It was purchased by Epic Games a year ago, who recently sold it to Songtradr, a licensing platform for background/‘mood’ music. Songtradr only retained 50% of existing Bandcamp staff (the rest were laid off a few weeks after the sale AFAICT, with the worst affected departments including Bandcamp’s editorial team and customer support. Epic Games handled the severance package, for some reason.)
People are pretty upset about the editorial team being laid off because it provided exposure for smaller/niche artists in a weekly publication. I’ve never checked it out personally checked it out because I never knew it existed - wishing I had now
Such a large layoff so quickly by the new owner feels like a sign of darker times ahead for Bandcamp IMO, seeing that it’s apparently been profitable since 2012 (Wayback link, new owners have nuked this from the site?). No need to milk the cow even more when the bucket is full…
c0mbatbag3l@lemmy.world 9 months ago
What happened to Bandcamp?
lemann@lemmy.one 9 months ago
It was purchased by Epic Games a year ago, who recently sold it to Songtradr, a licensing platform for background/‘mood’ music. Songtradr only retained 50% of existing Bandcamp staff (the rest were laid off a few weeks after the sale AFAICT, with the worst affected departments including Bandcamp’s editorial team and customer support. Epic Games handled the severance package, for some reason.)
People are pretty upset about the editorial team being laid off because it provided exposure for smaller/niche artists in a weekly publication. I’ve never checked it out personally checked it out because I never knew it existed - wishing I had now
Such a large layoff so quickly by the new owner feels like a sign of darker times ahead for Bandcamp IMO, seeing that it’s apparently been profitable since 2012 (Wayback link, new owners have nuked this from the site?). No need to milk the cow even more when the bucket is full…