Fandom Archives • 8Sided Blog

Bandcamp’s Roots in Fandom

September 8, 2020 · Leave a Comment

Bandcamp’s Ethan Diamond doesn’t do a lot of podcast interviews. So his conversation with Andrew Dubber on the MTF Podcast is a good find. Recorded sometime last April, the Bandcamp CEO gives personal insight into the platform and its philosophy. He also talks about the introduction of Bandcamp Fridays to help artists struggling without tour income. The interview happened after the first one took place.

And it’s fun to hear of Diamond’s music fandom, including a story about ordering an obscure vinyl LP from a Norwegian band called Koppen — “one of my favorite records.” The creation story of Bandcamp comes out of fandom, too. Diamond was inspired when he bought a digital download directly from the site of a band he liked. The profound technical issues he experienced — this was the web of the mid-00s — put him on a mission to serve the music community by making something better. In other words, Bandcamp is a platform sparked by fandom and in service to musicians. Compare that with whatever inspired Daniel Ek’s recent remarks about Spotify’s artist community — he seems to feel artists should serve him.

But there’s no animosity or sense of competition. Diamond explains that Bandcamp can coexist with Spotify. He rightly believes the two platforms each appeal to different tiers of listeners:

The way I think about it is when I was growing up — so listening to music in the late ’70s and the early ’80s — there were lots of people who exclusively interacted with music through the radio. And then there were the people who bought tapes and bought vinyl records. Not everybody needed to do that. There were a lot of people who were totally happy listening to stuff on the radio. They like music so they turn on the radio. They have this channel that’s kind of the style of music they like. I feel like that’s exactly what’s happening now. The streaming services are a lot like radio. And playlists are a lot like radio. And then there’s this different kind of person who wants to go deep and interact with the artist and own the music. That’s a subset and I’m happy to cater to that subset.

This is spot on. We forget that, in the pre-digital era, the vast majority of people didn’t buy music. The radio or background listening in stores or on TV was sufficient.

Spotify — or any mass audience streaming service — has the goal of monetizing casual listeners’ listening habits. That’s great — there are many paying $9.99 per year who would never buy music otherwise — and the more prominent labels are certainly profiting. But the danger is in pushing listeners who qualify as ‘fans’ to passive listening habits. Labels and artists need to do the opposite: motivate listeners away from radio (Spotify) and into fandom (Bandcamp and their own websites).

Why a Tip Jar on Spotify is a Bad Idea

February 5, 2020 · 2 Comments

In discussions with artists, in think-pieces, in Twitter threads — here’s an idea that comes up all of the time: streaming platforms (Spotify, etc.) should add a ‘tip jar.’ If you enjoy an artist, you can ‘tip’ them, like a dollar bill in a busker’s guitar case. It’s a way of helping the artist in a time of dwindling streaming payouts.

The suggestion is well-meaning and, at first, sounds like a great idea. But there are a lot of problems.

Let’s start with logistics. The streaming platform would need to implement a direct payment system. And the only way a ‘tip jar’ would work is if the payment goes directly to the artist. A label or distributor could be a conduit, but if the idea is to eliminate the ‘go-between,’ then having someone in the middle — accountable for payments and likely taking a cut — defeats the purpose.

For this ‘tip jar’ to work, the artist would need to contact the platforms and set it up personally. And, unlike a single distributor that maintains relationships with multiple platforms for an artist, the artist would have to directly manage each platform (assuming different spaces come on board to the idea).

But could we even get to that point? This concept wouldn’t work unless Spotify came on board. And what’s the incentive for Spotify to do something like a ‘tip jar?’ It would take an investment and change in infrastructure to set up this feature and facilitate direct payments. What’s in it for them? As a shareholder-controlled company, there needs to be a profit motive embedded in everything they do. And, again, if a platform takes a cut of the ‘tips,’ then the purpose is defeated.

I don’t harbor an illusion that Spotify would install a ‘tip jar’ without a profit motive simply to support the artist community. It’s not hard to discern Spotify’s interests, given the company’s recent moves: the opposition to raising copyright payouts to songwriters, the shift to podcasts, Daniel Ek’s insistence that Spotify is an ‘audio company,’ not a ‘music company.’ Spotify, and other corporate platforms, seek profit above all else, and a ‘tip jar’ doesn’t fit into that equation.

Now let’s pull back and look at some broader problems. We have to accept that, on its face, a ‘tip jar’ on streaming platforms is a bad idea. It disguises the insufficient payouts to artists — as well as the lousy record deals where many artists find themselves trapped — by claiming they can (and should) live off tips. There are already ethical problems with paying service industry workers far below minimum wage due to the possibility of ‘tips.’ We shouldn’t continue to normalize this practice by extending it to recording artists.

Also, an artist tipping system harms non-artist songwriters. Songwriters would not receive these tips. If fact, non-artist writers would probably receive less royalty. It’s possible services and labels would use the tipping feature as an excuse to reduce royalty payouts.

If we can ignore this bad behavior, then there’s an additional danger. A tipping system on Spotify, used by artists for income, would ironically increase reliance on the platform. It’s another method of separating artists from their fans, with Spotify standing in the middle. If the domination of corporate streaming platforms is what brought us here, wouldn’t it make better sense to offer solutions that lessened an artist’s ties to them? I worry that including Spotify et al. in plans to help independent artists shuts us off from outside-of-the-box ideas that further artist independence.

