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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?

#141

Post by justinclift »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #50
derstander wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Lichess, legally, is now a charitable organization I’m not saying Lichess will do something like this, but have you heard the saga of the Environmental Research Institute of Michigan (ERIM)? It grew out of the University of Michigan — as a non-profit. Its president and board spun off a for-profit subsidiary owning the majority of its work, people, and assets and leaving a small fraction for the non-profit. Then, th…

> 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

> graybeard

It's generally a term of respect for a more senior, knowledgable person.

> oldster

Isn't that ageist?

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

#142

Post by Foobar8568 »

ubermonkey wrote: post #65
pdntspa wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I can spot and recognize the audio on ABX if I focus with basically a 100% rate on the infamous ABX test website with a HD600 headphone, so basically a crap one. Now if you ask me which one would be the best sounding or lossless (for the "highest" quality one, obviously for other it's relatively easy to spot in a clean environment), I believe I would have a harder time.

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

#143

Post by barkingcat »

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.

Totally not true. Lossless is for listening!

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

#144

Post by barkingcat »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #96
JohnFen wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's no evidence that more than a very small percentage of humans (if even that) can differentiate between reasonable bit-rate pyscho-acoustic (lossy) compression and the source material. Double-blind tests have made this abundantly clear. If you really can hear a difference, you've either got particularly poorly compressed files, or are in a tiny minority of us.

A huge portion of all compressed media files are poorly compressed files. Often these poorly compressed files come directly from music distributor with the wrong compression settings, or with really really bad noise. Remember, many music distributors are working with old systems (unable to upgrade either due to driver/software or licensing issues), outdated software, and plain old junky audio interfaces, etc.

Lossless (when used properly and able to algorithmically guarantee what comes out == what goes into the compression toolchain) avoids the whole issue altogether, and that's what's valuable about it.

Focusing on whether compression captures every nuance of uncompressed sound is the wrong battle. The real battle is against careless distributors and bad artifacts introduced by poor compression settings and often incorrectly coded compression utilities used throughout the music industry.

(ie we on hn might all be using Lame or the Fraunhofer mp3 encoders, but a lot of music producers/distributors will be using custom / closed source encoders, or even audio workstations with the encoder implemented in hardware, and those might or might not be encoding mp3 correctly.)

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

#145

Post by AlbertCory »

lazide wrote: post #108
AlbertCory wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's time to adopt the classical Accounting 101 view of businesses: They reach profitability, then they throw off dividends, which the shareholders invest in (presumably) new businesses. NOT "they keep the profits to create infinite growth themselves."

You’d need to fix the tax code for that to work. Good luck getting that by Congress anytime soon!

For sure. "double taxation of dividends" isn't something that gets Democrats' blood racing.

However, most of the HN discussion on issues like this is for things that'll never happen, so I don't see any difference.

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

#146

Post by [deleted] »

Foobar8568 wrote: post #142
ubermonkey wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I can spot and recognize the audio on ABX if I focus with basically a 100% rate on the infamous ABX test website with a HD600 headphone, so basically a crap one. Now if you ask me which one would be the best sounding or lossless (for the "highest" quality one, obviously for other it's relatively easy to spot in a clean environment), I believe I would have a harder time.

[deleted]

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

#147

Post by pdntspa »

hatsix wrote: post #126
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no difference in the data that will be delivered to you DAC using flac or whatever the non-compressed version was. flac is a lossless format. If it started as 24 bit wav, nothing is lost when you get the flac version of that. it's just smaller.

if you digitized at 24 bit, then 16 bit is technically compressed. with flac, the waveforms aren't compressed, but the amplitude is, so audio buffs claim they can hear more separation. I can't hear it, but I also can't taste the difference between coffee bean origins, but I know people who can.

I'm pretty sure the 16-vs-24 thing has been proven already. 24-bit only really makes sense if you're fucking with the material. Same with 44.1khz vs higher sample rates.

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

#148

Post by hatsix »

brianstorms wrote: post #42
ye-olde-sysrq wrote: post #19

I've posted something to this effect before but I'll post it again. I'm terrified someone is going to enshittify bandcamp. I used to be a huge what fan, primarily for discovery. Never would've known I liked atmospheric black metal if not for them. When they closed, I didn't really have enough "in" in the scene to know where other refugees went, so I just shopped around for anywhere else that would let me get "real" (…

I also worry about enshittification of Bandcamp. And I'm an artist with music on the site. I was very nervous about the Epic deal when it happened (figured it was a way to get the founders and the A-round VCs some money in a cash-out after an incredibly long period of time, similar to what happened to Meetup). But now? Songtradr smells like an investment bank, one that looks at music as "content" or "IP" and wants to…

Songtradr employee here, we only own a tiny amount of music (that wasn't produced in-house), it was acquired as part of another acquisition and my understanding is that we're trying to divest ourselves of it so that rights holders.

So that can be one less thing you worry about, we're not buying up music.

I joined through the https://pretzel.rocks acquisition (which is where the above mentioned music came from), and they've kept our niche-industry-best 70/30 split on that product.

We're not the bastion that Bandcamp is, but we DO focus on ensuring that youtube influencers and tiktok stars are paying their fair share for the music that they use. We make sure that cosmetic companies using indie artists are paying market rates and not taking advantage of their naiveté.

I hope (though I can't guarantee) that we're able to keep Bandcamp the way it currently is. The company has treated my previous company/brand well, and I'm hoping that carries forward to a brand that carries MUCH MUCH MUCH more gravitas.

But holy hell do I hate our name. We've got other brands that we could use as our main name, but we went with the one that sounds like "Traitor". I blame this on our founder being an Aussie and they sound clearly distinct when they're both in his accent.

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

#149

Post by squeaky-clean »

siquick wrote: post #106
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?

These guys have been trying to get something similar off the ground for years but don’t seem to have been able to get traction. https://resonate.coop/

Sounded cool at first to me, but no clear pricing means I'm out. Pay-per-play also feels worse than a monthly flat fee. Even if it's cheaper than a standard streaming service for me, that means I'll have second thoughts about leaving music on overnight while I sleep. Or if I don't really like the first few tracks from an artist I hear, is it worth it to keep digging through their discography and pay for songs I might not enjoy?

> Pay 1/4 of a penny the first time you play, then a little more each time you replay. Then it’s yours forever.

How much is "a little more"?

Owning songs after you've listened to them enough is a nice idea, but since my library is about 20k songs, that's 28k dollars until I own them all, so it's not like I'd ever have hopes of not having to pay to listen anymore.

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

#150

Post by hatsix »

moepstar wrote: post #140
hatsix wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

thanks! I think we're technically an Australian company, at least, our founder is Australian and we have a very large investor that is Australian. Music supervisors are a big part of our business, so I'll pass this link up the line (I'm an engineer)

> Don't get DCMA'ed—let’s find your perfect membership. Pay monthly or annually, and upgrade or cancel at any time Heads up: i suppose that should've read "DMCA'ed"?

facepalm'ed
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