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Bandcamp has been sold to Songtradr. What does this mean for the musicians?

rocknerd.co.uk

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Re: Bandcamp has been sold to Songtradr. What does this mean for the musicians?

#61

Post by pdntspa »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #52
eindiran wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have also purchased music on Amazon and let's not pretend its "full on downloads", Amazon has V0 MP3 only iirc and Bandcamp offers ever format under the sun including FLAC and ALAC. Don't know about Apple because iTunes doesn't have Linux support and the whole setup of downloading an app in order to download a file strikes me as a bit gross.

It's true Amazon doesn't offer lossless audio downloads, but they're very good quality, and DRM-Free. iTunes downloads are AAC, 250+ kb/s (remember this bitrate is with a more efficient codec). I'm probably opening a can of worms here, but I'm really quite skeptical more than one in a million people could tell the difference between iTunes and lossless in a blind test. Maybe drop that to one in a thousand for Amazon…

I'm a DJ on mid-range monitoring hardware and I can definitely hear the difference with apple's encodes vs FLAC, at least on their older encodes. I am not 100% sure its the compression protocol (could be differences in mastering since streaming has different requirements) but the attentuation on bass and watery-sounding cymbals stick out like a sore thumb in the right listening environment

I only buy music on itunes as a last resort, so I don't have a huge sample size.

Re: Bandcamp has been sold to Songtradr. What does this mean for the musicians?

#62

Post by JohnFen »

Kye wrote: post #59
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's true Amazon doesn't offer lossless audio downloads, but they're very good quality, and DRM-Free. iTunes downloads are AAC, 250+ kb/s (remember this bitrate is with a more efficient codec). I'm probably opening a can of worms here, but I'm really quite skeptical more than one in a million people could tell the difference between iTunes and lossless in a blind test. Maybe drop that to one in a thousand for Amazon…

Lossless is mainly for mixing/remixing, not listening.

I disagree. As a listener, the lossy encodings I've heard are fairly annoying, especially in the higher frequencies.

I haven't heard every lossy encoding, of course, and there may be an actually good one that escaped my attention.

Re: Bandcamp has been sold to Songtradr. What does this mean for the musicians?

#63

Post by climb_stealth »

doublerabbit wrote: post #34
meindnoch wrote: post #25

I beg you, can you please not fucking ruin it? It's perfect as it is. Artist uploads music, people pay for music and download it. Don't change anything. Don't add new features, don't enshittify existing features, don't make design changes, don't do anything. Bandcamp is done, no need for any further changes, just put it in a cabinet and let it run. Thanks, Someone who've spent thousands of dollars on Bandcamp

Greetings and thank you for expressing your valued concern. We wish to emphasize our commitment to customer feedback in our ongoing enhancements. Allow us to assure you that you will enjoy our latest AI music generation suite as well as an cutting-edge state-of-the-art next-generation AI album cover generator. In tandem with these remarkable enhancements, we will be sprucing our algorithms allowing you to expand your…

I appreciate the effort but this was terrifying to read.

I think at this point I try to just not care anymore. Software and businesses that are currently great will go to shit and there's nothing I can do about it. Try to enjoy it whilst it lasts and don't get too attached or involved.

Sincerely,

someone who has been bitten too many times.

Re: Bandcamp has been sold to Songtradr. What does this mean for the musicians?

#65

Post by ubermonkey »

pdntspa wrote: post #61
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's true Amazon doesn't offer lossless audio downloads, but they're very good quality, and DRM-Free. iTunes downloads are AAC, 250+ kb/s (remember this bitrate is with a more efficient codec). I'm probably opening a can of worms here, but I'm really quite skeptical more than one in a million people could tell the difference between iTunes and lossless in a blind test. Maybe drop that to one in a thousand for Amazon…

I'm a DJ on mid-range monitoring hardware and I can definitely hear the difference with apple's encodes vs FLAC, at least on their older encodes. I am not 100% sure its the compression protocol (could be differences in mastering since streaming has different requirements) but the attentuation on bass and watery-sounding cymbals stick out like a sore thumb in the right listening environment I only buy music on itunes…

I really wonder if you can do this in a double blind, ABX test.

