This Friday 1 May, Belfast Live will partner with Belfast’s dedicated music hub, the Oh Yeah Music Centre, to promote and support Northern Ireland’s music community.
Running live from 12pm – 9pm on our Instagram channel, we'll have a series of gigs from some of Northern Ireland's best performers, as well as information on how to support them at this time.
These Lockdown Sessions will coincide with music company Bandcamp waiving their revenue share on all sales throughout Friday, May 1.
This means that if you buy from a local artist on Bandcamp on this day, 100% of the sales will go directly to them. This kind of financial support may prove invaluable to Northern Irish artists at this time.
What is Bandcamp?
Bandcamp is an American online music company, which hosts content created by all types of musicians.
Bandcamp works by offering artists and labels the ability to upload their music onto the site, and then control how they sell it. Artists can set their own prices for things like albums, tickets, or merchandise.
Bandcamp typically make 15% for digital sales, and 10% for merchandise sales, but during the Coronavirus crisis, the company have been regularly waiving these costs, to allow artists to collect their full revenue.
Fans have paid artists and independent labels $493 million using Bandcamp, and $14.2 million in the past 30 days alone.
Why is this important?
Artists still very much rely on digital and physical sales of their music - as well as merchandise sales - in order to get by.
These sales have become even more important than ever during the Coronavirus lockdown, as artists have not been able to earn from playing gigs or touring, due to lockdown measures.
As mentioned above, our Lockdown Sessions on Friday, May 1, will coincidence with Bandcamp waiving their revenue share on all sales throughout that day.
This means that if you purchase anything from an artist during those 24 hours, you're contributing directly to them - and offering them a valuable contribution during a difficult time.
Here's a full list of the Northern Irish artists who will be performing for Belfast Live's Lockdown Sessions on Friday, May 1, as well as a link to each of their Bandcamps:
