Querying Bandcamp Revenue Reports with Natural Language — Meet mtl-bandcamp-mcp

Every music label running on Bandcamp gets monthly CSV revenue reports. These files contain everything: gross revenue, net payouts, fee breakdowns, artist splits, and catalog details. But opening them in a spreadsheet means manual filtering, pivot tables, and context switching. I built mtl-bandcamp-mcp so you can query your Bandcamp earnings using natural language, without leaving the terminal.

Why I Built This

At the agency I ran at the time, I built MusicData Lab - a music distribution and analytics product. As part of that platform, I wrote an adapter that ingests Bandcamp revenue reports into the data pipeline. It is not something I work on daily - Bandcamp is one of many data sources - but when a new CSV export arrives, I need quick answers without opening a spreadsheet. An MCP server turned out to be the perfect fit: it lets me query reports on demand and could eventually help me integrate and debug the adapter within the broader data pipeline:

Since I already use Claude Code for development, building an MCP server was the natural choice. I took a similar approach with my AI-powered analytics dashboard, where business users query streaming royalty data in plain English and get interactive charts back.

The Tools

mtl-bandcamp-mcp exposes five tools:

Dashboard Fields

Summary metrics

Fee breakdown

Item detail

How It Works in Practice

Once installed, you just talk to Claude Code. No spreadsheet formulas, no pivot tables, no context switching.

Viewing the dashboard

Ask Claude for a summary:

> Show me a summary of my latest Bandcamp revenue report

Claude finds the most recent CSV and returns a formatted dashboard:

Report: bandcamp-rev-report-2026-q1.csvPeriod: 2026-01-01 to 2026-03-31

Checking artist splits

> Which artists earned the most this quarter?

Claude groups revenue by artist and shows each one's share:

Finding top sellers

> What are the top 5 items by quantity sold?

You can sort by net, gross, or quantity and set any limit.

Looking up a specific item

> Show me all the details for catalog number MDL-2939

Claude returns every field for that item: UPC, ISRC, region, item type, and a full fee breakdown.

More prompt ideas

Here are some real-world prompts you can try. Click each one to see the result:

Visualizing the data

You can also generate charts from the report data. Just ask:

> Show me which artists earned the most as a chart

---
config:
    xyChart:
        width: 800
        height: 500
---
xychart-beta
    title "Net Revenue by Artist (GBP)"
    x-axis ["Solar Cole", "Fox Alliance", "Midnight Storm", "Iris Grove", "Shaw Protocol", "Orion Webb", "Zane Element"]
    y-axis "Net Revenue (GBP)" 0 --> 140
    bar [129.38, 53.11, 28.81, 11.72, 9.42, 6.82, 0.78]

> Show me the revenue share breakdown as a pie chart

---
config:
    pie:
        useWidth: 700
---
pie title Revenue Share by Artist
    "Solar Cole" : 53.9
    "The Fox Alliance" : 22.1
    "Midnight Storm" : 12.0
    "Iris Grove" : 4.9
    "The Shaw Protocol" : 3.9
    "Orion Webb" : 2.8
    "The Zane Element" : 0.3

> What percentage of fees goes to taxes vs Bandcamp vs payment processing?

---
config:
    pie:
        useWidth: 700
---
pie title Fee Breakdown (% of Total Fees)
    "Taxes" : 46.6
    "Bandcamp Share" : 31.2
    "Payment Processing" : 22.1

All charts are rendered inline, with the site's dark theme and brand styling. No spreadsheet, no BI tool, no context switching.

Handling Bandcamp's CSV Format

Bandcamp exports revenue reports in UTF-16 encoding by default, which trips up most CSV parsers. mtl-bandcamp-mcp handles this transparently - it tries UTF-16 first, then falls back to UTF-8-sig and UTF-8. You never have to think about encoding issues.

Tech Stack

The entire codebase is a single server module with clean, focused logic.

Getting Started

Installation

git clone https://github.com/musictechlab/mtl-bandcamp-mcp.git
cd mtl-bandcamp-mcp
poetry install

Register with Claude Code

claude mcp add -s user mtl-bandcamp -- bash -c "cd /path/to/mtl-bandcamp-mcp && poetry run python -m mtl_bandcamp_mcp"

Configuration

Set BANDCAMP_REPORTS_DIR to point to the directory containing your Bandcamp CSV exports:

export BANDCAMP_REPORTS_DIR=~/Documents/bandcamp-reports

Restart Claude Code, and all five tools are available immediately.

What is Next

This is version 0.1.0. Here is what I am considering for future releases:

Have an idea for a feature I have not thought of? I would love to hear it. drop me a line and shape the roadmap together.

Open Source

mtl-bandcamp-mcp is MIT licensed and available on GitHub:

github.com/musictechlab/mtl-bandcamp-mcp

Contributions, issues, and feature requests are welcome. If you run a label on Bandcamp and want to streamline your revenue reporting, give it a try and let me know what you think.

FAQ

What is mtl-bandcamp-mcp?

It is an open source MCP (Model Context Protocol) server that lets Claude Code parse Bandcamp revenue CSV exports and present interactive dashboards with summaries, artist breakdowns, and top-selling items.

What file formats are supported?

Bandcamp CSV exports in both UTF-16 (Bandcamp default) and UTF-8 encodings.

How do I install mtl-bandcamp-mcp?

Clone the repo, run poetry install, and register it with Claude Code using the claude mcp add command.

What data can I see in the dashboard?

Gross and net revenue, fee breakdowns (taxes, Bandcamp share, collection society, payment processing, shipping), revenue by artist with share percentages, top-selling items, and detailed catalog item views.