Bandcamp’s performance space at 1901 Broadway in Oakland. The music platform founded in the Bay Area city is now losing half of its employees.
Courtesy of Google Streetview
Bandcamp built a unique music business: profitable and good for artists with a popular publishing arm. Now half of the company’s Bay Area employees are losing their jobs, victims of a sudden corporate swap.
The Oakland-based company was purchased by Epic Games – the maker of Fortnite and Gears of War – in early 2022. In September, just a year and a half later, Epic announced its plan to sell Bandcamp to Songtradr, a Santa Monica company specializing in music licensing. Only 50% of Bandcamp’s employees received offers for the acquisition, Songtradr spokeswoman Lindsay Nahmiache told SFGATE on Monday.
Of Bandcamp’s 118 employees, 58 received no offers and 60 received offers, Nahmiache said. One of Bandcamp’s remaining employees confirmed on Monday that around 60 people had left Slack. SFGATE granted the employee anonymity in accordance with Hearst’s ethics policy. According to a screenshot seen by SFGATE, Bandcamp co-founder and former CEO Ethan Diamond’s Slack account is also now deactivated.
Advertising
The article continues below this ad
“I know there are unanswered questions about why we didn’t hire everyone, and that losing team members is never easy,” Songtradr CEO Paul Wiltshire wrote Monday in an email viewed by SFGATE and in which the completion of the acquisition for the remaining Bandcamp employees was announced. “Obviously Bandcamp’s financial situation was not healthy. While revenues have remained constant, operating costs have increased significantly in recent years, making it impossible to continue the business as it was.”
But Bandcamp is hardly a money-burning tech company. Founded in Oakland in 2008, the company grew slowly with a model at odds with Spotify’s booming sales (and losses). While Spotify pays artists a tiny and variable amount for each play (calculated based on an artist’s “share of total streams on the platform”), Bandcamp is comparatively transparent: the platform directs listeners to buy the artist’s music, and then takes a small share from everyone. Billboard reported in 2021 that Bandcamp had been profitable for nearly a decade.
The careful approach, coupled with a commitment to small and independent artists in editorial curation, meant Epic’s 2022 acquisition came as a surprise to many in the music industry. The major game maker built on the success of Fortnite, leaned heavily on the metaverse and took on Apple’s App Store business in a high-profile lawsuit – without encouraging community support for an indie music platform. Bandcamp employees unionized about a year after joining Epic, and in September the game maker sold Bandcamp to Songtradr while announcing 830 more layoffs.
The completion of the Songtradr acquisition on Monday ends weeks of uncertainty for Bandcamp employees. After Epic announced the sale on Sept. 28, many Bandcamp employees lost access to the systems they used to do their jobs, the company union said in a statement. Songtradr released one a week later opinion He said not all Bandcamp employees will receive offers to join the company – a petition calling on Songtradr to recognize Bandcamp’s union has garnered more than 10,500 signatures as of Monday afternoon, but no commitment from the company.
Advertising
The article continues below this ad
Bandcamp employees were “completely in the dark,” software engineer Will Floyd told SFGATE on October 6, as they waited for updates and hoped for offers from Songtradr. On Monday, Floyd and dozens of others learned they were now unemployed.
Songtradr’s Nahmiache issued a statement to SFGATE in which the company committed to continuing Bandcamp’s popular Bandcamp Fridays promotion and editorial Bandcamp Daily. However, several members of the writing team were fired, including senior editor JJ Skolnik and Atoosa Moinzadeh. A chorus of music writers chimed in online, lamenting the layoffs as the latest in a string of music media closures, including Vice’s Noisey, Red Bull Music Academy and the NPR podcast “Louder Than a Riot.”
Advertising
The article continues below this ad
The Bandcamp union will negotiate severance packages with Epic, company spokeswoman Elka Looks told SFGATE, and unrepresented employees will receive six months of severance pay.
Have you heard anything happening at Bandcamp or any other tech company? Contact tech reporter Stephen Council securely at [email protected] or via Signal at 628-204-5452.