State Champ Radio Epic Games
Google has agreed to pay $700 million and make several other concessions to settle allegations that it had been stifling competition against its Android app store — the same issue that went to trial in another case that could result in even bigger changes.
Although Google struck the deal with state attorneys general in September, the settlement’s terms weren’t revealed until late Monday in documents filed in San Francisco federal court. The disclosure came a week after a federal court jury rebuked Google for deploying anticompetitive tactics in its Play Store for Android apps.
The settlement with the states includes $630 million to compensate U.S. consumers funneled into a payment processing system that state attorneys general alleged drove up the prices for digital transactions within apps downloaded from the Play Store. That store caters to the Android software that powers most of the world’s smartphones.
Like Apple does in its iPhone app store, Google collects commissions ranging from 15% to 30% on in-app purchases — fees that state attorneys general contended drove prices higher than they would have been had there been an open market for payment processing. Those commissions generated billions of dollars in profit annually for Google, according to evidence presented in the recent trial focused on its Play Store.
Eligible consumers will receive at least $2, according to the settlement, and may get additional payments based on their spending on the Play store between Aug. 16, 2016 and Sept. 30, 2023. The estimated 102 million U.S. consumers who made in-app purchases during that time frame are supposed to be automatically notified about various options for how they can receive their cut of the money.
Another $70 million of the pre-trial settlement will cover the penalties and other costs that Google is being forced to pay to the states.
Although Google is forking over a sizeable sum, it’s a fraction of the $10.5 billion in damages that the attorneys general estimated the company could be forced to pay if they had taken the case to trial instead of settling.
Google also agreed to make other changes designed to make it even easier for consumers to download and install Android apps from other outlets besides its Play Store for the next five years. It will refrain from issuing as many security warnings, or “scare screens,” when alternative choices are being used.
The makers of Android apps will also gain more flexibility to offer alternative payment choices to consumers instead of having transactions automatically processed through the Play Store and its commission system. Apps will also be able to promote lower prices available to consumers who choose an alternate to the Play Store’s payment processing.
Investors seemed unfazed by the settlement as shares in Google’s corporate parent, Alphabet Inc., rose slightly in Tuesday’s midday trading.
The settlement represents a “loud and clear message to Big Tech — attorneys general across the country are unified, and we are prepared to use the full weight of our collective authority to ensure free and fair access to the digital marketplace,” said Connecticut Attorney General William Tong.
Wilson White, Google’s vice president of government affairs and public policy, framed the deal as a positive for the company, despite the money and concessions it entails. The settlement “builds on Android’s choice and flexibility, maintains strong security protections, and retains Google’s ability to compete with other (software) makers, and invest in the Android ecosystem for users and developers,” White wrote in a blog post.
Although the state attorneys general hailed the settlement as a huge win for consumers, it didn’t go far enough for Epic Games, which spearheaded the attack on Google’s app store practices with an antitrust lawsuit filed in August 2020.
Epic, the maker of the popular Fortnite video game, rebuffed the settlement in September and instead chose to take its case to trial, even though it had already lost on most of its key claims in a similar trial targeting Apple and its iPhone app store in 2021.
The Apple trial, though, was decided by a federal judge instead of the jury that vindicated Epic with a unanimous verdict that Google had built anticompetitive barriers around the Play Store. Google has vowed to appeal the verdict.
Corie Wright, Epic’s vice president of public policy, derided the states’ settlement as little more than a one-time payout that provides “no true relief for consumers or developers,” in a blog post.
In court documents, the attorneys general said they decided to settle because of significant risks posed by a trial, including the possibility that a jury may have thought their plan to seek $10.5 billion in damages was exorbitant. The attorneys general also cited for the potential of jurors becoming confused had their case been presented alongside Epic’s claims in the trial, as had been the original plan.
But now the Epic trial’s outcome nevertheless raises the specter of Google potentially being ordered to pay even more money as punishment for its past practices and making even more dramatic changes to its lucrative Android app ecosystem.
Those changes will be determined next year by U.S. District Judge James Donato, who presided over the Epic Games trial. Donato also still must approve Google’s Play Store settlement with the states.
