So let’s say you’re a (european) hobby musician and you would like to upload some of your music on Bandcamp for fun and to maybe get some additional small pocket money. Your real job is selling whatever online, for example on eBay or Amazon. Your real job and your hobby are two totally different businesses. So should you register as a trader or not? The description is pretty confusing:
Does anyone here have experience with this?
chatgpt’s answer;
" Yes, I can help clarify that.
According to the Digital Services Act (DSA) and Bandcamp’s interpretation of it, the decision of whether or not you should register as a “trader” depends primarily on whether you’re acting in a professional capacity when selling your music.
Here’s how that applies to your situation:
You probably don’t need to register as a trader on Bandcamp if:
You might need to register as a trader if:The DSA focuses on transparency for consumers — so if you are acting commercially, even as a side hustle, you should mark yourself as a trader. But if you’re clearly just a hobbyist, you can choose not to mark yourself as such.
If your music uploads are infrequent and for fun, and you make only small, irregular earnings from Bandcamp, you can skip registering as a trader. Just be honest about your intent and scale — the DSA is aimed at protecting consumers, not punishing hobbyists.
Would you like help figuring out how much income or activity would count as “professional” in your country specifically?"
Yes. There are no clear rules, but more than 410 €/year profit (so it must be net and not gross) could count as “professional”… Anyway, I’m clearly a hobbyist either way.
@TNT I don’t really have an idea about the specific law, but this feels just wrong to me. You can also own multiple companies, no prob. Also I think everything artistery might be handled in a special way in Germany. If you are web designer, you can even opt-in for Künstlersozialkasse, etc (web dev is art).
But you might simply add your incomes from music ontop your usual yearly tax declaration. The only client you have here is Bandcamp. I am pretty sure you don’t have to act like you are a trader when it comes to your music.
Also nobody ever will care if you didn’t do something 100% correct, these days. Finance authority employees are just like us, just try to do it the best you know. I actually had a tax inspection two years ago, and everything was ok, even though I didn’t declarate every income into the correct type and so on.
How much income will there be by selling music? If it runs very nicely, maybe a 1000 EUR a year? They really don’t care.
Yes, it’s called “Liebhaberei”. But only as long as you don’t make more than 410 € within a year, and you’re not allowed to advertise or sell your stuff regularly afaik. But if you don’t want to get punished for nothing, then better add your income from Bandcamp to your other income, that’s the usual way to go.
At least that should be common sense. But the left-wing extremist EU is fucking sick, everything they do is to create a surveillance industry and to restrict freedom in any possible case. So you never now what those sick minds come up with. Especially not as long as criminals like Ursula von der Leyen are in charge…
Agree with the most, but:
you seem to completely mixing up things… EU is not at all left-wing, it’s dominated by neoliberal conservative CDU like parties. They claim to save nature in some superficial narratives, but actually allow Glyphosat another ten years to ruin nature and human health, or ruin the sea completely. It’s a purely lobbyism driven institution (with some rare exceptions which will disappear very soon then). I would say it’s so neoliberal (= politics for the richest 10%) that you neither can call this left nor right, it’s simply the absence of any kind democratic (= for the normal people) politics. And the main source for EU lobbyism still is German politics, more exactly the German oligopols.