Musos and gamers were left scratching their heads last Wednesday as Bandcamp, the online record store hailed by independent artists as a bankable alternative to the razor-thin royalties of streaming, announced its acquisition by Epic Games, makers of the online gaming phenomenon Fortnite.
Bandcamp CEO Ethan Diamond framed the deal as a boon for artists, saying that the two US companies shared a vision of building “the most open, artist-friendly ecosystem in the world”. A blogpost from Epic underlined the need for “fair and open platforms” to enable “creators to keep the majority of their hard-earned money”.
