Bandcamp employees in the United States have formed a union, they announced today. Members of the site’s editorial, design, support, and engineering staffs are asking for “a fair and timely election” as Bandcamp United, organizing with the Office and Professional Employees International Union (OPEIU) Local 1010. “We all chose to join this company as an extension of our own love for independent music, and believe that a site such as Bandcamp that aims to offer an ethical and fair alternative to the streaming economy should reflect its mission internally,” they wrote in their mission statement. Read the rest here.
Workers at Bandcamp join several other relatively new unions in the music industry, including Moog, Secretly Group, and Spotify, plus the Union of Musicians and Organized Workers. The union drive comes almost exactly a year after Bandcamp announced that Epic Games, the company behind the massively popular game Fortnite, had acquired the music platform for an undisclosed sum.
Ethan Diamond, Bandcamp’s co-founder and current CEO, said in statement to Rolling Stone, “we are aware that some Bandcamp employees are seeking to organize a union. Employees have a right to organize and we are reviewing the petition to understand their concerns.” Upon announcing the Epic buyout last year, Diamond promised the company would “continue to build Bandcamp around our artists-first revenue model.”