"Epic ticks all those boxes."

I bet those boxes were in the shape of zeroes too.

Duuuuude, this sucks. I don't hate Epic by any means (honestly, I prefer them over Steam but GOG is still superior) but I'm very worried about this... hopefully, they'll continue their DRM-free services because they were pretty much the ONLY site for DRM-free music purchases.

I guess we'll see what happens. I buy physical whenever it's possible but Bandcamp is my first choice if I have to buy digitally.

This is pretty crappy news, Bandcamp seemed to be among the good guys.

Well, crap. Been my preferred music site by far for many years now, but after this, even if nothing would actually change in the site itself... The very idea almost makes me sick.

Venture Capitalist Gonna Venture Capitalist.

Just as I've happily observed from a safe distance with the Amico Debacle, once a venture capitalist gets bored, your project is no longer safe.

Where? In bizarro world perhaps? o.0
(aside: I'd like to see him try saying this to his loyal customer base with a straight face)i.e. he got a cushy "advisory position"

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Then you might wanna get to work backing up your collection (if you have the time/means to do so) when you can.

I might be wrong, but I think they purchased it in order to complement their Unreal Engine Marketplace. So now in addition to marketing UE user-created assets, they will be marketing sound effects and music. So, DRm-free is out of the question for their business model. It's actually quite smart, as many developers today lack the knowledge or money to create a new game engine. It's simpler just to focus on game content rather than Engine creation. Thus, a one-stop shop for indie or cash-strapped devs. It'll probably just screw artists out of money.

Absolutely, everyone needs to back up their collection ASAP.

A little know disadvantage of Bandcamp is that if an artist deletes their music from the platform, it also gets removed from your account completely. That happened to one of my purchases last year.
It's likely to happen again as I'm sure the acquisition will upset some artists.

Well. Crap.

I see. That makes sense. And its a win-win since indie devs can use unreal as a one-stop shop and Epic can then essentially guarantee their games as exclusives to the Epic store (discounts on unreal license if you sell their game on Epic). Given how expensive producing games has become, its really only the AAA studios that make their own engines (and even some AAAs are dipping into using unreal).

Really smart.

Same here. In fact it was the only site I've ever used for digital music purchases. I'm not going to fatten Epic's coffers so now I'm totally out of options...

yeah just wait and we will see
so it wasnt even a good store
sounds like itchio for music

Gawd really. Either you haven't shopped around or it must be your musical taste.

Bandcamp is sort of alright, but Qobuz is much better ... and so is ZDigital I recently found out. That's for me in Australia anyway, but for other places in the world there are many other stores, just due to region nonsense I cannot often buy from them.

And my only purchase on Bandcamp at this point, was half the price at ZDigital ... that was a for a 4 album collection ... if only I'd known three hours earlier.

Personally I find Bandcamp to be a cluttered place ... it's worse than Steam with it's Indie complement of games.

I imagine if you are into Indie music a lot and like streaming, it is probably a cool place. I'm not into either.

Is there any evidence whatsoever that Epic plans to "DRM-ify" Bandcamp or is this whole thread conjecture?