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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

#351

Post by jmye »

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’m unaware of anything on Bandcamp that is remotely as useful to me as the auto-built playlists and artist/song radio tools in Spotify. That there’s “a lot” of music on either platform is meaningless if the tools to find things I’d like don’t work for me.

I get the compensation model sucks for artists. I try to buy things from bands I like. But ultimately, if artists don’t like the Spotify model, they should pull their music - but I’m going to continue to use a platform that gives me access to everything I’d ever want to hear for like, $10/mo.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#352

Post by jmuguy »

I’m not sure what the experience is with other niche genres of music but I’ve found more black and death metal on Bandcamp in the past month than has ever been recommended to me elsewhere. I get the impression that HN posters who don’t use Bandcamp just see it at some place where a band can make a MySpace profile - but it has a serious network effect going on.

For instance, the label 20 buck spin, has a boat load of artists on there. For metal, their profile page on Bandcamp is worth more than a 100 algorithmic playlists on Spotify.

https://20buckspin.bandcamp.com/

I hope Bandcamp can survive this layoff. It is a real resource for music lovers and artists, not a glorified front end for flacs on S3.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#353

Post by pavel_lishin »

avitous wrote: post #265
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…

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 also refuse to use streaming services, and prefer to curate my own music - but for me, it's less about algorithmic suggestions, and more about actually owning the things I've paid for.

A streaming service or an artist can pull music from a service (see Neil Young), but they ain't going to be reaching into my hard drives and pulling the mp3s out of it.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#354

Post by [deleted] »

jmuguy wrote: post #352

I’m not sure what the experience is with other niche genres of music but I’ve found more black and death metal on Bandcamp in the past month than has ever been recommended to me elsewhere. I get the impression that HN posters who don’t use Bandcamp just see it at some place where a band can make a MySpace profile - but it has a serious network effect going on. For instance, the label 20 buck spin, has a boat load of…

[deleted]

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#355

Post by bsder »

colinsane wrote: post #263
golergka wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you could replace Dropbox quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software.

funny thing: i recently happened into the solution to that age-old question of "how do i transfer some file(s) between two computers in the same room". i now run an anonymous FTP server on my laptop, open to the LAN. prior to this Dropbox _was_ one of the solutions, but recently i've used that FTP server for the job several times with both Linux and Windows users. yet, you jest.

The keywords you want for that file transfer are "Magic Wormhole".

Yes, it works on Windows, Linux, and OS X.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#356

Post by solardev »

elabajaba wrote: post #322
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…

Epic is private, Tim Sweeney owns >50%, and their only real rival in the game engine space had recently torpedoed themselves which caused a large amount of gamedevs and even some publishers to swear off Unity. There was no investor pressure.

Tencent owns 40% of Epic, and Epic lost most of its legal battle against Apple.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#357

Post by sarma17 »

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…

> like a runaway growth success thing.

is this because employee growth is easily verifiable? Put another way, don't companies ask for accounting statements etc to figure out if the target company is worth acquiring? (context - I have no idea how one company accquires another, so this is a noob q)

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#358

Post by Alupis »

avitous wrote: post #265
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…

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"…

Just to offer a counterpoint - there's so many indie and small bands I've found while listening to Pandora. Most or all of which I would have never discovered otherwise.

Sure, maybe they don't pay as much as me buying the CD would for the artist - but I likely would have never found them any other way. Now, they get something every time I listen to their songs.

I would, however, enjoy much higher quality audio. Even with the top tier Pandora plan, it's still MP3's, albeit high quality MP3's.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#359

Post by lawgimenez »

alexalx666 wrote: post #307
alisson_dover wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you used Bandcamp? It's a way larger feature set than an iOS app for picture sharing.

Yes I used it, it looks like a website from 2004, clearly their core competencies can not be about building their own file upload, payment etc. but creating Customer Friendly Sexy Branded landing, working with labels etc. which they failed to do with 100 ppl

People came to Bandcamp for music, not some fancy eye popping website. I'm glad they have not redesign their website.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#360

Post by redwall_hp »

aendruk wrote: post #283
callalex wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think you still need iTunes on your computer for it. You have to import your music into your iTunes library and sync your phone with a computer.

Purchases, similarly, can be redownloaded on the computer. They're all DRM-free AAC, since the early 2000s.

I've mostly used Spotify in the past decade, but it seems to all work the way it always has. They just shove Apple Music (not the same as iTunes) in your face when you open the Music app, until you turn it off.

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