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Epic Games acquires Bandcamp
- GeekyBear 5y ago>“Fair and open platforms are critical to the future of the creator economy,” Epic Games, best known as the company behind battle-royale game “Fortnite,” said in announcing the pact. So how do 3D artists go about designing and selling skins to Fortnight players without giving Epic a cut?
- rsolva 5y agoThis makes me sad. Hopefully, new, inovative and non-VC funded solutions will fill the void. I recently discovered the stream2own service Resonate. Really cool stuff, but the catalog of artists is currently small (~3500 indie artists).
- throwaway889900 5y agoIs it just me, or does this seem like a rather lateral move to get into more of the "marketplace" like Epic has been doing recently? Is there some grand goal that I'm not seeing here?
- hunterb123 5y agoMaybe they want a music catalog to play/merge into their games/social platforms like Fortnite.
- susodapop 5y agoThis seems like an odd move for a gaming company. But I wonder about its implication for streamers who deal with DMCA takedowns for playing copyrighted music. Perhaps a scheme where partnered streamers are granted limited license to play music from across Bandcamp while they stream games from the Epic Store.
- runevault 5y agoI'm assuming that, while the store will also remain separate, there will be at least backend ties into the Unreal asset store. Could see them trying to work with some music creators to set up licenses for people to buy to add their music to Unreal games.
- gowld 5y ago> This seems like an odd move for a gaming company. Amazon is a bookstore. Epic sees Steam and Apple (and Amazon) and knows that the platform is the chokepoint where all the money is.
- bduerst 5y agoYeah, this is just Epic blurring the lines between video games and music content as it moves to become more of a media company. It's also an easy way to to procure licensing to sell music content in games. I'd be interested to know why they passed up others like SoundCloud.
- posterboy 5y agoHow would it make licensing easier? As for SoundCloud, either they didn't come to terms for whatever reason, or they didn't try to begin with if marketing considerations favor BP.
- bduerst 5y ago>How would it make licensing easier? If you have a platform that artists allow purchasing of their music through, you can extend it to allow customers to sell/license songs in their games (developer) or buy snippets of song in Fortnite (gamer). Sound Cloud would achieve these features too, and I am certain they considered more than just Bandcamp, as well as kept everyone under NDA during the shopping around.
- MikusR 5y agoThey are also a gaming tools company.
- merlincorey 5y agoI think of them as primarily a gaming tools company. Fortnite and other games are really just Unreal Engine advertisement vessels that got successful in their own right and now serve that purpose plus making lots of money on their own.
- danbolt 5y agoFor a lot of indie games, it's not uncommon to see the game soundtracks available for download on Bandcamp. Part of me wonders if they could potentially integrate soundtrack bundle downloads with the Epic Store a little better.
- pedrogpimenta 5y agoThe FTL soundtrack was my first purchase on Bandcamp and I think how I discovered it. I love it. Farewell.
- joveian 5y agoBandcamp is just a store, they don't own rights to do anything other than sell music.
- AlexandrB 5y ago> Bandcamp will keep operating as a standalone marketplace and music community... 40% of which will be owned by Tencent, possibly more in the future based on the whims of Tim Sweeney and the performance of Epic's primary business (Video Games). Really unfortunate to see an independent source for music become part of a huge conglomerate.
- JaimeThompson 5y agoJust wait to see what happens when Gabe of Valve decides to retire and needs to diversify his holdings.
- revolvingocelot 5y agoYou think the guy who bought a racing team for funsies (and for charity!), the guy with an extensive forge setup in his palatial basement, needs more money? I know it's hip to be cynical and all, but seriously. Even if he were so motivated by money, could anyone even put together a payout that'd be better than "continue to watch the Steam Store print money, beholden to no one because Valve is a privately-held company held by you"?
- anchpop 5y agoThe GP didn't say anything about anyone needing more money?
- JaimeThompson 5y agoHow many people expected Gates to do something like the Gates Foundation?
- revolvingocelot 5y agoWhat's the relevance of the Gates Foundation? Gates didn't sell Microsoft in order to start it, he used his own personal fortune (fine, Warren Buffet helped, but he didn't sell any golden geese to afford it, either).
- muglug 5y agoThis is a big out-of-left-field move. About 12 years ago I rebuilt a record label's site, and bandcamp integration was a big part of that effort. A founder there helped get everything working. The brand name now has a ton of cachet — I hope it continues with the acquisition.
- acabal 5y agoThat's a pity. Bandcamp is my go-to for getting DRM-free FLAC files straight from the artists. The site was a little crusty but they were a huge benefit as a tech-friendly independent music community.
- rorymalcolm 5y agoThey aren't shutting down? Bandcamp's model is so directly connected to DRM free lossless downloads it'd be an incredibly bold decision to remove it.
- nerdponx 5y agoI wouldn't be surprised if Bandcamp shuts down entirely in the next 2-3 years, to be replaced by some limp attempt at an integrated Epic music/streaming/gaming platform.
- johnnyanmac 5y agoThis is Epic, not google. They've only had 2 aquisitions "shut down", both of which were game studios. One being a studio that became independent again, People Can Fly (Makers of Outriders). From a dev perspective of someone who's worked with several Epic tools I'm not immediately worried about what seems to be more of a technical acquisition. Historically they do seem to actually leave their subsidaries hand-off, integrating their tech into Unreal instead of absorbing it entirely. I imagine the extend of the ramifications here include some way to expand Unreal's Asset store to include music or SFX (which artists can opt into offering on the asset store).
- immibis 5y agoSimilar things have happened before
- AlexandrB 5y agoI actually like the site, it's simple and fast. Rare attributes on today's web.
- mkr-hn 5y agoToo bad. It was one of the few good independent websites left. As always, the CEO said they'll remain independent and blah blah blah in the email, but we know how that goes. Good tip for people on the music side, and something to suggest to them: 1. Set up but do not publish your Bandcamp Subscriptions 2. Add all your music to it 3. Now it's all downloadable in your own user-side Bandcamp library. Check the format: FLAC is best. Assuming not everyone holds on to masters once they're uploaded.
