Two years after the Songtradr layoffs, the platform paid artists 19 million dollars in 2025 alone and launched a human-curated subscription that plants itself against streaming.
In December 2025, Bandcamp announced record numbers: Bandcamp Fridays have paid 154 million dollars to artists and labels since 2020, and 19 of those millions were paid last year alone. For a model many had written off, it's a resurrection.
The numbers of a resurrection
The global figure is striking: since March 2020, Bandcamp Fridays —days when the platform waives its cut— have paid 154 million dollars to artists and labels, 31 million more than the 123 reported in May 2024. In 2025 alone, 19 million were paid out, and December's Bandcamp Friday moved more than 3.8 million in twenty-four hours, its best day of the year. On normal days Bandcamp keeps 15% of digital sales and 10% of physical: the artist takes home, on average, about 82%. For 2026, the platform is expanding to eight fee-free dates.
The anti-algorithm bet
The most ideological turn came in September 2025, with the launch of "Bandcamp Clubs": a 13-dollar-a-month subscription built on a "subscribe-to-own" logic, with monthly picks chosen by people, listening parties and exclusive content. In an era ruled by the automatic feed, the pitch is a statement: the competitive edge isn't the algorithm, it's judgment.
"Instead of algorithms, fans get human-curated picks from some of the best DJs and journalists in their respective areas." —Dan Melnick, General Manager of Bandcamp, to Music Business Worldwide
From Epic to Songtradr, and back
None of this was obvious. Epic Games bought Bandcamp in 2022 and sold it to Songtradr in 2023; the new owner laid off about half the staff, including the team bargaining on the union's behalf. The decline story was already written. That the platform climbed out of that hole with record numbers is, for that very reason, bigger news than it looks.
And it offers a needed counterpoint to the scene's dominant conversation, made of clubs that close and budgets that won't balance. While one part of the ecosystem contracts, another quietly builds an economy based on ownership —the record that's yours, not an access you rent— and on human taste over automated recommendation. Bandcamp's bet is counterintuitive and precise: in a market obsessed with scale, it proposes that what an independent artist needs isn't an algorithm to distribute them to millions, but a handful of people willing to pay them directly.
Amid the euphoria of the infinite feed, Bandcamp bets on the oldest thing in the business: that someone chooses with taste and pays for what they love.