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Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

variety.com

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Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

#111

Post by kevincrane »

fundamental wrote: post #93
HellDunkel wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I too would have prefered seeing bandcamp stay independent but they were a privately owned company so that would have required a huge amount of idealism (which eventually wanes) or ambitions to compete with spotify. You can‘t always get what you want.

Personally I don't buy that line of argument. The endgame for a business is not a binary choice between acquisition or taking over the entire market.

Hard agree, I really hate the trend of businesses having to have "an exit", be it IPO or get swallowed by one of like 6 behemoth companies. I love a good "we know who we are and are happy being it" success story which I thought Bandcamp was.

Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

#112

Post by lowbloodsugar »

HellDunkel wrote: post #37

Lots of disappointed comments here. Would you guys really prefer seeing bandcamp beeing bought by Apple?

I'd rather it remained independent, but if it was a choice between Apple and Epic I'd pick Apple. Of course, Apple would never buy them because they have iTunes. Since you raised the comparison, what do you think Epic is going to do? How do you think being dragged into Epic's war against Apple is going to impact Bandcamp as a service? It clearly isn't being bought so that it just continues as is (despite the promises). It's going to be used as a weapon, which means it's going to have to change. That change is likely to increase costs. Ultimately the day will come were "We are sorry that Bandcamp doesn't meet our customers' needs" [it no longer meets our needs of making enough money, because of all the shit we added] "And so we are adding new features to improve your experience" [ads, tracking, selling your data, subscriptions, increased price].

Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

#113

Post by NAR8789 »

dang wrote: post #36

Url changed from https://blog.bandcamp.com/2022/03/02/bandcamp-is-joining-epi... to what looks like the best third-party article. If someone knows a better URL, we can change it again.

Why prefer a third-party article rather than the original announcement? Presumably for neutrality? My gut instinct is to prefer the original announcement because it seems more of a primary source. How do you weight primariness vs neutrality?

I respect your long experience moderating HN, so asking mostly with the intent enrich my own intuition. Not a rhetorical question.

Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

#114

Post by efficax »

merlincorey wrote: post #66
prepend wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume it’s because Epic presented a ton of cash and a small but profitable company found it attractive. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to work for or be part of Epic, so that’s my assumption of gobs of cash.

You must have missed the recent news about Simon Peyton Jones leaving Microsoft for Epic Games[0], then. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29131996

Staff moves at that level are a lot different than your average joe, huge paychecks involved and lots of insulation from the product org

Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

#115

Post by kmfrk »

paxys wrote: post #28
g_sch wrote: post #13

I'm having a little trouble understanding the motivation for this move. Did Bandcamp have a poor revenue/profit outlook and were they looking to scale? Was this just an exit for founders? I was under the impression that they had a relatively stable and profitable business, and strongly valued their branding and positioning as independent.

Motivation for founders is a lot easier to understand than that of the acquiring company. What on earth is Epic going to do with Bandcamp?

Comedy option? The Epic Games Store will be the new iTunes.

Licensing As A Service is probably a neat thing if it can be done at scale on par with the Unreal Engine Marketplace. But a lot of it boils down to "imagine if we could make IP law straightforward" which is somewhat of a moonshot.

Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

#117

Post by HellDunkel »

fundamental wrote: post #93
HellDunkel wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I too would have prefered seeing bandcamp stay independent but they were a privately owned company so that would have required a huge amount of idealism (which eventually wanes) or ambitions to compete with spotify. You can‘t always get what you want.

Personally I don't buy that line of argument. The endgame for a business is not a binary choice between acquisition or taking over the entire market.

Dont get me wrong, I am not happy at all about this silicon valley „winner takes it all“ mindset. Let me explain how i see things. Bandcamp is for djs and indepenent music lovers. Although djing has managed to evaded streaming so far, it is almost inevitable to come. I am sure the folks at bandcamp were very clear about that and were looking to find a way to deal with the situation.

Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

#118

Post by MisterTea »

Not good in my book. I've been a huge fan and proponent of the platform since 2017 and have made over 600 purchases since. Mostly digital but also plenty of shirts, patches, an even physicals of select albums. My only gripe was the somewhat wanting android client which has just been fixed up (playlists and queuing).

I like it because its a simple and focused hub for artists and fans. The social interaction of the site fells like a perfect balance of presence and connection without any noise. You can see who purchased an album and leave an album review but unable to directly message users. User profiles are simply their collection and a 400 character bio that can contain links. Another plus is the simple web design they employ gives access to the mp3 if you scrape the album page. As a plan 9 user without a modern browser this made it easy to play the music by writing a script that scraped the album page for the mp3 links and fed those into play(1) creating a simple bandcamp player.

Epic will bring nothing good to the service.

Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

#119

Post by heleninboodler »

plainnoodles wrote: post #77

This is absurdly sad to me. I like to own my media (in the most practical sense that current IP laws let me do so). I run a Plex server and use PlexAmp as my primary way of listening to music, and my criteria are always this: * FLAC or similar, I want this to be a lossless preservation of what was on the best-available source. * No DRM. No mandated player. Just let me download a dang file. * "Real" flac: this is tech…

> Now I'm not sure what to do

I mean, why not continue doing what you are doing until the thing that you like actually goes to shit?

Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

#120

Post by slothtrop »

Absolutely terrible. It does not bode well for consumers when all the good small players sell out. I feel like this has been a worsening trend.

Someone should get started on a viable alternative. Is it possible to yield a mvp over a couple of weekends? :P

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