Epic Games buys Bandcamp... Wait, what?

[Accoun]

Man, I remember when Epic were the good guys. I foresee that this will be bad for the artist's cut of sales.

2003/2004 was so good, man!
And joking aside, I dunno - I assume they purchase relates to the Fortnite "concerts" being REALLY profitable. They also bought Harmonix (original creators of Guitar Hero and Rock Band). Might be related to these.
Also, their previous purchases seem to slash their prices instead right after being bought. But if you ask me, it's just them trying to be loss leaders and I expect it to not last. They seem to try to become the gamedev-centered equivalent of Adobe.

Oh, and Tencent owns a good chunk of the company (I want to say 40-something%? For sure they are the second after Tim Sweeney himself). That might matter to some here, since they are a Chinese investment firm, with obviously close ties to the party.

 

[Kyle Jordan]

Good impetus for me to stop playing and buy another SSD. Been needing to do an absolute back up of my music for a while, and renabbing lossless and WAV files of my catalog seems like a good idea now.

 

[p0ke]

What a weird acquisition! Won't affect me much, but hopefully all you guys relying on the service will be relatively unaffected!

 

[rikwebb]

2003/2004 was so good, man!
And joking aside, I dunno - I assume they purchase relates to the Fortnite "concerts" being REALLY profitable. They also bought Harmonix (original creators of Guitar Hero and Rock Band). Might be related to these.
Also, their previous purchases seem to slash their prices instead right after being bought. But if you ask me, it's just them trying to be loss leaders and I expect it to not last. They seem to try to become the gamedev-centered equivalent of Adobe.

Oh, and Tencent owns a good chunk of the company (I want to say 40-something%? For sure they are the second after Tim Sweeney himself). That might matter to some here, since they are a Chinese investment firm, with obviously close ties to the party.

Yeah its 40%, they also own 8.8% of Spotify too

 

[Emperoff]

RIP Bandcamp

 

[Spaced Out Ace]

2003/2004 was so good, man!
And joking aside, I dunno - I assume they purchase relates to the Fortnite "concerts" being REALLY profitable. They also bought Harmonix (original creators of Guitar Hero and Rock Band). Might be related to these.
Also, their previous purchases seem to slash their prices instead right after being bought. But if you ask me, it's just them trying to be loss leaders and I expect it to not last. They seem to try to become the gamedev-centered equivalent of Adobe.

Oh, and Tencent owns a good chunk of the company (I want to say 40-something%? For sure they are the second after Tim Sweeney himself). That might matter to some here, since they are a Chinese investment firm, with obviously close ties to the party.

You mean the CCP?

 

[Albake21]

Horrible company to pickup Bandcamp. Knowing Epic is all in on NFTs right now, I can only imagine what they'll do with BC.

 

[eaeolian]

Countdown to commercials between songs.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's coming. Next up: "It worked for Spotify".

 

[Blytheryn]

The big thing for me is that I can listen to all my decrepit black metal that doesn’t have a home on Spotify or Apple Music on there. If this goes big and mainstream what the hell does that mean?

 

[Spaced Out Ace]

The big thing for me is that I can listen to all my decrepit black metal that doesn’t have a home on Spotify or Apple Music on there. If this goes big and mainstream what the hell does that mean?

Normies will go, "ew, they are like, problematic and stuffs! Please deplatform them or I'll go on a Twitter rant to make my brainless moronic followers do the same!"

 

[shpence]

Good impetus for me to stop playing and buy another SSD. Been needing to do an absolute back up of my music for a while, and renabbing lossless and WAV files of my catalog seems like a good idea now.

Great idea. I will definitely check if I have lossless versions of everything I've purchased on BC.

 

[Jonathan20022]

The fact that most of you guys aren't more concerned that Tencent now owns Bandcamp says a lot IMO

 

[Matt08642]

The fact that most of you guys aren't more concerned that Tencent now owns Bandcamp says a lot IMO

Feels like it simply says people (including myself) weren't immediately aware Epic is 40% owned by Tencent ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[CovertSovietBear]

Guess I have to start sending my money to bands through Venmo for my merch now

 

[CTID]

tbh we'll all have to wait and see what happens. could be nothing will change except on the back end epic is making the money, or they could restructure the entire website and make it shit. until then it's all conjecture at best.

not to mention that if it goes down the shitter another website will invariably pop up that does what bandcamp used to do and it'll be the next bastion until that one is bought up by a gigantic corporation and repeat ad infinitum.

also, worth noting that bandcamp agreed to be purchased so they clearly had their reasons. could be their model was just unsustainable and they were unable to change it without backlash so they'll take the payday and let the huge faceless corpo take the heat when they start changing policies.

we'll just have to wait and see

 

[Andii]

Bandcamp is great, but it's also utterly replaceable all while getting paid more directly and without that cut.

People can stream you on any streaming service and for free on youtube. COVERED
You can sell your music on your own website. To replace pay what you want, embed youtube for previewing, simply provide a download link to .mp3 and .wav zips and put a donate button under it and write a little pay what you want message. For sales, a paypal shopping cart for digital goods and email links to zips.

 

[Blytheryn]

Normies will go, "ew, they are like, problematic and stuffs! Please deplatform them or I'll go on a Twitter rant to make my brainless moronic followers do the same!"

I swear if this means I can’t listen to Satanic Warmaster I’ll just erase the whole app.

 

[Spaced Out Ace]

I swear if this means I can’t listen to Satanic Warmaster I’ll just erase the whole app.

I’d rather listen to Judas Iscariot, but I think the project is defunct, so...

 

[Kyle Jordan]

Encouraging, somewhat:

“While Epic Games has acquired Bandcamp, the music marketplace and community hub will continue to operate independently, and will continue to be helmed by co-founder and CEO Ethan Diamond.”

Epic Games has acquired Bandcamp in bid to expand into music

Unreal Engine and Fortnite developer/publisher Epic Games has acquired Bandcamp, both companies announced. While Epic Games has acquired Bandcamp, the music marketplace and community hub will continue…

nichegamer.com

 

[Aewrik]

Encouraging, somewhat:

“While Epic Games has acquired Bandcamp, the music marketplace and community hub will continue to operate independently, and will continue to be helmed by co-founder and CEO Ethan Diamond.”

Epic Games has acquired Bandcamp in bid to expand into music

Unreal Engine and Fortnite developer/publisher Epic Games has acquired Bandcamp, both companies announced. While Epic Games has acquired Bandcamp, the music marketplace and community hub will continue…

nichegamer.com

Honestly? This is pretty much par for the course when companies are bought out. In a year those words will ring as hollow as they always have.

Bandcamp may still stay the best site for music, but its corporate priorities shifted completely the instant they were gobbled up by Epic.