- StopDarkPattern 5y agoLooks like China is trying to invade the music industry as well.
- dazzawazza 5y agoI look forward to not being able to download my purchases :(
- nerdponx 5y agoNot to mention the inevitable "we have updated our privacy policy" and the proliferation of tracking and fingerprinting on the increasingly slow-and-bloated site. Maybe at least they'll add some kind of "Now Playing" feature in Fortnite, that would probably be fun for some people.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- zormino 5y agoThat already happens with Bandcamp. If the artist removes a song/album, you have no way of downloading it again even if you've purchased it. You only get a license to download the music while it's still available on the website. I've lost a few tracks/albums this way, thankfully I had local copies already.
- joe-collins 5y agoAlthough, oddly, I do have one album which is no longer available for streaming in the web client, but remains intact in the Android app.
- dancemethis 5y agoUh-oh.
- hemloc_io 5y agoHere's a thought. Maybe Epic's strategy is to fight Apple/Steam (Marketplace monopolies more generally)? They're already fighting Apple/Steam w/ gaming, maybe they're looking to have a music store already. I think undercutting fees charged by either could be a big win in their eyes.
- prepend 5y agoI use all three and Epic is by far the worse software. Their platform requires root access on machines. It starts up when I don’t want it. It acts like malware. It also pegs my cpu at 100% at unpredictable times and download lots of data. It’s good that someone is fighting Apple and Steam, but I wish some better company would enter the fight. As it is now, I’d be sad if Epic won.
- joveian 5y agoGOG is much better when it comes to games, although there are a very small number with issues (there is one they sell that is effectively only multiplayer and won't run without anti-cheat software installed, also GWENT is an online microtransaction thingy but there since it is made by CDPR). Almost everything works completely offline. The website isn't perfect but not that bad (quite a bit better than Bandcamp) and you can download from the website or use a client.
- heleninboodler 5y agoI think it's interesting to note that Bandcamp has the same quarrel with Apple that Epic does. Doesn't (or didn't) their app have a brief explanatory note about why they have to send you to the browser to make a music purchase that was a subtle complaint about Apple's shitty policies?
- ryantgtg 5y agoYes, “music purchases are not available on your device” or some such. Apple’s terms forbids them from saying it’s due to Apple’s policy. Furthermore the Apple policy forbids them from directly linking to the website purchase page. I’m sure bandcamp received a huge amount of customer support messages about this. It’s confusing to most people.
- vernie 5y agoWelp this fuckin' sucks. Good going Tim Epic.
- g_sch 5y agoI'm having a little trouble understanding the motivation for this move. Did Bandcamp have a poor revenue/profit outlook and were they looking to scale? Was this just an exit for founders? I was under the impression that they had a relatively stable and profitable business, and strongly valued their branding and positioning as independent.
- paxys 5y agoMotivation for founders is a lot easier to understand than that of the acquiring company. What on earth is Epic going to do with Bandcamp?
- wildpeaks 5y agoGame soundtracks are usually sold on Bandcamp, even for games that aren't on the Epic Store. Also could be a source of creative content to generate NFTs, maybe even tie that to licensing of music used in game livestreams.
- bentcorner 5y agoThey recently acquired Harmonix (original makers of Guitar Hero and other rhythm games). Maybe they're trying to build a GaaS music game?
- stu2b50 5y agoCreate a market for music licensing that Unreal engine developers can use?
- finder83 5y agoThis is my guess as well. Pretty much every Epic acquisition is for Unreal.
- Macha 5y agoTurn the Epic Games Store into a more general Play Store/Apple Store competitor by expanding into other media types?
- aarpmcgee 5y agoThis is a little heartbreaking. The world just got a shade darker so that a few people could become a lot richer (I assume).
- vibemasterxl 5y agoIf so, did those people not build (and thus own) this platform? Is it not their right to sell it to others? I am not asking this so much to challenge your statement, as I agree that it's darker, but to demonstrate that clearly the platform delivered value to music consumers like myself, and perhaps we as music consumers should be willing to compensate the folks who build "glue" like Bandcamp more in order to provide such a great service in the future.
- mkr-hn 5y agoIf Bandcamp saw people who bought music on Bandcamp as consumers, then Bandcamp didn't understand the people who used it, and this might be for the best.
- posterboy 5y agoConversely, if Sweeney saw users as participants, for lack of a better word, this might be for ... the good? For whatever you have in mind, the question was basically whether you see the users as the owners. I thought it is a misleading question because it is riffing on a legal notion of property and possession, without clearly characterising that property, leaving open any illegal aspect to be pointed out if that was your moral basis of the argument. And indeed, one could attempt a hyperbolic retort in which it should be definitely illegal, say, to change a running system. Or how is leninist marxism for a debatable mindset. Understandably you have rejected that debate. Of course the users are an integral part of the platform, and it's a consequential facet of the culture that some are already feeling sold-out. Eventually it's kind of subjective, when everyone values the entity differently.
- mkr-hn 5y ago
- Keyframe 5y agoWhat's next for Epic? Streaming and video sharing?
- devmunchies 5y agoThis could even be a ecommerce/merch thing or something for creators. I think I remember reading that Bandcamp does like 9 figures in merch volume
- Keyframe 5y agoCould be a boost with content for well, content/game creators using UE among other things.
- Jhsto 5y agoCan't wait to show off my indie vinyl collection in Fortnite!
- jazzyjackson 5y agoactually this is a good angle, people might not be giving credit to bandcamp's social aspect. every album has a list of people who purchased it, and you can go to each person and see what albums theyve collected. You can even curate/hide albums in your collection basically choosing what to recommend. I can see Epic building off the infrastructure there for games and in-game collectibles (of which your vinyls are now a part)
- plorg 5y agoI find the social graph stuff frustrating, even though I generally like Bandcamp (fingers doubtfully crossed). Using the app or the online streaming requires an account that can't be opted out of the social graph, and this makes your Bandcamp profile publicly searchable by username, a thing that is completely unnecessary to both the use of the service and the goal of music discovery.
