In concept and practice, Buy Music Club’s purpose is starkly clear: It’s a website where you can compile songs available to download and purchase on Bandcamp into a playlist and then publish it for the world to see. Originally conceived by DJ/producer Avalon Emerson in 2018 as a way to redirect the annual year-end enthusiasm for list-making into meaningful financial gains for independent artists, the project has quietly become a valuable utility at a time when the unforgiving economics of streaming have made it hard for many musicians to make any money at all.
Though digital downloads accounted for just 6 percent of total U.S. recorded music revenue in the first half of 2020—down 22 percent year-over-year, as streaming continues to grow in popularity—that small percentage translates to hundreds of millions of dollars. And judging by the popularity of Bandcamp Fridays, where the company responded to the COVID-19 pandemic by waiving its percentage cut for sales once a month, there are legions of music fans who will still pay for MP3s.
BMC aims to help those paying customers make their way through the endless bounty of tracks on Bandcamp, which currently does not offer playlist functionality on its own. “We’ve seen how playlists have become such an important feature for big streaming services, and it’s natural that some tools will be needed to corral peoples’ taste, giving them a place to present it outside of major platforms,” says BMC software engineer Jason Fellows. “That’s what we’re hoping to accomplish—so far, just with Bandcamp, because it’s an equitable solution for distributing your own music.”
“A lot of music, especially dance music, requires the context of a playlist—or better yet, a mix, or a radio show,” adds Emerson. “So it’s useful to have a list-making platform that is really simple, but allows people to connect the dots through a bunch of songs, however they want.”
Emerson initially launched BMC with designer Ignatius Gilfedder and developer Louis Center. As of 2019, the site’s staff of volunteers also includes Fellows and music journalist (and Pitchfork contributor) Shawn Reynaldo. BMC holds a focus on dance, but it’s become a good way to find new ambient, folk, and experimental music as well. Some playlists serve as primer guides for small labels and collectives from around the world; others veer more conceptual, with titles like “Sundays are for…” and “Sleep Oddities.” You’ll also find ones compiled by notable artists like Four Tet, Yaeji, and Jacques Greene on there, alongside singer-songwriter Helado Negro’s compilations of various Bandcamp Day hauls and releases from his extended musical family.
Yaeji, who’s used the site ever since Avalon first put it on her radar in 2018, cataloged each piece of music she played during her recent residency on London’s influential NTS online radio station. “I’ve been using it predominantly to share artists I’m excited about with others, then promoting the link to my list via socials,” she says from Seoul over email. In this way, the lists make for a natural extension of a DJ’s job, and they’re typically easier to parse than hunting around for an unofficial tracklist. They’re particularly handy for someone like Yaeji, who spends a lot of time digging on Bandcamp—and she adds that they’ve already led to some “cute conversations” with some of the artists she’s highlighted.
With more people making lists on BMC since the start of Bandcamp Fridays, the way people are organizing music on the site is expanding, too—from themed lists to collections based around geography or era, all with a natural bent towards the lesser-known. “Over the past year, we’ve seen a lot of growth that we didn’t anticipate,” says Reynaldo. “On Juneteenth, when there was a big focus on finding and supporting music from Black artists, we had a huge influx, hundreds of lists getting made in a single day.”
What’s immediately appealing about BMC is how sparse and self-contained it is. You don’t have to make an account to publish a list. There are no social media-style features to speak of—you can’t follow users or individual lists, you can’t track your engagement, and you certainly can’t pay for promoted exposure. Outside of selected homepage picks by the site’s team of volunteers, the only way you can sort new lists (for now) is by “Most Recent,” which can make using BMC feel like sifting through the world’s most egalitarian record shop.
Fellows says the next step is a new player to enable continuous listening while browsing through different lists—though he’s quick to note that the ultimate goal is, simply, “to encourage people to buy music.” In the same vein, Emerson says the team has been careful about how they approach the concept of growth. “Being someone who uses the internet all the time, it can feel obvious to say, ‘Why not try and make your thing a multi-million dollar unicorn that can disrupt some industry?’ And it’s like, ‘No, I don’t want to do that,’” she says with a small laugh. “That’s a surefire way for cool little tools on the internet to get bloated and die. We want to build something very positive and culturally rich, instead of some killer app.”
The normalization of streaming opened up an entire universe of music to anyone curious enough to listen—but critics of the consumption model have long pointed at the undue power given to centralized platforms (and their sometimes-vexing CEOs) as a serious issue facing artists today. To date, Buy Music Club has been kept afloat directly by its community, with server costs covered by a rent party Emerson threw in 2019. The team has since opened a donation portal, taking a bet on music fans who favor personal recommendations over algorithmic ones.
“If you rely too much on an algorithm to filter and disseminate culture, then at the very best, it’s boring. At worst, it’s handing attention and power to those who already have it,” says Emerson. “Buy Music Club is just a bunch of small tastemakers making atomized lists where you find these interesting little cul-de-sacs of music. That’s why people like it.”
