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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

#231
post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do shoes with absorption work to a similar effect?

Not completely, a big part of the problem is resturant floors tend to get wet. When I first injured my back I slipped on a damp greasy floor.

If I had a mat like that I wouldn't have slipped.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#232
post #105

God damn. Bandcamp is where I get my music wherever possible - they're an amazing platform and product and I like the fact that my purchases are going to support the actual artists instead of vanishing into the Google or Spotify machinery. I knew it was possible after the Epic sale that they'd get screwed, but this worse than I expected.

This was my first reaction, but on thinking more I think this might end up being positive. Bandcamp is where I look first for music, and increasingly new releases are never there. It's great for music released in the mid 2010s, but it has without question been slowly dying. Hopefully somebody who cares is going to resurrect it.

I'm probably being too optimistic, but it's a nice psychological blanket

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#233

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…

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…

Alternate, equally speculative but less cynical take on 4-5, largely advised by Songtradr's announcement here: https://twitter.com/songtradr/status/1709986126117630051?s=2...

This may have been a last-minute accelerated deal process where Epic would have all but shuttered Bandcamp if a buyer couldn't be found, before they needed to announce massive layoffs to assuage investors. Songtradr is given an opportunity to see the deal, wants to ensure Bandcamp's survival in its current form (because its demise would hurt the entire ecosystem Songtradr depends on).

But Songtradr isn't given time to put together a transition plan or identify the exact legal path to deal with the union (especially given that they're in an entirely different country with different labor laws!) and not expose themselves to liability. So they announce conditional openness to the acquisition (per the link above, the transaction hasn't closed yet), and this at minimum gives Bandcamp a stay of execution while they identify next steps.

Now, they've identified at least one next step - how much of the current Bandcamp costs they can carry during the transition - and that's 50% of current staff. A tough call to make, but if the alternative was shuttering the service, a very justifiable one.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#234
post #44

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…

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…

> The rational choice is to sell.

Not necessarily. Whether or not that's the rational choice depends on what your goals are.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#236

Sad to see what has happened to BandCamp. My only gripe with BandCamp is the 128kbps streaming of full songs without purchase. If you are hell-bent on allowing full songs to be streamed before someone buys, just go all-in and allow full quality.

The purpose of that is to allow previewing before purchase, which IMHO is a wonderful feature and is the big reason I used to use Napster. If I liked some of the songs, I'd buy the album. I do the exact same thing now on Bandcamp.

https://get.bandcamp.help/hc/en-us/articles/360007902173-I-h...

https://newmusicstrategies.com/but-if-they-steal-it/

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#237
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

7digital is another source I often use.

I used to use them too, but they closed their EU store so Bandcamp is the only option for me now. Yes, Apple and Amazon might also be options, but I haven't ever done business with either and I don't intend to begin.

Qobuz operates in (and is based out of) the EU.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#238
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…

> But the bigger point is that you conflate selling to a bigger company with more resources with “f[ing] their users,” which is just naive.

It's not naive, it's how these things go the majority of the time. I think that expecting otherwise is a bit naive.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#239
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.

Can I buy music from Spotify? As in, be able to download a non-proprietary, lossless encoding of the music? If not, Spotify is worthless to me.

If you re-frame Spotify as a way to discover music, it's not worthless.

Feel free to use Spotify to find artists and give them money however you want.

Also, nobody is stopping you from spending your time finding new music and giving money as directly as possible to the artist.

Spotify can be seen as a way to increase your exposure to new music, and for that it might be worth the $XX/month to many people, the ability to stream/cache it is a nice addition, but you don't have to rely on it as a way to give money (a pittance) to artists you like.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#240
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.

I agree with you on not wanting to fuck the users over either. Personally I don't want to do that. But the reality is, I have other things I need in life too, and those things require money. My dad is working into his 70s, what if I could fund his retirement? What if I could pay for my brothers uni? Or for my grandma's nurse? When our basic necessities are not secure, we can't always make the ethical choice. Until th…

Literally everybody has family members who could use extra money. If having family absolves you from ethical constraints we can dispense with the notion of ethics altogether.
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