“In the next phase of the case, Epic will seek meaningful remedies to truly open up the Android ecosystem so consumers and developers will genuinely benefit from the competition that U.S. antitrust laws were designed to promote,” Wright pledged.
Google faces an even bigger legal threat in another antitrust case targeting its dominant search engine that serves as the centerpiece of a digital ad empire that generates more than $200 billion in sales annually. Closing arguments in a trial pitting Google against the Justice Department are scheduled for early May before a federal judge in Washington D.C.
A federal court jury has decided that Google’s Android app store has been protected by anticompetitive barriers that have damaged smartphone consumers and software developers, dealing a blow to a major pillar of a technology empire.
The unanimous verdict reached Monday came after just three hours of deliberation following a four-week trial revolving around a lucrative payment system within Google’s Play Store. The store is the main place where hundreds of millions of people around the world download and install apps that work on smartphones powered by Google’s Android software.
Epic Games, the maker of the popular Fortnite video game, filed a lawsuit against Google three years ago, alleging that the internet search giant has been abusing its power to shield its Play Store from competition in order to protect a gold mine that makes billions of dollars annually. Just as Apple does for its iPhone app store, Google collects a commission ranging from 15% to 30% on digital transactions completed within apps.
Apple prevailed in a similar case that Epic brought against the iPhone app store. But that 2021 trial was decided by a federal judge in a ruling that is under appeal at the U.S. Supreme Court.
The nine-person jury in the Play Store case apparently saw things through a different lens, even though Google technically allows Android apps to be downloaded from different stores — an option that Apple prohibits on the iPhone.
Just before the Play Store trial started, Google sought to avoid having a jury determine the outcome, only to have its request rejected by U.S. District Judge James Donato. Now it will be up to Donato to determine what steps Google will have to take to unwind its illegal behavior in the Play Store. The judge indicated he will hold hearings on the issue during the second week of January.
Epic CEO Tim Sweeney broke into a wide grin after the verdict was read and slapped his lawyers on the back and also shook the hand of a Google attorney, whom he thanked for his professional attitude during the proceedings.
“Victory over Google!” Sweeney wrote in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. In a company post, Epic hailed the verdict as “a win for all app developers and consumers around the world.”
Google plans to appeal the verdict, according to a statement from Wilson White, the company’s vice president of government affairs and public policy.
“Android and Google Play provide more choice and openness than any other major mobile platform,” White said.
Depending on how the judge enforces the jury’s verdict, Google could lose billions of dollars in annual profit generated from its Play Store commissions. The company’s main source of revenue — digital advertising tied mostly to its search engine, Gmail and other services — won’t be directly affected by the trial’s outcome.
The jury reached its decision after listening to two hours of closing arguments from the lawyers on the opposing sides of the case.
Epic lawyer Gary Bornstein depicted Google as a ruthless bully that deploys a “bribe and block” strategy to discourage competition against its Play Store for Android apps. Google lawyer Jonathan Kravis attacked Epic as a self-interested game maker trying to use the courts to save itself money while undermining an ecosystem that has spawned billions of Android smartphones to compete against Apple and its iPhone.
Much of the lawyers’ dueling arguments touched upon the testimony from a litany of witnesses who came to court during the trial.
The key witnesses included Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who sometimes seemed like a professor explaining complex topics while standing behind a lectern because of a health issue, and Sweeney, who painted himself as a video game lover on a mission to take down a greedy tech titan.
In his closing argument for Epic, Bornstein railed against Google for exploiting its power over the Android software in a way that “has led to higher prices for developers and consumers, as well as less innovation and quality.”
Google has staunchly defended the commissions as a way to help recoup the more than $40 billion that it has poured into building into the Android software that it has been giving away since 2007 to manufacturers to compete against the iPhone.
“Android phones cannot compete against the iPhone without a great app store on them,” Kravis asserted in his closing argument. “The competition between the app stores is tied to the competition between the phones.”
