Michael Walker: Yeah. Let's go. I'm excited to be here today with my new friend, Dan Melnick. Dan, this is funny—we were just backstage, and I was saying that there's another Dan Melnick that we've interviewed on the podcast, and so we had the wrong bio pulled up here. Thank goodness for ChatGPT and AI.

We pulled up all of the summary and the details. So just to give you a quick intro, Dan is the General Manager at Bandcamp—which, if you're a musician, you're probably familiar with Bandcamp. Or if you're not, then you absolutely should be. Bandcamp has championed, for a long time, artist-first music distribution and community-building and helping artists build a sustainable career.

He's a co-founder and former Head of Product at Reverb, which was a company acquired by Etsy. He himself is a musician, writer, and a tech leader blending art and engineering. So Dan, it's great to have you on the podcast today. I appreciate you taking the time and looking forward to connecting.

Dan Melnick: Yeah, thanks, Michael. Excited to be here.

Michael: Absolutely. So to kick things off—for anyone who this is their first time meeting you—could you share a little bit about your journey up to this point? You have the journey from starting and eventually selling Reverb, which I imagine was quite the journey. And also, I would love to hear from your perspective: what makes you excited when you wake up? What's the biggest problem that you see right now that you're looking to solve?

Dan: Sure. Yeah, absolutely.

So yeah, in terms of my journey, I think I've always been very involved in music. I played music my whole life. I grew up in a very musical household. I went to college to study music and play music.

And the other thread of my life that's important is the engineering side—and music was really the impetus there for me as well. I started building websites in the ‘90s that were all music-related. I made a Jimi Hendrix fan website—that was my first website.

Then I started building websites for my bands and my friends' bands. That's essentially how I became a software engineer—through problem-solving around that and continuously scratching my own itch of functionality and just trying to build cool web applications online.

So yeah, I’ll fast forward through some of that, but I met David Kalt, who's really the founder of Reverb. I want to make sure it’s clear—it was his idea, and I was there to help build it and work on it with him, but was part of the founding team. There were sort of three or four of us in the very beginning.

That was a really important experience for me—going from day one: let's build the thing, let's launch the thing, let's scale the thing. Over the course of the seven years I was there, we went from that initial team of three or four of us and $0 when we launched the site on day one—
 to, by the time I left when it was acquired by Etsy, over a hundred employees. We had an office in Amsterdam, we had an office in Tokyo, and the run rate of yearly sales around there was $600–700 million in annual sales.

So it was a huge learning experience. Encountered a lot of challenges, learned a lot about myself, learned a lot about how things work in practice versus theory. And learned a lot about the musical instrument side of the music business too. When people talk about the music business, I think it's really easy to say, “Oh, records,” right? The record business, the recording business. But I think the music industry is much larger when you take into account musical instruments, live touring—all of those other facets. There's really a lot of people and a lot of industry around music.

That was really career-defining for me in that sense of getting to go from day one to the acquisition and seeing Reverb become a global brand. That was really—and still is—very satisfying. I still love Reverb, use it all the time, and follow it closely. I care deeply about it. I think when you build something, that caring never really goes away, even when you're not involved. Now, I’ve been gone for going on six years this summer since I left, and I still really deeply care about it.

To answer your other question about what gets me up in the morning—I think it’s really artists. That goes back to Bandcamp's mission and also just to where we are in the world and how things are changing. Where can I have a positive impact on that changing landscape through my work at Bandcamp? That’s really what motivates me: making sure artists have a way to make a living, to communicate with their fans, to build a sustainable career, and to do it in the face of this rapidly changing world we live in.

Michael: Awesome. That must have been quite the journey—from scratch, or from a founding team to hundreds of employees, $600–700 million of revenue per year. And the analogy that came to my mind was something I can't really personally relate to yet, but I know I’m going to have to face someday—as my kids grow up and then go out on their way.

I’ve heard from people who have gone through that—it’s quite an experience of sort of pride. Of course, you're going to love the kid as they're grown and doing their own thing, but it's like, “Wow,” like you built them up to a certain point and now it's time for them to go out and do their own thing.

So I can imagine maybe there's a similar kind of feeling with seeing this company that you've built—from a baby, this little tiny baby that you guys were raising—and now you've nurtured it into an amazing adult, and seeing it out in the world is probably very fulfilling.

And I imagine probably a big shift—kind of coming back to a different, like, starting—not starting from scratch. Particularly with Bandcamp, it’s not like Bandcamp’s a baby. But as it relates to this next era of your journey and where you see the biggest needs right now for musicians,

I’m curious just to hear your analysis—having worked at the core of Bandcamp right now and working with so many artists and kind of seeing what their challenges are.

