Download CREDITS or download CODES -- which works best on Bandcamp to promote your music?
Bandcamp gives you some great tools to promote your band's music for free or for just a few bucks. But there's some confusion, too: what's the difference between download codes and download credits?
Download CREDITS are used to let fans download your NYP (Name Your Price, or free) music. These are given to each artist by Bandcamp for free. But you get only 200 per month. So let's say your new release is NYP (or set to Free Download, or $0) and more than 200 fans decide to download it. (FYI: a fan can download an NYP album without paying.) If more than 200 downloads are given out in a month, the price of your album will automatically change to the default price of $9.
By contrast, download CODES are things you buy and decide when to give them out. They can be used for NYP (free) or paid albums. You buy them for $3 for 100, or Bandcamp gives you 1000 for every $500 in sales made by your artist account. You create 100 at a time for a specific album. You can post them somewhere, mail them out, or send them out in a Bandcamp message. These allow a fan to redeem the code for the album, just as if they had paid for it.
So which to use -- credits or codes? Well, you can buy each type for the same price. But here's my honest opinion -- CREDITS are a waste of money. Why? Because you are paying your fans to download your music, without getting the benefit of them appearing as supporters on your album page. And from there, they are also NOT appearing in their feed for their followers to see.
By contrast, download CODES cost the same but let you share them deliberately with your fans, and your music will appear in your fans' collections and in their feeds which spreads the word on your music.
TLDR; download CODES are a cheap way to spread your music to gain new fans.
More info:
• Fuzzy's step-by-step on using download codes
• Bandcamp help on download CREDITS
• Bandcamp help on download CODES
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