- RodgerTheGreat 5y agoThis really sucks. Bandcamp has been my go-to store for buying music for a long time. No dark patterns, lightweight site, free previews, good terms for indie artists. I don't think I can ethically shop there anymore given Epic's ownership and business practices.
- politelemon 5y ago> No dark patterns, lightweight site, free previews, good terms for indie artists I am with you. One of the biggest draws for me was these what you have described. Their website experience was straightforward and honest. They are now being acquired by a company that is the complete opposite. We won't have to wait long for Epic's dark patterns and policies to creep into a once great marketplace.
- rvense 5y agoMy favourite thing is that they have all sorts of social features so you can really engage with other fans and make lists and explore and do things... but you can also just ignore the hell out of that and buy some music that you like.
- tasha0663 5y agoIIRC, this is what MySpace was supposed to be in the first place. They made the mistake of leaning into a more general social media audience while Facebook was on the rise, but it seems to me like Bandcamp excels at being what MySpace could have become.
- eezurr 5y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_Games#Acquisitions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_Games#Acquisitions This appears to be the first company they are acquiring that is outside of the video game industry. This may start a new era for Epic Games. I wonder what direction they are going to take? I'd guess a new player in the multi-media field, but I really dont know.
- SbEpUBz2 5y agoEpic Games acquired and recently discontinued Houseparty, a video chat app. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houseparty_(app) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houseparty_(app)
- randomsilence 5y agoWhy would they shut it down? Discontinuing a successful social app during Covid times doesn't make sense at all. Bandcamp seems to be too big to be closed like that though.
- runevault 5y agoOr just helping set up ways to license music for games made with Unreal as part of their asset store/offerings.
- Dracophoenix 5y agoGiven the Unity acquisition of WETA, I thought Epic Games's next acquisition would be to buy a movie or FX studio to compete - that is, if they aren't building their own. I think the end result of these acquisitions is that the line between making a game and a movie will no longer exist. Sometime in the future, everyone could build and render their own Star Wars in Unreal or Unity.
- BaseballPhysics 5y ago> This appears to be the first company they are acquiring that is outside of the video game industry. ArtStation also falls outside the core videogame industry and would seem to be similar to Bandcamp, insofar as its a two way marketplace connecting artists with fans.
- siver_john 5y agoThis feels like a major blow, as someone who just semi recently (probably around pandemic start) started getting into purchasing flac music from indie artists, Bandcamp was a great source of music. I understand nothing will change in the short term, but long term I am very concerned. Especially as streaming becomes more dominant and companies are less willing to provide flac based music and physical discs (where I can rip my own) continue to disappear. This feels like a potential last step of true music ownership and that makes me incredibly sad. That being said if anyone knows of any place to buy flacs of music with great selection would love to know (especially for Japanese music which I generally have to import, thankfully they love CDs).
- maldusiecle 5y agoBoomkat is also good, different selection than Bandcamp but comparable in size (they definitely have some Japanese stuff that Bandcamp doesn't, e.g. Tzadik's Japanese music line).
- slothtrop 5y agoI just checked it out to confirm that they have John Zorn's catalog, and it seems so. Good find. I thought the man was married to physical only.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y agoHDTracks for purchasing and downloading. Deezer and Tidal provide high fidelity streaming.
- prox 5y agoTidal pays better than most other streaming services afaik. It’s sad to see Bandcamp go. Because in tech an acquisition means loss of that independence.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y agoAs a chronic music pirate- I love Bandcamp. I've purchased more music through Bandcamp than anywhere else. I'm not going to let myself be bummed by this news until Bandcamp actually changes for the worse. Once again everybody is letting themselves be upset by some hypothetical scenario where the new owners drive the service into the ground.
- puyoxyz 5y ago[ insert obligatory comment about epic games hating linux ]
- newsclues 5y agoI guess others were interested in the FortNite concerts.
- conradfr 5y agoI don't get it and I don't see this being positive for me as a customer of Bandcamp, which is the only place I buy music online from. Now if they can finally make the Android app a decent music player I'll revise my judgment :)
- dang 5y agoUrl changed from https://blog.bandcamp.com/2022/03/02/bandcamp-is-joining-epic/ https://blog.bandcamp.com/2022/03/02/bandcamp-is-joining-epi... to what looks like the best third-party article. If someone knows a better URL, we can change it again.
- NAR8789 5y agoWhy prefer a third-party article rather than the original announcement? Presumably for neutrality? My gut instinct is to prefer the original announcement because it seems more of a primary source. How do you weight primariness vs neutrality? I respect your long experience moderating HN, so asking mostly with the intent enrich my own intuition. Not a rhetorical question.
- dang 5y agoIt's because corporate press releases are so lame [1]. They don't give relevant background, they're saturated with dystopian smarm ("Since our founding in 2008, we’ve been motivated by the pursuit of our mission"), and they're ultimately all about spin. I don't mean to pick on particular cases—it's across the board. You'd think the smarter people at some of these companies would realize how well they'd stand out by not writing that way, but that's surprisingly rare. You're right to reference HN's 'original source' rule ("Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), because this is an exception to it. The reason we have exceptions is that there's a higher organizing principle on HN, namely that we're trying to optimize the site for curiosity [2]. Optimizing means that when there's a conflict between that rule and any other rule, the curiosity rule wins. Funnily enough the curiosity rule is an instance of itself because it often produces decisions that are counterintuitive, yet at the same time are surprisingly clear. This case is one of the clear ones—it's obvious that corporate press releases don't serve curiosity, and in fact they're largely intended to smooth away anything that people would be curious about. [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=corporate%20press%20release%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... [2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=curiosity%20optimiz%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
- HellDunkel 5y agoLots of disappointed comments here. Would you guys really prefer seeing bandcamp beeing bought by Apple?
