ENTIRE RELAPSE RECORDS CATALOG IS NOW ON BANDCAMP

Relapse Records gets it. All the other metal record labels don’t.

Make it easy for your fans to download music in any format they like from a stupid-simple interface instead of making them seek it out on a small group of select services or resorting to piracy.

We all already know that Bandcamp is a piracy killer. So why are all the other bigger metal record labels lagging behind?

The entirety of Relapse’s 20+ year catalog is now posted at the Relapse Records Bandcamp, where you can stream every album ever released on the label in full for free or download them for $9.99 in high quality 320kbps MP3 or FLAC format. Baroness, Dying Fetus, Pig Destroyer, Red Fang, Necrophagist, Revocation — it’s all there. The new page joins the one they launched in April featuring Relapse “Alumni” — bands like Mastodon, Neurosis, Nile, High on Fire and The Dillinger Escape Plan that have graduated from the label — offering the same HQ download options but with only one track per release streaming.

It should be noted that Season of Mist, Candlelight, Seventh Rule, Basick and Willowtip all also have excellent curated Bandcamp pages, but Relapse is by far the biggest metal label to jump on board.

Prosthetic Records has a Bandcamp page but it doesn’t have the label’s biggest releases and doesn’t offer ANY music for sale. Century Media, Nuclear Blast, Metal Blade and Sumerian Records have zero Bandcamp presence. I would expect Digby to be all over Bandcamp, but Earache’s catalog is completely missing as well.

Unlike the low payouts offered by streaming services like Spotify, I see absolutely no downside to Bandcamp. Why not sign up, upload your records, and see what happens? There’s a better profit share in it for you than iTunes: Bandcamp takes 15% off the top, and the rate drops to 10% once you hit $5,000 in a year.

Time to get with it, fellas. I know you’re shackled into your old-school distro deal; ditch it!

-VN