After buying Bandcamp 18 months ago, Epic Games has sold it to Songtradr, a music marketing company, for an undisclosed sum. The sale follows the news of Epic Games laying off 830 employees which was announced by the company’s CEO Tim Sweeny in a letter that reads in part,
”As we shared earlier, we are laying off around 16% of Epic employees. We’re divesting Bandcamp and spinning off most of SuperAwesome. For a while now, we’ve been spending way more money than we earn, investing in the next evolution of Epic and growing Fortnite as a metaverse-inspired ecosystem for creators. I had long been optimistic that we could power through this transition without layoffs, but in retrospect I see that this was unrealistic.
[…]Epic folks around the world have been making ongoing efforts to reduce costs, including moving to net zero hiring and cutting operating spend on things like marketing and events. But we still ended up far short of financial sustainability. We concluded that layoffs are the only way, and that doing them now and on this scale will stabilize our finances. We’re also making some divestitures. Bandcamp is joining Songtradr, a music marketplace company supporting artists. SuperAwesome’s advertising business will become an independent company under the SuperAwesome brand, led by their current CEO Kate O’Loughlin. Kids Web Services (KWS), the parent verification and consent management toolset, will remain part of Epic.”
Songradr also released a statement about their acquisition of Bandcamp which contains this quote from their CEO Paul Wilshire,
”"The acquisition of Bandcamp will help Songtradr continue to grow its suite of services for artists. I’m a passionate musician myself, and artistry and creativity have always been at the heart of Songtradr. Bandcamp will join a team of music industry veterans and artists who have deep expertise in music licensing, composition, rights management, and distribution.”
The statement also goes on to say,
”Songtradr will also offer Bandcamp artists the ability and choice to have their music licensed to all forms of media including content creators, game and app developers and brands. This will enable artists to continue to own and control their music rights, and increase their earning capacity from Songtradr’s global licensing network. Epic is exploring ways to partner with Songtradr to build an inventory of music where artists can opt in to have their music licensed for use in Epic’s ecosystem. Epic will continue to collaborate with Bandcamp on projects like Fortnite Radio and is investing in Songtradr to support Bandcamp’s successful integration into Songtradr.”
As reported in Pitchfork, when Songtradr was asked about the fate of Bandcamp Daily, artist revenue shares, and user experience, the company declined to comment.