- nerdponx 5y agoI think most people would prefer to see them remain independent and successful as an independent company.
- gxqoz 5y agoFor me I'd rather it just remain independent. It already does what it does well enough. There aren't any obvious features that would improve the site for me, just a lot of further monetization crap for users who fall for that stuff.
- _bohm 5y agoI'd prefer seeing Bandcamp continue to grow and prosper as its own company
- fundamental 5y agoIdeally I (and I'd assume other commenters) would have preferred to see bandcamp remain independent. It's not like there's a huge need to scale up quickly or provide large partnerships. Bandcamp was an effective way of paying small independent musicians with a good overall website which should have given bandcamp a reliable revenue source. Acquisition likely means the website will get worse, artists will be driven of onto other platforms (i.e. harder to discover ones), and if there's alternative financial incentives then small artists will likely end up making less (e.g. track streaming revenue). I'd be disappointed if apple had made the purchase, though it would be less out of left field.
- HellDunkel 5y agoI too would have prefered seeing bandcamp stay independent but they were a privately owned company so that would have required a huge amount of idealism (which eventually wanes) or ambitions to compete with spotify. You can‘t always get what you want.
- readingnews 5y agoDang first Putin invades, then this? I am just not sure how much bad news I can take in one week.
- heleninboodler 5y agoI wonder if they are related. Maybe the Bandcamp founders are Putin supporters. Dead giveaway will be if they do a Bandcamp Friday Russia fundraiser.
- devmunchies 5y agoThe technical co-founder (Joe H.) left at the beginning of the year, went to Disney Imagineering. He has had a very impressive career (was an engineering manager at Apple in the 90s).
- notesinthefield 5y agoThis explains the slew of bug ridden releases they were radio silent about this past month. A shame.
- indigochill 5y agoWell, crap. Bandcamp was the perfect place for hosting my music. Hopefully Itch starts hosting music if they haven't already. I'd switch immediately. Are there any other good places to host low-budget indie music? Soundcloud doesn't count because I get at least one spammer interacting with my tracks every single time I upload something. It's got to the point that I've started only uploading things secretly and sharing the private links with the people who will actually listen to the music. Edit: I'm gonna experiment with self-hosting on Funkwhale. We'll see how that goes.
- samirsd 5y agohttps://mixtape.ai https://mixtape.ai big new release coming this month with artist-side album drafting and merch features
- whyoh 5y agoindieHD: https://indiehd.com/ https://indiehd.com/ I'm not affiliated, but I've known it for a while. It was known as IndieTorrent back then. (also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30534759 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30534759)
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- drewda 5y agoI misread this as Epic Games acquiring Basecamp and was scratching my head for a few minutes :)
- lghh 5y agoI read this correctly and I'm still scratching my head.
- bstar77 5y agoFor first world issues, this is terrible. I love Bandcamp and love supporting artists there. Epic is a scourge.
- QuikAccount 5y agoEveryone here is really gloom and doom about this news but as much as I love Bandcamp, they have made some decisions that really made me not want to use the platform. For example, if an artist releases a free song as part of an album, it is not possible to add that song to your library without purchasing the whole album. This makes no sense when I only like and want to purchase say 2 or 3 songs off the album. This alone made me uninstall the Bandcamp app and just go back to Spotify.
- stjohnswarts 5y agoI don't think Bandcamp's policies were ever going to work for everyone, but I appreciate them, and am a pretty active customer and user. I may have to reconsider that now if Epic starts "improving" the service.
- H1Supreme 5y agoThat's not Bandcamp's fault. Whoever listed the album configured it that way. There are settings for artists (or labels or whoever) to allow people to purchase single songs, or require that they buy the entire album. I've bought plenty of single tracks from albums. A few of them as recently as this past weekend.
- QuikAccount 5y agoEither I didn't explain it correctly or you didn't read what I said entirely. If an album has a free song or single, you cannot add the free song to your library unless you purchase the whole album. Even if you are allowed to purchase individual songs on the album.
- uncomputation 5y agoI really hope this is just one bad move and doesn’t point to a larger, inherent flaw in the business models of smaller, indie companies. With Bandcamp now gone, there’s one less case study of truly free consumption and ownership in an increasingly rented/“streaming”/subscribing world.
- tarentel 5y agoI am glad I only made physical purchases through bandcamp now. I don't really get what Epic Games isn't going to do with the company besides make it more hostile to artists.
- kregasaurusrex 5y agoWhen shopping for content around didgital platforms, the #1 decision that I take into account is how much of my purchase price actually goes back to the creator. Bandcamp seems to give the best cut for music, aside from directly purchasing from an artist's website, and Epic's acquisition might end up being a net positive for getting new users & overall growth. Personally I think it's a good fit and look forward to their success.
- Ruthalas 5y agoCan you elaborate on what makes it a good fit? I'm curious what your thought is. I would have, at face value, considered the acquisition a bit odd given Epic's primary product.
- kregasaurusrex 5y agoIt's boilerplate stuff, but my only experience with Bandcamp is buying a couple FLAC quality albums from artists that are too small to be signed onto a structured record label, or don't want to have additional middlemen between them and their fans. Was thinking something akin to Patreon with a well-functioning desktop app that goes beyond only having music offerings, like live shows or additional interviews with the band. Though other comments saying artists may need to have an exclusivity agreement in place to get this revenue sharing arrangement may be valid, the overhead of having to go through the traditional record label/publisher model is essentially rent seeking with providing no additional value.
- crtasm 5y agoArtists can live stream on Bandcamp now: https://blog.bandcamp.com/2022/01/27/bandcamp-live-is-now-open-to-everyone/ https://blog.bandcamp.com/2022/01/27/bandcamp-live-is-now-op...
- jbverschoor 5y agoSo... Epic's iTunes? eTunes.
