Black Bandcamp Relaunches As Black Artist Database

Today, community-based platform Black Bandcamp officially relaunches as Black Artist Database (aka B.A.D.). Born out of last year's Black Lives Matter movement and the global pandemic, a 'reset' and reflection began globally, with structural inequality finally being acknowledged. This momentum was key to Black Artist Database growing and becoming a widely embraced, a vital resource for music consumers.

In its 2021 relaunch, B.A.D. will continue to platform Black musicians, producers, and DJs of all genres as it has since its inception in summer 2020. The database, which now lists over 3,500 profiles, will also open up to Black creatives in various fields from around the world, including professionals in publishing, visual and digital art, media production, curation, and discourse. Submissions for creatives from all fields to be part of the database are now open, apply here.

Relaunching the week of this month's Bandcamp Friday, the new platform will continue to provide direct links to Bandcamp and individual website profiles of artists and creatives from all corners of the globe, including Australasia, Africa, Europe, North, Central, South America, and beyond. With recently added new search functionalities including; location, field, genre, and name, users can truly immerse themselves and engage with the database to discover new and emerging artists and creatives, giving users an easy and accessible way to navigate.

In addition to the relaunch, B.A.D. has revealed their [pause] initiative created to support and encourage businesses in the music industry towards the goal of more equitable workspaces. The partnership is not intended to be an all-encompassing fix, but rather to be a positive and proactive step in the right direction. With only 11.4% of music industry jobs filled by Black creatives, [pause] aims to encourage those in positions of power to actively bridge this inequality gap.

A number of key brands across the music world are supporting B.A.D. on their mission, including Mixcloud who, exclusively through B.A.D., will offer users a referral code to create a free Pro Creative account for 3 months.

Editorial content across the platform has developed with the new addition of their exclusive mix series, B.A.D.mix which this month will feature an exclusive mix from Detroit Techno pioneer Eddie Fowlkes. B.A.D. will continue to push quality editorial features highlighting Black artists and creatives with their mixed media series, Voices which tells the untold stories of people in music and champion the voices of Black people within the global electronic music sphere. Up first is Eddington Again who spoke with writer, editor, and speaker Christine Kakaire. So far, the series has heard stories from Ifeoluwa, Russell E.L. Butler, Chris Inperspective, and DJ Paulette.

The purpose of Black Artist Database is to bring the richness of creative talent from the global Black diaspora to the surface, in pursuit of wage equity, transparency, and stable employment for our communities.

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