About one synthwave-family release in five is self-released. In the Frekvenci archive, 4,952 of the 23,898 listed releases have no label behind them, and that share has stayed between about 14% and 30% every year since 2010, even though the yearly number of releases grew from under 100 to more than 2,500. The scene is not a few labels with a DIY fringe. It is a DIY scene with labels around it.
One definition first. We call a release self-released when MusicBrainz files it under its special "[no label]" entry, or Discogs files it as "Not On Label". MusicBrainz says that entry is for white labels, self-published releases and similar, and that self-releases generally go under it even when a digital store forced an artist to type a label name.[1] So the count is a floor: another 4,770 listed releases have no label data at all and no self-release flag, and some of those are DIY too.
What do the DIY numbers say?
Here is the whole history, year by year. The archive starts in 2000, and 2026 is a part year.
| Year | Listed releases | Self-released |
|---|---|---|
| 2008 | 26 | 7 |
| 2010 | 72 | 20 |
| 2012 | 232 | 59 |
| 2014 | 706 | 181 |
| 2016 | 1,878 | 400 |
| 2018 | 2,448 | 632 |
| 2020 | 2,597 | 546 |
| 2022 | 1,809 | 334 |
| 2024 | 1,718 | 326 |
| 2025 | 1,599 | 220 |
SHOW THE NUMBERS
| Year | Releases |
|---|---|
| 2000 | 9 |
| 2001 | 14 |
| 2002 | 11 |
| 2003 | 10 |
| 2004 | 11 |
| 2005 | 28 |
| 2006 | 18 |
| 2007 | 24 |
| 2008 | 26 |
| 2009 | 54 |
| 2010 | 72 |
| 2011 | 98 |
| 2012 | 232 |
| 2013 | 429 |
| 2014 | 706 |
| 2015 | 1,317 |
| 2016 | 1,878 |
| 2017 | 1,925 |
| 2018 | 2,448 |
| 2019 | 2,281 |
| 2020 | 2,597 |
| 2021 | 2,238 |
| 2022 | 1,809 |
| 2023 | 1,746 |
| 2024 | 1,718 |
| 2025 | 1,599 |
| 2026 | 581 |
Four things stand out.
- The scene was DIY from the start, in small numbers. The first years of the archive have a handful of self-released records a year, from 1 in 2000 to 7 in 2008.
- The share jumped around 2010 and held. From 2010 to 2020 between 21% and 30% of listed releases are self-released. The share is highest in 2013 (30%), and the count is highest in 2018, with 632.
- The share is lower since 2021. It is about 17% in 2021 and 14% in 2025. That does not necessarily mean artists have moved to labels. Recent releases are less completely catalogued, and labels' releases may get filed sooner than a solo artist's. We would not read it as a trend yet.
- Single acts can move a year. undersaken alone has 133 self-released listings, 129 of them dated 2023 to 2026. Beasuce has 45, 33 of them in 2018, and $lick King 45, more than half of them in 2020. A scene this prolific has a few outliers.
For context, 1,004 of the 8,728 listed artists, about 12%, have only self-released records in the archive, while 1,873, about one in five, have at least one self-released record. The rest have at least one release with a label or with no label data. Most artists have used a label at least once: 6,688 of them.
Why do artists self-release?
Three reasons recur in the sources we read, and they are all about control.
Tools that removed the middleman. Bandcamp, which began in 2008, lets artists set their own prices, sell downloads, CDs, vinyl and merchandise, and offer pay-what-you-wish pricing. In 2013 it took 15% of digital sales up to $5,000, 10% beyond that and 10% of physical items, according to Entrepreneur; its founder described the direct relationship with fans as the point.[2] Fees may have changed since. The period when our DIY share jumps matches that tool's rise, though we cannot show cause.
Artists who started alone. The Australian duo Power Glove told Gamereactor in 2013 that they began four or five years earlier as a casual project, putting tracks on MySpace, before a video game made them known.[4] Many scenes begin like that, with a project that nobody planned as a career.
Labels as a route into a different format. Labels are where vinyl and tape get pressed, as our Synthwave on vinyl, cassette and CD: formats in the data guide shows. Blood Music began as a reissue operation, and its founder ran it almost entirely alone.[5] The line between a label and a person with a Bandcamp page is thin, which is part of why our self-released number is a floor. For the labels that do carry weight, the labels guide gives each an active, quiet or silent status, and profiles such as NewRetroWave and RetroSynth Records show how a label-first catalogue looks in the same data.
A crisis can raise the DIY share too. In 2020, Bandcamp waived its revenue share on certain Fridays; the first, on 20 March, brought in about $4.3 million, and 1 May brought $7.1 million in 24 hours, with the money going to artists.[3] Our self-released count is at its second-highest in 2020 (546), though it also had a larger archive that year.
Self-release against labels, by genre
Self-release is not even across the archive.
| Family | Listed releases | Self-released |
|---|---|---|
| Synthwave | 8,105 | 1,939 |
| Vaporwave | 10,473 | 1,786 |
| Popwave | 2,678 | 527 |
| Darksynth | 1,803 | 481 |
| Dreamwave | 833 | 216 |
Darksynth (27%), dreamwave (26%) and synthwave (24%) have the highest self-release shares in the table. Popwave is at 20%. Vaporwave sits lowest, at 17%, although it is the biggest family; one reason may be tape labels such as DMT Tapes FL, which has 1,192 listed releases of its own. We cannot prove that from the data. Among tags with at least 100 listed releases, the highest self-release shares are dreampunk (33%), spacesynth and retrowave (31% each) and barber beats (30%); the lowest are future funk (10%) and signalwave (5%).
That is the surprising result: vaporwave, the genre that most looks like bedroom music, is less often flagged as self-released than synthwave.
