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

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

#111

Post by throwaway15968 »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #80
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.

For what it's worth in this depressing and anxious waiting period: thank you for your efforts, and I sincerely hope you can continue as you have been. As many other commenters have pointed out, Bandcamp is a great service. For me, it's really the only place I purchase music because of its commitment to paying artists fairly and offering FLAC downloads of the purchased music. Again, thank you and good luck! As an asid…

Thank you, truly. It means a lot.

I'm international, so I'm not represented by the union, but I support them for exactly the same reasons that you state here.

I don't think it's related to the unionization. I'm sure it didn't help, but Epic also spun off SuperAwesome today.

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

#112

Post by hatsix »

davidgerard wrote: post #21
mgkimsal wrote: post #4

> Songtradr is talking up using its licensing prowess to give opportunities to Bandcamp artists — including licensing on Epic games. So... Epic sells bandcamp, a profitable business unit, to another entity which will then sell bandcamp assets back to ... Epic. ?? And Epic's competitors. Why would Epic go out of its way to support a company that is supporting its competitors?

(author here) I'm assuming because sync rights are complicated, and Epic didn't quite realise how complicated. But Songtradr literally does rights as its main business. So this would work like Epic outsourcing it to a specialist, with an extra step. I'm still boggling that Epic thought tiny independent record labels would be good for pressuring the union to stop. Tiny labels these days tend to be set up by musicians…

I think you're exactly right. Epic thought that buying a music company would let them acquire what they needed to do sync... but sync doesn't matter for Bandcamp, so it was hard for them to align.

(while I work for SongTradr, I know nothing of the acquisition, so this is just speculation)

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

#113

Post by throwaway15968 »

hatsix wrote: post #88
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.

I work at SongTradr. I know nothing about the acquisition, but can answer any other questions you have. I feel like Bandcamp 100% fits better with SongTradr than Epic.

Thank you, I appreciate it! A few quick questions:

1. How are benefits/compensation? Competitive?

2. Are there a lot of international remote employees at SongTradr? Bandcamp has a lot of people around the globe and we'd love to know if SongTradr is likely to make offers internationally or if it'll just be near offices.

3. Do you like working there?

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

#114

Post by musicale »

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…

It's a shame (and puzzling really) that Apple only offers lossless on the streaming side and not on the purchase side. I don't need a physical CD, just the bits on it.

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

#115

Post by throwaway15968 »

yuriks wrote: post #32
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.

Do you think this sale was intended as a union-busting move? It sounds like they're not retaining staff with the sale, and this timing seems to match with Bandcamp's staff unionization efforts.

I don't think so. Epic also spun off SuperAwesome today, who are not unionized.

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

#116

Post by musicale »

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.

And transcoding and archiving.

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

#117

Post by throwaway15968 »

slantedview wrote: post #95
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.

Best of luck! I hope it all works out for you and everyone there, but it might be prudent to be prepared either way.

Thank you!

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

#118

Post by musicale »

JohnFen wrote: post #62
Kye wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Those bad mp3 cymbals and the wash of noise...

Higher bit rates (and probably improved encoders) help though.

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

#119

Post by throwaway15968 »

ip_addr wrote: post #36
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.

Did something similar happen when Epic Games bought the company?

The rumour is that this happened without any Bandcamp staff aware, even executives, so it's different in that we're all in the dark.
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