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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?

#221

Post by JohnFen »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #136
vunderba wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sort of deliberate bad faith interpretation of another's comment is the worst form of virtue signaling hysterics I've witnessed outside of a lab. The OP is referring to a specific person (and used the pronoun 'he'). It is in fact not considered by any reputable etymological source as a slur or as a sexist term in any capacity.

I've seen complaints about it on HN before, so don't go claiming that this has never come up before. The term is widely used by younger programmers in online discussions to refer to unnamed (and it oftens seems as if the name is almost not actually known) older programmers. I've seen it on HN, Reddit, Twitter (RIP) and Mastodon. It's not a reference to specific person, it's a reference to a perceived role. Even if a…

> Even if a person has/had a gray beard, why is that the characteristic used to describe them?

It's been programmer's slang for a very, very long time. At least back to the '70s.

I'm a graybeard, and I don't avoid using the term, nor do I find it offensive. It just means someone who's been doing this for a long time.

> There is absolutely no chance that someone says "I talked to a graybeard about it" to mean that they spoke to a (older) female programmer.

Since I've absolutely heard it used in reference to female programmers, there is more than "no chance".

In my experience, it's a bit like the term "guys". It may have been gendered at first, but it has largely lost the gendered connotations.

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

#222

Post by vintermann »

hatsix wrote: post #214
vintermann wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mute…

Music in games can be contextual, and it's more fun if you score that beforehand than stepping out and doing it as you go. You may also want to enjoy the score a map/modpack maker intended.

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

#223

Post by JohnFen »

acdha wrote: post #206
foresto wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm really quite skeptical more than one in a million people could tell the difference Consider that lossless is good not only for listening, but also for transcoding. For example, when you want to use a media player with limited formats, or when the inevitable future codecs become popular. (And for archival of digital source material, lossless is the only sensible option.)

AAC is one of the most widely used and implemented codecs in existence. It’s extremely unlikely that you’ll ever need to transcode it for compatibility since the only reason to do so (licensing) becomes moot over a preservation timeframe as patents expire. If you aren’t noticing technical defects in your recordings now, you’re really not going to care in 20 years - many of us will be lucky to still hear well enough!…

> that’s not true if you’re a huge fan or partial to high-res soundboard recordings, and if you’re archiving for a larger group you’ll start to exhaust what capacity you can get for free.

But hard drives are cheap. I have a multi-TB hard drive that is used exclusively to store my music. When that fills, I'll just get another.

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

#224

Post by [deleted] »

IronWolve wrote: post #86
Helithumper wrote: post #84

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. Don't forget Qobuz: https://www.qobuz.com/us-en/shop They not only have streaming plans but also let you buy the music files directly.

Amazon has always let me download the entire album as mp3, I've made cd's and copied to usb/phone just fine.

[deleted]

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

#225

Post by heleninboodler »

pharmakom wrote: post #166
Modified3019 wrote: post #20

Make sure to archive your bandcamp collection, which you can do with the following script: https://github.com/easlice/bandcamp-downloader Other downloaders only target the openly available mp3 files. I have a straightforward guide on how to get up and running on windows here: https://github.com/easlice/bandcamp-downloader/issues/21 You should always archive your collection anyways. One negative thing about bandcamp i…

Things I have paid for have disappeared from store but I can still download them. Is there another level of “disappear”?

Well, there's what can happen if SongTradr decides to change the download policy.

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

#226

Post by 3agle »

pharmakom wrote: post #166
Modified3019 wrote: post #20

Make sure to archive your bandcamp collection, which you can do with the following script: https://github.com/easlice/bandcamp-downloader Other downloaders only target the openly available mp3 files. I have a straightforward guide on how to get up and running on windows here: https://github.com/easlice/bandcamp-downloader/issues/21 You should always archive your collection anyways. One negative thing about bandcamp i…

Things I have paid for have disappeared from store but I can still download them. Is there another level of “disappear”?

There is, I have some older purchases where there's no longer a download link at all and it just asks you to contact the artist directly

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

#227

Post by manicennui »

hatsix wrote: post #98
manicennui wrote: post #7

Ugh. I wasn't happy that Epic owned it, but they didn't seem to be doing anything to harm it yet. I don't know much about Songtradr, but I don't trust a company that is focused on licensing and not creation.

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…

Every company has rationalizations about how they are helping their customers, and one can hardly blame artists for doing what they need to do in order to survive, but I doubt most of them dream of having their work used by big shitty brands.

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

#228

Post by joveian »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #94
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.

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.

Unfortunately, that is a big if and is frequently an issue on Bandcamp where stuff you get in flac has been passed through some lossy format. 7digital often sells flac for more money so hopefully that makes them more likely to verify that they are actually lossless (I haven't found an issue from them but only have a few albums there since the negative of them is the distributer model that is heavily geographically restricted).

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

#229

Post by musicale »

astrange wrote: post #153
musicale wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Cymbals in MP3 sound bad due to fundamental limitations of MP3; even high bitrates can't fix that. It's not a problem in any other codec though. You probably couldn't hear the difference in AAC or Opus.

Interesting - it's a persistent and annoying problem. I assumed that better bit rates would improve the issue but most compressed music I listen to is AAC where it may be better.

Do you have a reference for the MP3 issue?

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

#230

Post by daydream »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #2

> Bandcamp is good, it’s profitable and sustainable and it basically works. If they're profitable then why do we need to play these games? Why can't we keep a good thing going?

> Bandcamp is good, it’s profitable and sustainable and it basically works.

What's the source for the profitability claim?

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