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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

#281

Post by jlarocco »

nomel wrote: post #262
jlarocco wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's interesting - I usually don't like Spotify's recommendations. Youtube was much better at that IMO, but I've tried to stop using it due to the Google connection. I don't really know where Bandcamp stands - I've bought music there that I found on YouTube, but haven't used it to find new stuff.

> I usually don't like Spotify's recommendations It requires that you like songs, and listen, of course. I have around 1600 liked songs. It knows me well enough at this point.

That hasn't helped any. I have almost 1100 liked songs, several dozen liked albums, and several years of near daily listening. The recommendations are still less good (for me) than what YouTube recommended without an account, just based on my listening history.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#283

Post by aendruk »

callalex wrote: post #118
chunk_waffle wrote: post #110

Anyone have some good alternatives for downloading loseless and DRM free music from artists? For Japanese artist I use ototoy.jp but that's a small subset of my library. Guess I better get what's on my wish list while I can!

The iTunes Store never went away and fits your description.

I’d been wondering this myself and now suspect I’ve written off Apple too soon. If I buy music from Apple on my iPhone it’s not trapped on Apple devices?

When I first switched to iOS I didn’t see any way to play my music in Apple’s music player and I assumed the door was closed both directions.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#284

Post by Yodel0914 »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #197
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…

> Most people these days want to stream, not to buy and download To each their own. For me Soundcloud wins hands down because of social network effect and gets me continuous stream of mixes. I really don't care what was the authors journey to releasing an album. A lot of music soon going to be generated anyway. I really despise Apple Music for its album centric view and lack of good playlists. Spotify is somewhere in…

It's funny; this is the polar opposite of how I listen to music. I only listen to albums, and 95% of playlists I listen to are my own and just contain a series of albums.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#285

Post by sp332 »

hipadev23 wrote: post #278
matthewn wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bandcamp had 118 employees total. That doesn't smell bloated to me. (Source: https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/bandcamp-layoffs-oakland... )

[flagged]

Support for hundreds of thousands of bands and their bank payouts, and millions of customers. (They also sell vinyl, CDs, cassettes, and t-shirts.)

Edit: they reportedly had a good editorial team, but I'm not sure how many people you need for that part.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#286

Post by nomel »

jlarocco wrote: post #281
nomel wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I usually don't like Spotify's recommendations It requires that you like songs, and listen, of course. I have around 1600 liked songs. It knows me well enough at this point.

That hasn't helped any. I have almost 1100 liked songs, several dozen liked albums, and several years of near daily listening. The recommendations are still less good (for me) than what YouTube recommended without an account, just based on my listening history.

I've been satisfied, but that's good to hear. I'll give it another try.

My biggest problem with the Spotify recommendation is that it seems to be a bit "sticky", recommended recent listens more than anything.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#287

Post by draw_down »

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…

[dead]

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#288

Post by initplus »

Kye wrote: post #213
sitharus wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can, but not retrospectively.

"By continuing to use Bandcamp, you agree..." What's an artist who depends on the platform to do?

If Bandcamp were to try such a move they would destroy the value of their business overnight. Retroactively changing the agreement with your customers about their IP is the best way to permanently destroy trust.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#289

Post by myaccountonhn »

piperswe wrote: post #64
shmerl wrote: post #4

Bandcamp is where I go to buy DRM-free FLAC music. I hope they won't shut it down.

Qobuz is another option, but I always prefer Bandcamp because Qobuz's UI is pretty bad and it constantly corrupts my session such that I need to clear the site's cookies to do anything.

Qobuz also doesn’t work internationally for buying music

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#290

Post by zztop44 »

mhitza wrote: post #143
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…

Not sure who's getting laid off, but for me in the past the Bandcamp Weekly show was the one that gave me opportunities to explore new genres and artists. I think their shows have a positive impact towards the platforms, buyers, and artists.

Agreed. It’s one of the best music shows out there. Selfishly I hope Andrew Jervis wasn’t laid off but realistically it’s hard to imagine everything continuing as before with 50% of the company gone.
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