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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

#131

Post by fsckboy »

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.

>Could this be considered a strike breaking action?

"Strike breaking" is a different epithet, you're looking for "union busting". Nobody at Bandcamp is on strike.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#132

Post by sleepybrett »

willcipriano wrote: post #91
FireBeyond wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have those mats in my kitchen as a normal person who only spends at most a couple of hours in there a day.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#134

Post by mhitza »

hipadev23 wrote: post #65
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.

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.

> SongTradr needs demonstrate that Bandcamp wasn't financially viable

That's provably false.

> He notes that, according to its co-founder, Ethan Diamond, Bandcamp has been profitable since 2012.

> In addition, Bandcamp charges its customers (indie artists) just 10-15% commission rates as a retailer – and on Bandcamp Fridays, it charges nothing at all.

https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/podcast/is-this-the-r... "Is this the real reason Epic Games acquired Bandcamp?"

https://towardsdatascience.com/why-is-bandcamp-profitable-an... "Why is Bandcamp profitable and Spotify not?"

This is pre Epic acquisition, and they seemed mostly hands of in their approach.

https://old.reddit.com/r/BandCamp/comments/11g0c07/its_the_o... "It’s the one year anniversary of Bandcamp’s acquisition by Epic."

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#135

Post by Tao3300 »

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…

> The UI on BandCamp has been vastly outdated for ages now

That's what I like about it. It's essentially what MySpace was supposed to be.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#136

Post by Pxtl »

chunk_waffle wrote: post #122
callalex wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The iTunes Store never went away and fits your description.

I was under the impression (perhaps mistaken) that music you purchased in iTunes had to stay in iTunes. Can I take my files where I please or do they have to reside in the Apple walled garden?

You can download AAC files that are AFAIK digitally watermarked with your Apple ID to prevent piracy, but you can use freely in all your client tools. But they are not lossless. I don't know if iTMS sells lossless music.

However, they do cap the number of times you're permitted to download our collection.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#137

Post by nextaccountic »

throwaway-blaze wrote: post #96
chimeracoder wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It doesn't matter. The employees should be made whole eventually

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#138

Post by winternett »

diggan wrote: post #95
winternett wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> 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

Do you seriously think those features are worth 20 dollars a month?

Again, clearly advocating for the platform and missing the entire message.

A musician can easily self host a site that does exactly what bandcamp represents for them. Also, most serious artists are already distributed to platforms that do exactly what Bandcamp does and more.

There is very little value in bancamp, unless you are perhaps trying to sell songs with lots of uncleared samples in them.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#139

Post by iainctduncan »

Background, I work in diligence for software aquisitions.

There are a lot of assumptions on this thread. I don't know the answers in this case (not sure if anyone does?) but I think it is naive to assume that Bandcamp was wise to be employing all these people. While acquisitions tanking a company with stupid decisions are super common, it's also super common for companies who are trying to look like they are growing (for future funding or acquisitions) to have way too much staff (and thus, high a burn rate) instead of running a sensible, profitable business. It is not necessarily a good thing that they have tons of employees - sometimes it's entirely motivated by putting lipstick on a pig in order to look like a runaway growth success thing.

Songtradr is in the music infrastructure business. I think it's quite possible they are cleaning house to make Bandcamp a more viable business that is actually focused on their core business. Doesn't seem impossible to me that Bandcamp was way off base trying to make too much written content when really, it's about selling music.

But I'm spitballing here, anyone know more about whether Bandcamp was bloated?

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#140

Post by verall »

Pxtl wrote: post #121
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…

See, for me I like that Bandcamp is just a store . That I see an artist I like on social media, click their bandcamp link, and if I like their music I buy it. I don't use its recommendation features, and the only social feature I use is the ability to follow an artist and thus get news-bulletins about their work. Once you get to an artist's page, the UI is simple and clean and Just Works. I can see their releases, bu…

Off topic the article but I _love_ her new album

Also funny since I originally heard NDAD through a Spotify recommendation before eventually buying her discography on Bandcamp

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