But Bornstein ridiculed the notion of Google and Android competing against Apple and its incompatible iPhone software system. “Apple is not the ‘get out of jail for free’ card that Google wants it to be,” Bornstein told the jury.
Google also pointed to rival Android app stores such as the one that Samsung installs on its popular smartphones as evidence of a free market. Combined with the rival app stores pre-installed on devices made by other companies, more than 60% of Android phones offer alternative outlets for Android apps.
Epic, though, presented evidence asserting the notion that Google welcomes competition as a pretense, citing the hundreds of billions of dollars it has doled out to companies, such as game maker Activision Blizzard, to discourage them from opening rival app stores. Besides making these payments, Bornstein also urged the jury to consider the Google “scare screens” that pop up, warning consumers of potential security threats when they try to download Android apps from some of the alternatives to the Play Store.
“These are classic anticompetitive strategies used by dominant firms to protect their monopolies,” Bornstein said.
Google’s empire could be further undermined by another major antitrust trial in Washington that will be decided by a federal judge after hearing final arguments in May. That trial has cast a spotlight on Google’s cozy relationship with Apple in online search, the technology that turned Google into a household word a few years after two former Stanford University graduate students started the company in a Silicon Valley garage in 1998.
While Google usually takes a 15% cut of customer payments for app subscriptions in its Play Store on Android devices, Spotify obtained a deal that allowed it to pay a drastically reduced commission, according to The Verge.
The details of the business arrangement were divulged by Google head of global partnerships Don Harrison on Monday (Nov. 20) in testimony during the Epic Games vs. Google trial: Spotify paid no commission if users bought subscriptions through Spotify, and 4% if users selected Google as their payment processor.
Harrison said in court that Spotify landed this “bespoke” agreement because “if we don’t have Spotify working properly across Play services and core services, people will not buy Android phones.” His testimony also indicated that the deal entailed a $50 million investment by both Google and Spotify in a “success fund.”
In a statement to The Verge, a Google spokesperson said that “a small number of developers that invest more directly in Android and Play may have different service fees as part of a broader partnership that includes substantial financial investments and product integrations across different form factors. These key investment partnerships allow us to bring more users to Android and Play by continuously improving the experience for all users and create new opportunities for all developers.”
A rep for Spotify did not respond to Billboard’s request for comment.
Epic Games, which is known for furnishing the world with the popular game Fortnite, has been battling Google since way back in 2020 over the 30% fee the search giant charges app developers for purchases made on its Play Store on Android devices. Epic tried to circumvent Google’s system by putting its own payment system into the Fortnite app and charging a reduced price; Google hit back by yanking Fortnite off the Play Store.
Epic then sued Google. “Google… is using its size to do evil upon competitors, innovators, customers and users in a slew of markets it has grown to monopolize,” Epic wrote in its complaint. The New York Times reported that Epic’s CEO, Tim Sweeney, said in court on Monday (Nov. 20) that Google “exercises de facto control over the availability of apps on Android.”
Wilson White, a Google vp of public policy, told reporters earlier this month that “Epic wants all the benefits of Android and Google Play without having to pay for them,” according to The New York Times. “The lawsuit [from Epic] would upend a business model that has lowered prices and increased choices,” White argued.
Google had tried to avoid revealing the nature of its relationship with Spotify in court, The Verge reported earlier this month. “Disclosure of the Spotify deal would be very, very detrimental for the negotiation we’d be having with… other parties,” Google attorney Glenn Pomerantz told the judge overseeing the case.
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Source: Epic Games / Eminem x Fortnite Big Bang Event
Slim Shady is officially coming to Fortnite. Enimen and Epic Games confirmed the rapper will be a part of the upcoming “Big Bang” event in the extremely popular video game.
After a day of speculation, Fortnite and Eminem confirmed his existence in the game and will be a part of the Big Bang event to close out the highly successful Fortnite OG chapter.
Epic Games confirmed that Fortnite players will be greeted by a new Big Bang loading screen featuring the “Without Me” rapper in preparation for a virtual performance from the Detroit rapper.
