Bandcamp launched in 2008 with a proposition that sounded quaint at the time and looks radical now: let musicians sell directly to the people who listen, keep the majority of the money with the artist, and give the buyer a real file rather than a licence to stream. It has stayed close to that idea through two changes of ownership since 2022.
The economics are the point of the place. An artist sets their own price, a listener can pay more than the asking figure and frequently does, and on Bandcamp Fridays the company waives its cut entirely. Hundreds of millions of dollars have reached musicians this way, much of it from people who would otherwise have contributed a fraction of a cent through a streaming service.
It is worth being straightforward about what that means here. Bandcamp is not a platform that withholds downloads — it gives you high quality files in your choice of format the moment you buy something. This page exists for the material artists have deliberately made free, not as a way around the part that pays them.
Why buying is the right route on Bandcamp
The purchase is the download. Unlike every streaming service, Bandcamp hands you the actual files in whatever format you want, including lossless, with no restrictions on what you do with them afterwards. There is nothing to work around, because nothing is being withheld.
The money genuinely reaches the artist, and in a proportion that no other distribution route comes close to. For an independent musician the difference between a Bandcamp sale and the equivalent number of streams elsewhere is not marginal, it is the difference between the record paying for itself and not.
So the honest advice is the obvious one: if you keep returning to something on Bandcamp, buy it. It usually costs less than a coffee, you get better files than any tool could produce, and the person who made it can afford to make another.
Saving a free or name-your-price track
-
1
Copy the Bandcamp track address
Take the address from your browser. It will be on the artist's own bandcamp.com subdomain or on a custom domain, and either works. Open the individual track rather than the album page.
-
2
Provide it to the box above
Paste the address into the field at the top of this page.
-
3
Take what the artist has made public
Publicly streamable tracks appear with their file size. Where an artist has set a track to free or name-your-price, Bandcamp's own download page is still the better route — it gives you a choice of formats including lossless.
-
4
Keep the track
Tap the row when it turns blue. Downloads on Android, the Files app on an iPhone.
What this page will not do
Bandcamp is unusual among the sites listed here in that its whole design is built around paying musicians directly, and it is worth being clear about where the line sits.
Purchased albums stay purchased
Anything behind a purchase is not available here, and that is deliberate rather than a technical limitation we intend to remove. An artist who set a price has asked to be paid, and Bandcamp is the one major platform where that request reaches them almost intact.
The same applies to subscriber-only releases and anything a musician has shared privately with the people who support them. Those arrangements exist because artists built them, and working around them would take money out of the hands of exactly the people this site's users say they want to support.
What is left is genuinely substantial: the enormous quantity of music artists have chosen to make free, name-your-price releases where zero is an accepted price, and public streams. All of that is fair game, and for the rest, the buy button is right there.
Bandcamp download questions
Can I download an album I have not bought?
No. Purchases are how artists on Bandcamp get paid, and that is the one thing this page deliberately will not work around.
What if the artist has set it to name your price?
Then zero is a price they have accepted, and Bandcamp's own download page will give you the files in your choice of format, which is better than anything here.
Why buy when I could stream it free?
Because Bandcamp pays artists a far higher share than any streaming service, and because buying gets you lossless files with no restrictions. It is genuinely the better deal in both directions.
Does Bandcamp give me real files when I buy?
Yes. MP3, FLAC, ALAC and several others, as many times as you like, with no digital restrictions attached.
Can I save a track from a subscription-only release?
No. Subscriber releases are the arrangement an artist made with the people supporting them directly.
Do custom domain Bandcamp pages work?
Yes. Many artists use their own domain and those addresses are handled the same way.
Can I download a whole album at once?
Not from here. Buying it gives you the album as a single download in your chosen format.
Where does a saved file go?
Downloads on Android, the Files app on an iPhone.
What is Bandcamp Friday?
A day when the company waives its revenue share entirely, so effectively everything you spend goes to the artist. If you are planning to buy something, that is the day to do it.
Is downloading from Bandcamp acceptable?
For freely offered music, entirely. For anything with a price on it the answer is simply to pay it — this is the one platform where the money reaches the musician in a proportion that actually matters to whether they can keep working.