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Bandcamp has been sold to Songtradr. What does this mean for the musicians?

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Re: Bandcamp has been sold to Songtradr. What does this mean for the musicians?

#201

Post by deng »

vintermann wrote: post #197
thirdsun wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Another thing that has annoyed me for years is if artists release through labels: If I click on an artist, I want to see their music, not all music from the same label so that I have to painfully look through the whole catalogue to find more music from the same artist. Also, if I want to be notified for new music from that artist, I can only follow the label, so I get notified for everything they release. What kind…

Label accounts are very important for verifying authenticity on Bandcamp. It's very easy to pick up some small but niche artist that is not on Bandcamp, and upload their music pretending to be them. (It's of course very illegal, but I personally know artists this has happened to). It's harder to fake an entire label. Before you buy anything on Bandcamp, check that their label links to them, otherwise you could well b…

> It's very easy to pick up some small but niche artist that is not on Bandcamp, and upload their music pretending to be them.

Yes, quality control is something else where Bandcamp could drastically improve. New releases are riddled with questionable stuff. Blatantly copying an existing artist is one thing, but often it's popular stuff just slightly modified, usually pitched up/down with some new drum loop and then called a day. I know there's a whole artform in remixing/mashups/etc., but there's a line somewhere where it just becomes a lazy rip-off.

Re: Bandcamp has been sold to Songtradr. What does this mean for the musicians?

#202

Post by deng »

thirdsun wrote: post #171
deng wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's perfect as it is. Artist uploads music, people pay for music and download it. Don't change anything. Coudn't agree less. Listen: I love Bandcamp and buy a lot of music there. However, it could be so much better. It is far from perfect. For starters: the collection view. It's as barebones as possible, just a simple grid of stuff you bought. No way of separating albums and tracks (which is why I don't buy single…

> Another thing that has annoyed me for years is if artists release through labels: If I click on an artist, I want to see their music, not all music from the same label so that I have to painfully look through the whole catalogue to find more music from the same artist. Also, if I want to be notified for new music from that artist, I can only follow the label, so I get notified for everything they release. What kind…

Yes, I have also seen these label accounts, but somehow, I mostly end up with labels using artists accounts. I guess they don't really want to migrate because in the end, it makes the label less visible when doing so... I think it would be in Bandcamp's best interest if they would pressure labels to take this step, but maybe it has other consequences for labels I'm not aware of.

Re: Bandcamp has been sold to Songtradr. What does this mean for the musicians?

#203

Post by lazide »

AlbertCory wrote: post #145
lazide wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’d need to fix the tax code for that to work. Good luck getting that by Congress anytime soon!

For sure. "double taxation of dividends" isn't something that gets Democrats' blood racing. However, most of the HN discussion on issues like this is for things that'll never happen, so I don't see any difference.

It isn’t even that per-se. It’s treatment of dividends as income vs long term capital gains. Very, very different tax rates and degree of flexibility re: when you’d get taxed.

Re: Bandcamp has been sold to Songtradr. What does this mean for the musicians?

#204

Post by mgkimsal »

davidgerard wrote: post #21
mgkimsal wrote: post #4

> Songtradr is talking up using its licensing prowess to give opportunities to Bandcamp artists — including licensing on Epic games. So... Epic sells bandcamp, a profitable business unit, to another entity which will then sell bandcamp assets back to ... Epic. ?? And Epic's competitors. Why would Epic go out of its way to support a company that is supporting its competitors?

(author here) I'm assuming because sync rights are complicated, and Epic didn't quite realise how complicated. But Songtradr literally does rights as its main business. So this would work like Epic outsourcing it to a specialist, with an extra step. I'm still boggling that Epic thought tiny independent record labels would be good for pressuring the union to stop. Tiny labels these days tend to be set up by musicians…

Buying songtradr to complement bandcamp might have been a better option, because they could then be making revenue from any other game that licensed via songtradr. ?

Re: Bandcamp has been sold to Songtradr. What does this mean for the musicians?

#205

Post by pbronez »

vintermann wrote: post #191
hatsix wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're exactly right. Epic thought that buying a music company would let them acquire what they needed to do sync... but sync doesn't matter for Bandcamp, so it was hard for them to align. (while I work for SongTradr, I know nothing of the acquisition, so this is just speculation)

Just hypothetically, if I wrote a Minecraft mod that replaced the in-game music with music from a streaming service (to be clear, one the user would need to have a subscription for, and authorize via the streaming service's OAuth API)... How sued would I get?

Since that’s all client side, I don’t think sync rights come into it… unless you start streaming while playing the mod, in which case you have now synchronized the music to video and are in violation.

Re: Bandcamp has been sold to Songtradr. What does this mean for the musicians?