Source: Epic Games / Fortnite / Eminem
Also, if you’re going to attend the event, you have to look the part, so of course, three Eminem-related skins will be available: Rap Boy, Slim Shady, and Marshall Never More, which also come with matching accessories.
The new looks, the latest edition to Fortnite’s “Icon Series,” will be available starting Wednesday, November 29, at 7 PM ET.
Source: Epic Games / Eminem x Fortnite Big Bang Event
Those who attend the Big Bang event will unlock the Marshall Magma Style for the outfit, whether you purchased the outfit before or after attending.
As expected, Eminem and Fortnite fans have been reacting to the news of the legendary rapper coming to the video game.
“imma be honest… Eminem in Fortnite will go hard,” one X user wrote.
You can see more reactions to the news in the gallery below.
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Photo: Epic Games / Fortnite Big Bang Event
1. Good question
2. Proper use of Em bars.
HipHopWired Featured Video
Source: Epic Games / Fortnite / Eminem
Fortnite is enjoying a resurgence thanks to its OG Season. Now, word on the street is that Eminem will come to the game to help close Chapter 4.
Spotted on Polygon, reliable Fortnite leaker HYPEX is reporting that Eminem will be the star of Fortnite’s upcoming “Big Bang” event to close out the Fortnite OG event and usher in a new season of Fortnite.
According to the leaker, the picture above will be the announcement photo, and it “will be the BIGGEST one to date,” saying the download size will come in at “1.5GB+, making it the biggest in terms of file size alone.”
Eminem will also be a playable character in Fortnite Chapter 5, with players getting their hands on Slim Shady and Marshall Never More skins, each with two styles.
The Marshal Skin will come with a Marshall Magma exclusive to Fortnite players who attend the end-of-season event on December 2.
Eminem is not the only thing reportedly coming to Fortnite Chapter 5. According to leaker Shiina, Lego Fortnite will be released on December 7, Rocket Racing will follow on December 8, and Fortnite Festival will drop on December 9.
HYPEX also says the Fortnite Festival will allow players to play vocals, guitar, drums, and bass over tracks from Lady Gaga, Imagine Dragons, Linkin Park, Toto, and Alice Cooper.
The Lego mode will feature playable Lego minifig characters and allow players to craft and build.
When Eminem hits the virtual Fortnite stage, he will join other artists, Travis Scott, Ariana Grande, and J Balvin, who also had epic Fortnite concerts.
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Photo: Epic Games / Fortnite / Eminem
Bandcamp United, the Bandcamp employees union, accused Songtradr of unfair labor practices in a filing with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) on Sunday (Oct. 29). Epic Games announced that it was selling Bandcamp to Songtradr at the end of September. Subsequently, more than half of the Bandcamp staff was laid off, including all eight […]
Epic Games and Songtradr confirmed plans to let go of roughly half of Bandcamp’s workforce on Monday (Oct. 16), as the two companies finalized the sale of the popular independent music sales and streaming platform.
Epic Games first announced plans to sell Bandcamp to Songtradr — an online music licensing marketplace — on Sept. 28 amid a broad restructuring that involved laying off 830 employees, or about 16% of its workforce. In addition to divesting Bandcamp, the Fortnite developer also said it would spin off kidtech company SuperAwesome, a move that would impact 250 people in total.
An Epic Games spokesperson declined to comment on how many Bandcamp employees were terminated, but said impacted workers received notification of severance packages on Monday.
In a statement, Songtradr said Bandcamp’s operating costs have “significantly increased” in recent years and the job cuts, which were impacted all divisions, were necessary to “ensure a sustainable and healthy company that can serve its community of artists and fans.”
“After a comprehensive evaluation, including the importance of roles for smooth business operations and pre existing functions at Songtradr, 50% of Bandcamp employees have accepted offers to join Songtradr,” according to the statement. “We are looking forward to welcoming Bandcamp into our musically aligned community.”
Songtradr said it will keep popular Bandcamp services, including “artist-first revenue share, Bandcamp Fridays and Bandcamp Daily.”
