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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

#331

Post by paulddraper »

armini wrote: post #324
alisson_dover wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's a different business? No one needs to run anything. Bandcamp offers an easy way for musicians to have a fairly customizable online presence with a flexible pricing model, a merch store, and, importantly, plug into a larger platform's discoverability mechanism.

yeah but when i talk to artists, they tell me they love the process of creating music. they don't have the money or interest for procurement, warehousing or customer support. They just want feedback on their new beat...

That's the idea of Bandcamp.

Get the benefits of those things without doing them yourself.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#332

Post by nomel »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #326
nomel wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People hearing your music is nice and all As a listener, this is my entire concern, use case, and reason for paying for a streaming site: finding new music to listen to. I don't think I'm unique. Artists should get more, which is why I pay for Spotify Premium, but the use case of a listener is important. Bandcamp doesn't address that, for me.

There is more music on Bandcamp than you could listen to in a lifetime. More comes out in a week than you could (probably) listen to in a week. So when you sayd "finding new music to listen to", there's a hidden implication in there: you want to find new music that is on Spotify (which in turn implies things like major labels, artists seeking or expecting breakout etc. Bandcamp is an amazing resource for discovering…

I'll rephrase: I don't want to find the music. I want recommendation of music that I might like. I want a mostly passive experience, where I can click a like button to get more like that, added to feed. I don't want to actively search, because I'm doing other things when I listen to music. If I find a song that interests me, I'll listen to the songs "radio" to find similar artists. This is an acceptable use pattern.

> which in turn implies things like major labels, artists seeking or expecting breakout etc.

This is nonsensical [1]. I follow YouTubers have their music on Spotify. Some are just spoof songs.

[1] https://artists.spotify.com/en/get-started

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#333

Post by waveBidder »

DocKitKat wrote: post #310
avitous wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I too loved Bandcamp for its sane approach to acquiring new music; unlike "most people" I refuse to use the streaming-only services, and insist upon buying albums and listening to exactly those selections I choose (and I prefer to listen to albums in their entirety, even today). Perhaps I'm just old and set in my ways, but choices made by others, especially algorithmically generated "options maximizing my engagement"…

I too listen to albums in their entirety and don’t interact too much with autogenerated content. But I was on Apple Music and now I’m on Spotify. The amount of new albums I get to listen to would put a massive dent in my bank account if I was buying them as I go. I still purchase Vinyl and the odd CD, but that is reserved for my top must have records. A flat rate for music just makes sense to me, and allows me to che…

bandcamp is still pretty generous with streaming. I own maybe a third of the music on bandcamp that I listen to.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#334

Post by Alupis »

armini wrote: post #324
alisson_dover wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's a different business? No one needs to run anything. Bandcamp offers an easy way for musicians to have a fairly customizable online presence with a flexible pricing model, a merch store, and, importantly, plug into a larger platform's discoverability mechanism.

yeah but when i talk to artists, they tell me they love the process of creating music. they don't have the money or interest for procurement, warehousing or customer support. They just want feedback on their new beat...

Every band is eventually faced with making a tough decision:

1) Do it for the love of the music.

2) Become a business.

Some bands are lucky enough to do both - not most. Survivorship Bias is key here, and the overwhelming majority of bands do not make any money or perhaps even lose money chasing their passion.

"Just getting feedback" is cool when you're in it for the love of music. For the rest - you do need a way to market yourself, sell merchandise, promote your next show, sell downloads or CD's, etc.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#335

Post by nomel »

aurnik wrote: post #304
nomel wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this assumed or is there public info about their algorithm? In the first song of my Discover Weekly, if I google the very unique artist name, I get exactly four hits: their bandcamp page, their website, their Spotify page, and their YouTube channel that hasn't been updated in a 9 months, with that last video having 120k views. The rest is unrelated to them. This doesn't refutes what you're saying, but I would have…

Discover Weekly specifically requires artists to "pitch" their songs to Spotify. If you're already following the artist, their new releases that have been pitched are supposedly guaranteed to show up on your Discover Weekly. Otherwise, I believe it's someone at Spotify who picked that song which then distributes it to "relevant" listeners.

Again, is this assumed, or do you have something public that can be linked to? The only explanation of the algorithm is what I would expect, rather than some silly humans in the loop: recommendation based on user activity and the analysis of the song style [1].

https://medium.com/the-sound-of-ai/spotifys-discover-weekly-...

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#336

Post by throw_nbvc1234 »

Sakos wrote: post #321
btown wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 se…

Except Bandcamp wasn't at risk of shutting down before Epic. If it's being run unsustainably now, that's on Epic.

Was anything in danger of shutting down before Q1 2022? All time tech market highs were ~3-6 months beforehand and presumably the acquisition negotiation took time.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#337

Post by waveBidder »

nomel wrote: post #280
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fuck Spotify. They've played a major role in drastically reducing any chance of significant revenue flowing to musicians, in complete contrast to Bandcamp. People hearing your music is nice and all (I like it when people hear my stuff on BC), but it is orthogonal to the revenue that used to be associated with making recorded music available. There's far, far more music out there than anyone will ever be able to liste…

> People hearing your music is nice and all As a listener, this is my entire concern, use case, and reason for paying for a streaming site: finding new music to listen to. I don't think I'm unique. Artists should get more, which is why I pay for Spotify Premium, but the use case of a listener is important. Bandcamp doesn't address that, for me.

does Spotify pay artists more for listens on premium? I seriously doubt it.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#338

Post by waveBidder »

nomel wrote: post #279
winternett wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Spotify is a terrible alternative for the musicians. I'm not a musician. I'm a listener trying to find music that I like to listen to. Do you have a recommendation for us on the other end of the speaker wire?

there's this neat website/app called bandcamp, you may have heard of it somewhere. it asks you to occasionally buy albums, rather than pay a fixed fee.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#339

Post by fomine3 »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #183
nomel wrote: 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.

Fuck Spotify. They've played a major role in drastically reducing any chance of significant revenue flowing to musicians, in complete contrast to Bandcamp. People hearing your music is nice and all (I like it when people hear my stuff on BC), but it is orthogonal to the revenue that used to be associated with making recorded music available. There's far, far more music out there than anyone will ever be able to liste…

Buy on Bandcamp but also listen on Spotify, isn't it perfect for both?

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#340

Post by redwall_hp »

initplus wrote: post #288
Kye wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

It would be a more dramatic overnight loss of customers than Unity. It's entirely laughable, and given that laws restrict the licensing and royalties of music, it might not even be legal.

Labels can only write up contracts giving them rights because they pay for studio time (given them a financial buy-in to the creation of the music) and pay advances against royalties. Not so for indie distributors. I don't know if there are specific applicable laws, but it's absurd enough that everyone would immediately drop Bandcamp.

Music royalty rates, for physical records, radio and internet streaming, are also determined by a panel of judges: the United States Copyright Royalty Board.

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