What is a Listening Party? How does it work?
Listening Parties are the audio-only flavor of Bandcamp Live that puts the focus entirely on your album.
Listening Parties give you a chance to share your album with your community, build excitement, and chat with fans, without the added complications that come with video. You could host a Listening Party for a pre-order to give your fans an early preview of your album, for an album that is coming out on vinyl for the first time, or to showcase an album just because.
We designed Listening Parties to be as accessible as possible. These events are free - anyone with the link can tune in, and some additional interactions require a fan account (also free!). Just pick the album, choose a time, give it a brief description, and we’ll take care of the rest (though it helps to share the event on your social channels).
You don’t even need to start the album at showtime. The album will automatically begin playing from the first track and progress from track to track to until the end. All tracks published with the album will play in the Listening Party, even if certain tracks can’t be previewed from the album page. Fans from all over will be listening to the same thing, at the same time. When the last song finishes, the chat will stay open for 1 hour so you can hang around with your fans.
How do I set up my Listening Party?
Our goal is to make setting up and hosting a Listening Party as simple and hands-off as possible. We’d like to encourage active, dedicated listening from your fans without requiring any additional tech on your end - all you need is an album uploaded to your Bandcamp page.
You can schedule a Listening Party for any public album, including pre-orders! To get started, you can either click the “+ add” menu in the navigation bar and select an album, or you can click the “schedule listening party” option directly from the album editor.
Once you’ve entered all the necessary information in the Listening Party Editor, you’ll be able to preview the event and make sure everything looks right. Keep in mind that all tracks on the album will play in the Listening Party, even if certain tracks can’t be streamed by fans on the album page.
Comments