There are quite a few websites now where artists and labels can share free Bandcamp album codes, or yum codes, if you will (I will). I’ve tried some of the paid ones before someone recently pointed me to band.codes which is completely free for everyone involved. I made a page for my record label and put up quite a few releases. It seems a good number of people are already enjoying. If anyone is interested you are welcome to them here: https://band.codes/ingrown
Feel free to post codes for your music below! I think it’d be rad if we all supported one another by adding each other’s albums and EPs to our collection.
I think that a lot of people like to keep track of whether a code has been redeemed, and from where it was obtained. An example is that people mostly post their free codes in the topics they create for their own releases so that other members can redeem them and often people post the code which they’ve claimed so that others don’t bother trying the same one.
To your knowledge, does the band codes site log that information and report it to the artists so that they are able to obtain a metric for the effectiveness of using their codes with this manner of distribution?
Also, you may already be aware of this, but the elektronauts forum has to some degree (in an unofficial capacity) been working around the bandcamp fridays premise which is discussed in the topic that I’ll link below, and which is the way that a lot of people choose to support each other’s albums and EP releases.
I’ll have to see if I can get more info about band . codes, thanks for the heads up!
I love Bandcamp Fridays! I’ll try to pop back around on those days, thanks so much for the tip. It seems every time people post codes I miss out on it even by just a few minutes. I haven’t had a job or income in 5 years so I definitely have my hands full trying to run a boutique experimental and ambient record label, so any support (even just follows/ shares or free code redemption) is very much appreciated. I’m also looking for new music and performers for my radio show / TV show.
As far as I know band.codes only shows you how many people have redeemed and how many people like the release, there are no deeper statistics / data metrics. That would definitely be a great feature to add. It seems the userbase right now is largely the same as the other free code websites. Someone redeemed several codes yesterday and then went on to purchase a couple releases from us, so that’s a positive in my book. It’s really hard for us to 1. reach new people and 2. make any sales at all, even after 14 years, so I’m grateful for any sort of momentum that we can build.