Epic Games Sale of Bandcamp Has Left the Artist-Friendly Music Platform in Limbo

So many great companies die this way. Bought by a big corporation with no idea what to do with all their money, neglected, then sold to some monopolist that doesn't give a damn outside of squeezing the market.

Another victim of modern tech acquisitions. I hate it. I hate seeing another service potentially dying because it was bought out by a big tech company that actually didn't give a rat's ass about the service. Google has done it to so many great services, some of which that I really loved. The worst thing about Bandcamp is that it's a platform for smaller artists to sell their music, which affects them in a way other tech acquisitions don't.

Also, what?

> “Based on its current financials, Bandcamp requires some adjustments to ensure a sustainable and healthy company that can serve its community of artists and fans long into the future,” says a statement provided by Songtradr chief marketing officer Lindsay Nahmiache. It says the company will be extending job offers to Bandcamp staff over the next few weeks as the sale is finalized.

Since when does Bandcamp have financial issues? Or is it just not profitable enough and now Songtradr wants to squeeze it for all they can?

> “Based on its current financials, Bandcamp requires some adjustments to ensure a sustainable and healthy company that can serve its community of artists and fans long into the future,”

This is interesting. Bandcamp's website says they've been profitable since 2012.[0] If that's still true what other adjustments might be needed?

[0] https://bandcamp.com/fair_trade_music_policy

ooof. Bandcamp is the only place I know of that provides an actually user-friendly experience for buying music. They've seemed maybe a little too good to be true in this modern age.

That didn't take long. When the acquisition was announced someone from Songtradr was on here trying to reassure people. Wonder how they'll spin this.

Shades of mp3 dot com, which was once the Bandcamp of its day but now is owned by CBS Interactive and has been basically become a parked domain. I hope it doesn't go the same way.

ETA:

Of course, history doesn't repeat itself, it just rhymes. Mp3 dot com embarked on a music locker project that basically got it killed by the RIAA, and Bandcamp didn't repeat that mistake.

Bandcamp wasn't on my enshittification bingo card

Bandcamp workers voted to unionize five months ago. Is this a bust?

Surely it was left in limbo when it got sold to Epic.

Epic discarding it is simply a continuation of the downward spiral.

Saw this coming from a mile away when they were first acquired. I legitimately can't remember the last time a megacorporation's acquisition of a smaller company ended well.

Wow I had not heard about the acquisition by Epic, I was heartbroken, but this Songtradr seems much more likely than Epic to leave Bandcamp what it is.

Not transferring the employees (and their union) though is very worrying, I hope they'll step back on that.

I found out that Songtradr had also acquired 7digital, my go-to general music store (the only vast drm-free store with decent privacy policies that I could find)

The workers' petition to have Songtradr rehire everyone and recognize their union:

https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/songtradr-recognize-band...

We need an alternative from Bandcamp that is a co-op fediverse kind of system. I know there is people working on making alternatives like ninaprotocol.com but it's tainted by web3/crypto selling the songs as collectibles NFTs. Not even lossless.

Worker co-op!!!!

Waiting for Discogs to die soon (as it has slowly been for a few years).

I will never give Epic a penny. Their purchase of Bandcamp was such a scumbag move.

> customer support specialist ed blair and software engineer Blade Barringer

Weird editing here—one name in lowercase?

> posted on X (formerly Twitter)

Speaking of editing—oh my, are we going to do this parenthetical forever?

> Barringer, the Bandcamp software engineer, says that a handful of engineers are still performing the critical tasks needed to keep the site running, but otherwise they can’t commit new code. He found a minor bug this week but couldn’t access the program he needed to fix it.

This is interesting! They're locked out of the tools for committing code, but have production access? (SSH?)

But if they are trying to demonstrate their necessity and want to form a union, not doing those critical tasks may be a better idea? If the company is not showing interest in supporting you, don't support the company?

Honest question, what does Bandcamp provide?

As far as I can tell, it has music file storage gated behind a paywall (or not, plenty of music is offered for free), a few very basic functionalities like liking/wishlisting albums, and “following” musicians (fwiw… not sure what’s the value of that… a personalized feed?) and… that’s pretty much it? I guess the front page, which I assume boost sales a little bit for the included musicians?

What am I missing?

This is about the only time I'll defend the modern idea of "NFTs".

I want to show off the albums I bought to the world, ideally with some way to prove that I really spent money on them.

The albums are comparable to NFTs (though fungibility is arguable in both cases), with the caveat that the Bandcamp system is entirely centralized. If the company goes bust, so does my collection.

Though I appreciate that their ethics kept them from doing it, if anyone should've jumped on the NFT wagon, it should've been them. This would've detached the proof of ownership from the company and allowed a secondary market to exist (also important, should the company stop existing/change terms).