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Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

variety.com

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Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

#221

Post by vintermann »

loudtieblahblah wrote: post #106
skyfaller wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been buying more mainstream artists (who aren't on Bandcamp) from 7digital: https://us.7digital.com/ That said, I didn't spend nearly as much money there because Bandcamp showed a lot more evidence that they cared about ethics and getting money directly to artists. I have no idea how money works with something like 7digital, but I assume it doesn't pay artists as well.

7digital has really gone down hill in the last 2 years. They haven't updated their front page in forever and when they do its very slight. All the albums listed on the front page are from 2019. Albums disappear all the time and never return, your downloads from your library break when that happens too. So be like me, download immediately and back it up. I still use 7digital bc it's easier to actually download the mp3…

Yes, my impression is that 7digital does the absolute minimum. This is the case with basically all streaming services that try to compete with Spotify. I've tried all the big ones except Tidal, which has its own problems for which I refuse to touch it.

Want an example? Here's Deezer:

https://www.deezer.com/search/%22Arrows%20in%20the%20Gale%22...

Here's 7digital:

https://no.7digital.com/search?q=Arrows%20in%20the%20Gale

I probably can't post more links without getting auto-hidden by HN, but just try the search elsewhere too. Also try the album titles "Fresh Fruit", "I'm Looking for an Angel", "Day Dawn" or "My Car Sounds".

That is one spammer. He releases 300+ albums at once, several times per months, to virtually all streaming services. They all have the same title, and the same generic album art, often a filtered stock image. They're officially "compilation albums". He has been doing this for about a decade as far as I can tell. He uses a different made-up label each time. If you blindly search up any song by one of the classic artists he targets, likely you will get one of his "compilations", and he will get money for every play.

But Spotify is different. Those Echo Nest people have a special hatred of spammers, they kicked him out ages ago.

Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

#223

Post by pketh »

Invictus0 wrote: post #188
BaseballPhysics wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And yet so many modern day startups have no viable exit strategy beyond acquisition Bandcamp was already profitable and has been for years. The pandemic dramatically increased their sales. They were doing fine. Why did they need an exit ? That is the real flaw of SV thinking: that simply being a profitable, going concern is somehow inadequate. The result is monopoly accretion as small companies are repeatedly swall…

SV is not a homogeneous thought-entity. Maybe the founders were tired of running it or wanted to move on to do something else. Businesses get bought and sold all the time and don't need to be a lifetime commitment for the founder (it would still get sold or shutdown at that point anyway).

You make a good point, but I wonder what the real world business equivalent of this is? Is it the destiny of every successful café to become acquired by Starbucks one day? (assuming there's not a better comparison I should be thinking of)

Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

#224

Post by basisword »

dang wrote: post #152
NAR8789 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Thanks for explaining this. When I noticed the URL change I was surprised but this makes sense. It would be great if we could pin the original source link as the top comment though. Frustratingly Variety doesn’t seem to link to it anywhere in their article and it’s nice to have the official release along with the commentary.

Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

#225

Post by H1Supreme »

QuikAccount wrote: post #60

Everyone here is really gloom and doom about this news but as much as I love Bandcamp, they have made some decisions that really made me not want to use the platform. For example, if an artist releases a free song as part of an album, it is not possible to add that song to your library without purchasing the whole album. This makes no sense when I only like and want to purchase say 2 or 3 songs off the album. This al…

That's not Bandcamp's fault. Whoever listed the album configured it that way. There are settings for artists (or labels or whoever) to allow people to purchase single songs, or require that they buy the entire album.

I've bought plenty of single tracks from albums. A few of them as recently as this past weekend.

Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

#226

Post by johnnyanmac »

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.)

Historically, Epic's aquisitions are given freedom to do whatever they were doing beforehand, so I wouldn't be worried. Quixel now just gives out tons of free materials and assets, Sketchfab is untouched, Artstation forums don't behave any differently, Hypersense's tech was likely leveraged and used in Metahuman.

People concerned over the "Exclusivity deals" on the game store end aren't looking at the "Developer" acquisitions which have rarely lead to the kinds of ends that, say, Google's Aquisitions have.

Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

#227

Post by posterboy »

mkr-hn wrote: post #78
vibemasterxl wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If so, did those people not build (and thus own) this platform? Is it not their right to sell it to others? I am not asking this so much to challenge your statement, as I agree that it's darker, but to demonstrate that clearly the platform delivered value to music consumers like myself, and perhaps we as music consumers should be willing to compensate the folks who build "glue" like Bandcamp more in order to provide…

If Bandcamp saw people who bought music on Bandcamp as consumers, then Bandcamp didn't understand the people who used it, and this might be for the best.

Conversely, if Sweeney saw users as participants, for lack of a better word, this might be for ... the good?

For whatever you have in mind, the question was basically whether you see the users as the owners. I thought it is a misleading question because it is riffing on a legal notion of property and possession, without clearly characterising that property, leaving open any illegal aspect to be pointed out if that was your moral basis of the argument. And indeed, one could attempt a hyperbolic retort in which it should be definitely illegal, say, to change a running system. Or how is leninist marxism for a debatable mindset. Understandably you have rejected that debate. Of course the users are an integral part of the platform, and it's a consequential facet of the culture that some are already feeling sold-out.

Eventually it's kind of subjective, when everyone values the entity differently.

Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

#228

Post by chris11 »

BaseballPhysics wrote: post #168
Apocryphon wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> And yet so many modern day startups have no viable exit strategy beyond acquisition Bandcamp was already profitable and has been for years. The pandemic dramatically increased their sales. They were doing fine. Why did they need an exit ? That is the real flaw of SV thinking: that simply being a profitable, going concern is somehow inadequate. The result is monopoly accretion as small companies are repeatedly swall…

Did bandcamp raise a lot of money from venture capital? The last round listed on crunchbase was a series A in 2010. It looks like management were fine running it more like a lifestyle business.

Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

#229

Post by bduerst »

posterboy wrote: post #177
bduerst wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this is just Epic blurring the lines between video games and music content as it moves to become more of a media company. It's also an easy way to to procure licensing to sell music content in games. I'd be interested to know why they passed up others like SoundCloud.

How would it make licensing easier? As for SoundCloud, either they didn't come to terms for whatever reason, or they didn't try to begin with if marketing considerations favor BP.

>How would it make licensing easier?

If you have a platform that artists allow purchasing of their music through, you can extend it to allow customers to sell/license songs in their games (developer) or buy snippets of song in Fortnite (gamer).

Sound Cloud would achieve these features too, and I am certain they considered more than just Bandcamp, as well as kept everyone under NDA during the shopping around.

Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

#230

Post by ribosometronome »

pketh wrote: post #223
Invictus0 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SV is not a homogeneous thought-entity. Maybe the founders were tired of running it or wanted to move on to do something else. Businesses get bought and sold all the time and don't need to be a lifetime commitment for the founder (it would still get sold or shutdown at that point anyway).

You make a good point, but I wonder what the real world business equivalent of this is? Is it the destiny of every successful café to become acquired by Starbucks one day? (assuming there's not a better comparison I should be thinking of)

Successful restaurants, bars, etc do change owners from time to time as owners retire or simply want a change of pace. I imagine the difference is the amount of money involved. It's possible for an individual to save up several hundred thousand to a million to buy an existing, profitable small business. Less so the hundreds of millions to billion+ a business like this might go for.
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