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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

#521

Post by vintermann »

waveBidder wrote: post #337
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.

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

This is easy to check. Yes, premium listens are pooled separately from ad-supported listens.

If an artist is extremely popular with ad-supported listeners, that doesn't let them eat into the pool of payments from premium listeners.

Note, however, that listens are pooled by country, not per user. So premium accounts running background music in a hair salon 6 days a week will decide where your subscription money goes far more than the music you listen to.

Originally, this was because the big record companies demanded it. Now, the record companies are having second thoughts, but Spotify, which has adapted to the funding key favouring background music, are the ones resisting.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#522

Post by vintermann »

nomel wrote: post #412
waveBidder wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

All the revenue goes into a big pot, then split up [1]. That pot is 95% premium users [2]. [1] https://support.spotify.com/us/artists/article/royalties/ [2] https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/120314/spoti... .

It's separate pots for ad listens vs. subscriber listens. AFAIK there are also separate pots by country, since subscription fees and profitability of ad markets vary widely by country.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#523

Post by dbeley »

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…

On top of Qobuz (which is great) there is also Ototoy (mostly for japanese indie music).

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#524

Post by n4r9 »

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…

Sounds like Bandcamp is perfect for you. You can stream full albums for free, then buy and download the odd ones that you really like.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#526

Post by indigochill »

kwertyoowiyop wrote: post #413
notatoad wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it smells a little bloated there's certainly operations that are leaner than that. a little down the thread there's people saying they could build bandcamp in a weekend, which is probably fanciful but also not completely off base. just on a pure technology level, bandcamp seems like a 3-4 developer sort of project. so they've got ~110 people running sales and support?

This is HN. Start a thread about anything and someone will say they could build it in a weekend. Completely off base.

Counterpoint: https://simonrepp.com/faircamp/ already exists and is a self-hostable FOSS Bandcamp clone. Does it clone every feature? No. And it definitely has taken longer than a weekend to get to where it is. But it's a one-man passion project that clones enough to be a viable enough replacement for amateur musicians that I jumped to it immediately when Epic bought Bandcamp.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#527

Post by yankput »

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.

Epic is underperforming

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#528

Post by npteljes »

amrocha wrote: post #443
npteljes wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also rational not to sell. Why not value a nice sustainable business over selling out? I understand that many of us would sell, I would probably sell too. But different people do exist. Valve didn't sell, for example, and I'm sure they were approached many times.

Yeah they definitely do exist, but it's the exception. That's why everybody knows about valve and epic. However, if Gabe's family had urgently needed money back in the day, would he have sold? Maybe. That's what I'm getting at. You need to be in a very stable position to be able to turn down a big offer like that when it comes, and in general in our society we're always one or two emergencies away from being destitut…

I don't know about how rare it is, because rejected offers don't make the news. We either talk about the successful selling stories, or the major holdouts. I don't think this paints a full picture.

Besides, my point is that there are multiple options, all of them rational. There is no single rational choice.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#529

Post by _djo_ »

indigochill wrote: post #526
kwertyoowiyop wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is HN. Start a thread about anything and someone will say they could build it in a weekend. Completely off base.

Counterpoint: https://simonrepp.com/faircamp/ already exists and is a self-hostable FOSS Bandcamp clone. Does it clone every feature? No. And it definitely has taken longer than a weekend to get to where it is. But it's a one-man passion project that clones enough to be a viable enough replacement for amateur musicians that I jumped to it immediately when Epic bought Bandcamp.

While a very nice project, Faircamp doesn't come close to offering what Bandcamp does. It's self-hosted, requiring the artists to have the technical knowledge to both customise the platform and run the infrastructure themselves, and it doesn't support any payment options other than a barebones liberapay implementation.[0]

It's also most importantly not a single trusted entity that people can trust with their payments like Bandcamp is.

[0] https://simonrepp.com/faircamp/manual/payment.html

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#530

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]
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