“I’m all lost in the supermarket / I can no longer shop happily”
I’ve been working on an essay about how broken modern consumer technology (software and hardware) is when it comes to downloadable files, like MP3s and FLAC. And then Bandcamp.com, a leading retailer of DRM-free audio files and a cultural force in independent music, goes and gets re-sold by the company that bought it just last year. Bandcamp began as a self-owned entity, then it was bought by Epic, the video game company, and now it’s been sold to Songtradr, a music licensing firm. The word “precarious” has been floating around in my imagination all day.
Let’s be clear: companies get bought and sold every day. That is business. But for musicians and music fans alike, Bandcamp plays a special role. Its social tools are quite minimal; it makes no claims to be, say, the internet’s town square. But if there even is such a thing as the internet’s town square, then Bandcamp is the record store on the corner.