Epic Games Acquires Bandcamp - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 02 March 2022 / 2,016 Views
Epic Games announced it has acquired the online music store and community, Bandcamp.
Bandcamp will continue to operate as a standalone marketplace and music community, while co-founder and CEO Ethan Diamond will continue to lead the company.
"Bandcamp’s mission is to help spread the healing power of music by building a community where artists thrive through the direct support of their fans,” said Diamond.
"In Epic, we’ve found a partner who believes as deeply as we do that the future of music, and art itself, depends on the creation of equitable and inclusive communities like the one our fans and artists have helped to build. We’re excited to work alongside the Epic team to accelerate the realization of our mission and pursue our shared goal of empowering more creators in a fair and open way."
Vice President and General Manager of the Epic Games Store Steve Allison added, "We couldn’t be more excited to welcome the Bandcamp team to Epic Games. Bandcamp has built an incredible community and business where up and coming artists can succeed thanks to the direct support of their fans, with one of the best revenue models and terms in music. This aligns closely with Epic’s approach to supporting creators across all media and enabling them to connect directly with their fans."
Read a message from Diamond below:
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.
Bandcamp will keep operating as a standalone marketplace and music community, and I will continue to lead our team. The products and services you depend on aren’t going anywhere, we’ll continue to build Bandcamp around our artists-first revenue model (where artists net an average of 82% of every sale), you’ll still have the same control over how you offer your music, Bandcamp Fridays will continue as planned, and the Daily will keep highlighting the diverse, amazing music on the site. However, behind the scenes we’re working with Epic to expand internationally and push development forward across Bandcamp, from basics like our album pages, mobile apps, merch tools, payment system, and search and discovery features, to newer initiatives like our vinyl pressing and live streaming services.
Since our founding in 2008, we’ve been motivated by the pursuit of our mission, which is to help spread the healing power of music by building a community where artists thrive through the direct support of their fans. That simple idea has worked well, with payments to artists and labels closing in on $1 billion USD. And while over the years we’ve heard from other companies who wanted us to join them, we’ve always felt that doing so would only be exciting if they strongly believed in our mission, were aligned with our values, and not only wanted to see Bandcamp continue, but also wanted to provide the resources to bring a lot more benefit to the artists, labels, and fans who use the site. Epic ticks all those boxes. We share a vision of building the most open, artist-friendly ecosystem in the world, and together we’ll be able to create even more opportunities for artists to be compensated fairly for their work.
Whether you joined Bandcamp recently or have been with us since the beginning 14 years ago, thank you for being a part of this incredible community, and we look forward to serving you for many years to come!
Ethan Diamond
Bandcamp co-founder and CEO
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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This one time at band camp....
Interesting. I wonder if this will make it easier for Unreal projects to use Bandcamp music or something.
Or sell subscriptions/music through the Epic Store.
Let's face it... Epics focus is their online store these days.
They've been putting just as much focus on their engine and the developers for it, imo. Consumers may not like their moneyhatting, but when Epic has bought many companies in the past like TwinMotion, Quixel, and ArtStation they've tended to make those resources more accessible for Unreal users. We'll see which side of the business this acquisition is geared toward.
Yeah, for Unreal users, just not as accessible for everyone else not wanting to use it, and that's where I see the fault with their moneyhatting.
Yeah this is getting just a lil bit stupid now. First it was Art station, now it's bandcamp...
Almost feels like they wanna just nab up a load of venues and portals to spite a certain company or become that only one in town you can go to, at least with the tech and venues they keep nabbing.
Meanwhile, Linux support still being treated like a passport to Canada...
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