Bandcamp in 'Epic' fail?
One little guy's attempt to understand what a corporate merger of a beloved music website means to (and for) him
In another busy week for the pop music Gods – where one faced a plagiarism suit and another showcased an incredible display of bitterness as part of an ongoing feud – us mere mortals lower down the culture industry chain were confronted with news which may have serious consequences for independent music.
See, as someone who has staked a significant chunk of his personality on having ‘alternative’ music tastes, my contrarian gene bristled at the announcement that Epic Games had bought independent music website Bandcamp.
Not that I knew what Epic Games was (it’s a video game and software developer... they make Fortnite, apparently), but I sensed this was a corporate takeover, and to my mind, corporate takeover of indie music site I like = bad thing. In what ways, I was unsure. Thankfully, being Very Online on Twitter meant that I could trust my timeline to be peppered with hot takes on the subject from more enwisened folks than I.
@musicophiliamix warned ‘techbros want everyone to rent everything forever’ and that actual downloads may not survive the anticipated transformation of Bandcamp.
@ronmknox suggested Bandcamp may end up a beneficiary of Epic’s war against Apple over mobile app purchases (assuming Epic win).
They also suggested that playlists may become a feature, while expressing concern that Epic sees Bandcamp as ‘having the potential to create its own, very profitable streaming platform’, which ‘would crater the core purposes of the platform entirely’.
To this, my contrarian self detests the trend to monetise every stream going. I am more a consumer of than creator for Bandcamp, and from the perspective of the former, I’m wary of the rent-to-play jukebox model of music consumption, squeezing every penny from a listener trying to decide whether they like a musical artist’s work enough to purchase it outright. And as none of the major streaming platforms come close to remunerating independent artists fairly, any attempts to make Bandcamp more like them seems to me the wrong path for Epic Games to take. Bandcamp is not (and should never be) a direct rival to Sp*t*fy. Besides, other streaming platforms with fairer royalty systems exist (eg Resonate).
Of course, Bandcamp promised the website would remain independently operated while gaining the benefits of Epic's backend services. I do hope that at least the first part of that promise is true, especially for those who are, like me, unashamed control freaks about their Art (read: creative dilettantism). What I like about Bandcamp is that while the basic creators’ account comes as a one-size-fits-all-free-accounts-template, it allows me sufficient freedom to market my wares howsoever I wish, all for a small (not tiny, but tolerable) cut should I choose to try to monetise my output. In other words, it gets the blend of capitalist exploitation just right. The same reasons I made a Substack, in fact.
And I have grown so accustomed to this arrangement that I have forgotten what Bandcamp (and Substack) actually are. @glassbottommeg was quick to remind us that Epic’s acquisition is the inevitable consequence of yet another venture capital (VC)-backed company having to pay back what they owe with interest: ultimately, those VC’s have got to get a return someday. The only options were to launch an Initial Public Offering, or get bought out (the easier option).
It’s all part of the chain. And we should have seen this coming, said @hhhhhennies.
She is totally correct to say that Bandcamp monopolised the online marketing of independent music and I admit I was happy to mute that voice in my head for the ease of accessing copious amounts of independently-released music from a single website. But – and I apologise for making an argument from convenience – there is something to be said for my Bandcamp dependency, because I suspect it is nigh impossible for another company of the same type to sustainably scale to a similar level. Bandcamp needed deep-pocketed VCs to develop in the first place; where else is that sort of privately-held investment coming from for a clone? How do you sell the vision of wanting to create a Bandcamp-but-not-Bandcamp to any wealthy funder?
Also, network effects still operate outside of the mainstream. Many messaging apps in the Anglosphere exist as alternatives to WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and iMessage, yet people only really identify with Signal and Telegram among them. I’d love to connect with people I know on Tox, Wire, or Wickr, but it ain’t gonna happen.
Still, my contrarian gene admires a Cassandra (I see you Airbnb, Amazon Prime, Deliveroo, Facebook, Netflix, Sp*t*fy, Tesla, Uber, all you ‘Smart’ devices, etc, etc).
On the other hand, I don’t want to run a website again: the hassle of learning just enough JavaScript and CSS to make sure text ran alongside images how I liked; the struggle of ensuring I’d set up my directories correctly so I could successfully use my laptop as a file server; paying simultaneously not that much and yet seemingly too much moolah a year for a naff domain name and web hosting space that could make you a victim of your own success if you weren’t careful… just to have my media player plugin fail because I absent-mindedly copy-pasted one line of code in the wrong place. I just want to upload a song or two (plus artwork), set streaming / download terms and let it be.
So I’ll stay on Bandcamp a little while longer, at least until the valid concerns raised by some by Epic’s business practices force my (and other users’) hands first.
If @lucas_gonze’s prediction is anything to go by, then I’ll give it about 5 years, before I have to learn C+++++ or something.