- jdlyga 5y agoNothing changes with acquisitions until everything changes. Just keep a close eye on Bandcamp.
- kixiQu 5y agoWell, time to hope https://resonate.is/ https://resonate.is/ picks up the independent artists and doesn't do a blockchain.
- skyfaller 5y agoI'm not hopeful about this for a few reasons: - They used to be really into blockchain / smart contracts: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/may/25/resonate-spotify-music-streaming-service-co-op https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/may/25/resonate-spoti... - Looking at their forum now, they say that they are not currently using or planning to use blockchains, but it seems like their founders aren't actually opposed to it, so I'm not sure they'll be able to hold the line against it: https://community.resonate.is/t/the-unreasonable-ecological-cost-of-cryptoart/935 https://community.resonate.is/t/the-unreasonable-ecological-... They have a lot of discussion of how they'd like to try to achieve the effects of NFTs without actually using blockchain tech, which, uh... feels like flirting with disaster to me. Seems like they don't quite get the core issues and are in love with flashy technology and complex financial structures.
- kixiQu 5y agoI don't really think a coop is a "complex financial structure" itself, but I am hoping that democratic control aspect can forestall the blockchainification. That might be naive. > how they'd like to try to achieve the effects of NFTs without actually using blockchain tech, which, uh... feels like flirting with disaster to me To be fair, the "you need to pay for a license to have your otherwise unassociated digital music file be legal" copyright situation is the bizarre NFT-like thing that we all take for granted.
- kixiQu 5y agoSomeone project-official wrote: > no blockchain or such in the works; previous experiments in 2018 hurt the co-op far more than they helped it. https://social.coop/@hakanto/107889107767011612 https://social.coop/@hakanto/107889107767011612 So that's cheering!
- siquick 5y ago
- plainnoodles 5y agoThis is absurdly sad to me. I like to own my media (in the most practical sense that current IP laws let me do so). I run a Plex server and use PlexAmp as my primary way of listening to music, and my criteria are always this: * FLAC or similar, I want this to be a lossless preservation of what was on the best-available source. * No DRM. No mandated player. Just let me download a dang file. * "Real" flac: this is technically already covered under the first bullet, but I call it out because I've seen it happen before: if I can open the flac in audacity and see it's obviously just a re-encode of a lossy format that clips the upper and lower frequency ranges off, that's a smell and I don't like it. (I know, most people can't tell etc, but this is less for listening purposes and more for archival purposes). * Supports the artist! Now, I'll admit, when push comes to shove, I drop the last bullet point first. So previously, my source for music was: 1. CD's (and I would follow What's guide for making Perfect Flacs) 2. What But then what shut down and I lost my main music discovery mechanism. Enter bandcamp! Now I've been very happy with: 1. Bandcamp (I buy CDs because I like the artwork and they're cool). 2. CD's (+ Perfect Flac ripping guide still) Now I'm not sure what to do. Epic has really soured me on their brand already, and I already boycott their launcher and any EGS exclusives. I guess I have to find some other way to get stuff now.
- ironmagma 5y agoI get FLACs from hdtracks.com
- heleninboodler 5y ago> Now I'm not sure what to do I mean, why not continue doing what you are doing until the thing that you like actually goes to shit?
- johnnyanmac 5y agoYeah, Epic's acquisitions don't really affect the aquired's day to day. IDK why "protesting a launcher" means disassociating with every single thing a company does. Kind of hard to avoid every single Unreal Engine game, or Blender/Godot or any other company/game they gave no-strings grants to. Or games you played already but are on EGS when they get a PC port.
- Severian 5y agoFucking god dammit. This is all I have to say. My one joy and it'll probably be ruined with bullshit.
- throwhauser 5y agoI don't know anything about Epic Games, but as a huge fan of Bandcamp, this feels like a bit of a drag. There's something about Bandcamp that seems exactly right. It's an open, fair and creative way to discover and publish music, that is really distinct from the rest of the music business. I'm struggling to see how that fits into a gigantic video game company. If it has to pull in so much money that it "moves the needle" at Epic at all, I don't see how it can remain anything close to what it is today.
- ryantgtg 5y agoI’m with you. Never heard of this Epic Games company. This is worrying. I fell behind on downloading all of my 426 purchases on bandcamp, but now I feel a strong desire to catch up.
- johnnyanmac 5y ago"Never heard of this Epic Games company. " Creators of Unreal Engine, one of the two de facto 3rd party game engines in the industry, created way back in the 90's. You very likely played some game or 6 that was made using it. Also the developers of several games themselves like Gears of War, Unreal Tournament, Infinity Blade, and Bulletstorm. But I guess more recently people would call them "The creators of Fortnite", that free to play battle royale that usurped PUBG as "the face" of the genre. They also have a PC game store that is relatively recent and under some ire from consumers for reasons that'd take a whole essay to fully explain. As a middleman between games and developers, the reasons to purchase a music vendor is numerous. Time will tell what they do with it, but most of their previous aquisitions are hands-off.
- ryantgtg 5y agoThank you. Ok, I guess have heard of them then. I played Unreal! And I've heard many mentions of the Unreal engine. > but most of their previous aquisitions are hands-off Thanks. Given the immediate negative reactions that people have to this news (see the countless "what is a bandcamp alternative?" posts going around right now), I wonder how it will impact one of Bandcamp's most important assets: their Daily blog. From what I can tell, the blog posts are largely written by independent music journalists. The topics are all over the place (in a good way), and they are fun, personal ways to discover music. Will we see some of these core writers leave (on their own volition)? Likewise, will the direction of what is highlighted in these posts shift to align with other Epic assets? On the technical end, there are plenty of legitimate complaints about Bandcamp's app. I would imagine Epic = more resources for the app, for better or for worse.
- stjohnswarts 5y agoBig Corporations always ruin the good stuff. It was a good site with good content and fair practices. Alas bandcamp we hardly knew ye. I hope the owners made out like bandits I guess, they put in a good effort for a long time.
