This week’s episode is a chat around the sale of Bandcamp from Epic Games to Songtradr.
With streaming paying pennies or less than for many artists, the independently-driven music platform Bandcamp is the last bastion of online revenue making for many bands – allowing musicians to sell their music digitally, and on vinyl or CD direct to their fans.
Artists on Bandcamp collectively earned $193 million in the last year alone, and Bandcamp has paid out $1.19 billion since its founding in 2007.
But recent business deals have meant Bandcamp was acquired by Songtradr, after a short 18 months owned by Epic Games. With the acquisition came news today that approximately half (60) of the Bandcamp staff of 118 employees, including the Bandcamp Daily team, had been laid off, with the entire negotiating team at the workers’ union – Bandcamp United, let go.
We discuss what it means for independent musicians, what the alternatives are and also the other dodgy news this week, that NTS radio have been partially bought by Universal and Spotify is planning on reducing its royalty payouts to a minimum threshold so that many artists literally won’t get a penny for their song streams.
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All that, plus Niall shares his months-long local detective story, and Andrea talks about presenting PHD at a dance music conference in Huddersfield last week.
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Show notes
- Thinking of ditching Spotify? Musician Joel Harkin explores alternative music platforms so you don’t have to
- Bandcamp alternatives: Faircamp / Nina / Tone Audio / Mirlo
- First Floor Substack
- Interdependence Podcast
- Dancecult conference
- Songs played on the Nialler9 Podcast Spotify Playlist
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Niall Byrne is the founder of the most-influential Irish music site Nialler9, where he has been writing about music since 2005. He is the co-host of the Nialler9 Podcast and has written for the Irish Times, Irish Independent, Sunday Times, Totally Dublin, Cara Magazine, Red Bull and more. Niall is a DJ, co-founder of Lumo Club, event curator, Indie Sleaze club promoter, and producer of gigs and monthly listening parties & events in Dublin.
