William Doyle first uploaded music to Bandcamp in November 2016. He had previously released two electronic albums on the major indie label XL under the name East India Youth, but decided to call time on the project. Doyle uploaded an instrumental album, The Dream Derealised, under his own name, and chose to donate all the money he earned from it to the mental health charity Mind. “It was a nice, positive first use of Bandcamp,” Doyle told me. “There’d always been a rigmarole to putting things out before. So it felt good to be instantly like, ‘I’ve made this music, I’m going to upload it, and then it’s available to everyone’.”
Bandcamp reminded Doyle of MySpace, the social networking service that, in the mid-Noughties, was instrumental in launching the careers of many musicians, providing an easy way for them to connect to listeners. “It makes you feel like you’re actually communicating with people and not just chasing abstract metrics,” said Doyle, who has continued to use Bandcamp to share his alternative art-pop, listing albums and EPs available for download.
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