Reading your raw data sales report

Please note the following information on Standard Payments applies only to sales made prior to June 2024. All sales after that point are subject to the rules and processes for Enhanced Payments. 

Here’s the gist of how revenue share works on Bandcamp.

In your Sales Report, details about your balances are separated into five columns: assessed revenue share, collected revenue share, balance of revenue share, change to payout balance, and payout balance (for fine detail, see above). By looking at these five columns together, you can determine how your running balances are being calculated and where payments are going.

For sales of digital and physical items using Enhanced Payments, we collect our 10-15% revenue share right at the time of the sale, and transfer your share to you in bulk 24-48 hours later.

Example: selling digital items

The first three rows show sales of digital albums, and the last row shows a payout to you. Payouts reflect sales for digital items made at least 24 hours earlier (with certain exceptions). Here’s the nitty gritty of what’s going on in this example:

1. A fan purchases a digital album (item price), and the payment less the transaction fee goes to Bandcamp. This is why amount you received is 0 — we send payments to you in bulk later.
2. The 15% revenue share for that purchase is assessed, and collected from the payment.
3. The change to payout balance column shows your share of the payment added to the payout balance, to be paid out to you later.
4. In the next row down, a fan purchases the same album for $10, bringing the running payout balance to $16.02.
5. In the row below that, a fan purchases a different album for $9. The $1.35 revenue share is assessed ($1.35 is 15% of $9), then collected and noted in the change column. After this sale, the payout balance is $23.28.
6. In the last row, we send you a bulk payment for the payout balance, less the fee charged by the payment processor. The amount you received column shows the payment landing in your account. Note: Due to a PayPal limitation, you may see two payout entries per day.

Example: selling digital and physical items

When you sell a digital item, the payment initially goes to Bandcamp, and we pay out your share to you in bulk later. When a fan purchases a physical item the payment goes to you immediately, and we collect the amount owed later, from your digital sales. Here’s how it works in detail:

1. A fan pays for a package. The payment goes directly to you, so the amount you received column shows the total, less the transaction fee.
2. Though the 10% revenue share for that purchase is assessed, it isn’t yet collected (so that column shows a 0). The balance of revenue share column shows the amount now owed to Bandcamp.
3. The highlighted row shows how we collect the owed balance. When a payment for a digital item goes to Bandcamp, we collect the assessed revenue share for that sale, as well as the outstanding balance owed from any previous physical sales.
4. We reduce the balance of revenue share by the outstanding amount we are able to collect (in this case, the entire owed balance). If there’s a remainder (as there is in this example: $6.01), we add it to your payout balance.
5. The next row shows another sale of the same digital album. Your outstanding balance of revenue share is back to 0, so only the revenue share assessed on that sale is collected. We add the remainder after the transaction fee to your payout balance.
6. In the last row we send you a bulk payment for the payout balance, after the fee charged by the payment processor.

What happens if I’m selling a bunch of physical items, but I’m not selling enough digital to cover the revenue share balance I owe?

In this example, your owed balance of revenue share starts at $15.00, built up from previous sales of physical items. If there aren’t enough sales of digital items for us to collect against that balance, we’ll periodically collect an entire payment for a physical item. The highlighted line above happens to be such a payment. Here’s what’s happening:

1. You sell two packages for $20 each, and the payments go directly to you. The 10% revenue share fee for each purchase is assessed, but not collected.
2. We add the amount owed for both of those sales to the running balance of revenue share, bringing the total owed to $19.00.
3. You sell a third package for $20. The revenue share for this payment is assessed and added to the running balance owed, bringing the total owed at the time of sale to $21.00.
4. Whenever the owed balance exceeds the total of a given payment, that payment goes to Bandcamp, and we reduce the balance of revenue share by the payment amount less the transaction fee.
5. At the time of the next $20 purchase of a physical item the owed balance is only $3.88, so the payment goes directly to you.

And that’s the sum of it. Pun unintentional but not redacted.