The direct-to-fan music platform Bandcamp will be moving to a revenue-sharing model that takes transaction fees from artist sales. The company will charge 15% of an artist's revenues, but will drop that down to 10% if an artist crosses $5,000 in all-time sales. They will be switching to this new model at the beginning of August.

The founder of Bandcamp, Ethan Diamond, had this to say:

"We've based the percentages on what works for the business and what many of you have already told us feels fair, but there's still plenty of time for more feedback."

"It's been awesome to witness... And we're amped to carry right on, full steam ahead, building out new features, honing existing ones, strengthening our infrastructure, and generally making things better and better. Perhaps more importantly though, we want to do so in a way that's sustainable long-term."

While the model is changing from a free to a paid service, it is charging artists a percentage of transactions rather than charging users fees up-front before anything is sold. This seems different from the recent news of the Ning network switching to a paid service. Ning will be charging users monthly for the websites created off  of the Ning platform. With Bandcamp, it seems less like money is coming straight out of your pockets, rather you'll be getting less of it when selling music. Because of this, Bandcamp doesn't foresee any significant drop in support. While the new transaction fees might not be welcomed by Bandcamp artists, they seem tolerable to most.