With The New York Times calling it “one of the greatest underground-culture bazaars of our time,” Bandcamp is hardly an industry secret. Did you know that you can use Bandcamp with your WordPress.com website? With both tools in hand, you’ll be positioned to create a centralized, cohesive online presence that helps you sell albums and convey your artistry to fans around the world.
What is Bandcamp?
Bandcamp is a website where listeners go to discover and support artists by purchasing their music or merchandise. It’s popular because a significant share of what fans pay goes directly to the musicians.
Creating a Bandcamp account allows musicians to distribute their work, and they can further promote themselves by building websites and embedding Bandcamp music player into them.
Curate a tune with your own website
As Magnetic Magazine suggests, one advantage of having your own website is that it puts you in full control of your artistic vision. This allows you to tailor the aesthetic and message that you deliver to fans. This is a level of customization that you won’t find anywhere else, so it’s important to build a website that complements your promotional efforts across social media, SoundCloud, and Bandcamp.
With a WordPress.com website, you can choose from a wide array of themes designed with musicians and their music websites in mind.
You can also customize your digital hub with galleries and videos, automatically share updates across various social media networks, and embed audio files directly from Bandcamp.
Jazz up your website with audio from Bandcamp
Embedding a sample of your music can familiarize listeners with your eclectic sound, and entice them to attend performances or buy your albums. To do so, generate a shortcode by clicking on the Share/Embed button that appears at the bottom of any Bandcamp page. Then, click Embed this album.
After you select a layout for your music player, you’ll be able to customize and preview how it will appear on your website. Be sure to click WordPress.com to generate the correct shortcode.
Then, copy and paste this code into your WordPress.com post or page editor to embed the music player.
Although it’s a smart idea to provide a few samples of your songs so that fans can make informed decisions, making them all available for free might prevent you from selling albums. Ultimately, this can impact your bottom line and your music’s perceived value.
Instead, only embed your most popular tracks, or the ones that are most representative of the album you’re trying to sell.
March to the beat of your own drum
Combining Bandcamp with WordPress.com allows you to expand the ways in which you reach a fan base, take control of your online presence, and keep more of the money that you generate.
Once you’re up and running, consider using these promotional strategies to reach even more listeners.
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