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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

#531

Post by jemmyw »

simpaticoder wrote: post #475
jemmyw wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you've identified the major problem for musicians: there's so much music available today that the value of writing more has crashed. The value to listeners is now in the delivery infrastructure and recommendations.

The population of music lovers, people that have favorite bands, genres, albums, want more music. Those who listen passively and do not own or care about albums and don't go to concerts etc. can be safely ignored; Spotify is fine for them.

Ah the no true Scotsman argument. I have favorite bands and genres, I support local bands when I find them, I go to concerts when I'm able, though I don't live in an ideal location for it. I play music and I try to get together with others to play. And I use Spotify. I'm not interested in owning albums, you can stream an album or individual songs.

I spent years buying music, ripping the CDs, organizing files, etc. I'm very glad that I don't need to bother any more. I don't own the medium the music is stored on, I don't really get why it matters.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#532

Post by noobermin »

x0x0 wrote: post #114
diggan wrote: post #27

Judging by the Bandcamp United's (Union about to form at Bandcamp) feed, it seems they were nearing the completion of their initial steps to ask SongTradr to recognize and negotiate with the union. The "Last Call" post was made just 4 days ago: https://union.place/@bandcampunited/111219165521125342 Wonder if it ever got started or SongTradr tried to nip this whole thing in the bud?

It also could be a purely financial decision. Bandcamp claimed $51m in revenue (I assume gross?) in 2016 [1] and, per reporting, had about $20m in net revenue in 2022 [2]. With the reported 210 employees, that's $95k in net revenue (not profit -- wages / costs are not yet accounted for) per employee. That is very low. You could easily see an acquirer wanting to be more profitable and cutting things like editorial. [1…

I don't understand how people can say things like this where companies don't even make a profit like uber year after year yet no one wonders why they have the shop they do.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#533

Post by disposition2 »

iainctduncan wrote: post #465
nluken wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your view of bandcamp seems like a cartoonishly perfect representation of a consultant’s perspective with very little understanding of what the company actually does beyond the balance sheet. It’s the kind of no-skin-in-the-game perspective that ruined Boeing, and it’s why most folks absolutely abhor private equity. Bandcamp has been successful because of the trust they have within the internet music community. It’s…

You are making some wildy off base assumptions. I'm not a finance guy, I'm a hacker. We do technical diligence . I was a developer for 20 years and am doing a music and CS phd right now. I've slung code in over a dozen languages, I'm the open source developer of Scheme for Max and the csound6~ port to Max, an electronic composer, and a gigging musician. I am currently bootstrapping a music education product in Python…

> So I use bandcamp all the time, I have purchased tons of music on it, and the articles have not made any difference to me as a user at all. The only thing I care about is the band I'm purchasing from! I use bandcamp for three reasons: lossless audio, no DRM, fair payments to the band. None of those are at all relevant to their article efforts.

Just to add a conflicting opinion, I love the articles and often use them for music discovery and purchases. Of course, the primary function is to purchase music from known entities but the discovery part keeps me coming back. In terms of ROI, to me the articles seem like a pretty smart marketing move…without them I would not have discovered all kinds of artists and made numerous purchases.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#534

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#535

Post by Ilikeruby »

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"…

Im the total opposite, I don't want to own music (some things sure) but streaming services allow me to use the music I like to listen to wherever I want. I can make playlists and organize how I want it even make my own "radio stations" for different moods.

There is no way I can and will buy the amount of metal music I consume lol.

Also the algo that suggests new music is awesome! I learned about a lot of new bands just by using that feature.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#536

Post by disposition2 »

dminvs wrote: post #221
nkozyra wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YouTube music, Pandora, I'm sure there are others. Spotify likes to feed you back stuff you liked even if it's only tangentially related to what you're asking for. It also repeats the same recommendations for things like radio over and over again.

I had the same experience you describe with Pandora for years, has it improved recently?

That is borderline tragic to hear. Pandora acquired __the__ music streaming service when it came to discovery, rdio, and did absolutely nothing with it.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#537

Post by disposition2 »

heleninboodler wrote: post #216
toomim wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's a good thing. "Open this in the app" links are the worst advertising scum on the web.

Generally I'd agree with you, but for certain apps, it would be nice to be given the option . I never want to be forced to use the app, but sometimes when looking at a bandcamp page and checking out the music, I'd like to switch over to listening in the app, since I don't have to keep the browser window on top for it to continue playing. The only way to do that is to go use the (bad) search feature in the app to find…

Not the answer you wanted but…

Why not to favorite what you’re looking at in the browser and then open favorites in the app…if it turns out you don’t like what hear, unfavorite.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#538

Post by throwaway290 »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #188
throwaway290 wrote: post #9

It was not spectacular for a while according to musicians who sell there, and decision to sell out was just icing. Will there be a good faith player in this niche for once?

According to what musicans? where? What is it the icing on top of? ps. I'm a very tiny musician on BC. I know of no changes that altered BC's utility for me as someone with an album there, or as an avid purchaser of recorded music.

Friends run a band professionally (aka music is their job), they say it's scammy in how they charge their fees, leading to very small or zero revenue compared to other platforms. They say Bandcamp is good at selling physical merch including vinyl, but not digital music

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#539

Post by [deleted] »

eru wrote: post #483
cmckn wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve never seen these kind of roles even in huge companies. “Sprint master” as a job description? Can’t be serious.

Well, I've heard of 'scum masters' (sorry, scrum masters) as a job description. So 'sprint master' doesn't sound too ridiculous by comparison.

[deleted]

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#540

Post by dewey »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #470
iainctduncan wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are making some wildy off base assumptions. I'm not a finance guy, I'm a hacker. We do technical diligence . I was a developer for 20 years and am doing a music and CS phd right now. I've slung code in over a dozen languages, I'm the open source developer of Scheme for Max and the csound6~ port to Max, an electronic composer, and a gigging musician. I am currently bootstrapping a music education product in Python…

> while people might like to make public noises about hating PE, they sure like to sell their companies to them. I suspect that there's not a lot of overlap between people who publicly fume about good companies being ruined by profit-hungry buyers, and people who start companies explicitly so they can flip them to profit-hungry buyers and ditch. Does anyone still start businesses with the intention of building and ma…

It doesn't have to be the choice between "sell to profit-hungry buyer's and ditch" and keeping a company forever.

Sometimes people just want to do something different with their time after running their business for a long time and a PE deal is the easiest and most structured way of doing that.

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