Create a market for music licensing that Unreal engine developers can use?

This is my guess as well. Pretty much every Epic acquisition is for Unreal.

They recently acquired Harmonix (original makers of Guitar Hero and other rhythm games). Maybe they're trying to build a GaaS music game?

Comedy option? The Epic Games Store will be the new iTunes.

Licensing As A Service is probably a neat thing if it can be done at scale on par with the Unreal Engine Marketplace. But a lot of it boils down to "imagine if we could make IP law straightforward" which is somewhat of a moonshot.

Game soundtracks are usually sold on Bandcamp, even for games that aren't on the Epic Store.

Also could be a source of creative content to generate NFTs, maybe even tie that to licensing of music used in game livestreams.

I’m sure it’s no coincidence that Apple is big in music and they don’t like Apple. Wonder what Tim is cooking up for Tim on this one.

Metaverse concerts and fighting against Apple

I can never tell if comments are sarcastic are not...

but "fortnite" by epic already had concert/online experiences. They've been pretty fun. Maybe getting band camp allows them access to artists they didn't have before?

https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/news/fort-nite-concert-seri...

Turn the Epic Games Store into a more general Play Store/Apple Store competitor by expanding into other media types?

The Epic Games Store is barely even functional for video games. They haven't been able to implement table stakes features like reviews and a shopping cart, despite promising them for years now. Going wider and increasing its surface area even further doesn't really sound like a winning move.

User reviews are in the pipeline and shopping cart was added last year. And I doubt there were technical barriers that kept them from making this. Just a matter of other priorities on the store not immediately visible to western eyes (e.g., they have aggressively pursued regional pricing for the last 18 months).