What happens to Bandcamp accounts when the owner dies

Not as a right. The Terms of Use state "These Terms of Use are personal to you, and are not assignable, transferable or sublicensable by you except with Company's prior written consent." A survivor can ask Bandcamp for that consent through the support form, enclosing a death certificate and proof of executor or administrator authority, but Bandcamp publishes no estate process and no criteria for granting it. The music itself is different: Bandcamp takes no ownership of an artist's music, so the copyright passes to heirs through normal inheritance regardless of what happens to the account.

Contact Bandcamp through the web form at bandcamp.com/contact with a death certificate and proof of executor or administrator authority, and ask Bandcamp to release any sales proceeds it has not yet paid out and to direct them to an estate-controlled account. Payouts run to a connected PayPal account, 24-48 hours after each sale by default or in bulk on the 1st of the month if monthly payouts are selected, and higher-value purchases can sit under manual review for up to 14 days -- so proceeds from recent sales may still be undisbursed. Bandcamp is moving sellers to a Stripe payout system in phases, so say which system the account is on if you can tell. Do not attempt to log in as the deceased account holder: the Terms make the account personal to the holder, and the estate's path is the documented request to support.

Nothing in Bandcamp's published terms requires a page to come down when an artist dies, and because there is no subscription there is no renewal payment to miss. An estate that obtains control of the account through Bandcamp support can keep the catalog listed, fulfill physical merchandise orders, and have payouts directed to an estate account. Bandcamp takes no ownership of the music, so the estate holds the copyright and can also distribute the recordings elsewhere. Whether Bandcamp grants the estate control of the account is Bandcamp's decision.

A purchased Bandcamp collection is a set of licenses, not owned property. The Terms of Use grant each user "a worldwide, non-exclusive, non-sublicensable and non-transferable license to use, modify and reproduce the Content, solely for personal, non-commercial use," so the collection does not pass to a survivor by right and cannot be moved to another Bandcamp account without Bandcamp's written consent. The Terms go further: termination "may result in the forfeiture and destruction of all information associated with your membership, including, without limitation, any access to any Music you may have purchased through the Service." An estate can ask Bandcamp for the purchase history to inventory what was bought, and can ask -- as a discretionary request -- that access be given to a named survivor. Files the account holder already downloaded and saved are physically in the estate's hands regardless.