Bandcamp Announces Merger with Epic Games
The music platform is expected to help Epic’s vision to build a fair ecosystem for fans and creators.
Epic Games, the creator of Fortnite and the widely-used Unreal Engine game engine, has purchased Bandcamp, the online record store and music community. The deal’s financial terms have not been revealed.
While the acquisition is official, Bandcamp will keep operating as a standalone marketplace and music community as it has always been.
Ethan Diamond, the CEO of Bandcamp, said in an official statement posted on the Bandcamp blog: “I’m excited to announce that Bandcamp is joining Epic Games, who you may know as the makers of Fortnite and Unreal Engine, and champions for a fair and open Internet.
“The products and services you depend on aren’t going anywhere, we’ll continue to build Bandcamp around our artists-first revenue model (where artists net an average of 82% of every sale), you’ll still have the same control over how you offer your music, Bandcamp Fridays will continue as planned, and the Daily will keep highlighting the diverse, amazing music on the site.”
The merger with Epic is initiated in the hope that both platforms can expand internationally and push development forward for their services. The goal is to build “the most open, artist-friendly ecosystem in the world”.
Epic Games, meanwhile, said: “Fair and open platforms are critical to the future of the creator economy. Epic and Bandcamp share a mission of building the most artist friendly platform that enables creators to keep the majority of their hard-earned money. Bandcamp will play an important role in Epic’s vision to build out a creator marketplace ecosystem for content, technology, games, art, music and more.”