Employees of the independent music storefront had been attempting to unionize since March, a move prompted by Bandcamp’s 2022 sale to Epic Games. On Oct. 3, Bandcamp workers affiliated with the effort wrote Songtradr’s CEO asking that he recognize their union and extend offers to all current employees. The company ultimately stated that not all employees would receive offers to join Songtradr.
Bandcamp employees affected by Monday’s layoffs described disjointed communication from their new and outgoing employers about the job cuts.
“Officially laid off from bandcamp, after two weeks of waiting in limbo with many of my fellow colleagues,” according to a post by Atoosa Moinzadeh on X (formerly Twitter) shared on Monday. Moinzadeh wrote on her LinkedIn page that she was let go after working for 2.5 years as a social media manager and editor at Bandcamp.
Rochelle Shipman, whose LinkedIn page describes her as a vinyl representative at Bandcamp, wrote on X on Monday, “3 years at Bandcamp, nearly 100 records & an entire union later, and laid off without so much as a peep from (ex) leadership. Please continue to support artists. Buy music at every turn … Artists first forever.”
Additional reporting by Kristin Robinson.
Employees of Bandcamp sent a letter to Songtradr CEO Paul Wiltshire on Tuesday (Oct. 3) asking him to recognize their union, “extend [job] offers to all Bandcamp employees” and “maintain everyone’s current employment status,” including “current pay, working conditions, and benefits.” Songtradr, a music licensing platform, purchased Bandcamp from Epic Games last week.
“The integrity of the workers who build Bandcamp is a crucial aspect of the company’s ability to uphold its values,” Cami Ramirez-Arau, a support specialist, said in a statement. “Bandcamp’s core mission is best protected by retaining all workers and by those workers having a seat at the table.”
“We’ve been able to work effectively and directly with management at Epic Games to bargain collectively,” added Eli Rider, a data analyst. “We want to continue this process with Songtradr.”
A rep for Songtradr did not immediately respond to Billboard‘s request for comment.
Epic Games acquired Bandcamp in March 2022. Roughly a year later, Bandcamp workers filed with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to authorize a union election. At the time, Rider told Billboard there was “a shift in our workplace conditions” after the sale.
“If you think about Bandcamp, it’s about paying artists fairly for the music that we love so much,” Rider added. “So, the workers that build the site and support it also would like to have fair and transparent wages.”
In a statement on Wednesday, Bandcamp employees said their union, Bandcamp United, was recognized in May and began bargaining with Epic Games in August. But the negotiations were not complete by September 28, when Songtradr announced it was taking Bandcamp off Epic Games’ hands, potentially wiping out any progress in the talks. A rep for the union said it was not aware that Epic Games was planning to sell Bandcamp.
The employees union issued a statement on Wednesday saying that Epic had told them that Songtradr “would be offering positions to some Bandcamp employees but not all.” Adding to the feelings of uncertainty and disarray: Most employees “have had critical systems access revoked by Epic management and have been unable to do their jobs.”
Ed Blair, a support specialist, said in a statement that “Songtradr not immediately recognizing Bandcamp United is a worrying indicator that they have misunderstood the value of Bandcamp.”
“The workers who make up Bandcamp United are essential for the future of Bandcamp,” he emphasized.
Bandcamp United also noted in its letter to Wiltshire that it “has garnered extensive support from the Bandcamp user community – and the public more broadly.”
“Recognizing us,” the letter stated, “would go a long way to establishing goodwill for Songtradr.”
When Wiltshire spoke to Billboard following the announcement of the Bandcamp acquisition, he called Bandcamp “a great platform.” He added, “There’s not a need to change it into anything other than what it is.”
In March of 2022, Epic Games, best known as the maker of Fortnite, acquired Bandcamp, a crucial commerce platform for independent musicians. While the purchase surprised the music industry, the marriage ultimately proved short-lived: Bandcamp was acquired again on September 28, this time by the licensing platform Songtradr.
Bandcamp is widely loved for its role in the indie music community, and in an interview, Paul Wiltshire, CEO of Songtradr, was eager to assuage any fears about the company’s new owner. “We think Bandcamp is a great platform as it is,” he says. “There’s not a need to change it into anything other than what it is.”
