It was the last week of September that the American company Songtradr made the headlines by acquiring Bandcamp. Yes, that’s right. Less than two years after the American video game and software developer Epic Games bought the online record store, it’s being sold again.
A new unexpected future for Bandcamp
Epic’s divestiture of Bandcamp comes alongside the news that the gaming company is planning on laying off 16% of its global workforce. Reportedly, Bandcamp employees, too, were given information that some of them will not be receiving job offers from Songtradr. On top of that, multiple Bandcamp employees have said they began losing access to critical systems needed to do their job on the day the acquisition was announced publicly.
While this doesn’t make the ongoing transition any easier, the company’s staff union, Bandcamp United, has submitted a bargaining petition to the new owner, calling for employment offers for all workers, equitable voluntary severance, and union recognition.
While the letter is yet to be reviewed, Songtradr — which to date has been most known for its B2B music licensing operations — has declared that the acquisition will ‘help Bandcamp continue to grow within a music-first company and enable Songtradr to expand its capabilities to support the artist community’.
As planned, musicians who release on Bandcamp will have the opportunity to license their music to those using Songtradr services. On top of that, the music licensing company has confirmed that they are working on a way Epic Games can still be involved so that Bandcamp artists can potentially license their music to Epic Games, too.
However, only time will tell what the future holds for the music platform. After all, as Songtradr said, they are yet to officially become the owner of Bandcamp, expecting the transition to close in the next few weeks.
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