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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

#91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Around here (near Seattle) they are having to explain why the foam floor mats behind the counter used for anti-fatigue were removed as trip hazards, but only in stores attempting to unionize...

I destroyed my back working without mats in the resturant industry. Every winter I get back pain and have to use a cane for a few weeks. Use mats if you are going to stand somewhere 8+ hours a day kids.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#92

This can’t be a hard business to replicate right?

Technically possible, but Bandcamp is like Myspace was, and like Purevolume was before Myspace. It's the default place for small independent artists and labels to post and sell their music.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#93

This can’t be a hard business to replicate right?

No. And neither is Twitter, Facebook, or Threads. Anyone can replicate all of these apps in a weekend.

If you’re talking about the difficulty of attracting a bunch of paying users, building trust in your platform, working through payments and fraud, then yeah it’s monumentally hard and takes a long time.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#94
post #79

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

can one stream a mix of music sourced elsewhere and bandcamp music? If people have to keep switching apps, I think that's going to limit the appeal to people who are a bit more serious/intentional about every "listen". There's a lot of those, but it's still a minority.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#95
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…

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> It's apparent that you work for them somehow.

Because they understand what Bandcamp is charging for?

The page for Bandcamp Pro lists all the feature you get (and everything that isn't listed there, is stuff you don't get): https://bandcamp.com/pro

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

I love this legalizing and philosophizing. Bottom line is half the employees lost their jobs, and even if there is some sort of anti-union or NLRB-initiated action here, it will be years before there's a fine or lawsuit. By then the business will be unrecognizable.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#97
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.

SongTradr needs demonstrate that Bandcamp wasn't financially viable and thus layoffs were coming regardless of unionization attempts. They acquired BandCamp two weeks ago and layoffs post-acquisition are extremely common. NLRB can't do shit.

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Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#98
post #80
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Compared to what? Genuinely asking, because I like Spotify's recommendation system yet I always have the feeling that it can be better... even with the recent enhanced shuffle playlist and efforts to provide more contextual recs.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#99
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, first of all, it’s transactional. I have no particular affinity for any given service I use. If another service comes along that has enough upside to overcome the momentum of switching, I’ll definitely do it, and I’m sure you would too, and maybe that will annoy the company. That goes the same for the company; if they have a chance to cash out, I’m sure they’d take it. And maybe that will annoy me. But the bigg…

I'm a Bandcamp user, the sale to Epic fucked me over.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#100
post #50
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.

Thing is, we are in a pretty ruthless society governed by sometimes insane amounts of money - and eventually, anyone will sell out given the right price, and no matter the purchase contract, eventually big-corp culture will seep in. See e.g. Atlassian, Apple, Oracle, Microsoft or Facebook who have been on the buyer side, and Minecraft and MySQL for infamous cases of companies that got bought out.
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