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Music platform Bandcamp have announced that they will be donating 100% of their profits made on June 17 to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.
The decision was inspired by ongoing worldwide protests in the wake of George Floyd’s death and other instances of racial injustice. It also marks Juneteenth, the anniversary of enslaved African Americans being informed of their liberation in the former Confederate States of America in 1865.
In a post on Bandcamp’s website, the platform’s co-founder Ethan Diamond said that “The recent killings of George Floyd, Tony McDade, Sean Reed, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and the ongoing state-sanctioned violence against black people in the US and around the world are horrific tragedies.
“We stand with those rightfully demanding justice, equality, and change, and people of color everywhere who live with racism every single day, including many of our fellow employees and artists and fans in the Bandcamp community.”
This coming Juneteenth (June 19, from midnight to midnight PDT) and every Juneteenth hereafter, we will donate 100% of our share of sales to the @NAACP_LDF https://t.co/FVgnE0FuDC
— bandcamp (@Bandcamp) June 1, 2020
100% of Bandcamp’s share of sales made throughout the entirety of June 17 will be donated to The NAACP Legal Defense Fund, a legal organisation that fights for racial justice through litigation, advocacy, and public education.
In addition, the site have announced that they will be allocating an additional $30,000 per year to partner with racial justice organisations and to create opportunities for people of colour.
“The current moment is part of a long-standing, widespread, and entrenched system of structural oppression of people of color, and real progress requires a sustained and sincere commitment to political, social, and economic racial justice and change,” Diamond continues.
“We’ll continue to promote diversity and opportunity through our mission to support artists, the products we build to empower them, who we promote through the Bandcamp Daily, our relationships with local artists and organizations through our Oakland space, how we operate as a team, and who and how we hire.”
It’s not the first time Bandcamp, who typically take a 15 per cent share of digital sales and 10 per cent from merchandise, have used their platform to support charitable and social justice initiatives.
This Friday (June 5) will be the fourth time they have waived a day’s profits entirely to allow more money to support musicians effected by coronavirus.
After Donald Trump’s travel ban on a number of Muslim countries in 2017, they donated all their profits for a day to the ACLU, the legal organisation that fought it.
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