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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

#191

Post by JohnFen »

dylan604 wrote: post #55
diggan wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I use Bandcamp a lot. Same here. I wasn't even aware Bandcamp had articles! But I basically just navigate to specific labels/artists/albums, buy what I need and resync my local backup of my collection.

I'm not a bandcamp user, so maybe this is an obvious question, but if bandcamp were to shutter operations, would the files in your local backup still be usable by you?

I've purchased thousands of dollars of music through Bandcamp, and every purchase is a FLAC file I download. Bandcamp has no control of or connection to the music I've purchaed after the download is complete.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#192

Post by gizmo »

constantly wrote: post #84
gizmo wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cheaters think everybody cheats when given the opportunity. Thieves believe only fear of the law is what keeps the masses in line. Liars believe lying is normal and that they’re only embellishing anyway and really it’s for the greater good and also pragmatic and necessary to succeed. There are many people who would not f their users and employees over when given the opportunity. Be like that.

Well, first of all, it’s transactional. I have no particular affinity for any given service I use. If another service comes along that has enough upside to overcome the momentum of switching, I’ll definitely do it, and I’m sure you would too, and maybe that will annoy the company. That goes the same for the company; if they have a chance to cash out, I’m sure they’d take it. And maybe that will annoy me. But the bigg…

"It's just transactional"

"I don't owe anybody anything"

"You're just naive"

These are the rationalizations used to justify antisocial behavior. It's nihilistic and destructive to society.

I've heard people espouse this kind of logic even when talking about employees who have worked for them for 20 years. They exchanged labor for pay and therefore nobody owes anybody anything. Yeah, right.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#193

Post by petre »

freeone3000 wrote: post #147
callalex wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just calling someone dumb isn’t constructive. Instead tell them what you think Bandcamp had to offer.

Bandcamp let me pay a musician for a song, regardless of how unknown or unpopular a band was. You’re three dudes in your mid-thirties playing open mic night and passing a hat around, and definitely cannot afford to get on Spotify or Youtube Music, but you can get on bandcamp and a few people can pay $5 for a song they liked when they were tipsy.

Also YT Music quality is shit. I bought a new pair of headphones and though they were defective until I played some songs encoded by yours truly as opus files.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#195

Post by tomphoolery »

nomel wrote: post #73
biorach wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> i only go there to buy music if I have a direct link. > Bandcamp doesn't even allow YouTube video embedding for music videos, which is a huge mistake alone. > Music platforms should be heavily promoting any independent artist that pays them a monthly fee... They seem to think that monthly subscription money form hard working artists is simply for extra file storage above free accounts. You haven't really understood…

This is exactly why I have Spotify rather than bandcamp. It finds music I like, regardless of musician effort. I found more new musicians in the first year of Spotify than decades before. It’s a loss for everyone if good music goes unheard.

> It finds music I like, regardless of musician effort.

This isn't really true...musicians must put forth a ton of effort just to be part of the songs that are recommended to you. Spotify favors and rewards those who promote their music on other platforms, since it scours the web for articles mentioning your name and people posting about you on social media in order to determine how far up in the "rankings" you should be when someone asks for a similar sounding song.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#196

Post by heleninboodler »

drcongo wrote: post #99
constantly wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, first of all, it’s transactional. I have no particular affinity for any given service I use. If another service comes along that has enough upside to overcome the momentum of switching, I’ll definitely do it, and I’m sure you would too, and maybe that will annoy the company. That goes the same for the company; if they have a chance to cash out, I’m sure they’d take it. And maybe that will annoy me. But the bigg…

I'm a Bandcamp user, the sale to Epic fucked me over.

Like the sibling comment, I'd honestly be interested in hearing how they fucked you over. I know the whole "we will keep running it just like it's always been" trope is very hard to swallow, but it seems to me they actually had left it alone thus far. Am I wrong about that?

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#197

Post by dzhiurgis »

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…

> Most people these days want to stream, not to buy and download

To each their own. For me Soundcloud wins hands down because of social network effect and gets me continuous stream of mixes. I really don't care what was the authors journey to releasing an album. A lot of music soon going to be generated anyway.

I really despise Apple Music for its album centric view and lack of good playlists. Spotify is somewhere in the middle.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#198

Post by phatfish »

nkozyra wrote: post #80
nomel wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly why I have Spotify rather than bandcamp. It finds music I like, regardless of musician effort. I found more new musicians in the first year of Spotify than decades before. It’s a loss for everyone if good music goes unheard.

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 later if they were that good.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#199

Post by piperswe »

dylan604 wrote: post #103
piperswe wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the Bandcamp files are fully DRM-free. You can download the music in just about any DRM-free format, I always go with FLAC. The FLAC files are exactly the same as any other FLAC file, just losslessly compressed samples.

Maybe I should pay attention in case Bandcamp continues to stumble, and take advantage of any fire sales to which that might lead.

Bandcamp doesn't really have any say in pricing, that's all up to the artists/labels.

Re: About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off

#200

Post by heleninboodler »

willsmith72 wrote: post #89
amrocha wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a hypothetical scenario: - You're running the successor to Bandcamp - You're making good money, employ a couple staff - Epic comes to you offering millions to buy your business The rational choice is to sell. Would you choose the stress of running a sustainable business over the payout? I know I wouldn't. There's no indication afaik that Bandcamp was in financial trouble before they got acquired. This is inevi…

It's not at all as simple as a "rational choice". It completely depends on your objective. Why did you start the business in the first place? If it was to make a few mill and never have to work again, sure, sell. If you wanted to build something bigger than yourself, work with great people, feel accomplished, then why sell? How is that few mill going to get you those things? A lot of founders regret their first sale…

> If you wanted to build something bigger than yourself, work with great people, feel accomplished, then why sell? How is that few mill going to get you those things?

It's possible that the founders felt they had accomplished this, and after spending 15 (?) years running it, were ready to move onto something else. I've sure as hell never stayed at the same job for 15 years. I'd go nuts.

They may have also felt some obligation to early investors, often who are friends and family or early employees, to get them a nice return.

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