#Bandcamp Announces Second Annual Juneteenth Fundraiser

Last year, Bandcamp held a fundraiser on Juneteenth (June 19), a holiday commemorating the end of slavery in the United States. Now, the site has announced its second annual Juneteenth fundraiser. On Friday, June 18 (from midnight to midnight Pacific time), Bandcamp will donate 100% of its share of sales to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund to support the organization’s ongoing efforts to promote racial justice through litigation, advocacy, and public education. 

“We held our first Juneteenth fundraiser last year in response to the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and the long-standing structural oppression, state-sanctioned violence, and daily racism faced by Black people and people of color, including many of our fellow employees and artists in the Bandcamp community,” Bandcamp CEO and co-founder Ethan Diamond said in a statement. He continued:

We’ve been inspired by and joined in the growing call for racial justice and equity, and have celebrated the many new reforms, practices, and policies that bring us closer to a world where Black people and people of color can thrive without fear of violence and oppression. At the same time, we are nowhere near where we need to be, and there is still much work to be done.

This annual fundraiser is part of our larger, ongoing commitment to racial equity, and we’ll continue to promote diversity and opportunity through our mission to support artists, the products we develop, those we promote through the Bandcamp Daily and Bandcamp Radio, how we work together as a team, who and how we hire, and our relationships with organizations local to our Oakland space (some of which we’ve highlighted below).

We hope you’ll help us spread the word about the upcoming fundraiser, and thank you for being a part of the Bandcamp community! 

In March of last year, Bandcamp waived its revenue shares for 24 hours to direct more funds to musicians suffering financially from the COVID-19 pandemic. The program continued for more than a year, and will come back in August until the end of 2021.

Read last year’s “Pitchfork Staff Picks for Bandcamp’s Juneteenth Fundraiser” on the Pitch.