Music distribution and licensing company Songtradr has acquired music marketplace and community platform Bandcamp. Bandcamp is owned by interactive entertainment company Epic Games.
As announced on the Songtradr blog, it appears that Bandcamp — which provides track and album e-commerce for independent artists — will continue operating:
“Songtradr will continue to operate Bandcamp as a marketplace and music community with an artist-first revenue share.” –Soungtradr blog.
Bandcamp has operated mainly as a CD and single-track buying platform for indie-music supporters and collectors, and will continue those functions. Also, Songtradr’s licensing division brings an important new function to Bandcamp:
“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.” –Songtradr blog
Epic is also exploring ways for Bandcamp artists to license their tracks in Epic’s gaming ecosystem, an important opportunity.
“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,” said Paul Wiltshire, CEO of Songtradr.“
I think the bigger question about the Songtradr deal with Bandcamp is what does the future hold for Songtradr? They’ve had a lot of VC investment who will want some kind of exit, either an IPO or acquisition.
So I’m not sure if this is a good thing for Bandcamp in the long run, I just think its’ a better fit *right now* than Epic was.
Looking at the bright side, if this is a play to let BC artists license their music easily and collect royalties from podcast and social media use, that would be great. Wins for everyone.
What I worry about is the stuff on Bandcamp with questionable sample clearance might find themselves being booted from Bandcamp.
I have seen a lot of (how to say nicely) “inappropriate rights appropriation” on Bandcamp, and someone running good fingerprinting software on the whole library will likely find a lot of stuff for a big company to be concerned about.
Or maybe that’s part of the play? Automatic sample clearance? That would be very forward looking and interesting.
I hope nothing happens to Bandcamp, it’s an incredible resource to me.