The tag level shows the spread more sharply. Here are the five highest and four of the lowest self-release shares among tags with at least 100 listed releases:
| Tag | Listed releases | Self-released | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dreampunk | 391 | 128 | 33% |
| Spacesynth | 115 | 36 | 31% |
| Retrowave | 429 | 134 | 31% |
| Barber beats | 1,881 | 555 | 30% |
| Chillwave | 624 | 180 | 29% |
| Slushwave | 470 | 72 | 15% |
| Mallsoft | 403 | 55 | 14% |
| Future funk | 1,538 | 154 | 10% |
| Signalwave | 1,505 | 77 | 5% |
The low end is made of label-driven scenes; see the signalwave guide and the barber beats guide for how imprints shape those catalogues, and the dreampunk guide for the tag at the top of the table. Retrowave at 31% is a useful sanity check: the tag nearest to plain synthwave behaves like synthwave itself (24%).
Where is the DIY scene?
Self-release also varies by country. These counts include only releases with the country on file, which is 60% of the archive, so they are partial.
| Country | Listed releases | Self-released |
|---|---|---|
| United States | 5,552 | 1,347 |
| United Kingdom | 1,205 | 303 |
| France | 926 | 210 |
| Canada | 598 | 222 |
| Russia | 529 | 115 |
| Sweden | 408 | 128 |
| Italy | 356 | 89 |
| Australia | 391 | 91 |
| Japan | 309 | 66 |
| Brazil | 328 | 39 |
Canada is the outlier: 222 of its 598 listed releases are self-released, about 37%, the highest share in the table. Brazil is lowest at roughly 12%, while France, Russia and Japan sit around 21 to 23%. Beyond the table, Mexico is high at 35% (86 of 244) and Sweden at 31% (128 of 408). Our country pages show how this plays out: see Canadian synthwave: Le Matos, Miami Nights 1984 and more, French synthwave: from French touch to darksynth and Brazil's vaporwave and synthwave scene in data. In Canada, one artist, Beasuce, accounts for 45 self-released listings, which is part of the explanation. Small numbers swing percentages.
Who are the busiest DIY artists?
By the number of self-released listings, the leaders are not the best-known names. undersaken has 133, then a Russian act that goes by the single symbol ▥ with 48, $lick King and Beasuce with 45 each, FOR THE CVLTVRE with 42, Makeup and Vanity Set and PZA with 41 each, 超高 Titan with 33, I Wish I Could Stay Here Forever with 29 and CityOfFeelings with 28. Look at when they released, though, and a pattern shows: bursts. All 42 of the self-released listings for FOR THE CVLTVRE are from 2023, 29 of 33 for Titan are from 2020, and 33 of Beasuce's 45 are from 2018. These are artists who uploaded a catalogue in a single year. undersaken is the extreme case, with 53 in 2024 and 43 in 2025.
Two cautions. A list like this rewards volume, and volume is partly an artefact of how a single artist's discography is catalogued: an artist who uploads every track as a separate single will outrank one who releases a few albums. And the label that appears on a record is not always who made it. Treat these names as a map of who is prolific, not of who matters.
Which sources record self-release?
Both sources the archive reads flag it. In MusicBrainz data, 3,890 of 18,494 listed releases are self-released; in Discogs data, 1,062 of 5,404. That works out at 21% for MusicBrainz and 20% for Discogs, so the two sources agree closely, and the overall share does not hinge on one database's habits. Together they add up to the archive's 4,952 flagged releases. The sources differ more in what they leave blank: that is the 4,770 releases with no label data and no flag.
Getting your own release listed
If you release your own music and want it in the archive, the route is through the sources, not through us. The archive is built from MusicBrainz and Discogs, so a record appears once it has an entry there with a listen link. Our for-artists.html page explains what an artist gets and what we count. A release that you add to MusicBrainz as "[no label]" will be counted as self-released, which is what the guideline asks for.
Records to start with
Ten self-released records, from the first years to the latest, taken from the archive's own flag.
- Power Glove · 2008 · self-released · EPThe Australian duo's 2008 EP, years before their game score.
- Le Matos · 2011 · self-released · LPA 2011 album from the Montreal duo, flagged as self-released, from the years when the Canadian scene was still small.
Quick answers on DIY releases
Does self-released mean unsigned?
Not exactly. In the archive it means the release is filed under MusicBrainz's "[no label]" entry or Discogs' "Not On Label". An artist can be on a label for one album and release the next alone, and 1,873 artists in the archive have at least one self-release. A flagged release says nothing about the artist's whole career.
Is the fall in the self-released share since 2021 real?
Possibly in part, but the data cannot prove it. The share was 17% in 2021 and 14% in 2025, down from 21% in 2020. Solo releases are often entered into the databases later than label releases, so recent years can look more label-heavy than they are.
Are Bandcamp-only releases counted?
Only if someone has added them to MusicBrainz or Discogs with a listen link. A release that exists only on a Bandcamp page, with no database entry, is not in the archive at all, so the DIY scene is, if anything, larger than the figures show.
How do I get my own release counted?
Add it to MusicBrainz or Discogs. Entered as "[no label]", it will be counted as self-released the next time the archive refreshes.
Sources
- Special purpose label ([no label]) – MusicBrainz style guideline · MusicBrainz
- Website That Benefits Both Musicians and Fans · Entrepreneur, Jim Morrison, 5 Jul 2013
- Bandcamp's first rev-share-free Friday earned over $7 million for artists · Spin, 4 May 2020
- The Music of Blood Dragon (interview with Power Glove) · Gamereactor, 1 May 2013
- Label Profile: Blood Music · Bandcamp Daily, 11 Dec 2017