Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

621–630 of 640 posts

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#621

Post by JohnFen »

winternett wrote: post #601
JohnFen wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regardless of how good high bitrate MP3s can technically be, my experience with MP3s has been poor. I can't remember the last time I got one that was of good enough sound quality that it didn't annoy me to listen to it. That's why I go with lossless encodings. They aren't a guarantee of good sound quality, but the odds of them being so are much, much higher. Personally, I don't actually care about whether or not FLAC…

I understand. I think the reason why they charge more for lossless is the additional bandwidth required to download them. Cloud host providers charge based on bandwidth, so they pass that cost on to buyers. I do know 320k VBR is usually undesireable, sometimes converting a 320k Mp3 back to WAV can cure some problems with frequency loss and artifacts... I don't know the specific answer to your dilemma, as flac formatt…

I have no actual dilemma. Bandcamp is still good, and there's a chance that they will remain so. If they go away/get bad, that's just the loss of one source of high-quality music. There are others -- even if I'm only left with physical CDs.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#622

Post by JohnFen »

vonjuice wrote: post #608
JohnFen wrote: post #587

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an interesting point, actually. I rarely play music in the background when I'm doing other things -- but I listen to a lot of music. When I do, I put an album on and listen to it with my full attention. In other words, I listen to music like other people watch movies. It was only in the last few years that I learned that I was unusual in this.

That's how truly good albums shine, specially if you do it in the dark, you can travel to different worlds :) But yeah most people don't have the patience. Can I safely assume that you also listen to some albums multiple times to get to know them? If so I'd like to know which are some of your favorites.

> Can I safely assume that you also listen to some albums multiple times to get to know them?

Absolutely yes. Like with good books and movies, you can't really appreciate music fully on a single listen. And a lot of music reveals wonders only after you've become very familiar with it.

Also, with some of my favorite artists (Kate Bush comes immediately to mind, but she's not the only one), I often dislike their music on first listen. It's only after sitting with it a few times that I fall in love with it.

It would take too long to list my favorites, but here's what I've been listening to over the past week: Martina DaSilva, Oriana Curls, Yello, Frank Zappa, early Pink Floyd, miscellaneous Venezuelan salsa bands.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#623

Post by vonjuice »

JohnFen wrote: post #622
vonjuice wrote: post #608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how truly good albums shine, specially if you do it in the dark, you can travel to different worlds :) But yeah most people don't have the patience. Can I safely assume that you also listen to some albums multiple times to get to know them? If so I'd like to know which are some of your favorites.

> Can I safely assume that you also listen to some albums multiple times to get to know them? Absolutely yes. Like with good books and movies, you can't really appreciate music fully on a single listen. And a lot of music reveals wonders only after you've become very familiar with it. Also, with some of my favorite artists (Kate Bush comes immediately to mind, but she's not the only one), I often dislike their music…

I once went to a "blind concert" (basically a pitch black theater) where they played Atom Heart Mother, I didn't know that album but I was a big PF fan, and it was a wonderful experience.

> Venezuelan salsa bands

Like Zeta?

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#624

Post by npteljes »

jbaber wrote: post #402
npteljes wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While not automatic, YouTube Music can do this. You can basically upload your own music. Create playlists that mix yt songs and songs in your collection. You can upload on one machine, and access the uploaded song from anywhere, so you're basically using their cloud.

Wait, really? Won't I get accused of pirating my CDs? Is it officially okay to rip my CDs to a cloud provider?

I can tell you that I wasn't accused, but that it's also for private consumption only, no way to share the songs, so they might not be that strict. No idea though. You can read about the feature here: https://support.google.com/youtubemusic/answer/9716522

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#625

Post by chimeracoder »

accrual wrote: post #7
chimeracoder wrote: post #2

Bandcamp voted to unionize in March, although they are still fighting for recognition, as Epic has refused to recognize it so far (last I checked). I wonder who involved in that was affected by the layoffs.