What are the biggest opportunities right now, from your perspective? If there’s an artist listening or watching this right now and they're looking at their own career and life and saying, “What’s this next year, five or ten years? Where should I swim along to try to capture the next wave as it crests?” What do you see as some of the biggest opportunities for artists to swim along with?

Dan: Yeah. I think, especially in times like this of really rapid change, actually going back to kind of the timeless principles and ways of building becomes even more relevant again.

There are foundational realities of music that haven’t changed through any of the technology cycles—and those really come down to creating real connections with your fans.

The way those have been done traditionally has been through local scenes—playing gigs, building up that local fandom first, and then going out from that and being able to tour and record and do these other auxiliary things.

I think the way that happens has changed with the internet. It doesn’t have to just be local. But I think for that initial foothold, going for depth over breadth is still the right first move. I still believe that you have to find your true believers.

And I think the internet makes that possible globally, which is amazing. You don’t have to just find them in your local scene. But I do think playing locally and playing in front of people and having that human connection is as important—or more important—than ever. I have this personal belief that people in the next five years are going to be seeking more of that, not less of it, because of the landscape of technology.

They're going to be seeking more meaning and connection to compensate for how quickly the world of technology is changing. And I think music still sits right at the center of that. It's really our oldest social ritual in lots of ways as humanity, and I don't think that changes in the future.

I still fundamentally believe in that core thesis of music bringing people together, creating human connection. And once you do that, you have a lot of optionality, basically. At the end of the day, when you have connected fans who support you as an artist, it allows you to take more risks artistically because you're not necessarily being pigeonholed for this one thing.

You have that depth of connection that gives you freedom to experiment—and then that, in turn, leads to more longevity in your career.

If you look at artists who have had really long successful careers, there are ups and downs. There are little detours of artistic exploration that maybe land or don’t land. When you look at the spiky rise-and-fall artists—who maybe have a hit or find one thing and then don’t go on to do anything else—they sort of saturate. They go for one thing very quickly, as opposed to an extended, more circuitous route through their career.

So what I would say is, don’t get distracted by the technology landscape changing. Certainly utilize it, explore it—don’t ignore it. But at the end of the day, it’s still about writing great songs, connecting with human beings, and then trying to figure out how you can make a living doing that. I think those things are still at the foundational level of being an artist in 2025 and beyond.

Michael: Awesome. Yeah, that's great.

What I'm hearing you say is that in this analogy of surfers looking at what's the next wave—it’s possible that, sure, technology might be a new wave, and if you catch it at the right time, maybe you get a boost and that's that spike. But really, even more important than that is understanding the fundamentals of what exactly is the wave and getting good at swimming along with it.

Some of those things haven’t changed since music has connected humanity since the beginning—which is really about rooted connection and the communities that are built through you as an artist connecting directly with your fans, creating good music that brings people together.

The tools might change. The technology might change—in fact, probably going to change faster and faster. But some of those fundamentals of building that connection and community aren’t going to change. So those are the places to focus on.

Dan: Yeah. And I will readily admit that I am sort of a—how do I put this—it might even sound a little bit naive, but I’m a real believer that, at the end of the day, the hardest thing is writing the great song.

That’s really it—it’s about honing your craft. And it's really easy to get distracted and say, “Okay, well, I need to get really good at marketing and all these other things.” And even if that’s true, it can’t compensate for the song at the end of the day. The music is ultimately what people connect with.

The naive part is that I believe the cream rises to the top. I think great songwriters, in the end, even if they mess up some of this other auxiliary stuff, they end up doing pretty well if they stay focused on their craft. And really invest in the art—and expressing themselves through the art.

That’s still my core thesis with music. It can get really deep now on all of the tools and all of this stuff—and I work on one of those tools. I understand how important they are. But at the end of the day, it’s an art, and you have to invest in that first. And if you get too distracted by everything else or the technology landscape, you’re going to get diluted in terms of your focus on the craft.

Dan: Hmm.

Michael: That's a great reminder. Yeah. So it sounds like what you're saying is—I mean, the first thing that came to mind, and it's probably a better analogy for this—is kind of this concept of putting lipstick on a pig.

Where it's like marketing—if you haven't solved the product itself—then you don't really have something worth marketing. So getting more awareness to it is not necessarily going to give you the best leverage versus just honing in the product and the craft and coming back to the heart or the core of what the value you create is—essentially.

