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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

#631

Post by bgroat »

danjac wrote: post #489
user_named wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Legally perhaps, but firing people particularly en mass is hard to do right, unless you don't care and you are just prepping for a fire sale. You can lose people who might be key contributors. You can destroy morale in the rest of the company. Everyone else knows they might be next, so they will leave first chance they get. Finally, it signals to the market you are in trouble (hence why a lot of companies are doing i…

This was the point that founder friend was making.

It's hard to look someone in the eye and say they're done

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#632

Post by user_named »

bgroat wrote: post #631
danjac wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legally perhaps, but firing people particularly en mass is hard to do right, unless you don't care and you are just prepping for a fire sale. You can lose people who might be key contributors. You can destroy morale in the rest of the company. Everyone else knows they might be next, so they will leave first chance they get. Finally, it signals to the market you are in trouble (hence why a lot of companies are doing i…

This was the point that founder friend was making. It's hard to look someone in the eye and say they're done

He mentioned several points, all different from what you said

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#633

Post by DocKitKat »

n4r9 wrote: post #524
DocKitKat wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I WANT for bandcamp to work for me. But……

For the few albums that are there sure, it works. Unfortunately the vast majority of the time there isn’t anything there. Most artists just aren’t on bandcamp. Or the artist is on there but only a subset of their albums are. Even if I started using it more, it would be so rare, as I’d need to go use Spotify or my own physical/digital collection most of the time, which means when the album ends I’m more likely to keep listening on the current platform, not think to switch back to bandcamp to see once again if the newest Metric album is suddenly there, or if any albums apart from one are there etc. Also the amount of similarly named artist/albums that are tributes or fan “sequels” or straight up just the same named artist a a little bit of friction to make search.

Bandcamp exists in an odd space where unless I’m willing to have my music choices heavily restricted it then it loses out to traditional a-la-carte purchasing of albums whether physically or on digital storefronts, or to just using a streaming service. If I was a young kid in primary school again, it would still lose out to pirating music as well I think.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#634

Post by n4r9 »

DocKitKat wrote: post #633
n4r9 wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I WANT for bandcamp to work for me. But…… For the few albums that are there sure, it works. Unfortunately the vast majority of the time there isn’t anything there. Most artists just aren’t on bandcamp. Or the artist is on there but only a subset of their albums are. Even if I started using it more, it would be so rare, as I’d need to go use Spotify or my own physical/digital collection most of the time, which means w…

That's fair! Bandcamp's model is awesome, it just doesn't have the coverage (yet?).

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#635

Post by vonjuice »

JohnFen wrote: post #629
vonjuice wrote: post #623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

Meddle is one I listened to religiously for a while. I do find that I can get obsessed and then "burnt out" with a particular album or even band. This happened to me with PF, I can still listen to them, but not with the same focus.

And that's not entirely a bad thing, because it makes me value more the (few) bands or composers who stand that test.

Salsa is wonderful to explore, in particular if you're able to find a good group to watch live :)

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#636

Post by nomel »

simpaticoder wrote: post #627
jemmyw wrote: post #619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I'm experiencing them together and in order, and that's a very different experience than interleaving songs.

I don't follow. You're free to listen to full albums, in sequence, on Spotify. You can listen to any song at any time in any order, from the album, or custom playlists. It's just a large catalog of music where you can click and play/queue anything you see, with some recommendation systems that create custom playlists you can choose to listen to.

I'm getting the impression that many people criticizing these streaming services don't understand what they actually are.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#637

Post by PhasmaFelis »

shiroiuma wrote: post #617
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a middle ground between giving a company to your kids and selling it to someone who you know will suck it dry for short-term gains. You can also give (or sell) it to someone that you know and trust to keep it sustainable.

Who? Where do you find this person? Do you have any experience in running a business and selling businesses to others? And why do people assume that the kids are going to run it well or the same way the founder did? If anything, it seems like the kids of highly successful people are usually spoiled brats, and nothing like their parents. Did Bill Gates' kids create any successful software companies?

You seem to be trying to rebut several things I didn't say.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#638

Post by btown »

btown wrote: post #233
ye-olde-sysrq wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

prior to this, bandcamp was owned by Epic and lord only knows why they bought them or what their bigger plan was. i also have no idea how much they staffed up under epic rule since they went from a small business to being owned by the fortnite money man. Entirely possible it's something like: 1. bandcamp is a sustainable normal small-to-medium business growing healthily 2. Epic has tons of fortnitebux and is feuding…

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…

Self-replying to retract the above. From https://www.404media.co/bandcamps-entire-union-bargaining-te... it seems that Songtradr leadership had explicit knowledge of the members of the union bargaining team, lied about it, and laid every single one of them off. I no longer think it likely that Songtradr is operating in good faith.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#639

Post by shiroiuma »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #637
shiroiuma wrote: post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who? Where do you find this person? Do you have any experience in running a business and selling businesses to others? And why do people assume that the kids are going to run it well or the same way the founder did? If anything, it seems like the kids of highly successful people are usually spoiled brats, and nothing like their parents. Did Bill Gates' kids create any successful software companies?

You seem to be trying to rebut several things I didn't say.

The first paragraph was a direct response to your "you can give it to someone you trust" claim.

The second paragraph wasn't related to your response, it was related to prior posts by others and just an add-on for the discussion at large (in case anyone's even still reading it, which I doubt).

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#640

Post by mortos »

shagie wrote: post #327
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…

(dig, dig, dig... where did I get that... music... found it!) http://magnatune.com (correct, there is no 's' there... that's odd in today's world) > Since 2003, we've found and recruited the very best independent musicians and shared revenue 50/50 with them. Much of our music is exclusively available here. Nobody has spent the time to curate a collection like we have. They've got some interesting licensing (as in lac…

Funny to see Magnatune mentioned, HN is probably the only place I would ever see that. You got me out of lurking as I had to share.

The founder and CEO of Magnatune is John Buckman. Per his Linkedin he is still the CEO of Magnatune, in addition to some of his other projects like BookMooch and iLicenseMusic.

Magnatune is certainly in zombie mode, as Buckman started an espresso machine company that really took off and gave him notoriety, Decent Espresso. It uses an Android tablet to control and the app he wrote is written in Tcl/Tk. It's a fascinating project and how I became familiar with him and his previous endeavors.

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