Ampwall thread (BandCamp alternative) [Rolling]

Signups open for fans and artists now:

https://ampwall.com/

Obviously early days but have signed up and it’s something I’ll be watching with keen interest to see how it pans out, in case y’know hypothetically BandCamp goes completely off the boil somehow :thinking:

possible “funny” replies: a literal wall of amps (possibly fakeones ), something about pugwall, idk

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Going to sign up for my next release I reckon.

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got a new album coming out soon but can’t really see the functionality for a pre-order or anything at the moment and i’m terrified of leaking it. gonna stick an older album up as a test run for now!

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You can definitely do pre-orders, a pal was in the alpha and I bought a thing from him pre release as a test, one track was immediately downloadable and I got an email notifying me when the whole thing was out. No idea how it works from the artist side though…

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FWIW, he has repeatedly mentioned how receptive/helpful the devs are, I’m sure if you joined the discord they’d be happy to help.

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Bump, its live. Looks good over there, made first couple of sales. Still not many people there but im treating it as a life raft if/when bandcampnl goes to hell.

https://ampwall.com/a/dawnwalker

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@BodyInTheThames some quotes from my friend:

"I personally have been really impressed with Ampwall for many reasons:

  1. The devs are actively looking for feedback, both good and bad, and they respond quickly.
  2. The platform has a subscription pricing model, which I generally dislike, but it’s super reasonable ($10 / year for 5 hours of upload time). Their rationale is that storage is the most expensive part of running a platform like this, so you “pay for what you use” ; it also means their per-sale fees are low (currently 5%). Plus, you can recoup your annual fee with like 2 or 3 sales, so it’s basically a non-issue
  3. Feature wise, it does a lot of things better than bandcamp already: better free downloads experience, bulk uploads, better support for splits and compilations (in terms of associating artists to releases on other accounts). Lots of stuff is still in development, but looking holistically at their mission statement (https://ampwall.com/mission) they’re absolutely going in the right direction."

“I’m not ready to jump ship on Bandcamp (and probably won’t unless they do something egregious), but I see myself shifting my focus toward Ampwall as the place I steer people when looking for my music in the future.”

“The little community they’re building on Discord is amazing too. Release something on Ampwall and it automatically announces it on Discord with a discussion thread. I’ve found and connected with a bunch of musicians that I never would have otherwise over there.”

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It’s been enough to convince me to make the effort with my next release anyway.

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alright

https://ampwall.com/a/bodyinthethames

I'm in

for the moment it’s just my 2017 LP Plasticine Pyramids (set on pre-order for a re-release next Friday… but I’ll be adding some more - possibly new stuff)

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also threw this up there

https://ampwall.com/a/udkm/album/u-dont-know-me

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Slowly bumbling my way through setting up my page too

https://ampwall.com/a/exitchamber

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state of play email from the owner

Summary

Happy almost-Halloween! 🎃 It’s been one month and eleven days since we went live. Things are busy. We thought we’d give a quick update on how our launch went.
561xauto
On September 18, I clicked a button to launch the new Ampwall landing page, signup form, and subscription features. Then, I hit “send” to notify our mailing list.

And we waited.

For nearly a year, Ampwall had been invite-only. We had a solid base, great feedback, and optimism, but as any musician knows, you can love a song — until it’s out there, you don’t know how it’ll connect.

Then traffic spiked. Signups rolled in. Our live internal user list just scrolled… and scrolled… and scrolled!

With zero paid ads or major social influence — just our mailing list and an amazing community — we blew through our signup goals in 24 hours. Six weeks later, we can share some early data:

  • 1300+ users
  • 350+ subscriptions
  • 500+ artist pages
  • 1000+ albums

Our sales volume is up — artists are making money. Our web traffic is up. Our Discord community is busier. We’re hearing from more people than ever. Signups continue every day. New albums go online every day. And we are still growing organically, driven entirely by our community.

Compared to Bandcamp and other established platforms, these numbers are low. But for us, it is huge. It is clearer than ever that there is a hunger for what we are doing. And we couldn’t have done it without you. We’ve just barely started, we can only get better.

Here’s a quick list of new stuff who we’re especially excited about.

Annie Williams - “quiet dancey introspections” - really everything YK Records are doing is amazing

Xiao - hardcore from Sweden

Warning - legendary doom metal from the UK

The Privates - extremely rockin indie from Nashville, TN

Replicant - boundary-pushing death metal from NJ

There’s just so much more. Check out our Explore page where you can explore tags, search, and see new releases. We’ve made a lot of improvements to the platform in the last six weeks with more coming imminently, so keep an eye out for a separate Platform Updates email soon.

To everyone who signed up immediately: thank you! To everyone else… what are you waiting for? Join us today! You can support our mission to build stronger music scenes for as little as $10/year! And of course, you can always reach me directly at chris@ampwall.com.

-Chris Grigg

chris@ampwall.com