“Even with the battle of the underdog versus mainstream culture, this merger can be a new blessing in disguise. It’s a merger of artistic formats to bring high-quality creative content into the gaming arena.”
There’s always a concern when a major corporation buys out a company specifically built to avoid the mainstream. There’s the discussion that these independent artists are being sold out to more giant conglomerates of the music industry, and thus lose what made them great in the first place.
Although there are many benefits when moving to a bigger corporation, there’s a compromise that happens, and the biggest one is the loss of creative control and direction. This drawback is usually the case when it’s a music-focused company acquiring another music-focused company.
What does the independent music industry currently look like?
Thankfully, with the advent of the internet age, and social media enabling global connections from the comfort of home, we’ve seen the revitalisation of the independent music industry. In fact, a significant portion of the industry is currently still independent, as there are minimal barriers to finding ways to distribute one’s music without the need for a huge record label.
There are also a lot of white labels and indie related distribution platforms out there to help bring the audience and network to facilitate success for the industry – platforms such as our own, or others fully geared for an end to end solution for creation, mixing, sound engineering and eventually distribution. But this is a constant battle, as more and more major labels are snatching up these platforms – another recent example being when Universal Music Group bought out Ingrooves in 2019.
This is different.
Even with the battle of the underdog versus mainstream culture, this merger can be a new blessing in disguise. It’s a merger of artistic formats to bring high-quality creative content into the gaming arena.
This development is a precursor to the metaverse itself. Epic Games was famous for being one of the first companies to stage a completely virtual concert with nearly 11 million people in attendance. It’s also not Epic’s forte to be in the music industry, so its acquisition could be seen as maintaining the quality of independent artists but offering them a much larger platform and audience.
After all, there will be a massive demand for content in the coming years. It’ll be up to specific platforms to provide the right mix of entertainment, from quality music to video games. Epic has a higher standard than many other gaming companies out there, with one of the most popular games on Earth currently.
It will be fascinating to view how this unfolds, and hopefully doesn’t follow along the lines of EA, who have a tendency for acquiring some of the best gaming studios that ever existed, then subsequently putting them on hold, or deteriorating their quality; leading them to consistently be in the category of one of the most hated companies ever.
Hopefully, Epic maintains the integrity that Bandcamp has produced, and this will help keep its massive and loyal following, and transition into their world – instead of alienating them.
