Published
Thu, Jan 17, 2019, 19:21
- The 5000-square-foot complex, which will also serve as a venue, opens on February 1st.
Bandcamp will open the doors of its new record store, venue and main office on February 1st.
The 5000-square-foot HQ will be located in downtown Oakland at 1901 Broadway. The shop will feature a rotating stock of 99 LPs, listening stations and screens displaying live data on which titles are selling online. The record store will be attached to Bandcamp's first permanent office, reports KQED, where 17 of Bandcamp's 63 employees will work on a regular basis.
Bandcamp's move to brick-and-mortar reflects internal attitudes on the company. "We view ourselves as an online record store, not a streaming service," Chief Operating Officer Josh Kim tells KQED. "We're a place for people to support artists directly. Bandcamp is almost half physical sales at this point. We're really as much an Etsy, if not more, as we are a Pandora."
The record store also doubles as a venue with a small stage. Weekly shows will be thrown on a non-profit basis with proceeds benefiting organizations such as Oakland School for the Arts, Bay Area Girls Rock Camp and Transgender Law Center.
Avalon Emerson recently established Buy Music Club, a site that aimed to "funnel year-end list mania through Bandcamp, a channel that actually pays people."