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Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

variety.com

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Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

#261

Post by BaseballPhysics »

ballenf wrote: post #240
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…

I think it's more so the result of cheap money than some way of thinking. Higher interest rates will curtail a lot of this activity. Might even see a wave of divestitures or spinoffs as companies have to look harder for sources of capital.

The need to "exit" and the obsession with "growth" that occupies the minds of SV founders significantly pre-dates the low rate environment that's dominated since 2008. The only difference is the path: IPO vs acquisition.

Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

#262

Post by johnnyanmac »

danso wrote: post #105

Maybe change of ownership won't significantly affect Bandcamp's operation, but my limited consumer-facing experience with Epic — via its game store — has given me such a bad taste that I'm not keen on using any storefront service managed by Epic. And this is despite the vast majority of my Epic game library being free (literally hundreds of games) or deeply discounted — the storefront is really that bad. For example,…

"when AWS went down a couple months ago, both the store app was non-functional. Apparently, the game store depends on S3 for game thumbnails and other metadata, and its caching is...non-optimal."

I don't see that as some kind of dealbreaker. Just an unideal choice for a consumer who may want everything to be offline and cached. The storefront is very likely some electron wrappper for their website, so I wouldn't be too surprised if their thumbnails were stored on some other server. Steam isn't too different in regards to that architecture (just not using AWS, since they preceeded that).

Games are available offline as of some year+ ago so that outage should not have affected your ability to run games.

Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

#264

Post by dang »

basisword wrote: post #224
dang wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you want to post that link as a separate comment and email hn@ycombinator.com (so I don't forget!) I'd be happy to pin it to the top.

Eventually we're going to build software for aggregating related URLs.

Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

#265

Post by inasmuch »

inasmuch wrote: post #248

This is tragic for all the many, many reasons everyone else has outlined (DRM, Tencent, etc.), but for me the biggest blow is the loss of the last commercially viable (profitable!), but independent champion of underground and truly independent music. Say all you want about the freedom and quasi-independence of self-publishing to the various streaming corporations, etc., but for years now, the underground scene has th…

If anyone wants to build an alternative/replacement/FOSS tool—whatever kind of remedy for this tragedy—I would eagerly partner up and design it (can't code well, sorry).

Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

#266

Post by mooreds »

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.)

Hmmm. I tend to agree.

Would be interesting to think of acquisitions where this wasn't the case. The only one that jumps to mind is Zappos.

Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

#267

Post by johnnyanmac »

nerdponx wrote: post #30
rorymalcolm wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren't shutting down? Bandcamp's model is so directly connected to DRM free lossless downloads it'd be an incredibly bold decision to remove it.

I wouldn't be surprised if Bandcamp shuts down entirely in the next 2-3 years, to be replaced by some limp attempt at an integrated Epic music/streaming/gaming platform.

This is Epic, not google. They've only had 2 aquisitions "shut down", both of which were game studios. One being a studio that became independent again, People Can Fly (Makers of Outriders).

From a dev perspective of someone who's worked with several Epic tools I'm not immediately worried about what seems to be more of a technical acquisition. Historically they do seem to actually leave their subsidaries hand-off, integrating their tech into Unreal instead of absorbing it entirely. I imagine the extend of the ramifications here include some way to expand Unreal's Asset store to include music or SFX (which artists can opt into offering on the asset store).

Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

#268

Post by paularmstrong »

branon wrote: post #243
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…

Consider alternatives to Plex (Jellyfin being the main competitor). With Plex, you may own the media, but Plex, Inc. owns the authentication. You're not allowed to access the service running on your own hardware unless you can log in with a Plex account. Also: losing What was indeed a massive blow, but there are others still carrying that torch...

Unfortunately, nothing currently beats Plexamp in terms of quality music listening, shuffle, smart playlists, etc.

You can still set up local login for Plex to avoid their auth on your own network or list of allowed IPs. It's not 100% what people want, but it's something.

Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

#269

Post by aezell »

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…

Qobuz markets itself first as a hi-res streaming service. However, it also offers FLAC purchases without DRM that are yours even if you don't continue to use Qobuz. Their selection is very large and might have more options for more well-known acts.

Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

#270

Post by HellDunkel »

lghh wrote: post #96
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.

Why did they have to compete with spotify? They are not a music streaming service (at their core) or a podcast publisher.

Because streaming makes more sense and provides far better metrics for artist compensation.
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