Since 2015, artists and labels have used Bandcamp’s Android app to sell music and merchandise directly to their fans, and we have used our own billing system to process payments, consistent with Google’s guidelines which specifically exempted digital music from incurring a revenue share. Moving forward, we’ll continue the fight to allow artist-first business models like ours on Android. Bandcamp will place 10% of the revenue generated from digital sales on Android devices in escrow until Epic’s ongoing case against Google is resolved, a cost we will bear. Fans can keep supporting artists on Android as they have, and we’ll continue paying artists the same share of sales (typically within 24-48 hours, as we do today). “Now, Google is closing the exemption” and threatening “to remove any apps, including Bandcamp, from Google Play on June 1, 2022, if they do not adopt GPB for the sale of all digital content.Update: Under an agreement encouraged by the court, Bandcamp will continue to operate using our existing payment system on Android devices. “Since Google first launched its in-app payments product in 2011, it has exempted from its tie developers that sell digital content consumed outside the app,” the legal text reads. Epic, the document continues, is seeking a preliminary injunction to halt the quick-approaching rule change, and the corresponding 16-page-long filing indicates that Google has threatened to boot Bandcamp from the Play Store altogether. The Epic Games subsidiary will have to eat the heightened fee, pass it onto consumers and/or artists, or cease accommodating digital sales on Android beginning in June, according to Diamond’s message, which likewise notes a resulting delay to artist payments. “However, Google is now modifying its rules to require Bandcamp (and other apps like it) to exclusively use Google Play Billing for payments for digital goods and services, and pay a revenue share to Google,” the text proceeds.
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