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Comment by iworshipfaangs2 | Hacker News Reader

This is an interesting place for this to come from, since bandcamp has really been a model for fairness in how artists can distribute their work and get paid. And it was sadly recently bought by Epic Games. I know nothing about Epic, but I know the game industry is far from the paragon of fair labor or fair content distribution. I wish them luck.

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> And it was sadly recently bought by Epic Games.

I wasn't aware of that, that deeply sucks. Bandcamp was the premiere place for me to buy DRM-free music and know my money was going to the artist at a transparent and fair price.

Unionising certainly seems especially important for these folks in light of that, I wish them all the very best.

I think as it currently stands that's still the case, however with Epic at the helm there's indeed a high risk of negative changes.

what gives me hope that they won't, is that they probably only bought Bandcamp to use it as a salvo in their legal battle versus Apple.

How so? You mean along the Apple Music vertical?

To prove you can run a marketplace with lower commissions since the Epic Store was shown to be running at a loss, which hurt their case against Apple. Or so I’ve read.

In Bandcamp's messaging when they were acquired, expanding these payment systems was a major highlight. Combine this with Epic's messaging against Apple and Google about opening up billing on mobile platforms and major goals becomes very clear. One of these major goals can be a subscription service but to me it's obvious they're wanting to get into the artist -> individual creator/studio licensing environment for game/movie creators who already rely on Unreal.

The good news about this is that none of this should impact Bandcamp negatively, neither as a consumer or an artist, not unless you see more avenues to sell your music/merch as a bad thing. Bad news is your favorite Bandcamp artist will sell out ;)

Epic bought artstation, bandcamp, and, sketchfab. I don't know for sure, but I don't think any of those are very profitable. They're almost like resume hosting websites for game developers. 3d artists show off their work on sketchfab, artists show off on artstation, musicians show off their work on bandcamp.

My impression is that epic bought them for sort of the same reason Microsoft bought linkedin. They don't make tons of money, but they enhance the pipeline of artists and musicians available to the game industry.

Of course I have no idea if that's why they did it, but epic has definitely shown interest in steering the direction of the game industry in the past, and aligning the talent pool with their way of thinking is maybe a good way to do that.

It makes me wonder if microsoft now has the upper hand - it can now ask chatgpt/bing: who should we hire?

> musicians show off their work on bandcamp.

That would be SoundCloud. Bandcamp is a marketplace and a pretty good one.

Bandcamp was profitable since 2012 apparently.

Being used as a pawn does not put you in a place that is sustainable over the long-term or even really the medium term.

They bought it over a year ago. Where ya been? Turns out it’s still the best place to buy DRM-free music.

Yeah luckily I've not noticed any major changes. Hopefully Epic continues to let them do their thing. It really is a one of a kind service in our current media landscape.

> They bought it over a year ago. Where ya been?

Enjoying my life, working on things that inspire me, not following tedious news about tech industry mergers and acquisitions.

Not dismissing the news as unimportant, it is important. It's just boring and I wish we lived in a world where everything good wasn't subsumed into soulless corporate behemoths.

So far Epic still seems to have a tiny bit of soul. But that'll gradually fade as it does with every huge company and in ten or fifteen years it'll be another Adobe/Autodesk.

Heh. I’ve been enjoying my life, as well, and also buying things from Bandcamp. And each time I do for the last year it says “Receipt for Your Payment to Bandcamp, an Epic Company.”

Anyway I don’t want to bore you, but yes I agree that less mergers would be nice. And the bandcamp news was very worrisome, and I’m sure at some point things will turn to shit.

Still downloading from Bandcamp.

Instead of paying $10+/mo for a streaming service, I spend $10+ on an album each month.

I first check the band/label website to see if they have a download.

I then use bandcamp if the band is smaller and on there, falling back on 7digital or HDTracks when they are larger and not.

All to say is, I just didn't know they were bought by epic, I just usually get linked to artist pages

In a way it's not that surprising that people drawn to work at a company that prioritizes fairness and compensation of labor in the music industry would also be amenable to forming a union to support those principles in their own labor.

As for Epic, we can't know until they speak to any specific reasoning, but unions don't necessarily imply active or anticipated poor treatment from the employer. It's pretty normal to want input into decisions that affect your working conditions, and unions are a legally-protected way to do that.

Good-ness can be a creeping thing. If you're excited to work for a company because it does an actual measurable good you probably are inclined to care about and advocate for the people around you.

Wish them luck in keeping that fairness to the artists and themselves going strong.

Hadn’t really considered that but the epic purchase is probably why the employees decided to quickly unionise?

I feel like that’s a pretty smart change to make when you go from an apparently reachable and (I assume) fair leadership you knew, to… Epic Games.

Epic owns ArtStation too.

Worse, Tencent owns like 40% of Epic. Ironically would have been better if Bandcamp were acquired by Spotify, because then it would at least be owned by a public American company.

Spotify is Swedish.

Close enough (to me).

Oh haha. Yeah. I guess “western” in this case. Listed on the NYSE.

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