Selling Music Direct: Ultimate Guide to Monetization

Direct Sales

Selling music today is a charity. Music fans are donating to support your career, not because they need your music, but because they want to see you continue making it. Here's why.

Vinyl records served a purpose and solved a problem. They allowed people to bring music out of clubs and off the radio into their homes.

Cassette tapes improved on that by giving listeners the ability to fast-forward, rewind, and pause songs. They were also more compact, making them easier to store. Again, they solved a real problem.

CDs allowed listeners to skip through albums with ease. You could jump from one song to another with the push of a button. They held more music, so there was no flipping from side A to side B like you had to do with vinyl and cassettes.

Digital downloads solved a different problem: storage. As music libraries grew, it became harder to carry collections around and find what you wanted. Digital music lets listeners carry hundreds of songs, all searchable and sorted, making for a much smoother experience.

Then came streaming. It allowed listeners to carry millions of songs everywhere. More importantly, it improved discovery through algorithms, curated playlists, and powerful search tools.

Each technological shift was paired with hardware that made it practical:

• Vinyl had record players
• Cassettes had decks and Walkmans
• CDs had CD players and Discmans
• Digital music had the iPod
• Streaming has Spotify and other apps

Each advancement phased out its predecessor. Cassettes replaced vinyl. CD players replaced cassette decks. Streaming replaced both CDs and digital downloads. Most people today don’t own record players or CD players, and digital downloads have become inconvenient due to storage and access issues.

Downloads now feel like work. You have to download the file, locate it - often buried in your downloads folder - import it into a media player, and figure out how to sync it across your car, phone, speaker, and other devices. On top of that, there's no standard control over audio quality.

Music, as a standalone product, is dead. Today, it's a souvenir - something fans collect to show support, not something they buy for utility.

Once upon a time, if you heard a song and wanted to play it on demand, you had to buy it. You didn’t need to love the artist. You didn’t need to follow them or know anything about them. It was purely transactional.

Even now, when it comes to my favorite artists, all I care about are the songs I like. I don’t follow them on social media. I’ve never joined their mailing lists. I’m not interested in Q&As. I barely know anything about them beyond the music.

There’s a saying: “Never meet your heroes,” meaning you’re likely to be disappointed if you do. Some artists simply aren’t charming or personable. That used to be okay, because no one was buying their personality - they were buying the music. Take Miles Davis, for example, considered by many to have an unendearing personality, but he was an amazing musician, and to fans, that’s all that mattered.

Today, that’s changed. To sell music directly, artists need to connect with fans on a personal level. Fans need to feel emotionally invested in you. They need to feel like they know you. Sales are often driven by a sense of personal connection and obligation. Building that kind of bond takes time.

It’s not instant. It often takes years of relationship-building and nurturing. That process is time-consuming and sometimes costly.

With that foundation, let’s look at your options for selling direct to fans.

Bandcamp

Bandcamp is a music store with a strong community of collectors. It’s a space where music still matters and where fans genuinely care about artist compensation. Many understand that without financial support, the art can’t continue.

Pay-what-you-want pricing is Bandcamp’s signature feature. Since buying music isn’t necessary anymore and is largely driven by goodwill, Bandcamp leans into that with flexible pricing. Artists can set a minimum price, or allow fans to pay nothing, and fans can pay more if they choose. Bandcamp makes it known that customers often pay more with statements like this.

“Fans pay more than the minimum a whopping 40% of the time, driving up the average price paid by nearly 50%. Every day, we see überfans paying $50, $100, $200 for albums priced far lower.”

This sounds encouraging, and some artists interpret it to mean they’ll make more money on Bandcamp than streaming platforms. But the missing piece is the conversion rate - how many people are likely to buy in the first place. The fact that some fans pay more doesn’t mean many people are paying at all.

I’ve had music on Bandcamp for over a decade. In that time, I’ve made a single sale. I set the minimum price to zero, and the buyer chose to pay $1, more than I asked for, but still just $1 in ten years. Most artists I know have similar stories. Their music just sits there, occasionally selling a copy every few years.

That said, some artists do find success on Bandcamp. I know a few who do quite well.

Revenue share: Bandcamp takes 15% of the revenue from each sale. Once a month, they run Bandcamp Friday, where they waive their cut entirely, allowing artists to keep 100%. Sales typically spike on Bandcamp

Fridays, showing that purchases are often motivated by community support rather than product demand.

