So many great companies die this way. Bought by a big corporation with no idea what to do with all their money, neglected, then sold to some monopolist that doesn't give a damn outside of squeezing the market.
It's true. Except it was the people in charge of the great company that sold it to the big corporation / monopolist in the first place. Bandcamp was doomed when it was sold to Epic -- everybody knew that. They knew that doing that was bad for the product and bad for the company and they did it anyway, because they didn't and don't give a damn.
So what should they have done? Continued running the company until the day they died? Then what? Converted it to a non-profit/co-op/etc. and effectively donated 90% of their net worth and tens of millions of dollars (a tall order for most people)?
Your response seems disproportionate, maybe you read a bit beyond what I actually wrote?
To respond to your question anyway: I don't really like telling people what to do (don't tread on anyone and all that) but if it was up to me to choose what they did, then not selling the company to Epic, or any other hungry hungry corpos, would have been a default stance.
Considering how successful the platform is/was -- and the excellent financial situation they apparently were in for the last decade -- it seems like selling the company to Epic (a random and unnatural fit) would be a gamble at best. There's a negligible chance that it could have ended well for the artists or the users but I'm sure it's ending well for some of those involved.
Also, yeah, convert your business to a not-for-profit or hand it down to the employees when you're dying / done with it. That sounds like the sort of thing that makes the world a better place, which is commendable.
Being a founder and being the CEO of medium/large company (or even the head of the board) are very different jobs and skill sets. As we've seen with Flexport as the owner you can't simply hire on a CEO and focus on other things without likely severe issues. So eventually those founders sell the company to someone else for either the money or to have time to focus on other things they enjoy more.