Re: Bandcamp has been sold to Songtradr. What does this mean for the musicians?

#66

Post by caseyf »

Triphibian wrote: post #64

What would an employee-owned Bandcamp-like platform look like? Has anyone experimented with or attempted this model to prevent or stave off enshittification?

this exactly the type of platform where community ownership makes a tons of sense but I don't know if we've seen many examples of it actually working and resulting in something sustainable

there are people working on questions like "what if the owners could have exited to their community instead of Epic"

https://www.colorado.edu/lab/medlab/exit-to-community

Re: Bandcamp has been sold to Songtradr. What does this mean for the musicians?

#67

Post by Dwedit »

doublerabbit wrote: post #34
meindnoch wrote: post #25

I beg you, can you please not fucking ruin it? It's perfect as it is. Artist uploads music, people pay for music and download it. Don't change anything. Don't add new features, don't enshittify existing features, don't make design changes, don't do anything. Bandcamp is done, no need for any further changes, just put it in a cabinet and let it run. Thanks, Someone who've spent thousands of dollars on Bandcamp

Greetings and thank you for expressing your valued concern. We wish to emphasize our commitment to customer feedback in our ongoing enhancements. Allow us to assure you that you will enjoy our latest AI music generation suite as well as an cutting-edge state-of-the-art next-generation AI album cover generator. In tandem with these remarkable enhancements, we will be sprucing our algorithms allowing you to expand your…

Surprisingly, 32kbps is actually somewhat listenable with Opus.

Re: Bandcamp has been sold to Songtradr. What does this mean for the musicians?

#68

Post by datavirtue »

throwaway15968 wrote: post #24

Throwaway, but I work at Bandcamp. We're all very frightened and don't know what the future holds. We were told that some, but not all, will get offers from Songtradr and it may be up to a month before we receive an offer. It's pretty depressing.

Uh...demand negotiations and/or strike immediately. Like wtf!?

Re: Bandcamp has been sold to Songtradr. What does this mean for the musicians?

#69

Post by mey »

throwaway15968 wrote: post #24

Throwaway, but I work at Bandcamp. We're all very frightened and don't know what the future holds. We were told that some, but not all, will get offers from Songtradr and it may be up to a month before we receive an offer. It's pretty depressing.

When Epic was announced as a buyer, it kinda struck me that Valve would've been a better steward for the platform in the short term, with potential synergy in the long term considering how many OST they already sell for games.

Re: Bandcamp has been sold to Songtradr. What does this mean for the musicians?

#70

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

jprd wrote: post #58
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> working with a graybeard This language is offensive (to me [0]) and sexist. Feel free to use it if it really floats your boat, but you could get the same effect without the implicit sexism just using "oldster". You could also say "older colleague", or even just "person". [0] and I don't even have a beard

Thank you for sharing your feelings on this one, I hadn't heard of "graybeard" categorized that way by anyone before, though I can see your point-of-view and respect it. That being said, if the person was an actual human being, and subsequently had a graybeard (as I do!) - would that still be offensive? I don't intend to be combative, simply trying to learn!

If you really feel that they color and presence of their facial hair was the best way to describe whatever it was that felt relevant to mentioning them, I can't really call that offensive.

But the term "graybeard" is known in these circles as a reference to an older, always male, programmer.

What actually matters is that they've been around the block enough times to understand (for example) that Rust probably will not solve every programming issue known to current programmers. Their gender and facial hair status is not really relevant. "Corner office grump" would be another term that I'd find entirely acceptable: non-gendered, unconcerned with physical appearance, but encapsulating much the same sort of personality that "graybeard" is attempting to evoke.

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