- DrBoring 5y agoIt's my experience that when a buyout occurs, product quality usually suffers. I wonder if there is a directory if beloved companies whose quality goes down after a buyout. This past weekend, I was lamenting with a friend about how two US craft beer breweries we loved were bought out, and how they stopped producing their interesting niche beers in favor of more profitable ones. Their restaurant menus got bland too.
- danso 5y agoMaybe change of ownership won't significantly affect Bandcamp's operation, but my limited consumer-facing experience with Epic — via its game store — has given me such a bad taste that I'm not keen on using any storefront service managed by Epic. And this is despite the vast majority of my Epic game library being free (literally hundreds of games) or deeply discounted — the storefront is really that bad. For example, when AWS went down a couple months ago, both the store app was non-functional. Apparently, the game store depends on S3 for game thumbnails and other metadata, and its caching is...non-optimal. I think I could've accessed my games by running their executables directly from file explorer. But 4 years in, this kind of slapped together design decision — on top of EGS still being bare bones compared to Steam — seems indicative of poor management. Obviously, Bandcamp as a relatively mature storefront is not in the same situation. And remaining alive and sustainable probably outweighs what negatives Epic might bring as owner.
- johnnyanmac 5y ago"when AWS went down a couple months ago, both the store app was non-functional. Apparently, the game store depends on S3 for game thumbnails and other metadata, and its caching is...non-optimal." I don't see that as some kind of dealbreaker. Just an unideal choice for a consumer who may want everything to be offline and cached. The storefront is very likely some electron wrappper for their website, so I wouldn't be too surprised if their thumbnails were stored on some other server. Steam isn't too different in regards to that architecture (just not using AWS, since they preceeded that). Games are available offline as of some year+ ago so that outage should not have affected your ability to run games.
- MikusR 5y agoSteam has been running for 18 years and still has problems.
- joveian 5y agoBandcamp isn't really great as a store either. They don't have a real shoping cart, only client side stuff that can fail and empty your cart and/or make the entire site stop working until you clear cookies (support's response is just "oh yeah, that happens"). It seems unlikely that Bandcamp isn't sustainable from an ordinary business perspective considering that they have been voluntarily giving up their fees one day a month to support artists.
- btdmaster 5y agoIn case of DRM: https://www.defectivebydesign.org/guide/audio https://www.defectivebydesign.org/guide/audio
- MisterTea 5y agoNot good in my book. I've been a huge fan and proponent of the platform since 2017 and have made over 600 purchases since. Mostly digital but also plenty of shirts, patches, an even physicals of select albums. My only gripe was the somewhat wanting android client which has just been fixed up (playlists and queuing). I like it because its a simple and focused hub for artists and fans. The social interaction of the site fells like a perfect balance of presence and connection without any noise. You can see who purchased an album and leave an album review but unable to directly message users. User profiles are simply their collection and a 400 character bio that can contain links. Another plus is the simple web design they employ gives access to the mp3 if you scrape the album page. As a plan 9 user without a modern browser this made it easy to play the music by writing a script that scraped the album page for the mp3 links and fed those into play(1) creating a simple bandcamp player. Epic will bring nothing good to the service.
- heleninboodler 5y agoIMO Epic has already brought something good: not getting bought by Apple or Google. Whether they can refrain from bringing something bad remains to be seen.
- MisterTea 5y agoThey are 40% owned by Tencent.
- slothtrop 5y agoAbsolutely terrible. It does not bode well for consumers when all the good small players sell out. I feel like this has been a worsening trend. Someone should get started on a viable alternative. Is it possible to yield a mvp over a couple of weekends? :P
- SahAssar 5y agoThis is incredibly disappointing. I bought quite a bit from bandcamp, to both support the platform and the artists, and I don't think epic should be the middleman in that transaction. Thanks, I hate it.
- danShumway 5y agoWas Bandcamp draining money or something? Were they not profitable? I hate this. Why does everything need to roll up into other companies. I don't want anything Epic is bringing to the table, and every interaction they've had with open platforms as a business has been negative as far as I can see. I hate how much consolidation is going on right now.
- antris 5y agoWelcome to capitalism
- mkka 5y agoTotally not thought through, but it seems like it could be good if once a company hits a certain size they have to increase their difficulty level and only grown from the inside, no acquisitions.
- dleslie 5y agoAnd now I'm using an automatic downloader to fetch all the FLAC encodings of the several hundred albums that I purchased from Bandcamp.
- redsolver 5y agowhich one are you using? I could not find an up-to-date one on GitHub. thanks!
- dleslie 5y agoBandcamper for Chrome. Just finished downloading over 300 albums. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bandcamper/nafpaehhiebmplponikkijlebkljdnni https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bandcamper/nafpaeh...
- dec0dedab0de 5y agoI haven't been in an active band for over a decade, but back when I was bandcamp was the only way we ever got money online. We had it set to optional to pay, and we would randomly get $5-30 from people around the world. It wasn't much, but it always felt nice. I also like the way they handled payments to artists, I'm not sure if they still do it this way, but back then your first 9 payments would go directly to your paypal, and the 10th would go to theirs. And they would balance it out to keep it where they only took %10.
- stjohnswarts 5y agoThis is one my concerns. They will lose touch with the little guys. Also, I have several musician friends and I only buy their music from Bandcamp or straight from them. Some prefer not to even bother with CDs/Vinyl and just point people at Bandcamp as preferred vendor as they get a good cut of the money. They seemed to be like a company that wasn't controlled strictly by slick marketing (and empty promises) and bean counters.
- MadcapJake 5y agoIs there any good kit out there for artists to self host their own store/player?
