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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

#511

Post by _the_inflator »

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…

I totally agree.

In corporate environment, people really must be fooled by two numbers: head count and budget. This is true for other walks of life, too.

I initiated and lead a platform in Financial Service Industry which lead to massive productivity gains. Through standardized processes we could use an inhouse build No Code editor instead of individual app development. Costs went down from 1.5 Mio to sub 10k USD, time to market from 4 1/2 month for two dev teams to a couple of hours for a non-developer per app.

Reaction: "Dude, you are destroying careers. We get paid and promoted by budget and head count. We artificially inflate budgets and projects so that we get promoted."

I was stunned. We could do so many other things with the free capacity or help build value for the company.

Lesson: People are sometimes able to comprehend abstract stuff ("Software can be used to automate processes and can scale. It serves 1000+ customers worldwide 24/7. We have 10 people employed."). Mostly decision makers sadly prefer power ("Woooha, your company has 1.000 devs?! How cool, you must feel like superman!")

Lesson still not really comprehended, but somehow ingested.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#512

Post by hiAndrewQuinn »

golergka wrote: post #224
jtriangle wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alot of the time, you can just email their booking email asking to buy their album with cashapp et al and they'll gladly take your money and ship you a zip file of MP3's, assuming the band/artist is small enough.

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.

I never get tired of the classics.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#513

Post by pharmakom »

iainctduncan wrote: post #400
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... )

So we work for private equity mostly, and they are in the business of buying and selling steady growth, profitable businesses, as opposed to VC/bubble stuff, so our expectations are a lot leaner. But at a guess, I think we'd expect that to be a 40-50 person company. 118 seems high. The app is tiny, it has changed very little in who knows how long. Infrastructure is obviously the big thing, so there would be a solid s…

They run something equivalent to Spotify at a much smaller scale.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#514

Post by stjohnswarts »

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"…

Can you explain why you are so opposed to streaming? I actually do both and own a few hundred lossless albums as well. Usually if I think something is moderately good, I'll purchase a lossless copy (unless I buy a CD of it, which I'll rip to my collection). However streaming is a more modern version of radio to me when I don't want to dig around playlists. I'll find new music I like from whatever spotify or apple music serves up if it's new to me, quite often. Just curious.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#515

Post by vintermann »

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…

You know what Glenn Jones (American guitarist), Talisk (Scottish folk), Tonbruket (Swedish jazz), Daniel Herskedal (Norwegian jazz, tuba), The Books (New York, sound collage), Yom (French klezmer clarinetist), Kongero (Swedish folk a cappella), and Naragonia (Belgian accordion folk) have in common?

That 1. I supported them on Bandcamp 2. I would never have found them if it wasn't for Spotify's discover weekly.

I could list a lot more artists for which this is true. It's not even counting the ones I found indirectly.

This is maybe something artists should be aware of when they think they get such a good deal from Bandcamp and such a bad deal from Spotify. It's not as simple as that. I'm sure it's true that most people who promise you "exposure" are trying to exploit you, but that doesn't mean you can ignore how you actually got in front of the audience you have.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#516

Post by vintermann »

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 have not been able to use Bandcamp to discover music. Even for music in niches that are so tiny that they're not on Spotify, I didn't find them on Bandcamp (I found them on YouTube). Bandcamp's recommendations for me are lousy.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#517

Post by noirscape »

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.

That's largely a distinction without a difference while Epic still owned (owns? seem deal isn't closed yet) them. If Epic is in peril, Bandcamp is in peril since they owned Bandcamp up until recently, and we know Epic is in financial trouble because of the Epic Games Store.

Their entire minimum revenue guarantee scheme to lure over indies and publishers is apparently extremely expensive for Epic and the store has yet to turn a profit on the whole. Before, they could run it off of Fortnite profits alone. That said, Sweeney has admitted that well is basically running dry and it's why they've been doing layoffs and the like everywhere.

If a company is in trouble, the first thing on the line are the subsidiaries and Bandcamp is a questionable acquisition on the Epic rep sheet, being a music store for a company whose main business is making videogames and selling a gaming engine to people. That means it either goes under or is sold off because it's seen as an irrelevant "aside" subsidiary.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#518

Post by vintermann »

jmye wrote: post #351
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

I think the auto-built playlists are bad. Not only because they slip in something jarring, but even the "This is..." playlists can't be trusted. They often mix artists with the same name who have nothing to do with each other.

No, I think it's for active discovery Spotify is good. I have never enjoyed everything on the Discover weekly playlist, quite often it contains stuff that makes me ask "why did you even think I would like that crap, Spotify". But when it hits, it hits amazingly well.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#519

Post by coldtea »

DiggyJohnson wrote: post #463
coldtea wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

This is an egregious comment. Why are you assuming the GP was satisfied in making this point. You are assuming the worst in this person just because you disagree.

No, I assume it because of the way they phrased their answer

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#520

Post by elric »

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 hope this won't result in Bandcamp going to shit, but I have to say I'm pretty worried. It's the only place I buy music. Band releases album -> I buy it. When I'm looking for new music, I typically look at the collections of other people who bought an album I enjoyed.
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