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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

#431

Post by gen220 »

ShamelessC wrote: post #364
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…

> Background, I work in diligence for software aquisitions. It shows. I don't see lay-offs from this perspective. Instead, I think about each of the employees impacted by the company's reckless behavior. Did the employees have any say in this matter? No? Then who cares if the job they were there to do was unimportant in the first place? That is absolutely the fault of the company. Your stance is not effective when tr…

> I think about each of the employees impacted by the company's reckless behavior.

The "reckless behavior" in the above quote was not committed by the acquirer, but by whoever was responsible for leading + growing Bandcamp off this cliff.

In the same way you want to treat humans like humans, you need to treat businesses like businesses – i.e., if you're not making money or growing revenue fast enough to justify hiring the marginal employee, as a hiring manager, you're gambling with the prospective hire's career in pursuit of a collective gain.

If you're an employee joining an unprofitable company, this is part of the package and should be really clear in the interviewing/onboarding. If it isn't, again, the blame falls at the feet of the CEO, ultimately.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#432

Post by dclowd9901 »

zaps wrote: post #416

Switching to full-on Dirty Hippie mode here but, goddammit why why WHY can’t we just have nice things without profit motives or acquisitions or shareholders or growth hacking and just enjoy the ride and the gifts that these kinds of resources give to the world? Why is the default setting “always sell out”? IUMA was the Bandcamp of the early aughts. It was THE place to go for discovering new exciting music that you ne…

Because profit has somehow become the goal. Take away profit as a target and then you’re just left with people doing what they want.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#433

Post by alisson_dover »

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...

The vast majority of profession artists I know and love have a Bandcamp account. Maybe in the early stages musicians just want feedback on their new "beat". However, at some point they want to have a professional looking profile with releases that they can sell, with a community they can reach out to, merchandise they can roll out at their own pace, etc etc.

You are probably talking to very early stage musicians who would enjoy using Soundcloud over Bandcamp for feedback reasons.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#434

Post by intalentive »

iainctduncan wrote: post #422
zaps wrote: post #416

Switching to full-on Dirty Hippie mode here but, goddammit why why WHY can’t we just have nice things without profit motives or acquisitions or shareholders or growth hacking and just enjoy the ride and the gifts that these kinds of resources give to the world? Why is the default setting “always sell out”? IUMA was the Bandcamp of the early aughts. It was THE place to go for discovering new exciting music that you ne…

They do exist, but yeah they are rare. Both Ableton Live and Reaper refuse to take outside investments or sell. The Live owners are famous for telling them to screw off. Major reason I use both of them. The music tech business is getting rocked by acquisitions recently.

Reaper rocks. I love that the installer is so small, shows that nothing is in the code but what's essential. I also love that they allow scripting within the DAW, and that they ported to Linux, and I love the payment model, and and...

Just an amazing company all round.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#435

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

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…

> Basically what I'm saying is it feels very much like a rails app you could build in a weekend.

Downvoted solely for that comment. Honestly, I feel like it's so tiresome and lazy with the "X could be built in a weekend" or "Why does Y need so many employees?" comments. Sure, I've worked at companies that were easily overstaffed, and it's not hard to find some slack in any sizable company. But these kinds of comments pretty universally are completely lacking in insight of what it takes to operate and run a sizable business. It's basically just selfishness that people only comment on the limited slice (usually of programming work) that they understand.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#436

Post by gu009 »

iainctduncan wrote: post #422
zaps wrote: post #416

Switching to full-on Dirty Hippie mode here but, goddammit why why WHY can’t we just have nice things without profit motives or acquisitions or shareholders or growth hacking and just enjoy the ride and the gifts that these kinds of resources give to the world? Why is the default setting “always sell out”? IUMA was the Bandcamp of the early aughts. It was THE place to go for discovering new exciting music that you ne…

They do exist, but yeah they are rare. Both Ableton Live and Reaper refuse to take outside investments or sell. The Live owners are famous for telling them to screw off. Major reason I use both of them. The music tech business is getting rocked by acquisitions recently.

Worth noting here that the main guy behind Reaper is Justin Frankel, creator of Winamp - would seem like he doesn't really need or want outside investment.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#437

Post by amrocha »

willsmith72 wrote: post #372
amrocha wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few mil won't get you those things, but they'll guarantee your basic necessities. For example, my dad is working into his 70s. If I could fund his retirement I would. And here's the kicker: you can always go build something bigger than yourself after selling. Having fuck you money means you can make the ethical choice next time. Edit: on your comment about founders regretting their first sale. I'm guessing most fou…

The people who get to have the option of a multi-multi million dollar exit are the ones who start at the beginning when the company is worth nothing. Most people who can't afford basic necessities also can't afford to take the risk of starting something new. In fact, I would say it's a terrible decision in that case, akin to buying lottery tickets. The far easier way to guarantee "basic necessities" in tech is train…

Maybe the reason the majority of founders are like that is because the ones who sell out and go live comfortably for the rest of their lives take themselves out of the pool and you don't hear about them.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#438

Post by alisson_dover »

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

What are you talking about? They work with a ton of labels. The landing page is tailored to discovery... they are long past the sexy branding stage, having millions of users and being the most loved independent music platform.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#440

Post by diogenes4 »

zaps wrote: post #416

Switching to full-on Dirty Hippie mode here but, goddammit why why WHY can’t we just have nice things without profit motives or acquisitions or shareholders or growth hacking and just enjoy the ride and the gifts that these kinds of resources give to the world? Why is the default setting “always sell out”? IUMA was the Bandcamp of the early aughts. It was THE place to go for discovering new exciting music that you ne…

There are known methods to retrieve power from the jaws of capital.
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