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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

#551

Post by efitz »

nluken wrote: post #453
iainctduncan wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

> Bandcamp has been successful because of the trust they have within the internet music community.

Hahaha I don’t think that they have as glowing reputation as you think. I’ve heard creators complaining about lack of transparency, lack of communication, poor customer service, arbitrary decision making with no reason given, etc.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#552

Post by mattkevan »

nomel wrote: post #498
waveBidder wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there's this neat website/app called bandcamp, you may have heard of it somewhere. it asks you to occasionally buy albums, rather than pay a fixed fee.

> trying to find music that I like to listen to As mentioned, my problem, as a listener, is discovery, which bandcamp doesn't address.

As a listener, Bandcamp is my favourite place for discovery bar none. Find a genre or label and start exploring the catalogue. Find other users with similar tastes and explore their lists. Follow artists, labels and users to see their activity stream.

It's not as passive as just hitting play on a playlist, but I've discovered so many incredible artists and labels this way. I'd be genuinely devastated if Bandcamp goes away.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#553

Post by thirdsun »

jemmyw wrote: post #531
simpaticoder wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

Prepare for your music to disappear at any point. Licensing deals end and albums you love are suddenly removed from platforms. I understand that's an acceptable trade off for a casual listener. I actually use Spotify for previewing albums and consider it great value.

However any music I care about I buy as I plan to own my library for decades to come.

Plus, you're missing out on a lot of great music that never has been available on streaming platforms.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#554

Post by thirdsun »

nomel wrote: post #498
waveBidder wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there's this neat website/app called bandcamp, you may have heard of it somewhere. it asks you to occasionally buy albums, rather than pay a fixed fee.

> trying to find music that I like to listen to As mentioned, my problem, as a listener, is discovery, which bandcamp doesn't address.

NTS Radio, Rate Your Music or Discogs should be great, deep rabbit holes that lead to new and interesting discoveries.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#555

Post by thirdsun »

callalex wrote: post #118
chunk_waffle wrote: post #110

Anyone have some good alternatives for downloading loseless and DRM free music from artists? For Japanese artist I use ototoy.jp but that's a small subset of my library. Guess I better get what's on my wish list while I can!

The iTunes Store never went away and fits your description.

iTunes doesn't sell lossless music. You can stream lossless music with Apple Music but you can't buy it.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#556

Post by COM2323 »

nomel wrote: post #73
biorach wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> i only go there to buy music if I have a direct link. > Bandcamp doesn't even allow YouTube video embedding for music videos, which is a huge mistake alone. > Music platforms should be heavily promoting any independent artist that pays them a monthly fee... They seem to think that monthly subscription money form hard working artists is simply for extra file storage above free accounts. You haven't really understood…

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.

It probably depends on music genre, but Bandcamp hosts a ton of music that's not available anywhere else. Spotify is great for popular music, but a lot of small/niche artists have presence only on Bandcamp, both digital and physical. Pretty much all of my vaporwave/futurefunk/synthwave vinyl records are from Bandcamp.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#557

Post by crtasm »

jjulius wrote: post #488
derefr wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm talking about what you get without having to sign in. Even with free albums, IIRC you can't fully preview the song without "buying" it, which means signing in first. The signed-in experience is mostly akin to the signed-in experience of the iTunes Store. It's what you get when not signed in that's unique.

>Even with free albums, IIRC you can't fully preview the song without "buying" it, which means signing in first. Actually, you can! Fun fact, unless an artist/label has explicitly limited what you can listen to without having made a purchase, you can listen to most of the music on Bandcamp in full, without buying it, an unlimited number of times if you're not logged in. The way it works is that, if you're logged in,…

It's the same when not logged in, the playcount is stored in cookies yes.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#558

Post by zztop44 »

JohnFen wrote: post #387
mcsniff wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you re-frame Spotify as a way to discover music, it's not worthless. Feel free to use Spotify to find artists and give them money however you want. Also, nobody is stopping you from spending your time finding new music and giving money as directly as possible to the artist. Spotify can be seen as a way to increase your exposure to new music, and for that it might be worth the $XX/month to many people, the ability…

> If you re-frame Spotify as a way to discover music, it's not worthless. It is to me, though. I don't need another way to discover music. I have that well-covered. And by "buy music", I wasn't referring to a way to pay artists (that would be a followup question if I didn't already know that part). I mean, can I download the music in a high-quality, open-standard, format? I thought Spotify only did streaming, and I a…

Sounds like you’re not in Spotify’s market if you don’t want to stream and you don’t care about discovery. It’s probably not the right service for you.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#559

Post by mbesto »

nluken wrote: post #453
iainctduncan wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

I work with the parent commenter above and have overseen 500+ tech diligence projects. We get to see a whole company's tech operations, so our views aren't necessarily just "consultant in a suit".

> 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.

And your comment reads like a typical HN armchair technologist.

> It’s not a very complicated product,

Yup, here we go. Classic "I could build this in a week".

>and it’s why most folks absolutely abhor private equity.

Actually it's not. Much of PE is what is driving people to start companies, because it provides a reliable exit path. I know many tech founders who are grateful PE exists, otherwise they would not have the capital available to them to grow their companies. People typically abhor large cap PE which focus on financial engineering. Many growth PE firms (the ones the parent and I usually work with) are value focused, which means focusing on profits (EBITDA) and growth.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#560

Post by mst »

efitz wrote: post #551
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…

> Bandcamp has been successful because of the trust they have within the internet music community. Hahaha I don’t think that they have as glowing reputation as you think. I’ve heard creators complaining about lack of transparency, lack of communication, poor customer service, arbitrary decision making with no reason given, etc.

Those two things aren't mutually exclusive.

They could be trusted by a bunch of people to probably screw things up less than alternatives and to at least be -trying- to care about the community, while still having made more than enough mistakes to generate a bunch of justifiably unhappy people.

Think about how e.g. your favourite hosting provider nonetheless has a bunch of unhappy ex-customers.

(I'm not asserting what -is- the case here, mind, just trying to flag up a part of the possibility space that I've seen quite a few times over the years)

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