I too wonder how this will affect the platform. I've always been a fan of how Bandcamp was operated in the past (access to high quality lossless audio, directly support the artist, nice app, etc). This was interesting: > Bandcamp United is looking forward to bargaining with Songtradr in the near future regarding wages, working conditions, and benefits. It’s our hope that Songtradr honors our existing progress (includ…

> I too wonder how this will affect the platform.

It turns out that all Bandcamp United members were laid off. https://www.404media.co/bandcamps-entire-union-bargaining-te...

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#626

Post by satvikpendem »

iainctduncan wrote: post #592
smcg wrote: post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wonder if it's also simply selection bias, they only see the failures, because the successes are invisible. I know some tradespeople who set up their own practices and sold it to PE, and the practices are running similarly as before.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#627

Post by simpaticoder »

jemmyw wrote: post #619
simpaticoder wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't really get why it matters. Support, experience, control. Physical media supports the artist. When you play a physical album you experience the whole album. When you own an album you control it and it cannot be taken away, edited or lost. Streaming doesn't support the artist. Streaming obliterates coherence of albums. When you stream music you do not control it and it can be taken away, edited or lost withou…

There's a few albums I love listening to all the way through every time. But for the most part I want to listen to the songs I like. I think about all the times I've found one song that really moves me on an album I don't care for, your suggestion is kind of like "well you should miss out on those gems". Physical media doesn't support the artist much better either, that's been a topic of conversation since I was a ki…

>our suggestion is kind of like "well you should miss out on those gems"

No, I'm the same way. Sometimes an album only has 1 good song; other times an album is great but I can't stand 1 or 2 songs. The important thing is that I listened to the whole album! I'm judging the songs in the context of their creators. I'm experiencing them together and in order, and that's a very different experience than interleaving songs. Interleaving is fine and can be an artform in itself (we used to call it a "mix tape") but I believe you owe it to the artist to listen to the thing they made in its entirety. It would be like reading a book collection interleaving the chapters. It's not fair to you or the authors.

That's how I feel about it. You ARE missing something.

>Physical media doesn't support the artist much better either, that's been a topic of conversation since I was a kid.

I have many musician friends, and they would ALL disagree with you quite strenuously. The money they make on streaming is ~0. The money they make selling CDs is almost all profit - and it's also the thing they made instead of sliced and diced and mixed with other things other people made.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#628

Post by sitkack »

heleninboodler wrote: post #577
sitkack wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then sell it to the employees who have a vested interest in maintaining it.

You're expecting a group of startup employees holding illiquid stock to come up with the cash necessary to buy the finders out on a company that could otherwise sell for (apparently) $273 million?

Sure, depends on how you structure it.

They had what, 400 employees, so 675k per employee.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#629

Post by JohnFen »

vonjuice wrote: post #623
JohnFen wrote: post #622

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can I safely assume that you also listen to some albums multiple times to get to know them? Absolutely yes. Like with good books and movies, you can't really appreciate music fully on a single listen. And a lot of music reveals wonders only after you've become very familiar with it. Also, with some of my favorite artists (Kate Bush comes immediately to mind, but she's not the only one), I often dislike their music…

I once went to a "blind concert" (basically a pitch black theater) where they played Atom Heart Mother, I didn't know that album but I was a big PF fan, and it was a wonderful experience. > Venezuelan salsa bands Like Zeta?

Atom Heart Mother is a wonderful piece of work. The albums I've listened to in the last week were Obscured by Clouds and Meddle.

> Like Zeta?

I'm actually new to the genre and still finding my way by listening to single songs from different groups to figure out the ones that appeal to me the most (that's why I didn't name a specific band). I hadn't come across Zeta, but they look like the right sort of thing. I'll check them out. Thanks!

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#630

Post by JohnFen »

thirdsun wrote: post #548
hondo77 wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have my music download stores set to give me ALAC so that's a normal store for me. :-)

To be fair it really doesn't matter since it's quite easy to convert between lossless files. I prefer ALAC too since I use iOS devices. However let's not pretend that Apple supporting FLAC wouldn't make things easier.

Bandcamp provides ALAC as one of their format options, too.
Post reply on HN