And that's something where the marketing is maybe a function of—like good marketing is sort of connected deeply with the product itself. But it's easy to lose sight of that if we have shiny object syndrome or we're trying to figure out the next big hack or the next way to market.

So it's important to remember the essential—that it's about the art, and going deeper on your craft, and honing that in over time.

Dan: Yeah, absolutely. Well said.

Michael: Awesome. I mean, the other thing that you shared that I really liked was the difference between building real connections and going deep—or the depth of connection with fans—even more so than the amount of fans. Obviously both are important, and maybe the amount of fans is more on the surface.

So it's easier to get vanity metrics or social proof or validation by having lots of numbers—regardless of whether they're legit or not. But it sounds like what you're saying is that probably the more important thing is actually the depth of connection and building the roots deep.

Even though they're below the surface and maybe not everyone sees them as much, those roots are what create longevity. And if a storm comes and passes, then if you have these solid true believers, if you have the solid connection from those roots, that's going to keep you growing more sustainably.

Dan: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's a particularly important topic in the age of short-form video and a certain segment of music listener being very passive—and maybe not even engaging with knowing who the artist is. It's just a song on a playlist that they're listening to while they're doing something else, and it really isn't about engaging with that artist.

And what's strange—and I think confusing for some artists—is that the artist who gets a placement on a great playlist can even do okay as a career in some ways, but they might have a hard time touring.

So it's this weird landscape where you might have a lot of streams, but not really a sustainable career outside of that—if you fall into those cracks of the music world right now.
 And on the short-form video part, I think that's even more salient in the sense that—I've heard of bands that have had a TikTok hit, gotten signed by a solid label, and then had a really bad tour.

It's more than one anecdote at this point of this cycle because it created this spike in their streaming activity. They had this little hooky thing that people got the earworm on with social media, or maybe it was even about the content of the song.

That's the strange thing about some of the short-form video—it can be just about a little lyric that is being used as a theme in this video performance.

Michael: That doesn't mean that those people are fans of your music, right? Mm. That doesn't mean you shouldn't try and engage on those platforms. I think that's the dichotomy there. It just means you should know what they're for, know who you're talking to, know why, and know what your goals are as an artist in doing that.

Because it doesn't mean that you can't use those platforms to create depth. You just have to be more creative, and it can't just be about the algorithm getting you out there. It has to be about you being purposeful with how you're using the platform, and how your image is being built, and how you're then bringing them elsewhere, right?

I think you gotta get those people off those platforms to really create that lasting connection as fans. And yeah, the long careers I think you see are built on that kind of deep fandom, not the kind of quick, spiky flash in the pan.

Dan: Hmm.

Michael: Awesome. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. It sounds like what you're saying is that there is a benefit to the short-form content and the fact that you can get a lot of reach or things can go viral.

But often, if that's all you focus on—without that more important piece of building a deeper connection with those people and what happens after they discover you—that often is sort of like a flash in the pan.

Which leads nicely to everything that you're doing with Bandcamp and the platform you built to help artists kind of build deeper roots and deeper connection with fans. So I would love to hear a little bit more. Hopefully, people who are watching or listening to this right now are at least familiar with Bandcamp, but just in case they've heard of it, but they're not actively using it—maybe you could share just a quick overview of the platform and the main benefit that artists can get from signing up for an account.

Dan: Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, Bandcamp's a platform where passionate fans directly support the artists they love by buying their music. 

So, it's a marketplace, right, where any artist or label can come and put up their music. They can sell digital music, records, cassettes, CDs, t-shirts, merch—any physical goods in addition to the music. And when a fan buys that, the artists get the majority of the money.

Bandcamp takes a small cut as a commission, but we only make money when the artist makes money—period. And that keeps our interest very aligned with the artist. If we're going out and marketing to sell more, it's because the artist is going to make more. So will we. So will Bandcamp. But only if the artist makes more.

And that hasn't changed since its inception, right? Our business model has stayed the same. It's been very transparent. And I think that's part of why it's become a beloved brand by artists and labels and fans, but also a sort of critical piece of infrastructure in the independent music world and beyond.

It's been very steady and reliable in a world that is changing very quickly and evolving fast.

As opposed to Reverb—actually, it's interesting, right? I'm the person who's stewarding that brand now, right? So I'm not the founder. I came in later, and I'm inheriting this really beautiful and important brand and business.

And so I think keeping that spirit of Bandcamp is really important to me. And it's really important that artists look at that history and see—oh yeah, this has been a very reliable, steady hand in a rapidly changing music world.

