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.
Those who always claim to be “democratic” are left wing extremist fascists in reality, look around what’s happening (especially in Germany). I’m not mixing up anything, what you say WAS reality decades ago, but things have changed DRAMATICALLY. I bet you saw what I wrote before I deleted my answer (because this is a board about music and not about politics), and that’s unfortunately the reality. But let’s not talk about the endless hypocrisy of western criminals and their pseudo-democracy here, ok?
So back to Bandcamp. I’ve created an artist account and I won’t register as a trader. There’s not much to expect, maybe a small pocket money at the max. No advertising, no social media, no release elsewhere, I will just silently drop some music and look what happens. A trader would act differently, right? I’ll leave a link when it’s done. Feel free to support, feel free to ignore, do whatever you like. 
“Just be at the state of your art(heart)”
…But you continued the political discussion, so I feel free to answer again: I think you are the victim of strong narratives, which have the goal to make people angry about the wrong things, not the things which actually are making your life worse. So they managed to make you completely powerless and best of it, you do not even realize it. You are not looking above you, instead you are looking left or below you. But it is all about the fight of the classes. And if the 90% of normal people would finally realize and organize, it would be very easy to completely change this system and kick out all those parasites. The powerful though exactly know this and pump a lot of money into dividing us, filling the public space with pure shit like fake narratives, false information and scapegoat strategies. And you just proved that it almost perfectly works. The stategy also is as old as millennia.
“Left” actually means something. Left is NOT the German Green party, which is not left at all anymore, since quite a lot of years. The actual left people already left the Green party. “Left” has a long tradition and history, it basically means politics for normal, not-rich people. Only because journalists or politicans call a party “left” doesn’t mean that it is actually left. There is a clear definition about leftism. You might watch some communist youtube channels to get an idea.
I also can’t see a lot of difference in EU politics compared to a decade ago, except now they now want to go to war for resources on their own. EU is not at all a political unit, it is just all about economics for the big companies. And it still is not organized in a democratic way. As I wrote, it’s neoliberal (= toxic af), now with a bit green paint on the surface, which is even worse, because it discredits an originally left and wise strategy. It’s the end state of capitalism, turning into oligarchy.
You really need to start research and think on your own, when it comes to politics. Neither capitalism is god-given, nor unlimited groth like cancer, nor the money system in its current way.
Barter is the only way to go, the “money system” is an incorrect construction and about to collapse. I agree with most parts that you just wrote, but things change, just as definitions. And no intelligent person cares about what “journalists” (aka activists) or even politicians (aka hypocrites and liars) say about whatever party. As I wrote (post deleted), all they care about is their personal wealth, no more and no less.
So, any advice in terms of Bandcamp? Is there anything one should know? Some “secrets” or testimonials? Some stories and experiences?