Back on Christmas Eve, you might recall that Ears To The House published an article about the future of Bandcamp Friday. In short, it’s staying around for a little while longer, with the next one taking place in February. We also briefly mentioned something about Bandcamp United, the trade union operating at the company.

We promised we’d go into some more detail on this, and here it is. A few weeks ago, self-proclaimed American left-wing website Jacobin published an article about Bandcamp United’s seemingly never-ending battle to receive official acknowledgement of their existence from the company.

Previous owners Epic Games appeared to do so – and things were going well until September. At that point, whilst the two sides were immersed in negotiations, Epic Games announced that they were selling the company to Songtradr. And further to that, the new owner had pledged to keep “some” employees, but certainly not all.

It turns out that “some” in this case meant around half of the company would be losing their jobs. But according to the union, bigger problems might be around the corner for Bandcamp – and it’s all because of the systems the company uses. Ed Blair, a member of the union’s bargaining committee and former Bandcamp support worker, explains that…

“Our systems are very unique, they are in-house systems that don’t make a lot of sense unless you’ve been using them for about six months. In some ways, it’s hard to not see Songtradr shooting themselves in the foot with this decision.“

Could this be hyperbole? Quite possibly – similar predictions came about when Elon Musk took over Twitter and sacked most of the company’s staff. It remains to be seen what’ll happen here – but Ears To The House will be watching…

Your usual Wednesday Whisper is having a well-deserved Christmas break. Normal service resumes next week…