- indigochill 5y agoI don't yet know if it's any good, but I'm looking into Funkwhale right now, which was originally created as an open source alternative to Grooveshark. It is, however, explicitly designed for music under free licenses (whether creative commons or something else), so it's not an option for many artists. Another option I just came across is https://codeberg.org/simonrepp/faircamp https://codeberg.org/simonrepp/faircamp which sets out to be an open source Bandcamp clone, conveniently enough. It does appear to have payment options, but I'm unsure whether they're actually functional since I haven't tried it myself yet (but I plan to).
- AndyKelley 5y agoThis is why, as a user, you should prioritize relying on non-profit services and software rather than for-profit companies.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- makach 5y agoNoo... It feels as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened...
- qwertox 5y agoSo next news will be that EA is acquiring SoundCloud.
- yathrowaway2424 5y agoConflict in europe, and now this ?
- donutshop 5y agoI hope they keep Bandcamp Fridays!
- lostgame 5y agoNothing good can come of this. :(
- shmerl 5y agoThat sounds worrying. Will they mess up DRM-free FLAC releases? I have little trust for Epic.
- gloosx 5y agoNot sure if it's a good thing pals, I'm a big fan of bandcamp and I have a really nice collection there, should i expect some drastic changes to the platform?
- lukka5 5y agoIt's difficult to understand how an indie focused site will sell to a big generic company. They obviously know that Epic is going to have different culture even if they say the contrary. So probably making money or exit was the priority here.
- jrm4 5y agoI can't help but think we never solve "how to pay musicians" until we first jettison the absurdities, specifically "paying for downloads." Start with the assumption; mp3s are free to create and copy, and there is no point in pretending that this isn't simply how it is, and should be considered a universally good thing. Even streaming a song a second time is stupid. Now that we've accepted this, how can we collectively figure out some way for me to send money to my favorite artists so they keep doing their thing? (And I say this as someone who does fairly regularly pay for digital downloads.)
- Ruthalas 5y agoWhile not perfect, this is how I (and others) use Patreon. I'm not sure it exactly fits your ideal, but it's closer than anything else I've seen to how I'd like it to work.
- vintermann 5y agoMe too, but I use it in a way I know many music artists wouldn't be happy with. I don't care about "personal rewards", but I do care that my contribution makes a tangible difference to what the artist might be able to do. Basically, if they're already doing great, I won't be gilding their lilies, no matter how much I love them.
- petarb 5y agoThis makes me happy for the Bandcamp employees who will hopefully get a good payout for their hard work but sad for what Bandcamp will become in the future under Epic. I’ve really enjoying going into their record store / small intimate venu in Oakland, CA.
- basisword 5y agoDoes anyone know Bandcamps funding situation? Did they need an exit like this? Or can people not run businesses long term for profit anymore?? Such a shame. If you think Epic will just leave them alone you just need to read the corporate speak in the first paragraph of the announcement: “I’m excited to announce that Bandcamp is joining Epic Games, who you may know as the makers of Fortnite and Unreal Engine, and _champions for a fair and open Internet._”
- amar-laksh 5y agoRented games, rented music, rented health, rented lives but hey at least you got your own misery! As the lyrics of a contemporary classic goes, "20,000 years of this... 7 more to go."
- inasmuch 5y agoThis is tragic for all the many, many reasons everyone else has outlined (DRM, Tencent, etc.), but for me the biggest blow is the loss of the last commercially viable (profitable!), but independent champion of underground and truly independent music. Say all you want about the freedom and quasi-independence of self-publishing to the various streaming corporations, etc., but for years now, the underground scene has thrived on and been virtually exclusively supported by Bandcamp. It's like every independent artist in the world just got signed to a major corporate label all at once, minus the benefits to the artists. I recognize that's hyperbolic, but fuck me, I feel physically sick over this.
- inasmuch 5y agoIf anyone wants to build an alternative/replacement/FOSS tool—whatever kind of remedy for this tragedy—I would eagerly partner up and design it (can't code well, sorry).
- gen220 5y agoIt'd be reasonable to structure the development company as a non-profit, to prevent an outcome like Bandcamp's. I think it may be possible to build the marketplace in a purely FOSS-y way, but it would be illegal to operate it with the wrong configuration values. I'm thinking in particular about the accounting functions, such as earmarking x% of each sale for royalties, and ensuring they go to/from the correct bank accounts. In other words, one could plausibly release the code as FOSS, but the interface would depend on a set of corporate entities that are configured a particular way, so it would be of limited value to the median person. It would definitely lower the barrier to entry for people to fork the business, though, which is probably a good thing for the median person. --- I'd also be down to contribute as an engineer, if such a project already exists with momentum or if somebody wants to start it!
- joveian 5y agoindiehd.com mentioned elsewhere doesn't look like it is nonprofit but does have an at least mostly open source store: https://indiehd.com https://indiehd.com https://github.com/indiehd https://github.com/indiehd They have 277 albums listed, almost nothing, and it doesn't sound like they are really ready to be a full Bandcamp replacement but maybe they will be able to turn into something artists want to use.
- AdmiralAsshat 5y ago
- nxoxn 5y agoNo. No no no. Bandcamp was where I went to get DRM free music and feel like my money was going to the artists.
- _bfhp 5y ago"So sad" "I'm disappointed" Ok but everything like Bandcamp will always go away because it's not efficient enough. If it exists today, it's treading water! It is on borrowed time! Bandcamp was like a character in a video game with 1HP and a temporary shield called "Startup." Bandcamp is to the way capital works as life is to mortality. Nothing workable will ever exist at scale unless our species is completely overhauled.
- mountainplus 5y agoI am surprised slsk did not appear prominently in this discussion as alternative to share, own, collect lossless music. Is it due to its nature? It is certainly something of the past in terms of userbase but I can't imagine any of the services mentioned coming close to replacing bandcamp.
- siquick 5y agoBecause artists don't get paid when you download their music for free from Soulseek.
- almet 5y agoIt's really sad to see these almost "public goods" platforms be acquired by other companies, which will probably turn them in something else at some point because their vision isn't the same. This could probably be avoided by using different strategies. For instance, if Bandcamp was an NGO of some sort, or has a social contract attached to it, etc. it could have terms for not being acquired. You, capitalism. Again.
