RIP Bandcamp? Epic Game buys them for an undisclosed amount of money.
Epic Games, makers of the Unreal Game engine - a very impressive property - and of the Fortnite game, a very popular game, have bought the extremely popular music site Bandcamp.
While pledges were made to keep Bandcamp independent, this isn't likely. First off, corporate talking heads lie. Second, why spend money buying a property if not to monetize it. What's the point? Epic does not have a good game store, Bandcamp's store is very efficient, popular, and they have apps for iOS and Android. That's something that Epic could really use, i.e., monetize.
But then there's all that music....
IF it stays....
The comments on Ars are universally negative. No one there likes the idea, and musicians there are hugely bummed at the announcement. The question will be whether they jump ship. There aren't many other places where they can go that are like Bandcamp. A sufficiently motivated group - if they could get the funding - could create another Bandcamp-like site, but could they keep it going long enough to build up a large enough musician base to become viable? Would they pay the content creators enough to keep them?
One thing that made Bandcamp popular with small bands is their payout vs streaming services. From the article: "Diamond [Bandcamp CEO] hints at his company's value by suggesting "$890 million" in payouts to musicians since launching in 2008. If you'd like to understand how rapidly Bandcamp has grown, consider that the company's last lifetime payout estimate, from September 2020, was $584 million. That's pretty good growth-especially for a service that favors à la carte full-priced album purchases, as opposed to cheaper, buffet-style music subscription services.
Though many digital download storefronts cull as much as 30 percent of sales, Bandcamp famously demands less: a default 15 percent figure for digital media sales, which drops to 10 percent after an artist exceeds $5,000 in annual revenue. And Bandcamp insists it will continue running its "Bandcamp Fridays" promotions, which skip Bandcamp's cut of digital sales on the first Friday of every month (though the company still takes fees on those days from sales of physical items like CDs, records, cassettes, and shirts).
You can listen to tracks, pay what you want for individual tracks, download as MP3 or as lossless FLACs. You can find some really esoteric stuff there. I've used it as a source for background music before and have spent some bucks there. Right now I have it open to listen to an Arizona Renaissance Festival hurdy gurdy band that I'm not going to get to see perform live.
Nothing will change immediately, but I will be surprised if in 3-4 years there isn't a diminishment of what Bandcamp is now.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/03/epic-games-begins-to-show-its-more-than-games-acquires-bandcamp
While pledges were made to keep Bandcamp independent, this isn't likely. First off, corporate talking heads lie. Second, why spend money buying a property if not to monetize it. What's the point? Epic does not have a good game store, Bandcamp's store is very efficient, popular, and they have apps for iOS and Android. That's something that Epic could really use, i.e., monetize.
But then there's all that music....
IF it stays....
The comments on Ars are universally negative. No one there likes the idea, and musicians there are hugely bummed at the announcement. The question will be whether they jump ship. There aren't many other places where they can go that are like Bandcamp. A sufficiently motivated group - if they could get the funding - could create another Bandcamp-like site, but could they keep it going long enough to build up a large enough musician base to become viable? Would they pay the content creators enough to keep them?
One thing that made Bandcamp popular with small bands is their payout vs streaming services. From the article: "Diamond [Bandcamp CEO] hints at his company's value by suggesting "$890 million" in payouts to musicians since launching in 2008. If you'd like to understand how rapidly Bandcamp has grown, consider that the company's last lifetime payout estimate, from September 2020, was $584 million. That's pretty good growth-especially for a service that favors à la carte full-priced album purchases, as opposed to cheaper, buffet-style music subscription services.
Though many digital download storefronts cull as much as 30 percent of sales, Bandcamp famously demands less: a default 15 percent figure for digital media sales, which drops to 10 percent after an artist exceeds $5,000 in annual revenue. And Bandcamp insists it will continue running its "Bandcamp Fridays" promotions, which skip Bandcamp's cut of digital sales on the first Friday of every month (though the company still takes fees on those days from sales of physical items like CDs, records, cassettes, and shirts).
You can listen to tracks, pay what you want for individual tracks, download as MP3 or as lossless FLACs. You can find some really esoteric stuff there. I've used it as a source for background music before and have spent some bucks there. Right now I have it open to listen to an Arizona Renaissance Festival hurdy gurdy band that I'm not going to get to see perform live.
Nothing will change immediately, but I will be surprised if in 3-4 years there isn't a diminishment of what Bandcamp is now.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/03/epic-games-begins-to-show-its-more-than-games-acquires-bandcamp