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Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

variety.com

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Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

#151

Post by duped »

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…

Some people put a 17.5kHz low pass and high pass at 20Hz on the master. It's dumb and you have very few reasons to do it, but people still do it and keep it as default settings in "mastering chains" that get passed around and dropped on random tracks.

So you can't be sure if you're looking at a reencoding or a lossy file or not.

Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

#152

Post by dang »

NAR8789 wrote: post #113
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.

It's because corporate press releases are so lame [1]. They don't give relevant background, they're saturated with dystopian smarm ("Since our founding in 2008, we’ve been motivated by the pursuit of our mission"), and they're ultimately all about spin. I don't mean to pick on particular cases—it's across the board. You'd think the smarter people at some of these companies would realize how well they'd stand out by not writing that way, but that's surprisingly rare.

You're right to reference HN's 'original source' rule ("Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), because this is an exception to it. The reason we have exceptions is that there's a higher organizing principle on HN, namely that we're trying to optimize the site for curiosity [2]. Optimizing means that when there's a conflict between that rule and any other rule, the curiosity rule wins.

Funnily enough the curiosity rule is an instance of itself because it often produces decisions that are counterintuitive, yet at the same time are surprisingly clear. This case is one of the clear ones—it's obvious that corporate press releases don't serve curiosity, and in fact they're largely intended to smooth away anything that people would be curious about.

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

#153

Post by antris »

danShumway wrote: post #127

Was Bandcamp draining money or something? Were they not profitable? I hate this. Why does everything need to roll up into other companies. I don't want anything Epic is bringing to the table, and every interaction they've had with open platforms as a business has been negative as far as I can see. I hate how much consolidation is going on right now.

Welcome to capitalism

Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

#154

Post by mdoms »

AlexandrB wrote: post #110
mdoms wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Epic Founder and CEO Tim Sweeney has addressed this a number of times and so far given no reason to doubt it, > I’m the controlling shareholder in Epic Games, and have been since 1991. We have a number of outside investors now. Tencent is the largest. All of Epic’s investors our friends and partners. None can dictate decisions to Epic. None have access to Epic customer data. > Tencent is a Chinese company founded in…

I think it's naive to think that the opinion of a 40% shareholder has no influence on the CEO. Even if that just presents as a bias in their decision making. > Although I completely agree with you that it's a shame to see yet another indie source get swallowed up by a big corporation. For the record, I don't think that Tencent is any more evil than Disney, Sony, or Microsoft in this regard.

> I think it's naive to think that the opinion of a 40% shareholder has no influence on the CEO. Even if that just presents as a bias in their decision making.

I'm more than willing to accept that I'm being naive. All I ask is some actual evidence of this influence/bias.

Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

#156

Post by maldusiecle »

siver_john wrote: post #22

This feels like a major blow, as someone who just semi recently (probably around pandemic start) started getting into purchasing flac music from indie artists, Bandcamp was a great source of music. I understand nothing will change in the short term, but long term I am very concerned. Especially as streaming becomes more dominant and companies are less willing to provide flac based music and physical discs (where I ca…

Boomkat is also good, different selection than Bandcamp but comparable in size (they definitely have some Japanese stuff that Bandcamp doesn't, e.g. Tzadik's Japanese music line).

Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

#157

Post by notesinthefield »

devmunchies wrote: post #43

The technical co-founder (Joe H.) left at the beginning of the year, went to Disney Imagineering. He has had a very impressive career (was an engineering manager at Apple in the 90s).

This explains the slew of bug ridden releases they were radio silent about this past month. A shame.

Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

#158

Post by kingcharles »

skyfaller wrote: post #107
kingcharles wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a Twitter account I can't find right now (help!) which shows the statements companies put out at the moment of acquisition ("nothing will change, ever, we'll always be independent") and the statements they put out a couple of months later ("all your files have been deleted, we've closed the offices, everyone is absorbed into Parent Company, so long and thanks for all the fish").

Do you mean the "Our Incredible Journey" Tumblr? https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/

No wonder I couldn't find it anywhere in my Twitter history... thank you, you saved me going mad (for now).

Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

#159

Post by GeekyBear »

>“Fair and open platforms are critical to the future of the creator economy,” Epic Games, best known as the company behind battle-royale game “Fortnite,” said in announcing the pact.

So how do 3D artists go about designing and selling skins to Fortnight players without giving Epic a cut?

Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

#160

Post by Apocryphon »

zippergz wrote: post #40
siver_john wrote: post #22

This feels like a major blow, as someone who just semi recently (probably around pandemic start) started getting into purchasing flac music from indie artists, Bandcamp was a great source of music. I understand nothing will change in the short term, but long term I am very concerned. Especially as streaming becomes more dominant and companies are less willing to provide flac based music and physical discs (where I ca…

"Nothing will change in the short term" is the story of every acquisition, almost all of which end up with major changes for the worse at some point. (So yes, I agree with you.)

And yet so many modern day startups have no viable exit strategy beyond acquisition- what does that say about the state of the industry, and of founders' commitments towards building a sustainable product?
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