- basisword 5y agoBandcamp Press Release: https://blog.bandcamp.com/2022/03/02/bandcamp-is-joining-epic/ https://blog.bandcamp.com/2022/03/02/bandcamp-is-joining-epi...
- aaaaaaaaaaab 5y agoFuck, please no :'( I've spent thousands of dollars on Bandcamp. This makes me really, really sad.
- rglover 5y agoThis is a bummer, but I'm getting giddy at all of the opportunities for indie devs to rebuild the web. It's a guarantee anything acquired is going to get destroyed in the mid to long-term and people will be thirsty for something that isn't a corpo-nightmare. Even more fun is the opportunity to do that with decentralized data.
- aasasd 5y agoCould I please get an overview of Epic's bad practices and decisions? Currently my frustration from this is rather unfocused—and mostly comes from Bandcamp being a couple heads above everyone else in terms of user-friendliness and having outstanding selection: from Gruuthaagy, Jungle Death and Mamaleek to big names.
- Forgeties79 5y agoMy main gripe is their willingness to support systems that are functionally gambling directed at children. I also didn’t love their attempt to essentially “weaponize” their young teen fortnite audience when they got into that dispute with Apple a few years ago over in-game purchases transferring from their end to the iOS version.
- eindiran 5y agoDoes anyone have a mass downloader for your purchases on Bandcamp?
- hwers 5y agoGot really confused because I thought it said Basecamp.
- bananapub 5y agothis will be my new goto example for why VC is a cancer for businesses that can and should be cash positive almost immediately and could instead just choose to be "run well at a reasonable growth rate" instead of betting everything on number 17.
- heleninboodler 5y agoI highly recommend waiting until something bad happens before you use this example.
- appel 5y agoAw man.
- kello 5y agoI hate everything about this :/
- LtdJorge 5y agoTencent always wins
- palisade 5y agoI know that everyone is commenting that this is the end of their independence. But, Epic Games has been really good to everyone they've acquired. Quixel is a great example. They protected Improbable when it was under licensing attack by Unity and they gave away $25 mil to help fund development for them when they didn't have to. They've given out lots of no strings attached megagrants when they didn't have to and they receive no direct revenue from. Those grants have helped independent open source 3rd party tools like Blender and Krita with no strings and no required oversight from Epic. And, some of those megagrants helped Unity and not Epic, e.g. the dialogue tool, but they didn't take backsies on their grant. They designed the grants to help the entire game industry and not just them. They have a very lawful good alignment as a company. They're an example of a really decent parent company IMHO. Also, Epic has a really solid financial foundation from Fortnite and their Unreal game engine so they're easily able to give independence to their subsidiaries without nervously micromanaging. Bandcamp is awesome so I hope I'm right.
- sickcodebruh 5y agoI didn’t know about these acquisitions, I really hope you’re right. At the moment, I’m heartbroken because of this. I’ve been using Bandcamp for a very long time now and it has been the single best thing to happen to independent music and musicians in the modern age. For me, one of its best features was the fact that it barely changed in all that time. It seemingly never chased the metrics that drive similar platforms to reinvent themselves constantly, so it’s always been a reliable, predictable partner. It’s the only product like it that I can think of where I can say that I truly believe that our interests are (were) aligned. Now? It seems like a matter of time until their flashy front-end revamp, their new profit share agreement, a DRM option, a proprietary music player to compete with Spotify. I’m going to hope that their commitment to not changing dramatically holds true, but almost every acquisition starts with an email like this, so I’m not holding my breath. And one of the worst parts, Bandcamp’s dominance is so thorough and its users so loyal that I’m unaware of a true competitor in their space. I’m not sure what I’d do if they did get progressively crappier.
- palisade 5y ago
- kristopolous 5y agoSo that means the market is blown open for a new Bandcamp clone as epic dismantles and destroys them. That's your opportunity
- newobj 5y agoWow. Did not see that coming. I love Bandcamp, tho strangely stagnant as a product, but I loved its chill communal vibe and lack of tryhard tech for techs sake. Wonder what the future holds with this acquisition.
- noodles_nomore 5y agoBandcamp is one of the few sites still in existence that allow you to purchase things without making an account. I expect this will be the first feature to go. So long, Bandcamp.
- siquick 5y agoIt would be very hard to do this without taking VC money (server costs alone must be massive) - and to take VC money means you're most likely going to be hard on the metrics, which is the opposite of what Bandcamp did and what has made Bandcamp unique up to now.
- bichiliad 5y agoI make music and sell it on Bandcamp as a way to raise funds to donate to nonprofits. It’s been a reliably honest website, and a fantastic source of both music and validation. Although it’s really tempting to speculate otherwise, I really hope they stay the same.
- wildpeaks 5y agoIt's been fascinating to see a wider audience being introduced this way to the behemoth that has been absorbing so much in the past years and hearing Epic being described as a "gaming company", it's like saying Amazon is a bookstore: sure it started this way, but it's already so much more now. They already try to own the entire pipeline for 3D creation, not just for games but anything 3D. They don't see Fortnite as a game, but as a platform (Errant Signal had a good essay on that topic two years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNukmNDq60Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNukmNDq60Q) and it's only been more visible ever since, acquiring key tools like Sketchfab, RealityCapture, Quixel, and Artstation.
- 12ian34 5y agowhat.cd the hell happened here?! My beloved Bandcamp! to Epic Games!?
- kitsune_ 5y agoSad news.
- fire 5y agoMy immediate thought on this was that we could see in-engine asset stores promoting music from artists and potentially even having predefined contracts for easy of integration? Like, this could be a pretty good thing if it's handled properly
- patchtopic 5y agoso when/if bandcamp jumps the shark, hopefully there will be a similar music site to jump to.
- mikestaub 5y agoThe future of media and entertainment is clearly in web3