You won’t find 75 Dollar Bill anywhere on the Billboard charts, but the New York act’s latest studio album nabbed the No. 1 spot on experimental bible Wire magazine’s best albums of 2019 list. Centered around guitarist Che Chen and percussionist Rick Brown—who keeps time by banging on a wooden crate—the collective specializes in droning improvisations that are gritty, hypnotic, transcendent. On May 1, they put out a digital-only album, Live at Tubby’s, exclusively on Bandcamp. Documenting the group’s last show before the coronavirus hit, the pay-what-you-want release generated $4,200 from nearly 700 buyers in just two days. That’s more than 75 Dollar Bill have made through streaming services like Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube over the last six years. “Streaming is a joke,” Chen tells me. “We might make $100 a year from streaming. On a recent statement of mine, the royalties for one track that had 580 plays on Spotify was zero dollars and 20 cents.”

Since the coronavirus pandemic put the live music industry on pause, Bandcamp has waived its usual 10 to 15 percent share of revenues for two full days to support the artists on the platform. May 1 was the second of these Bandcamp Days, which have already helped direct a total of $11.4 million toward musicians. For 75 Dollar Bill, the influx meant being able to pay out several hundred dollars each to the seven-piece lineup that played on Live at Tubby’s, as well as to the shuttered Kingston, New York venue where the album was recorded. The next Bandcamp Day is Friday, June 5, and 75 Dollar Bill are plotting another live digital album for the occasion.

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