Epic Games is selling Bandcamp and Cutting 870 Jobs, 16 Percent Of Its Workforce
The company behind Fortnite and the Unreal Engine is also reported to be selling off Bandcamp
Most of the article is unrelated to music but Bandcamp being sold to Songtradr is big news
I hope Bandcamp continues like before. It wasn't changed by Epic and I hope Songtradr doesn't change it.
They also bought 7digital this year which is primarily a b2b music rights company but they also operate an mp3 store -- here in Canada where Amazon doesn't sell mp3s, 7digital.com and Bandcamp are the only websites where you can buy digital music instead of rent it (unless you want to go through the hassle of iTunes).
This is weird. Literally yesterday I was wondering when Epic would kill Bandcamp by making it streaming-only or some shit.
They are likely making considerable amount of money on taking a cut of merch sales like physical records and apparel. If not then it's still fairly hassle-free. Layoffs at marketing could mean that they don't see much room for growth and that's what business is about these days.
TIL Bandcamp is owned by Epic.
If I had to guess Bandcamp is feeling Covid vinyl craze fizzling out.
TIL too!
About vinyl sales going down, I don’t think so though. This article says it’s up 20% in the US in the first half of 2023, compared to last year.
There's a Walmart Taylor Swift vinyl record and a French symphonic post punk with Mongolian throat singing vinyl record that's sold via Bandcamp.
I'm a member of a group niche genre collectors and there's way less activity compared to a year ago. I also get the impression that labels overestimated continued interest after every pressing plants was booked months in advance. There's plenty of stock on new releases which was unheard of just recently. New releases are getting less frequent now too.