I also don’t think that artists should have to busk and beg on the side of a road that runs alongside corporate property. It’s a bad look, and it’s demeaning, and, despite what we’re led to believe, there are other options. Yes, artists need to make a living, and streaming payouts are awful, especially in the niche genres. But ‘if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em’ isn’t the answer here.

The answer lies in fandom — it always has — and finding ways to cultivate and engage an audience without a middleman controlling access. For starters, a robust artist website is key. Create a hub that draws new listeners and repeated visits from diehard fans. Reward with bountiful content, consistent updates, surprises (very important), and full streams of the catalog. Your website is where you send people, not Facebook or Spotify or another platform that controls access to fans. One can still use those platforms, of course, but use them merely as tools to get people to your site. And, if you want, that’s where the tip jar goes.

Vaughan Oliver’s Invitation to Decode

January 9, 2020 · 1 Comment

My first job was at a record shop (Camelot Music, a staple of ’80s shopping malls), and I enjoyed a generous employee discount. That offered the freedom to purchase records based on the cover art — if the cover’s cool, the music’s gotta be cool, right? — and a lot of those records would be released on the seminal British label 4AD. The enticing cover art was by 23 Envelope, the design team of Vaughan Oliver and photographer Nigel Grierson.

Years ago, I wrote about the power of cover art in a tribute to Factory Records boss Tony Wilson. There was a cool record shop in the beach town where my grandmother lived. It was next to the grocery store, so, while visiting my grandmother, I’d pop in to look at records when she’d go for groceries. I was 12 or 13 years old and recall seeing those early New Order records — Movement and Everything’s Gone Green — sitting in the mysterious bin labeled ‘imports.’ These records were strange, not like anything that I’d seen, and it was impossible to resist their vibe. It would be a couple more years until I heard these records, but the sound, the feeling, wasn’t that far off from the cover art’s first impressions. The designer was Peter Saville, often mentioned in influence alongside Vaughan Oliver, and it was like he was transmitting signals to me across the Atlantic.

That’s what remarkable cover art — or design in general — does to us. It’s an invitation to decode, revealing (or hinting at) the intention of the creator. Or, as Oliver told an interviewer, “[An album] cover should work as an entrance door that invites you to cross it.”

Clan of Xymox - cover art by Vaughan Oliver

It’s not a stretch to believe there would be a lot fewer graphic designers in the world if not for Vaughan Oliver and Peter Saville. I can’t think of a single designer friend of a specific age range that wasn’t significantly inspired by the outputs of 4AD and Factory. But it wasn’t only budding designers who received inspiration. There are also a lot more independent labels because of these designs. Or a lot more labels that approached everything they did as a representative package.

Oliver understood that the appeal he added to 4AD was emotional, that fans of the label picked up on common threads and identified a community. Oliver stated, “This was kind of branding before branding—and I generally don’t use the word branding—but it was creating a vibe that made you trust in something.” He continued:

I was always a bit wary of putting an identity on the label itself, but I wanted individual identities for the bands that were consistent. Then, with time, you would see a thread start to appear. There was a unity, but without a corporate branding stamp on it. It was very fluid. Eventually, it became an emotional response that people had with the work. Thirty years later, I’m talking to students who call it “emotional branding”—how people become emotionally involved in what we were doing. I’ve got clients who ask, “How can we have that now?” I say, “We don’t have that now. It builds with time; it also builds with the quality of the product.”

It’s a challenge to create this emotional community without the tangible effects of a physical totem. It’s not impossible — many well-crafted artist websites successfully transmit intention to potential fans. But basing an artist’s vibe on the limitations of a social media platform’s template or a thumbnail in a streaming app is a losing battle. The Guardian’s Ben Beaumont-Thomas said it well: “[Vaughan Oliver’s cover] design tells you that you’re about to go on a journey. With streaming, you’re suddenly teleported in without a map.”

Unlike Oliver, I’m not afraid to use the term ‘branding’ as long as I get to define how I use it. And I define branding, in music, as the promise an artist makes to her audience. That’s the vibe of trust that Oliver refers to above, and it’s essential. An artist or label that gains that trust, that cultivates a community, that repeatedly transmits a signal, becomes a cultural curator. An expectation grows in the listener, and this expectation is a necessary tension. What’s next? Will this label fulfill my expectations? How will this artist continue to reward her community of fans?

That’s how we felt about 4AD. The cover art, the music, the ambiguity allowing us to fill in our own interpretations — these worked together to build our tribe. If, circa 1985, I saw you pick up a Cocteau Twins album in the record store I’d strike up a conversation. We’re in the same club.

I’m sure that Vaughan Oliver, 23 Envelope, and label founder Ivo Watts-Russell partly knew what they were doing. But I also think they stumbled into a lot of this. The point here is that it’s not that difficult. It’s all about developing intention. Understand who you want to reach, as narrowly as possible, and create only for them. Cohesively apply that aesthetic to everything you deliver to the world.

Vaughan Oliver passed away in the final days of 2019. As I commented on Twitter, it’s a triumph to be remembered for a distinctive contribution to culture and style; one that’s identifiably his own as well as freely lent to others. Oliver transitioned to education in his last decade, and that’s fitting. Many of us in the music industry were his students. He taught us all a lot, and, in a more ephemeral digital age, these lessons now serve a higher purpose.

🔗→ Lost worlds of sex and magic: Vaughan Oliver’s album sleeves for 4AD
🔗→ Sight, touch, hearing: an interview with Vaughan Oliver
🔗→ Vaughan Oliver (Interview Magazine)
🔗→ Cover Star: Vaughan Oliver interview
🔗→ interview with graphic designer vaughan oliver