Bandcamp has been sold again. This time Epic Games who acquired it a couple of years ago have sold it on to Songtradr. Thre as much wringing of hands and wailing at the potential for Epic Games to wreck the unique service that Bandcamp offers. In the end nothing happened.
This time “60 Bandcamp staffers, out of 118, were offered employment to join Songtradr’s staff of 369 workers” according to the Hollywood Reporter. In the wake of the way the Twitter/X/whatever layoffs were handled, this has clearly caused consternation on the socials.
With Epic Ganes focused on products like the game Fortnite moving Bandcamp on to a business that has music at its core seems like a sensible option. Wired report Songtradr as saying they will be “extending job offers” to other Bandcamp staff over the next few weeks. But redundancies were probably inevitable as there would be duplications in roles, and clearly Songtradr staff were going to be preferred.
What does it mean for Bandcamp as a platform for artists? Too soon to say. “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. But Bandcamp has a fundamentally good offer, for fans and artists and is making money, but maybe not enough to make it sustainable.
Songtradr describes itself as “the world’s largest B2B music company, delivering the only full-stack solution for all business music needs”. Their business includes licencing and distribution so adding Bandcamp make sense for them, and quite likely artists by adding Songtradr’s services to those accessible within Bandcamp.
Breaking the Bandcamp model seems counterproductive. There is a pool of committed artists, fans, labels, and other music professionals to draw on. The good karma brought by Bandcamp Friday, where Bandcamp’s 10% share is handed back to the artists on the 1st Friday of each month brings a big spike in sales on that day. How long that continues remains to be seen.
The press have gone to town on the sale of course, focusing on the job losses and a small amount of glitching in systems in the transition period. Calls for boycotts of Bandcamp on Twitter/X seem a bit of an overreaction. Artists are still making more money than they do elsewhere, and so far, there are no signs of that changing. In which case buy lots on Bandcamp to help artists now… just in case.
Credit: Ken Abbott
A slightly more balanced news item from Louder/Classic Rock, at least compared to the slightly hysterical American coverage.
I keep finding artists who are on Bandcamp. This week my new favourite singer Polly Paulsma, and Kathryn Williams. I saw both these artists in Newport last week and while I’ve been a Williams fan for a good while, came away with 2 of Polly’s CDs.
