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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?

#211

Post by hatsix »

lminiero wrote: post #209
hatsix wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SongTradr's main business focuses on earning money for musicians. We aren't in the business of owning music and then licensing it, we're in the business of connecting musicians with companies that want music. some of it is advertising, some is YouTube/content creation, and some is for streaming ( https://pretzel.rocks , which is how I joined the company). We support the artists by finding diverse ways for them to mon…

What do you mean by "All of the artists are already on pretzel"? Do you mean all Bandcamp artists?

I meant that all of the artists that I purchased music from. When I like a band, I make sure to tell my buddy over in the group that signs artists. Pretzel has great terms that are non-exclusive, so it's easy to get a 'yes'.

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

#212

Post by hatsix »

max_ wrote: post #167
hatsix wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I can tell, Epic did the gutting today, and it's left to us to pick up the pieces. It doesn't make sense to me, letting everyone go before the acquisition, why not let the acquiring company figure out what to do with the employees. It stinks of internal politics. Songtradr has done a good job with previous acquisitions, including mine. I'm no longer working on that product, but it's doing well. I don't agre…

What product of yours was acquired? I would like to enter the Music services business and it would be great to connect with someone that has hands on experience.

https://pretzel.rocks. I wasn't a founder, but a long time... "employee".

Music Services is a tough place to do product development in. Nobody is flush with cash, so all deals are percentage based... so you have to generate pass-through revenue. It's impossible to generate revenue from the general public, as they can get music from spotify/youtube for free, so you have to find a niche.

I know several startups in the music space that are begging to be acquired because they didn't realize they needed pass-through revenue, they thought they could do what another company was doing, but cheaper, but the problem is that few established labels are willing to move off their old providers, as they value their industry relationships.

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

#213

Post by hatsix »

deng wrote: post #201
vintermann wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Label accounts are very important for verifying authenticity on Bandcamp. It's very easy to pick up some small but niche artist that is not on Bandcamp, and upload their music pretending to be them. (It's of course very illegal, but I personally know artists this has happened to). It's harder to fake an entire label. Before you buy anything on Bandcamp, check that their label links to them, otherwise you could well b…

> It's very easy to pick up some small but niche artist that is not on Bandcamp, and upload their music pretending to be them. Yes, quality control is something else where Bandcamp could drastically improve. New releases are riddled with questionable stuff. Blatantly copying an existing artist is one thing, but often it's popular stuff just slightly modified, usually pitched up/down with some new drum loop and then c…

This is, unfortunately, the most expensive thing that Bandcamp could spend their time on.

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

#214

Post by hatsix »

vintermann wrote: post #191
hatsix wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Just hypothetically, if I wrote a Minecraft mod that replaced the in-game music with music from a streaming service (to be clear, one the user would need to have a subscription for, and authorize via the streaming service's OAuth API)... How sued would I get?

the main concern here would be the streaming service. If the streaming service offers a full API for custom implementations, then you're probably fine. If, instead, you're using their non-public API, you'll probably get a Cease And Desist and your API keys revoked.

Then, like the other response mentioned, there's the streaming aspect. You, probably won't get sued, but anyone that streams with that music will get muted on Twitch and Revenue Claimed on YT.

Why build a minecraft mod for this, when you can just play music on your computer and turn off the minecraft music? A few hotkeys and you don't even have to swap screens to change the music.

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

#215

Post by Wowfunhappy »

PeterStuer wrote: post #160
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because of their no DRM policy and full on downloads, not just streaming, Bandcamp has basically become the only place I’ll buy music outside of CDs. Just so you know, Apple and Amazon also offer DRM free music downloads. Obviously, you have to actually buy the individual song or album, not a streaming plan. In Apple's case you do need to install iTunes to get your DRM-free file (on Windows, I'm not sure what the s…

Also watermark free?

What is the problem with watermarks?

I actually love watermarks as a solution for DRM-Free media, because they make illegal sharing more cumbersome but don't impede legitimate customers (at least in any way I can think of). In fact, I kind of feel like watermarks add value, lending an authenticity to my purchase which a pirated copy wouldn't have.

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

#216

Post by hatsix »

vintermann wrote: post #188
hatsix wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

then you should check out SongTradr's other recent acquisition, 7digital.com... not only do they have flac, but many have 16 and 24bit available.

Afaik 7digital is the main backing service of a lot of streaming sites like qobuz and Deezer. 7digital is chock full of spam. Spotify, for all their faults, has some people who care about quality on those sort of things (the old Echo Nest people). 7digital and their white-label frontends don't, they're skeleton crew operations. I hope they understand, they can't run Bandcamp like that. Bandcamp has had problems like…

7digital doesn't accept music directly from artists, it's up to their distributor to ensure the music is valid... and there are several distributors that are known to be very very lax in that regard.

The 7digital acquisition is still pretty fresh, so your experience with them was the state of things prior to the acquisition. Also moving forward, remember that this was already the state of things on Bandcamp, lest people forget and think that the impersonations started after this acquisition.

Songtradr's core business has been B2B sync licensing. One of the reasons "Trust" is such a big deal on the website is that very large brands can't risk having a debacle where it looks like they've stolen music. So we do a lot of vetting of information before music is made available to our B2B partners.

Rest assured that if things slide in a direction, it'll be towards more vetting, not less.

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

#217

Post by JohnFen »

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.

I'm aware of those studies. Nonetheless, the difference to my ears, in my settings, with my equipment, is not slight. It's screaming-in-your-face obvious.

Whether it's because of the math or because of poorly done encoding is only of academic interest. It happens regardless of the cause. Using a lossless encoding resolves the issue entirely.

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

#218

Post by JohnFen »

musicale wrote: post #118
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.

Those bad mp3 cymbals and the wash of noise... Higher bit rates (and probably improved encoders) help though.

Higher bit rates do help some, but not enough.

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

#219

Post by almatabata »

hatsix wrote: post #100
JohnFen wrote: post #37

This makes me very nervous. Bandcamp is one of the few great sources to buy new music and support artists rather than labels. I hope that it doesn't get ruined.

I work at SongTradr, and while I'm not involved with the acquisition, I wouldn't expect it to drastically change for end users. I hope that we'll drastically improve things for musicians, offering them more ways to earn money from their music.

Maybe a stupid question but if songtradr focuses more on B2B licensing of music could't they hammer out exclusive deals and remove the music entirely from end customer catalog? I mainly think about licensing it to other streaming services.

People have already mentioned that some music disappeared from the catalog because artists pulled it. I wonder if this acquisition would make it more common.

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

#220

Post by JohnFen »

hatsix wrote: post #100
JohnFen wrote: post #37

This makes me very nervous. Bandcamp is one of the few great sources to buy new music and support artists rather than labels. I hope that it doesn't get ruined.

I work at SongTradr, and while I'm not involved with the acquisition, I wouldn't expect it to drastically change for end users. I hope that we'll drastically improve things for musicians, offering them more ways to earn money from their music.

I hope you're right. I'm scared nonetheless, though. It doesn't help that SongTradr characterizes itself as a "music licensing platform".

A part of my fear is that they'll try to "improve" the service.

In any case, I'm just afraid. Hopefully, time will show my fears were unsupported.

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