Because it started, you know, 2007–2008, really sort of the same era as SoundCloud. It was part of that era of music technology. And so it's weathered these changes from the late MP3 era through streaming and has grown through that.

And I think part of why is that we do have this kind of timeless business model and approach that aligns our incentives.

And if you're an artist who's trying to build that depth of fan base, it's really an essential tool for a couple reasons. One is that you own your relationship with the fans.

Whereas someone streaming your music on Spotify is just a statistic, and you don't really have any relationship with that person or any ability to get in touch with them or market to them without paying for it—every fan you get on Bandcamp, you have direct access with.

They can opt in to even give you their email address so you can take it off-platform. But even if they don't, you can message them on-platform and have that relationship with them.

And second, especially in the age of streaming, being able to charge for your music in some way is sort of a test of that depth of relationship.

It shows how much fans value you and want to support you if they're willing to open their wallet and pay for something that you've produced.

And it might not be MP3s in 2025, right? A lot of people use streaming. We still sell a ton of digital music, to be clear, and there's a lot of people who love it and use it. But, you know, half of Bandcamp sales are records, CDs, cassettes, t-shirts, other merch, right?

And so every band creates merch, right, once you get to a certain size. And I think part of that is letting fans express their fandom, letting them have something that they can hold and wear or listen to physically.

And that's really where Bandcamp shines.

Because of the nature of the platform, too—because of the nature of what we've built—we also have this whole community of fans that you can tap into who already have that proof of depth. These are already people who've shown that they're willing to pay for art, willing to pay for your music.

I don't know how you can be an artist in 2025 and afford to not be playing in that sandbox, right? And trying to experiment with—okay, there's a bunch of people here who pay for music and are really passionate supporters. I would want those people to be my fans if I'm an artist in 2025.

Dan: Mm.

Michael: Awesome. Yeah. I mean, it sounds like what you're saying with the repetition is that it's easy to get discouraged. If your first release or your first try—like posting something in an email—it’s not a slam dunk. But the same way that, I don't know, when you're playing a game of golf, the goal isn't necessarily to hit a hole-in-one on the first try.

Like, you have to swing, and then it's like, okay, you kind of see what happens. And then it's the repetition of like—somehow it takes continuing to swing at this little tiny ball, and you can get it into this hole with enough swings. But you need that repetition, and you need to keep showing up and giving it a shot.

And it is, like you said with your band too—maybe your first music wasn't your best. And I think, you know, there's way outliers where that's not the case—genius-level artists and bands, you look at their first album, it's just amazing, right?

Dan: Mm.

Michael: Most of us are not them. Most of us have to make the first pancake that’s like slightly burnt before we get to the second one, right? So it's like, go make the first pancakes.

Same with marketing. Go send that first slightly awkward email or make that first social media post. It's how you find your voice and see what people respond to. And then once you see what they respond to, you can double down on that and get better at it and be like, "Oh, fans actually really like it when I post that video of me sitting at my desk, playing with my headphones on, and messing up a couple vocal takes," right?

Dan: Mm-hmm.

Michael: Or maybe they like this other thing. But the only way to do that—it’s really a process of experimentation, but it's also a process of repetition and not giving up on that first try when it flops.

And I think you should actually look at huge artists’ careers because all of them have flops, actually. You know, really across the board, you see for every hit song, there are ten that are just like, “Eh.” Most people don't really engage with them—only the really hardcore fans who listen to the whole album, you know?

And so it's that kind of distribution everywhere on these things. So you have to keep your hand in the game. You have to love it enough to keep doing it and coming back to it and not giving up on it. But sort of believing in yourself and believing in the art enough that you want to get it out there and find your people, right? You want to find your people that believe in it.

Dan: Mm.

Michael: Good stuff. Yeah. It does seem like that's an important part of it—sort of knowing that it's possible. Having the belief that even though you're going with the right expectation—so not necessarily being like, "Yeah, I'm gonna hit the—on the first one, I'm gonna get a hole-in-one," but having the mindset you're talking about.

It's like knowing it's possible. Like, "Look, there is a hole. There's people there. There's millions of people every year that are supporting artists." So it's just a matter of me showing up and continuing to hit the ball. And I'll get closer each time if I pay attention to where it landed.

Dan: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And I think the internet is amazing because it makes it possible to do that in all these little niches too.

I mean, think of how many people there are in the world. And Bandcamp's a really global platform, for what it's worth. You can find a hundred, a thousand people who are really into your thing. It doesn't have to be a huge thing, and you can still do something really cool.