The plan for now, he continues, is “introduce the opportunity of licensing” to Bandcamp artists who are interested in seeding their music to various brands and platforms. “We think that alone is a really big piece, and we want to get that right,” Wiltshire adds. “That will create a lot of opportunity for the independent market and the artists on there.”
Before we get into the Bandcamp acquisition, can you explain what Songtradr does?
The genesis of Songtradr was to build a platform that made licensing easier for both sides of the marketplace. On one side, you have artists, songwriters, and also labels and publishers; on the other side it’s brands, agencies, games, apps, platforms, anyone who uses music in content, film, TV, etc. The problems associated with licensing are mainly due to fragmentation — both publishing and recording rights need to be licensed whenever you legitimately license a track. And so there’s inherent fragmentation, because much of the time there’s a publisher, and there’s a label and they’re two different parties. The same thing happens with independents, where they co-write with two different people. We wanted to build a platform that solved the rights fragmentation and brought parties together so that they could transact together.
Are there specific areas of licensing you focus on?
Where we’ve focused over the last five years in particular is music for brands and advertising agencies. We work with so many of the Fortune 500 brands around the world; we’ve got teams across Europe and Asia and Americas and Australia. We try to provide a complete solution for brands — everything from understanding the sonic architecture of that brand, to working with composers to make the right music for a campaign, to licensing music at scale if they want music for everyday use with their social media campaigns, right through to their licensing of famous track.
The second vertical we focused on was games, apps and platforms because they have a lot of technical challenges. With digital platforms, it’s more complicated. If we think about brands as being one to one, licensing one track to an ad campaign, platforms and games is like 1000s to one — many tracks being used in a game, app, or platform. We wanted to solve the big problems associated with that.
What led you to the Bandcamp acquisition?
Our strategy around M&A up until Bandcamp has been buying companies that really marry that vision of simplifying licensing. The strategy around Bandcamp was: We’re seeing a trend in the market where music is becoming increasingly important in brands and games and fitness apps and meditation apps, all these different touchpoints. And we’ve seen an increased trend in brands in particular: They want to know about the artist who’s behind the music.
We’ve built technology around being able to best match the right music to a brand or to a customer. How do we ensure the right music is used in an advertising campaign or in a game that aligns with the target audience, whether it’s the gamer or the customer that’s watching the advertisement?
We look at Bandcamp and it’s the largest independent music community in the world. You could argue SoundCloud is, but that’s more than just an independent artist community — there are a bunch of other things as well. Bandcamp legitimately has that core independent artist market. We looked at the business model, and we love the business as it is; there’s no plans to change the existing model. What we wanted to do was connect licensing to the Bandcamp offering.
This would be an opt-in only basis for the artists so that they continue to control their rights and control their destiny. Licensing is not for every artist, and we want them to be able to choose what they want to participate in. An artist on Bandcamp can not only sell their vinyl, their T-shirts, their digital album, but they can also have the opportunity to license music into multiple different areas.
We’ve seen what happens when an independent artist has a license it can be quite transformational in terms of streaming numbers. We’ve licensed music to TikTok and suddenly an artist has blown up unexpectedly because brands got ahold of it. We really believe in licensing as being a key driver for your expanded awareness of an artist’s career.
Can you explain a bit more how that tech works matching brands to songs?
We bought an AI company called Musicube last year. They scan the audio file and they create metadata points that describe it in simple terms like mood, BPM, that fairly obvious stuff. But they went a degree further: We can now predict the audience that would most align with sections of the song right down to like small fractions, like five seconds. We can look at a track using a computer amd in milliseconds understand, ‘that chorus is going to be awesome for a 18 to 23 year old female on the east coast, the United States who likes the following things.’
How does that help on the licensing side?
When you have millions of tracks, it helps us figure out, what do we pitch, what do we place, what do we suggest to a brand? If we’re using creativity on the one hand and data in the right hand we argue we get a better result than just objectivity or just data. We use the tech to help choose the music.
We will be creating a user experience that gives them the option — do you want to have your music participate in this system? That’ll be the music that we start to curate and pitch.
