Bandcamp sells to Epic: can a video game company save independent music? | Music

Musos and avid gamers had been left scratching their heads final Wednesday as Bandcamp, the net report retailer hailed by unbiased artists as a bankable different to the razor-thin royalties of streaming, introduced its acquisition by Epic Video games, makers of the net gaming phenomenon Fortnite.

Bandcamp CEO Ethan Diamond framed the deal as a boon for artists, saying that the 2 US corporations shared a imaginative and prescient of constructing “probably the most open, artist-friendly ecosystem on the earth”. A blogpost from Epic underlined the necessity for “honest and open platforms” to allow “creators to maintain nearly all of their hard-earned cash”.

However Bandcamp customers reacted with shock and disappointment to the sale of the indie juggernaut, lamenting the lack of “our” retailer, as drummer and Spotify critic Damon Krukowski tweeted.

“All of us simply received offered,” lamented media theorist McKenzie Wark. Bemused avid gamers and tech consultants, in the meantime, puzzled what doable makes use of an organization akin to Epic – itself 40% owned by Chinese language gaming megacorp Tencent – might need for the direct-to-fan market for MP3s of area of interest musical genres like vaporwave and chiptune.

Since its founding in 2008, Bandcamp has develop into a cornerstone of the worldwide underground music financial system by means of its “pay-what-you-want” obtain construction and low commissions, taking a 15% reduce of each sale. Throughout the pandemic, the San Francisco-based firm earned kudos for waiving that price on the primary Friday of each month, producing tens of millions of {dollars} for artists, in addition to donating to racial justice campaigns together with the NAACP Authorized Protection Fund.

Epic has its personal monitor report as a plucky indie, having remained largely within the fingers of CEO Tim Sweeney since its founding in 1991. Like Bandcamp, Epic takes a comparatively small reduce from builders, setting its fee at 12% in contrast with Apple’s 30%. Epic even took Apple to courtroom – and misplaced, at nice expense – to accuse the tech large of monopolising the cellular gaming business. However the firm’s fortunes have soared lately after the success of Fortnite and different free-to-play video games. Now valued at $28bn, and dealing with its personal controversies over knowledge assortment and Retailer exclusivity, it’s not a feisty underdog.

Many unbiased artists, already squeezed by the collapse of bodily gross sales and – since Covid – an extended hiatus from touring, see the Bandcamp sale as one other disappointment in an extended custom of indie sellouts. However tech consultants and neophyte musicians have additionally been speculating on the opportunity of new integrations between Bandcamp’s huge catalogue of music and Epic’s cutting-edge recreation expertise. These vary from live-streaming occasions akin to Fortnite’s digital live shows, which have seen artists Travis Scott and Marshmello placing on trippy performances for tens of millions of emoting avatars, to social areas akin to Occasion Worlds, designed for digital hangouts reasonably than fight and destruction.

Past the busy world of Fortnite, Epic is also desirous about simple routes into licensing music for software program builders utilizing Unreal Engine, the open and free-to-use growth platform constructed by Epic’s Sweeney. There are apparent alternatives for integration with Harmonix, the video games studio behind Guitar Hero and Rock Band.

Extra importantly, Sweeney is a longtime proponent of digital actuality and its buzzy reincarnation because the metaverse, the promise of a digital 3D atmosphere constructed from interconnecting areas and social networks. “Probably the most believable means the metaverse goes to rise,” Sweeney mentioned in 2020, “isn’t from one firm, even Epic, constructing this factor and forcing everyone to make use of it. It’s going to be from increasingly corporations and types connecting their services and products.”

In that sense, Epic’s acquisition will also be learn as a play for the hearts and minds of the following era of musicians and music lovers who’ve grown up in digital worlds akin to Fortnite. Fairly than trying to transform digital natives into record-buying traditionalists, the sensible transfer may very well be to satisfy Technology Z the place they already are, among the many 160 million gamers contained in the Epic Video games Retailer.

Promoting to Epic can also have offered itself because the least worst possibility for an organization underneath stress to supply returns for its early traders. Bandcamp obtained enterprise capital backing in its early years, and although the exact numbers concerned are unknown, market logic dictates that VC-backed startups finally begin searching for an exit: both float on the inventory market, which works for corporations displaying spectacular progress and vital future valuation, or promote up.

Whether or not or not that’s the case for Bandcamp, it gained’t do a lot to cheer up the musicians and followers who way back recognized Silicon Valley economics because the supply of their woes. On social media, the deal was met with cynicism by a few of the musicians who make up Bandcamp’s world neighborhood of creator-consumers. “It’s VC-funded and has at all times been a part of platform capitalism, the place progress is paramount,” wrote experimental artist Zola Jesus.

The irony is that Bandcamp has at all times positioned itself as a “neighborhood” reasonably than a market, but that neighborhood has not been given a say within the destiny of the worth it has created. The answer, say some artists, is to take again management – both by transferring over to a platform like Resonate, a streaming cooperative owned by its customers, or exploring new Web3 protocols for collective possession. Austin Robey, co-founder of other music platform Ampled, advocates for an “exit to neighborhood”, a mannequin the place startups are taken over by the customers and stakeholders who depend upon the services or products they’ve created.

Nonetheless, no different indie platform has but achieved something like the size or enchantment of Bandcamp, and the shift to different platforms would require a leap of technical literacy that the majority artists and followers aren’t able to make. Within the quick time period, Bandcamp stays the slickest direct-to-fan operation on the town – and continues to be paying out tens of millions to artists.

“The services and products you depend upon aren’t going anyplace,” assured Diamond in his assertion. Nothing will change within the quick time period, is the promise – though it’s the identical one which accompanies each related acquisition. These sufficiently old to recollect shedding their MySpace music in a single day could also be feeling itchy. Phrase to the clever, suggested one suspicious person, “obtain all of your Bandcamp MP3s in case you haven’t but”.