Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 640 posts

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#171

Post by diggan »

callalex wrote: post #151
diggan wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right. The numbers I had in mind were averages: > on Bandcamp Fridays, an average of 93% of your money reaches the artist/label (after payment processor fees). When you make a purchase on any other day (as millions of you have, with more than $1 billion now paid directly to artists), an average of 82% reaches the artist/label. https://daily.bandcamp.com/features/bandcamp-fridays-update

Oh I was talking about iTunes. Now we’re both learning something new :)

Haha yes of course! I missed my own comment and thought you were talking about Bandcamp, when I was the one talking about iTunes... Sorry for the confusion :)

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#172

Post by heleninboodler »

theolivenbaum wrote: post #156
NewJazz wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the pre-IPO / pre-acquisition playbook to cut staff lower than the optimum level to show profitability? But I'm spitballing here, anyone know more about whether Bandcamp was bloated? Bandcamp was shown to be profitable quite recently. Hard to justify slashing staff in half with that in mind.

From what I see, it's exactly the opposite. It's more like we hired all these people because we're growing so fast, so please give us money

That doesn't sound like a powerful negotiating position, though; it sounds like desperation. Why would you do that intentionally?

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#173

Post by projectazorian »

wutwutwat wrote: post #25

Bandcamp is an odd site. It's existed for a very long time and is simple (or was when I last used it a couple years ago) in terms of application requirements. Basically what I'm saying is it feels very much like a rails app you could build in a weekend. Direct upload mastered files to s3 from the artists, activejob to convert to various formats and throw back to s3 via activestorage, subdomain model scoping for artis…

> Bandcamp has always felt like it should be someone's lifestyle business, like gumroad, and never seemed like it was trying to be a "business" that needed to add features or obsess over hyper hocky stick growth.

Bandcamp did seem like a chill midsize lifestyle business before the Epic acquisition. I suspect that Epic's acquisition offer was too good for the founders and board to turn down.

(While Bandcamp wasn't a classic venture-funded startup they did have outside investors.)

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#174

Post by ngcazz »

x0x0 wrote: post #114
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?

It also could be a purely financial decision. Bandcamp claimed $51m in revenue (I assume gross?) in 2016 [1] and, per reporting, had about $20m in net revenue in 2022 [2]. With the reported 210 employees, that's $95k in net revenue (not profit -- wages / costs are not yet accounted for) per employee. That is very low. You could easily see an acquirer wanting to be more profitable and cutting things like editorial. [1…

It should be ok to not be exceedingly profitable. Bandcamp produced loads of amazing valuable content. But greedy maniacs will always hate this. I am reminded of the Craigslist leadership who was mad insulted for the conscious decision to impose an upper bound to their growth which is a refreshingly moral thing to do under capitalism

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#175

Post by projectazorian »

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.

Bandcamp did have investors, they weren't 100% bootstrapped. Those investors likely had board seats and a significant say in whether to accept Epic's offer.

Not to mention that COVID led to a steep increase in the site's traffic. It's possible that the added operational burden meant that Bandcamp was no longer the chill lifestyle business that it used to be.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#176

Post by x0x0 »

ngcazz wrote: post #174
x0x0 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also could be a purely financial decision. Bandcamp claimed $51m in revenue (I assume gross?) in 2016 [1] and, per reporting, had about $20m in net revenue in 2022 [2]. With the reported 210 employees, that's $95k in net revenue (not profit -- wages / costs are not yet accounted for) per employee. That is very low. You could easily see an acquirer wanting to be more profitable and cutting things like editorial. [1…

It should be ok to not be exceedingly profitable. Bandcamp produced loads of amazing valuable content. But greedy maniacs will always hate this. I am reminded of the Craigslist leadership who was mad insulted for the conscious decision to impose an upper bound to their growth which is a refreshingly moral thing to do under capitalism

If the median wage you can pay is capped at maybe $70k-ish, it's delusional to call someone a "greedy maniac".

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#177

Post by headbee »

brink wrote: post #12
JohnFen wrote: post #3

And the small hope I have that BandCamp would remain a good thing after SongTradr acquired them grows even smaller.

I use Bandcamp a lot. Tbh, if I had acquired Bandcamp, in efforts for streamlining, I probably would have laid the editors off too. I've never read a single bandcamp article. Did anyone actually read them, especially enough to justify their cost?

Yes, and they're truly phenomenal pieces of music journalism in an era where many of the music blogs have withered or degraded.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#178

Post by choppaface »

iainctduncan wrote: post #139

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…

> I think it is naive to assume that Bandcamp was wise to be employing all these people

It probably was stupid, but stupid isn’t illegal, and companies will hide behind that fact to issue mass layoffs (which can be even stupider when they result in an inoperative team).

The financial argument behind a layoff is today made more irrelevant when the employees are smart and creative enough to be the key to company success. Good employees won’t take stupid, no matter how legal stupid is.

> sometimes it's entirely motivated by putting lipstick on a pig in order to look like a runaway growth success thing

The same can be said for the CEO and Board who created the mess. Except they get a big payoff no matter what, and have much larger leverage over the lives of the employees.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#179

Post by nanidin »

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…

Bandcamp always struck me as a place for producers to sell to DJ’s since you can get high bitrate MP3’s and lossless files.

A pattern I’ve seen is that artists will put a new release on Bandcamp a week before it’s available on streaming services. This lets them pull in more revenue by selling the album for $10 to enthusiasts before it’s released to the masses.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#180

Post by iainctduncan »

NewJazz wrote: post #149
iainctduncan wrote: post #139

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…

Isn't the pre-IPO / pre-acquisition playbook to cut staff lower than the optimum level to show profitability? But I'm spitballing here, anyone know more about whether Bandcamp was bloated? Bandcamp was shown to be profitable quite recently. Hard to justify slashing staff in half with that in mind.

Honestly, it's all over the map. Depends on the reason for sale and the reason for purchase. They are looking for "synergies" and a very common one "you already have this thing, so you can cut it out of this company after you acquire and use yours". It is very possible that Epic had plans that involved hyper-growth, now realized those are not going anywhere, and is happy to demonstrate that a chopped up Bandcamp is a good deal.

I have literally done diligences where part of our role was to weigh in on how much could be slashed, which is not very pleasant, but like I said, when the growth was dumb in the first place it can be the right call.

Post reply on HN