Venting on shipping costs
I know that I’ve gone on about this subject before and I know there is a lot of factors at play and no one is blaming the bands here but I just wanted to vent on the ever increasing costs of shipping and how it is becoming so prohibitive to supporting small bands and buying physical media.
For example, just this morning I found a 3 track demo I was interested in checking out. I found it when looking through the grindcore tab on Bandcamp (it isn’t grindcore, so well done Bandcamp, but that’s a whole other post). I liked what I heard and wanted to support the band. Digital release is $3 which works out at £2.32. That’s cheap and no one can grumble at that, but I was interested in going further. I wanted the tape.
The tape is $8.50 which works out at £6.58 and you get the digital album too? Sold! But wait, once we add shipping, that £6.58 purchase becomes a £23.00 purchase. Now if I want to do that occasionally for some bands I really love then fine, it’s not cheap but that’s the price. However, for a small band that I’ve just discovered and wanted to support by buying physical, that’s too much. I like to find a lot of new music and that cost would really add up. Fast.
This isn’t really a solutions based post. I don’t know how to fix this. This isn’t even the worst shipping I’ve come across. I know sometimes the shipping is set to hundreds of dollars and that’s just to stop people from certain places ordering as Bandcamp doesn’t let you select to not ship to certain parts of the world but that’s not what we are moaning about here. I’m just talking about releases that can be shipped, but that are too expensive. I just wanted to put down some Sunday morning frustration into words.
Hails!