Bandcamp Purchased By Chinese Company

Just received this message from the Mesmerize Records label:

"hello. today it has been announced that bandcamp is becoming a subsidiary of epic games, while apparently still operating as an independent company — only time will tell how truly independent they remain in the future.

blog.bandcamp.com/2022/03/02/bandcamp-is-joining-epic/

epic games is 40% owned by tencent, the chinese conglomerate that controls a huge part of media and communications in china, and which has been notably involved in alleged censorship and surveillance both inside and outside the country. you can choose to trust bandcamp's declaration that the partially chinese-owned american corporation are, and will remain, "champions for a fair and open Internet," or you cannot. as for us, we will reserve judgment for the time being.

bandcamp has already been banned in china last year, in a development which directly resulted in the censorship and marginalization of many independent artists from the nation, which is already subject to alleged heavy cultural and informational control by the state, and by big chinese media companies with alleged financial ties with the chinese government, such as tencent. in other words, today bandcamp is indirectly tied to a company from a country in which bandcamp itself can't be accessed, a company which itself controls a huge part of chinese media."

Too soon to start looking for Bandcamp alternatives..?

According to this report on Stereogum, Tencent also owns stakes in Warner, Universal and, wait for it, Spotify.

It could just be Epic Games wanting to get a piece of the action and Bandcamp wanting their reach, and the bit about how nothing about Bandcamp will change will be true. But we've seen this movie before, and it always ends with the new parent company imposing its will on the new acquisition, even if it's not immediately.

I've spent a lot of money on Bandcamp in the past couple of years, mostly on Bandcamp Fridays. I'm gonna hope for the best here, but expect the worst.

American (and Chinese, in this case, I guess) monopoly capitalism always changes culture for the blander. I can see Epic Games purchasing Bandcamp because they want to start selling games through it or that Bandcamp needed corporate backing to launch a streaming service in the future that could compete with Apple and Spotify, but who knows? I'm not hopeful - two years till Bandcamp's front page features BTS and Taylor Swift vinyl? - and if an indie download site comes along in the future, Amazon, Google, etc. will just snap it up when it becomes commercially successful.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/02/2022 12:31PM by steevee.

A commenter of another article also pointed this out:

"Countdown until everyone’s licensing agreement with Bandcamp includes a requirement that the music can all be used in Epic games without market-rate compensation."

Right, Michael, fingers crossed. But I'd say that if there's anything you've been wanting to dl from Bandcamp, now would be the time.

Especially considering this from a WSJ article, "For the occasion of the 19th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, Tencent released a mobile game titled "Clap for Xi Jinping: An Awesome Speech", in which players have 19 seconds to generate as many claps as possible for the party leader."

They don't call it the Communist PARTY, for nuthin, eh?!

Well, sooner or later, everything you like will be bought by a rapacious interest! It's hateful since Bandcamp has been the last store standing online for me. They have managed to stand tall as a beacon of someone doing the right thing to distribute music. I stopped using Amazon years ago. PledgeMusic went down in a pit of their own corruption. Now Bandcamp sold out! To a videogame company! [spits on the ground] A sad, awful day in this fully terrible [racing towards dystopic] century that I hate.

Former TP subscriber [81, 82, 83, 84]

[postpunkmonk.com]
For further rumination on the Fresh New Sound of Yesterday®



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/03/2022 03:32AM by Post-Punk Monk.