I only found out about this rather unsettling news just yesterday: the European Commission, starting in 2015, will be charging internet sales tax to anything sold to European customers. Not a big deal, except that:
1. The seller has to pay said taxes in a traditional tax return, even if they don't live in the countries of concern, like myself.
2. There is no longer a minimum income threshold, which, beforehand, was 81,000 GBP.
This could very well be a fatal blow to Bandcamp, which is a direct-to-fan platform and has announced it will take a few months to change the payment system for itself.
Sadly, this means that, at least for a few months, I'll be concentrating on selling my music elsewhere, since Bandcamp won't allow sales to be restricted by region. As someone who registered earlier on with the site, I have the privilege of disabling downloads for anything I wish while still making the tracks streamable, which, unfortunately, is more than I can say for the Future 80s label.
Regardless, I'll keep the albums up but disable downloads for the stuff I wish to be paid for, and will include links to iTunes instead. This will be implemented for my own Bandcamp, and I'll see what I can do when it comes to convincing my label's Bandcamp to do the same.
The good news is that, partially because of this bad news, A Dark Future has been distributed to iTunes, Spotify, and Amazon, among other platforms. Expect these sites to begin to host the album within the next two weeks.
UPDATE:
Since I wrote this journal, Bandcamp has buckled down and agreed to pay the taxes for us musicians. This means that we're all free to continue selling and buying on the site. Will still keep much of my stuff free for now, though, for the sake of the holidays!
1. The seller has to pay said taxes in a traditional tax return, even if they don't live in the countries of concern, like myself.
2. There is no longer a minimum income threshold, which, beforehand, was 81,000 GBP.
This could very well be a fatal blow to Bandcamp, which is a direct-to-fan platform and has announced it will take a few months to change the payment system for itself.
Sadly, this means that, at least for a few months, I'll be concentrating on selling my music elsewhere, since Bandcamp won't allow sales to be restricted by region. As someone who registered earlier on with the site, I have the privilege of disabling downloads for anything I wish while still making the tracks streamable, which, unfortunately, is more than I can say for the Future 80s label.
Regardless, I'll keep the albums up but disable downloads for the stuff I wish to be paid for, and will include links to iTunes instead. This will be implemented for my own Bandcamp, and I'll see what I can do when it comes to convincing my label's Bandcamp to do the same.
The good news is that, partially because of this bad news, A Dark Future has been distributed to iTunes, Spotify, and Amazon, among other platforms. Expect these sites to begin to host the album within the next two weeks.
UPDATE:
Since I wrote this journal, Bandcamp has buckled down and agreed to pay the taxes for us musicians. This means that we're all free to continue selling and buying on the site. Will still keep much of my stuff free for now, though, for the sake of the holidays!