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About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

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Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#71

Post by nerdponx »

some-guy wrote: post #30
winternett wrote: post #19

As a musician once on there, I joined, spent a lot of time carefully designing my page and uploading my catalogue, and then I paid $20 a month for their premium service for absolutely no traction on the site beyond external promotion I did. The UI on BandCamp has been vastly outdated for ages now, it was very hard to navigate and find new music by genre. i only go there to buy music if I have a direct link. It's a pr…

While the feature-set isn't the best, I find their simple UI to be a breath of fresh air and easy to navigate.

The UI is good overall, but the search system is the worst I've ever seen. And there's no "open in app" link on the mobile site. Been like this for as long as I've been using it. It's like they don't want to be more successful than they already are.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#72

Post by lawlessone »

NewJazz wrote: post #37
diggan wrote: post #27

Judging by the Bandcamp United's (Union about to form at Bandcamp) feed, it seems they were nearing the completion of their initial steps to ask SongTradr to recognize and negotiate with the union. The "Last Call" post was made just 4 days ago: https://union.place/@bandcampunited/111219165521125342 Wonder if it ever got started or SongTradr tried to nip this whole thing in the bud?

Could this be considered a union busting action? Especially if the union was planning to negotiate for remote work. Edit: previously said strike breaking instead of union busting.

Looks like it, Starbucks has a tendency to suddenly close stores in areas where unions are attempted. Doesn't seem to matter to them if the store was doing well or not.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#73

Post by nomel »

biorach wrote: post #42
winternett wrote: post #19

As a musician once on there, I joined, spent a lot of time carefully designing my page and uploading my catalogue, and then I paid $20 a month for their premium service for absolutely no traction on the site beyond external promotion I did. The UI on BandCamp has been vastly outdated for ages now, it was very hard to navigate and find new music by genre. i only go there to buy music if I have a direct link. It's a pr…

> i only go there to buy music if I have a direct link. > Bandcamp doesn't even allow YouTube video embedding for music videos, which is a huge mistake alone. > Music platforms should be heavily promoting any independent artist that pays them a monthly fee... They seem to think that monthly subscription money form hard working artists is simply for extra file storage above free accounts. You haven't really understood…

This is exactly why I have Spotify rather than bandcamp. It finds music I like, regardless of musician effort. I found more new musicians in the first year of Spotify than decades before.

It’s a loss for everyone if good music goes unheard.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#74

Post by chimeracoder »

stronglikedan wrote: post #47
NewJazz wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could this be considered a union busting action? Especially if the union was planning to negotiate for remote work. Edit: previously said strike breaking instead of union busting.

Perhaps not, if the union is not yet recognized.

> Perhaps not, if the union is not yet recognized.

That's incorrect. Most of the rights afforded by the NLRA actually apply regardless of whether or not a union exists; a union is simply a formal structure for exercising those rights.

In this case, firing employees could be considered retaliatory action. Retaliatory action is illegal regardless of whether or not the union has been recognized (in fact, it is illegal to retaliate against employees for supporting a union even if there is not sufficient support for the union to call an election).

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#75

Post by metamet »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #59

Has anyone ever tried writing something into their company's sale contract that says 100% of staff must be retained for some duration of time to prevent new overlords from doing exactly this? Obviously in Bandcamp's case this probably would not have helped, since they had already "sold" themselves to Epic before being offloaded to Songtradr. I'm just trying to think of how one could reasonably, enforceably stop an ac…

This does happen.

One strategy the acquiring company will use to sidestep it is enacting an internal reorg, where staff are assigned to new roles they may not want to fulfill, passively encouraging them to find employment elsewhere.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#76

Post by lawlessone »

gizmo wrote: post #50
amrocha wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a hypothetical scenario: - You're running the successor to Bandcamp - You're making good money, employ a couple staff - Epic comes to you offering millions to buy your business The rational choice is to sell. Would you choose the stress of running a sustainable business over the payout? I know I wouldn't. There's no indication afaik that Bandcamp was in financial trouble before they got acquired. This is inevi…

Cheaters think everybody cheats when given the opportunity. Thieves believe only fear of the law is what keeps the masses in line. Liars believe lying is normal and that they’re only embellishing anyway and really it’s for the greater good and also pragmatic and necessary to succeed. There are many people who would not f their users and employees over when given the opportunity. Be like that.

