The Bandcamp Live new service will ease artists to perform for their fans while the fans will be able to support directly the artists they love.

Today, Bandcamp presented its new feature and introduced it as a fully integrated turnkey service solution bringing together all the services offered in one place.

Bandcamp Live is simple to set up, even if you’ve never streamed before, and is fully integrated with the rest of Bandcamp. This has several benefits: we automatically notify your fans when you announce a show, it’s easy to buy a ticket since so many people already have a Bandcamp account and saved credit card, and new buyers become your followers (and have the option to join your mailing list).

You can also showcase your music and merchandise right alongside your stream in a virtual merch table.

- Bandcamp

As this was its initial service, Bandcamp Live will also include the ability to purchase from a merch table which will appear in chat, driving more sales, the optional chat is presented to help fans discuss the show, and the artist to engage with his community.

Free fee until March 31st, 2021

In order to attract as many artists as possible to monetize their live broadcasts, Bandcamp explains that pricing is completely transparent, so they're not billing it to the custommers but on the artists, in fact it's 10% of the ticket and they're waiving it entirely until March 31st, 2021.

When the pandemic eliminated a major source of musicians’ income, we immediately began working on ways to help the artists and labels on Bandcamp, without whom we would not exist. We started with Bandcamp Fridays, a day each month where we waive our revenue share, and so far those have raised $35 million in just 8 days (that’s in addition to the $126 million fans have paid artists via Bandcamp since the pandemic began).

- Bandcamp

Bandcamp think that streaming is the next best thing (Even if they state that it will never replace the experience of in-person performances) and will provide artists with a powerful tool to build and connect with their fans.

Only time will tell, but it's still a good news for artists to get another tool to get incomes while no new gigs will come until a majority of people have not been vaccinated, implying no booking fee for them and that they will hardly be able to rely on streaming knowing that Only 1% of artists represent 90% of listenings on streaming plateforms.