Reading about a lot of layoffs today from Linkedin Bandcamp and more. Hope everyone lands on their feet.
About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off
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Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 Tay…
can you follow up on the recreating popular songs and how spotify wronged taylor swift?
Sure, quick google searches… there’s definitely more but this gives you enough info.
https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/spotify-denies-its-pl...
https://kotaku.com/spotify-music-streaming-fake-artist-ai-ap...
https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/features/fake-artists-have-...
https://www.pon.harvard.edu/daily/dispute-resolution/dispute...
https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/9/15767986/taylor-swift-appl...
And honestly, for some of this stuff, I understand Spotify’s position. At the same time, their willingness to promote fake artists with copy cat songs to circumvent paying royalties to BMG or such is why musicians are eating ramen and only a handful of musicians are eating steak.
Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I’ve admittedly aged into a stereotype out of an Hard Times article and so haven’t bought an album in years…
What did they do exactly? My music is there I bought years back.
Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not at all as simple as a "rational choice". It completely depends on your objective. Why did you start the business in the first place? If it was to make a few mill and never have to work again, sure, sell. If you wanted to build something bigger than yourself, work with great people, feel accomplished, then why sell? How is that few mill going to get you those things? A lot of founders regret their first sale…
To back this view up there are plenty of artists who openly admit they "break even" when they've sold a 300-batch of records. The operating costs include buying instruments/software/hardware, using a mastering service and pressing vinyl - all of which are not cheap. They do it for the love of producing music - and watching their work sell out within _minutes_ of being released... which in turn inspires them to make a…
I'm not dismissing that, but most artists sell out given the chance.
The thing is that the gap between "breaking even" and "life changing money" is huge for most artists. You wouldn't sell out for 50K per year, but 1M? Sell out for 2 years and you're set for life, then you can go back to making the music you love.
But very few artists can pull 1M per year, so it doesn't happen as often.
Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off
#166Background, 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…
prior to this, bandcamp was owned by Epic and lord only knows why they bought them or what their bigger plan was. i also have no idea how much they staffed up under epic rule since they went from a small business to being owned by the fortnite money man. Entirely possible it's something like: 1. bandcamp is a sustainable normal small-to-medium business growing healthily 2. Epic has tons of fortnitebux and is feuding…
On point 5, bandcamp doesn’t own any rights to the music on the site. The artist agreement is limited to the service of selling music, if that changes the artists can revoke their agreement.
Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 Tay…
Agreed. Spotify is a terrible alternative for the musicians. Myspace and Mp3.Com used to be the road map to how sites should be run, but venture capitalism and publicly traded companies ruined the entire ecosystem.
I had high hopes for SoundCloud but in the end, VC’s always win.
Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's wrong with a paid storefront for artists? Considering the rest of the ecommerce ecosystem, 20$ seems fair. Have you considered that 20$ is just the cost of doing business? Discoverability is a problem yes, but I don't know that it's a solvable one. And if Bandcamp tried seriously to solve it, they would likely have to rely on investment money, and eventually enshittify the platform.
$240/yr is too much for simple hosting- a small artist can get that for free these days, especially if they don't need DRM. For the price you'd expect promotion and discovery.
Yes, you can get that for cheaper, but then you're not the customer you're the product.
If you tried rolling your own solution you'd be paying more than 20$ per month.
Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off
#169I'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…
Alot of the time, you can just email their booking email asking to buy their album with cashapp et al and they'll gladly take your money and ship you a zip file of MP3's, assuming the band/artist is small enough.
Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
prior to this, bandcamp was owned by Epic and lord only knows why they bought them or what their bigger plan was. i also have no idea how much they staffed up under epic rule since they went from a small business to being owned by the fortnite money man. Entirely possible it's something like: 1. bandcamp is a sustainable normal small-to-medium business growing healthily 2. Epic has tons of fortnitebux and is feuding…
On point 5, bandcamp doesn’t own any rights to the music on the site. The artist agreement is limited to the service of selling music, if that changes the artists can revoke their agreement.
That can change.