Would like to think i wouldn't sell, but if someone massive company is offering my money, the worry is always they'll build their own later and stomp me anyway.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#77

Post by gspencley »

Miraste wrote: post #16
basisword wrote: post #5

I’m not sure how I feel about this as regards the product. As a user, I’m happy for it to just be maintained. It doesn’t need new features, it doesn’t need editorial stuff, it just needs to continue functioning as it has done for a long time. As long as there are enough staff to fix bugs and keep it running…that seems like a good thing. Better than the risk of people changing it for little reason.

This is a plague on the software industry. No one wants a new design language every two years, or all the buttons in the frontend to be moved to different places with different icons. It's not "innovative" or "exciting" or "friendly." It wastes whole lifetimes worth of time for the users. Whole cottage industries are devoted to retraining on the pointless changes. Yet it always happens anyway. I'm not sure how incent…

As a user who absolutely hates un-requested change being shoved down my throat: I can actually see it from both sides.

Innovation almost always looks like throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. You have to "break" things to figure out what can be improved.

The problem is that we've gone all in on SaaS and pushed updates. Pushed updates were a huge win for security, and SaaS has some pros for some users and certain niches.

But long gone are the days where a company would invest time and money into beta test periods where they'd try out new features on focus groups who would give feedback and then the rest of us would wait for reviews from the early adopters before deciding if the upgrade costs and risks were worth it.

These days we get "upgraded" whether we opted in or not. And we're all the beta testers 100% of the time.

That has been the real plague on the software industry IMO. At least, it has ruined my enjoyment of computers and tech for the most part, and further driven to me towards native open source software (which I already used anyway, I just cling to it harder now because I feel like it is under threat). Now get off my lawn.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#78

Post by reactordev »

nomel wrote: post #73
biorach wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> i only go there to buy music if I have a direct link. > Bandcamp doesn't even allow YouTube video embedding for music videos, which is a huge mistake alone. > Music platforms should be heavily promoting any independent artist that pays them a monthly fee... They seem to think that monthly subscription money form hard working artists is simply for extra file storage above free accounts. You haven't really understood…

This is exactly why I have Spotify rather than bandcamp. It finds music I like, regardless of musician effort. I found more new musicians in the first year of Spotify than decades before. It’s a loss for everyone if good music goes unheard.

It’s a loss to musicians to have a monopoly like Spotify (who likes to recreate popular songs with their own artists and label) be the gatekeeper to what is good music.

From a service perspective, it’s great. I have the worlds music at my fingertips. From a music perspective it’s horrible. I have one company dictating streaming payments and terms on an entire industry and you’re f&$ked if you don’t play nice. Ask Taylor Swift.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#79

Post by dfxm12 »

Night_Thastus wrote: post #53

I'm really bummed. I love Bandcamp. It's the only place I can buy music FROM THE MUSICIAN with very little overhead, and download a high-quality lossless track. Amazon only lets me buy crap-quality MP3s. Apple is opaque about it, putting either lossy AAC or lossless ALAC in the same M4A containers. >:( The only good alternative is Qobuz, which is frustrating to use and charges absolutely massive overhead. But unfortu…

One can stream on bandcamp, through an app or the browser

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#80

Post by nkozyra »

nomel wrote: post #73
biorach wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> i only go there to buy music if I have a direct link. > Bandcamp doesn't even allow YouTube video embedding for music videos, which is a huge mistake alone. > Music platforms should be heavily promoting any independent artist that pays them a monthly fee... They seem to think that monthly subscription money form hard working artists is simply for extra file storage above free accounts. You haven't really understood…

This is exactly why I have Spotify rather than bandcamp. It finds music I like, regardless of musician effort. I found more new musicians in the first year of Spotify than decades before. It’s a loss for everyone if good music goes unheard.

I'd say you're very much in the minority then. Spotify is notorious for its weak recommendation system.
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