes etc.

Make sure you don’t host your music in a ghetto where nobody wants to visit.
I could have downloaded the ‘Bandcamp’ app to download and listen however people want to listen to all their music in one place, to create playlists on one platform etc. People don’t want to be hopping between two or three apps, they just want all their music on the music platforms that they use.  In marketing terms, any time you place a barrier in someone’s way it is called ‘friction’ and the scenario I’m talking about is a classic case of friction.

Gratuitous ‘ghetto’ reference.
So, I would suggest that even if you still want to drive people to sites like Bandcamp make sure fans still have the option to buy or listen to your music on the most popular music platforms.  If you don’t then customers like myself are going to pass you by!

Got any questions about this post or how you can better market yourself?

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