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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

#591

Post by PhasmaFelis »

dewey wrote: post #540
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Sure. But (assuming you'd reached sustainable profitability, as BandCamp reportedly had) you can choose whether you sell to someone who intends to maintain what you've built, or someone who you know will suck it dry for short-term profits.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#592

Post by iainctduncan »

smcg wrote: post #580
iainctduncan wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting little aside for those reacting to the fact that it's PE who pay our bills. While the world of vampire PE certainly exists, most of the time the clients I interact with are genuinely concerned with how to make the business better. And we are far more frequently telling acquirers to spend top dollar on new hires than advising on who to cut! The expectation is that the company needs investment , and that th…

Any "profitably" run PE company is being sold for parts and its wiring is being stripped. Good job being better than a charlatan startup. Your employer provides nothing of value to society.

This is just completely and laughably wrong. You have no idea how many companies are now owned by PE, and the vast majority of them are run as solid, sensible businesses for five years and then sold again. You have bought into some caricature of what the PE world means.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#593

Post by JohnFen »

zztop44 wrote: post #558
JohnFen wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

That's exactly what I was saying, yes. Bandcamp, however, is right up my alley.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#594

Post by JohnFen »

nomel wrote: post #500
JohnFen wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> have that well-covered. Could you share your secrets?

No secrets. I get recommendations from my friends, I keep track of what musicians/producers/etc. were involved in producing music that I love, and seek out what other works they were involved in, etc. I pay attention to incidental music I come across and pursue it.

I've been doing this for decades and as a result, I have a very eclectic collection that covers almost all genres. This approach may not work for everyone, but it works very well for me.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#595

Post by troyvit »

phatfish wrote: post #198
nkozyra wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say you're very much in the minority then. Spotify is notorious for its weak recommendation system.

I listen to music a lot, but never got algorithmic recommendation systems. It just seems too soulless. Personally i still listen to the radio (streamed online obviously), in the UK NTS Radio (nts.live) and Rinse FM (rinse.fm) are good. Very few adverts, NTS is pretty much listener funded, not sure what Rinse do as I rarely hear ads. The shows get archived on SoundCloud so you can ID tracks and find them on Spotify la…

I would also add dandelionradio.com. All their streaming shows are uploaded to mixcloud. I'm a little worried though because their DJs always point to their artists' bandcamp pages to help you find the music.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#596

Post by reactordev »

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.

I’m afraid if bandcamp doesn’t address discovery and SoundCloud doesn’t either then you’re referring to the “shuffle-radio” where you discover new music without doing anything? This is how Brooks Jefferson got to 60m listens in the first place. “Sounds like Garth Brooks!” Because it’s his songs sang by a wedding singer.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#597

Post by alickz »

gizmo wrote: post #240
amrocha wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you on not wanting to fuck the users over either. Personally I don't want to do that. But the reality is, I have other things I need in life too, and those things require money. My dad is working into his 70s, what if I could fund his retirement? What if I could pay for my brothers uni? Or for my grandma's nurse? When our basic necessities are not secure, we can't always make the ethical choice. Until th…

Literally everybody has family members who could use extra money. If having family absolves you from ethical constraints we can dispense with the notion of ethics altogether.

I don't think selling your company is unethical

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#598

Post by paulddraper »

user_named wrote: post #484
bgroat wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A founder friend confided in me years ago, "It is MUCH easier to raise more money than it is to fire someone... I just keep raising and hiring and eventually everything will get done" No surprise that this approach was very much a "Low-Rates Phenomenon"

Why is it hard to fire? I thought it's super easy in the US.

Legally yes.

Morale-wise no.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#599

Post by mcrwfrd »

zztop44 wrote: post #290
mhitza wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure who's getting laid off, but for me in the past the Bandcamp Weekly show was the one that gave me opportunities to explore new genres and artists. I think their shows have a positive impact towards the platforms, buyers, and artists.

Agreed. It’s one of the best music shows out there. Selfishly I hope Andrew Jervis wasn’t laid off but realistically it’s hard to imagine everything continuing as before with 50% of the company gone.

100% really hope Andrew Jervis is able to keep his show going. So much of the music that I keep coming back to is music that I discovered through his show!

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#600

Post by 60secs »

iainctduncan wrote: post #586
60secs wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bandcamp was profitable. Clearly songtradr thinks they can be more profitable. Assuming average comp of $100k x 60 employees x 1.3 for taxes and additional expenses thats about $7.8MM revenue. Songtradr just did a series D in 2021 for $50MM and recently acquired 7Digital for $23.4MM. I couldn't find a statement on how much it cost to acquire bandcamp, but it seems this might be motivated by Songtradr being cash poor…

Interesting, thanks for posting. So what could also be going on is "synergies" as they call them. It is quite possible that Songtradr has staff/functions that they think they can share across the acquisition. This happens a lot when a portco (what Songtradr is to whoever owns them) buys an adjacent company. Of course it's also possible that that it's specific places (i.e. the content) that are being gutted as they ar…

> You are throwing your employees to the wolves when you do that. Once you've sold, the decisions are now ultimately made by a new entity with new priorities (for better or for worse).

At its heart, tech is adapting to change and uncertainty through the fusion of creativity and process. Job changes are just another input.

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