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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

#211

Post by barrkel »

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.

You want to sell when you can show growth because that justifies a higher multiple. If you're cutting people, it means you don't have enough growth opportunities to use those people for. It's the opposite signal.

You might need to sell, which may change the calculation.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#212

Post by projectazorian »

heleninboodler wrote: post #203
projectazorian wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 c…

> While Bandcamp wasn't a classic venture-funded startup they did have outside investors I don't think it's correct to say they weren't venture-funded. True Ventures lists them on their portfolio page. I don't know what that says about how much True Ventures put in, but they must have invested something.

Crunchbase says that was a Series A in 2010 with no further rounds, so I don't think that's inconsistent with my original post. They took some outside investment early on but their path looks nothing like the classic VC-funded growth trajectory.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#214

Post by hondo77 »

winternett wrote: post #159
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…

Junodownload is where I buy music most. They have a wide variety of options and fair pricing. It's much easier to find and browse music there. Our link: https://www.junodownload.com/labels/Ruff+And+Tuff+Recordings...

Too bad their prices for lossless downloads for the quick searches I just did are outrageous. Don't even need to get into the very limited catalog.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#215

Post by hondo77 »

shmerl wrote: post #186
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…

Apple just can't get over their NIH obsession and support FLAC like a normal store.

I have my music download stores set to give me ALAC so that's a normal store for me. :-)

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#216

Post by heleninboodler »

toomim wrote: post #205
nerdponx wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But that's a good thing. "Open this in the app" links are the worst advertising scum on the web.

Generally I'd agree with you, but for certain apps, it would be nice to be given the option. I never want to be forced to use the app, but sometimes when looking at a bandcamp page and checking out the music, I'd like to switch over to listening in the app, since I don't have to keep the browser window on top for it to continue playing. The only way to do that is to go use the (bad) search feature in the app to find the thing you're already looking at in the browser.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#217

Post by hipadev23 »

mhitza wrote: post #134
hipadev23 wrote: post #65

Earlier 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.

> 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... "I…

> That's provably false.

Then why did Epic sell this veritable cashcow?

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#218

Post by jtriangle »

egypturnash wrote: post #202
jtriangle wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There is slightly more friction involved in this scheme. Just a little.

Yes, however, if your goal is to give your money to the people you want to give it to, there isn't a better way.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#219

Post by dharmab »

amrocha wrote: post #168
dharmab wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$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.

I pay $0 a month to host a website. A number of artists I've bought from have you pay with paypal and a download link is included on your receipt. That's what, nine cents per transaction plus five percent, and minimal egress charges from a cloud provider.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#220

Post by heleninboodler »

projectazorian wrote: post #212
heleninboodler wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> While Bandcamp wasn't a classic venture-funded startup they did have outside investors I don't think it's correct to say they weren't venture-funded. True Ventures lists them on their portfolio page. I don't know what that says about how much True Ventures put in, but they must have invested something.

Crunchbase says that was a Series A in 2010 with no further rounds, so I don't think that's inconsistent with my original post. They took some outside investment early on but their path looks nothing like the classic VC-funded growth trajectory.

I can't help but make a wry observation that they are objectively VC-funded, but that by saying they aren't a "classic VC-funded growth trajectory" you're doing a No-True-Scotsman-style "not a true venture funded company" argument, and that they are literally a True Ventures funded company..

I'll show myself out.

(Seriously though, I see your point and am not trying to bicker about this; I just think it's a funny situation)

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