Perks for downloaders:

Fans can choose from multiple file formats, including MP3 and WAV, even if they paid nothing. Artists can’t restrict formats based on price. That’s because Bandcamp isn’t designed like a typical e-commerce platform - it’s built around the idea of goodwill.

Streaming - Bandcamp has a royalty-free streaming option. Everyone who downloads an artist’s release has the ability to stream it on Bandcamp’s app for free. This can hurt revenue since fans may stream on Bandcamp instead of Spotify or Apple Music, platforms that pay royalties for streams.

Buyers are recognized. Bandcamp displays thumbnails of people who purchased each release. In tight-knit communities, this can encourage more sales because people don’t want to be seen as unsupportive. Especially other creatives in the community looking for reciprocity.

Even

Even is a music store similar to Bandcamp, but with more traditional e-commerce elements. Like Bandcamp, it offers pay-what-you-want pricing with optional zero minimums. But unlike Bandcamp, Even lets artists create tiers with added perks. For example, someone who pays $20 for your album might get access to an exclusive video.

This creates an incentive to spend more. Fans aren’t just giving out of kindness - they’re getting something in return. Artists can also sell non-music items on Even, which they can also do on Bandcamp, but in a limited capacity. This offers artists more flexibility.

Revenue share: Even takes a 20% commission on sales.

Both Bandcamp and Even appeal to artists who are uncertain about their sales potential. These platforms offer percentage-based pricing, which minimizes risk upfront. If things go poorly, you don’t lose much. If things go well, the platform takes a cut. That’s the trade-off. When you’re only making a few sales, 15% or 20% seems reasonable. But when you’re selling in volume, it becomes expensive.

Another downside: these platforms lack standard e-commerce tools like conversion tracking, abandoned cart recovery, and third-party analytics integration. They’re great for getting started, but not ideal for artists expecting significant revenue.

Traditional E-commerce (Shopify, Squarespace)

Platforms like Shopify and Squarespace give artists more control and help them keep more of their revenue. Instead of paying a percentage per sale, you pay a flat monthly fee, which can end up costing less as sales grow.

These platforms also offer complete control over branding, design, and user experience. You can build a professional storefront that fits your vision. They also offer flexible payment options, integrating with multiple payment gateways like Stripe, Amazon Pay, Google Pay, Apple Pay, cryptocurrencies, and more. Artists have control over how foreign currencies are handled, where they can accept British Pounds directly, without forcing British customers to convert to USD. Stretch pay also becomes available, allowing fans to pay for higher-priced items in installments.

Of course, there are challenges:

• You’re responsible for the design and setup.
• You have to manage maintenance and troubleshooting, mainly by contacting customer support for the platform.
• You have to engage directly with customers if there’s an issue, unless you hire an intern to do customer support.

Still, you’re in control - and you have the flexibility to keep costs down over time.

Websites

Think of Bandcamp, and Even like renting a room in someone’s house. Shopify and Squarespace are like renting an apartment. A website is like owning land. You can do anything you want with a website, even extend it beyond the sale of your music and turn it into its own business. With a website, you could build a home for you to live in, a rental property to lease to tenants, and retail space to lease to merchants. To paraphrase the words of the mighty He-Man, “You have the POWER!”

The price point for a website is lower than what you’d pay for an e-commerce solution like Shopify. One of the best plans on Hostinger allows you to host up to 100 websites, and it only costs $7.99/month on promotion, which seems to be perpetual.

It’s not all roses with owning a website. Similar to owning a home, all the responsibility for repairs and other matters falls on you. You can’t contact Shopify support if something doesn’t work; you have to find a programmer to hire and have it fixed. It offers the most flexibility, but also the most responsibility.

Subscriptions

One major benefit of subscriptions is reliable revenue. You don’t need fans to love your latest album enough to buy it - they’ve already paid.

But subscriptions also create pressure. Fans expect consistent value. Platforms like Spotify succeed because they deliver new content constantly from many artists. If you're the only content source, you can't afford to go silent for months or years.

The ideal subscription setup is one where:

• You’re offering access to a deep back catalog,
• Or you’re regularly creating lightweight content (e.g., photos, voice notes, livestreams).

This way, you meet fan expectations without exhausting yourself.