Is it Tim Ferriss who did the “1,000 True Fans”? You know, find your—was it him? Or am I thinking of someone else?

Michael: He might’ve referred to it. I think it might’ve been someone else that originated the idea, but love, love, love that idea—and absolutely applicable to what you're describing right now.

Dan: Yeah. I think it's that same spirit, right? And the internet really enables that.

Michael: Maybe you could share it for anyone who—maybe people have heard it before—but as a quick reminder, in case they haven't?

Dan: Yeah. Basically, the idea is that instead of trying to find a million people who like you this much, it's better to find a thousand people who like you this much.

I'm way oversimplifying it, but if you find this core audience of 1,000 true fans, you can build a really great career now in the age of the internet. And the internet is really what enables that. That didn’t used to really be possible in the same way from a distribution perspective.

Now the internet’s enabled that kind of global distribution where you can find that really passionate, small fan base. But that's your foothold. And it goes back to that same theme we've been talking about—going for depth.

Because those people—they're evangelists, right? In lots of ways. They're the ones who are gonna tell their friend, gonna bring a friend to the show.

Michael: Mm-hmm.

Dan: Because they love it so much that they're gonna be your street team, right? Out there spreading the word. And you can't put a price on it. It's so valuable when you're trying to build a career.

Michael: It is. Especially from the standpoint of the belief too, and the identity. Like, if you have a couple of those people—or a few of those true believers—that helps keep you going early on when you're taking those swings.

It’s not big yet, but man—Donzi, like that guy—he loves the music. And I know that people like that exist.

Dan: Mm.

Michael: Cool. Well, Dan, this has been awesome. Really appreciate the conversation and your focus on the roots—coming back to what's really important in a rapidly changing landscape.

It feels like it is important to have voices of integrity and foundational advice come back to the thing that isn't necessarily a flash in the pan. So I really appreciate the conversation. I appreciate the work that you did with Reverb and that you're continuing to do with Bandcamp.

And for anyone that's here right now who's a musician who wants to explore Bandcamp—and there's a lot of different tools they can use on the platform now, which is awesome—but if they were just like, "What's the lowest-hanging fruit?" or "What's the very first thing—the small, bite-sized thing—that I absolutely need to do just to get started with the platform?"

What do you recommend they do as a first step?

Dan: Create an account. Put up some music. Tell your fans about it.

“Hey, we're on Bandcamp now. We just put up our EP from last year. You can name your price,” or whatever.

And see what happens, right? Or “Follow us on Bandcamp” is another call to action. Like other social media platforms, you can follow artists or labels or even genres and tags on Bandcamp.

And it's a way then to stay in touch with your fans. Once they're following you, you can message them. And it starts to build up that notification base for the next time you post an album or a piece of merch or whatever that is.

And so I think that would be the first thing to do. And then after that, part of what Bandcamp's about too is expressing yourself as an artist. So you can design your page, put in your own color palette, your own background, express your brand.

There are lots of great artists and labels across Bandcamp you can look to for inspiration. But it's a platform where you don't just have to have the vanilla look and feel. So customize it, make it yours, make it feel like who you are as an artist—I think that's sort of the next thing.

Michael: Hmm. Awesome. I like it. Those three steps—I was imagining this as like three pillars on the homepage: create an account, upload your music, tell your fans about it.

Dan: Totally.

Michael: Awesome. I also imagine probably a lot of artists on the platform who, if you have a new song or an exclusive download or something that isn’t available anywhere else yet—probably an amazing opportunity to make it available as a pay-what-you-want to get early access to it.

Dan: Yeah, absolutely.

Michael: Cool.

Dan: We've seen lots of artists do that. We're also seeing lots of artists use windowing on their releases, where they release it to their fans first on Bandcamp, let the fans pay on Bandcamp before they release it to streaming.

So they can make more off their release—they can pay for their next tour, pay for all of the recording, all of that through just their Bandcamp sales—and then they go to streaming later. So I think that kind of windowing is a trend that we're seeing and I think we'll continue to see.

Michael: Mm. Super smart. Well, Dan, thank you again for taking the time to be on the podcast today. Really enjoyed the conversation and appreciate what you're building with Bandcamp.

Dan: Thanks, Michael. Yeah, really appreciate it. It was great talking.

Michael: Awesome. Oh yeah, and also, like always, all the links are in the show notes for easy access.

So I'd highly recommend—if you don't have an account yet—go sign up for free for Bandcamp, put up your music, and let your fans know about it.

Alright, let's go.