We want to be very clear to Bandcamp artists: They will always have the choice of where their music goes. Licensing is quite a steep learning curve for many — what does it mean, what are all the different opportunities, some are paying pennies, some are paying a huge amount. There’s a lot to unpack, so we know that’s going to be a careful learning process and it will take time to properly communicate.
My impression was that Bandcamp got a big bump in engagement during Covid. Has that continued?
Just speaking from a very on-high view from the detail that I have, there was a quite a significant bump up during that period. But it looks like there’s been a step-up that was sustained, and it’s continuing [at a level higher than it was]. More awareness was raised of what Bandcamp is; there are more fans and more artists using it. That period educated the market to be more self-sufficient online, to do more online, to make passive income a reality without being wholly reliant on their performance. It’s one of the few blessings of that period.
Songtrader is very supportive of the artist community and I come from that background. I was a songwriter and record producer after I tried to be an artist for a few years. We are musicians. It’s important that the Bandcamp audience knows that that’s where we come from, that’s what we believe in.
We really want to protect the value of music rights. We’re not trying to package up a bunch of music and sell it cheaply. That’s not what we do. We’re very much into increasing the value of music for all so when someone licenses music, they get a better result because they’ve licensed something that’s actually on brand that actually suits their time. And on the other side, that music is properly paid for and it attracts the right fees.
Epic Games has sold Bandcamp to Songtradr, an online music licensing marketplace. News of the sale arrives as the Fortnite developer also announced plans to eliminate 16% of its workforce — around 830 jobs — and to spin off its SuperAwesome services division, according to a memo on Epic Games’ website.
“We’ve been spending way more money than we earn…We’re cutting costs without breaking development or our core lines of businesses so we can continue to focus on our ambitious plans,” explained Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney in the memo.
Epic Games acquired the independent music platform for an undisclosed sum in March 2022. Though the purchase initially shocked the music business, several music executives explained to Billboard right after the sale that the motive behind buying Bandcamp might be to improve Epic’s relations with musicians or ease synch licensing. According to Epic Games at the time of the sale, “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.”
In the company’s latest memo, it continued to stress its desire to build itself into a wide-reaching “ecosystem for creators” but added that it needed to reach profitability.
In the past few years, Songtradr has been active in acquiring new businesses to expand its reach. In March 2023, it purchased B2B music company 7digital for a reported $23.4 million. It also recently acquired AI metadata and music search platform MusicCube in 2022, Massive Music and Song Zu in 2021, and Big Sync Music in 2019. Other companies in its expanding portfolio include Tunefind and Pretzel; it also invested $1 million in music credits database Jaxsta.
Bandcamp’s new owner says it will continue to operate the platform as a marketplace and music community with an artist-first revenue share, while the acquisition will enable it to expand its capabilities to support the artist community. In addition, Songtradr will now offer all Bandcamp artists the ability to have their music licensed to all forms of media, including content creators, game and app developers, and brands.
In a press release announcing the acquisition, Songtradr added that Epic Games is “exploring ways” to allow Bandcamp artists to opt-in to have their music licensed for use in Epic’s gaming and metaverse ecosystem via a partnership with Songtradr. Epic will continue to collaborate with Bandcamp on Fortnite Radio and “is investing in Songtradr to support Bandcamp’s successful integration into” the company, according to the Songtradr release.
“The acquisition of Bandcamp will help Songtradr continue to grow its suite of services for artists,” said Songtradr CEO Paul Wiltshire in a statement. “I’m a passionate musician myself, and artistry and creativity have always been at the heart of Songtradr. Bandcamp will join a team of music industry veterans and artists who have deep expertise in music licensing, composition, rights management, and distribution.”
“Songtradr shares Epic and Bandcamp’s values around ensuring artists are fairly compensated for their work,” added Epic Games vp/GM, store Steve Allison. “Bringing Bandcamp to Songtradr will make it easier for independent artists to connect with creators and developers looking to license their music and enable Epic to focus on its core metaverse, games, and tools efforts.”
