Why was Epic even interested in Bandcamp in the first place??
This fucking blows. Start downloading all your music you've bought, you soon won't be able to own anything online anymore.
this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2023
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I'm pretty sure they Epic bought Bandcamp for their battle with Apple and then did literally nothing with it.
Since I discovered bandcamp in 2017, I always downloaded all the music I bought
Same since 2010, but most of it was ogg files, so I’m currently downloading everything as FLAC for proper archival.
I loved Bancamp because you could download CD-quality FLAC. Yeah, I can stream my music there but I want to load it up to my personal media server and just have it in the best reasonable quality possible (I know there's better than CD quality).
I don't have a 1k€ sounds system, so there is no difference in quality for me.
It's hard to justify as it's mostly subjective but objectively I think having music archived in a lossless format allows me to transcode to more practical lossy codecs as things evolve.
It's kind of like in the olden times owning the CD and you could re-rip anytime and whatever format you needed/wanted.
That's why I downloaded everything as FLAC. But I'm saying quality of playback does not go into it ;)
Epic doesn't care about any particular product or service. They are a publishers with aims to become a storefront, but plan to do so by passing off customers and devs and partners.
If you didn't download it, then what's the point?
I feel like back in March 2022 Epic did not really anticipate market conditions to continue to worsen. Big miscalculation on their part.
Why wouldn't you plan for the worst?
I really don't understand how on one hand all of these CEOs and investor types are geniuses and just built different but on the other hand they're hiring people and firing people because they couldn't predict the line on graph doesn't always go up.
If I had to guess, it's because of money. There was more incentive at the time to grow fast and try to maximize profit than to limit growth and potential profits in case of a market downturn. Tim slightly explains what happened.
I'm so fucking tired, you guys.
Stop reading the news and spend some time in your local community. It's the best way I've found to shake that feeling of dread and exhaustion
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Man, I wish Bandcamp would catch a break already, I actually like (liked?) the platform. I like supporting artists I like and I like supporting platforms that sell DRM-free music. If Bandcamp goes away and no other DRM-free alternative comes up, it's back to piracy for me.
Fuck you Epic for many reasons, but for this one in particular
Sweeney and his supporters talking about how they give devs a better cut while also making devs work overtime and file for unemployment.
I didn’t even know they sold them again :( I thought there was a chance that Epic would be a good steward, but now a random music licensing company?
Apparently the biggest in the world, but B2B …
Anyway, might as well mention the bandcamp collection downloader in case anyone needs all their FLACs.
edit: It’s done. 110 albums/EPs for 40.5 GB of FLACs, took around 20 minutes. In case anyone wants to peek into my library (mainly if you are into folk or extreme metal): My collection
I'm really surprised by the number of people who doesn't already have all their music locally
I did, just not in FLAC.
I mean before epic games purchased it. It simply sound natural to me to have local versions of your music no matter what
Yes, I also did so before :D The only thing I changed, was that now I downloaded the FLAC files instead of only ogg.
This has to end at some point. Practically everything is owned by like 5 companies, and they don't even acquire them for any particular reason, other than to prevent someone else from doing the same.
Reminds me of my monopoly strategy
Yeah, it's their monopoly strategy too. Difference is that we're playing it with toy pieces, and they're playing it for real
Man… we can’t have anything nice… damn capitalists fucking every thing up
Wow, I don't think Epic ever did anything with Bandcamp. What a terrible way to end it. What will become of the artists who use it as their main platform? I source a significant amount of my music from these artist, from that site.
Why do you think this is the end?
My apologies, I mean a terrible way for Epic to end their ownership. I hope that Bandcamp will continue and thrive but this move doesn't seem encouraging. Songtradr is monopolizing music at this point.
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Could someone fill me in on why we’re panicking about it being sold? Epic never seemed to do anything to it and it seems Songtradr is keeping it’s the same, does Songtradr have a bad track record or something?
Sorry if this is a dumb question, I just feel out of the loop.
Effectively firing half the employees seems like a strong sign that the new owners are going to ruin what made Bandcamp good.
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Songtradr is a music licensing middle man, charging both artists and those looking to license their music, and somehow despite money coming in at both ends they were losing money in 2022. That does not bode well for the status quo at their new acquisition, Bandcamp, especially considering that their very first move was to fire half the staff. Songtradr doesn't care about artists or music fans, their singular and only priority is entangling artists and music distributors in their licensing scheme. They're middlemen. Middlemen are great for exploiting the free market for profit. Middlemen are at best an additional drain on profits for everyone else. Bandcamp was one of the few places you could buy digital music that really felt like ownership and not licensing locked behind DRM. The songtradr acquisition has the potential to kill development of that kind of digital and DRM-free distribution marketplace and limit investment in anything else that tries to do something similar. If songtradr continuing to lose money after the Bandcamp acquisition, it will be an example to all investors that DRM-free digital music cannot be profitable.
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
One of the worst tech labor years ever continues with the news that roughly half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off.
Epic Games bought the indie music platform back in 2022 for an undisclosed amount before selling it barely a year later.
Late last month, Epic Games laid off 16 percent of its workforce, or 830 employees, due to what CEO Tim Sweeney described as overspending.
Epic also revealed that it would sell the Bandcamp business to California-based music licensing company Songtradr.
Employees who did not receive offers from Songtradr were notified today and will be eligible for severance.
In an email to The Verge, Songtradr confirmed that 50 percent of Bandcamp employees have been extended offers to join Songtradr and reaffirmed from a previous statement the company’s commitment to keeping the Bandcamp experience the same.
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