#206

Post by acdha »

foresto wrote: post #78
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's true Amazon doesn't offer lossless audio downloads, but they're very good quality, and DRM-Free. iTunes downloads are AAC, 250+ kb/s (remember this bitrate is with a more efficient codec). I'm probably opening a can of worms here, but I'm really quite skeptical more than one in a million people could tell the difference between iTunes and lossless in a blind test. Maybe drop that to one in a thousand for Amazon…

> I'm really quite skeptical more than one in a million people could tell the difference Consider that lossless is good not only for listening, but also for transcoding. For example, when you want to use a media player with limited formats, or when the inevitable future codecs become popular. (And for archival of digital source material, lossless is the only sensible option.)

AAC is one of the most widely used and implemented codecs in existence. It’s extremely unlikely that you’ll ever need to transcode it for compatibility since the only reason to do so (licensing) becomes moot over a preservation timeframe as patents expire. If you aren’t noticing technical defects in your recordings now, you’re really not going to care in 20 years - many of us will be lucky to still hear well enough!

> And for archival of digital source material, lossless is the only sensible option.

I work in digital preservation and one thing everyone is keenly aware of is the cost of storing large amounts of data. Archivists like lossless, of course, but if it’s below the level where humans can notice problems they’re often more forgiving than you might think because preserving twice as many works with the same storage budget has its own appeal. Your personal music collection is probably small enough that it fits in your personal storage slop but maybe that’s not true if you’re a huge fan or partial to high-res soundboard recordings, and if you’re archiving for a larger group you’ll start to exhaust what capacity you can get for free.

Re: Bandcamp has been sold to Songtradr. What does this mean for the musicians?

#207

Post by rchaud »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #40
Modified3019 wrote: post #20

Make sure to archive your bandcamp collection, which you can do with the following script: https://github.com/easlice/bandcamp-downloader Other downloaders only target the openly available mp3 files. I have a straightforward guide on how to get up and running on windows here: https://github.com/easlice/bandcamp-downloader/issues/21 You should always archive your collection anyways. One negative thing about bandcamp i…

> Because of their no DRM policy and full on downloads, not just streaming, Bandcamp has basically become the only place I’ll buy music outside of CDs. Just so you know, Apple and Amazon also offer DRM free music downloads. Obviously, you have to actually buy the individual song or album, not a streaming plan. In Apple's case you do need to install iTunes to get your DRM-free file (on Windows, I'm not sure what the s…

> In Apple's case you do need to install iTunes to get your DRM-free file

Another laughable requirement from the land of 'it just works'.

Bandcamp just packages the album in a simple ZIP file that can be opened anywhere, desktop or mobile.

Re: Bandcamp has been sold to Songtradr. What does this mean for the musicians?

#208

Post by Kye »

Kye wrote: post #59
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's true Amazon doesn't offer lossless audio downloads, but they're very good quality, and DRM-Free. iTunes downloads are AAC, 250+ kb/s (remember this bitrate is with a more efficient codec). I'm probably opening a can of worms here, but I'm really quite skeptical more than one in a million people could tell the difference between iTunes and lossless in a blind test. Maybe drop that to one in a thousand for Amazon…

Lossless is mainly for mixing/remixing, not listening.

It's interesting how easy miscommunication happens. I said it's mainly for one thing, not the other. I didn't say it wasn't for or never used for other purposes. People are misreading that "not the other" as though I used a period instead of a comma. Read it as "not mainly for listening" and you'll read it the way it's intended.

Carry on listening to a format most people use for purposes other than listening if that works for you. I can't stop you with a simple dependent clause. You're safe.

Re: Bandcamp has been sold to Songtradr. What does this mean for the musicians?

#209

Post by lminiero »

hatsix wrote: post #98
manicennui wrote: post #7

Ugh. I wasn't happy that Epic owned it, but they didn't seem to be doing anything to harm it yet. I don't know much about Songtradr, but I don't trust a company that is focused on licensing and not creation.

SongTradr's main business focuses on earning money for musicians. We aren't in the business of owning music and then licensing it, we're in the business of connecting musicians with companies that want music. some of it is advertising, some is YouTube/content creation, and some is for streaming ( https://pretzel.rocks , which is how I joined the company). We support the artists by finding diverse ways for them to mon…

What do you mean by "All of the artists are already on pretzel"? Do you mean all Bandcamp artists?

Re: Bandcamp has been sold to Songtradr. What does this mean for the musicians?

#210

Post by AlbertCory »

lazide wrote: post #203
AlbertCory wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For sure. "double taxation of dividends" isn't something that gets Democrats' blood racing. However, most of the HN discussion on issues like this is for things that'll never happen, so I don't see any difference.

It isn’t even that per-se. It’s treatment of dividends as income vs long term capital gains. Very, very different tax rates and degree of flexibility re: when you’d get taxed.

Right. And that leaves out that the company's already paid taxes on them.
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