Epic Games acquires Bandcamp (opens in new tab)

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).

* 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.

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 Set up but do not publish your Bandcamp Subscriptions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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I’ve really enjoying going into their record store / small intimate venu in Oakland, CA.

The brand name now has a ton of cachet — I hope it continues with the acquisition.

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.

That's your opportunity

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) and it's only been more visible ever since, acquiring key tools like Sketchfab, RealityCapture, Quixel, and Artstation.

Now if they can finally make the Android app a decent music player I'll revise my judgment :)

As the lyrics of a contemporary classic goes, "20,000 years of this... 7 more to go."

“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._”

So how do 3D artists go about designing and selling skins to Fortnight players without giving Epic a cut?

Someone should get started on a viable alternative. Is it possible to yield a mvp over a couple of weekends? :P

Wonder what the future holds with this acquisition.

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.)

I've spent thousands of dollars on Bandcamp. This makes me really, really sad.

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.