(or, more accurately, how I decide how much to pay for each album)

Bandcamp has been my favorite company for some time. They allow independent artists to easily sell music, their fees are extremely affordable (15% max), they allow artists to give out free downloads (up to a point), they let me download music in FLAC (and I really love them for that), and they have nice, responsive customer service (in my experience, at least).

However, one of their practices really rustles my jimmies, but in a good way.

The way their pricing model works, the artist can set a base price for an album (or song), and anyone that buys it can choose to either pay the base price or pay anything above the base price (similar to how the Humble Bundles work).

For someone like me, who immensely enjoys supporting indie artists, I find this to be a conundrum. Do I pay the base price? Should I pay more and support them further? What if there is no base price?

Through careful consideration of all the facts (and mostly how much abuse I’m willing to give my wallet), I’ve devised a method that, even if not perfect, is at least consistent.

The first question I ask is, how much have you listed your album for?

If you’ve listed it as a free download, then I go ahead and download it… for free. The artist had to make a conscious choice to release it as a free download (which is distinct from a “name your price” album), so I don’t have any worries about it whatsoever.

If it’s $10 or more, then I go ahead and pay the listed price. As much as I wish, I am not made of money. Just delicious human beef.

If it’s less than $10 or a “name your price” album, then I’ll pay whatever price you listed plus a certain amount of money based on the length of the album — if it’s single length, I’ll add $1, but if it’s full album length (more than a few songs) I’ll add $2. However, the total price is capped at $10 — if your full album is $9, I’m only going to pay $10, not $11.

I’ve even made a convenient flowchart. Everyone loves flowcharts, right?

(I realize this isn’t something most people worry about, but I’d rather give my money to artists that deserve it [i.e. not any of the RIAA artists] and support them as much as I can, so I think about this a decent amount.)