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Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

variety.com

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Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

#271

Post by BaseballPhysics »

heleninboodler wrote: post #244
Apocryphon wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did Bandcamp offer employee equity?

Would they have ever managed to hire anyone if they didn't?

Some people just want to work at a decent company for reasonable pay, and aren't looking to get filthy rich busting their asses for a FAANG.

Bandcamp is absolutely a company I would've considered working for. I'm long past the point in my career where I care about a lottery ticket. They were profitable, big enough to be sustainable, but small enough to be nimble. The management seemed to make all the right noises regarding their values and motivations.

I'll take that over a massive tech company or a tiny startup any day of the week.

Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

#272

Post by johnnyanmac »

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.

>If Bandcamp saw people who bought music on Bandcamp as consumers, then Bandcamp didn't understand the people who used it

If they DIDNT see people who bought music as consumers, they'd be shut down instead of acquired. It's still a business, not a charity case. It costs money to host music and pay the payment processors for the ability to let people use credit cards.

People who want some truly decentralized form of music hosting/publishing would be better off going back to the limewire dys than expecting a steady, supported website provide all the expected niceties.

Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

#273

Post by airstrike »

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…

> Why did they need an exit?

Because the people who like to start new companies and take lots of risks generally tend to not like running stable businesses and dealing with FP&A managers, lawyers, compliance and tax experts

Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

#274

Post by johnnyanmac »

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…

>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.

it's all about CYA. Better to be "smarm" than create any opening for a legal storm that ruins the entire acquisition, or tanks any public shares from the news.

I'm still not too sure if the "curiosity" rule applies to this new link, however. Half the article is just quoting the source and another 40% just quoting the CEO's on how happy and great the oppurtunity is. Not much real analysis or introspection unless the audience had no idea what a Bandcamp is.

That's unfortunately better than 80% of modern jounralism, but I digress.

Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

#275

Post by _bfhp »

"So sad" "I'm disappointed" Ok but everything like Bandcamp will always go away because it's not efficient enough. If it exists today, it's treading water! It is on borrowed time! Bandcamp was like a character in a video game with 1HP and a temporary shield called "Startup." Bandcamp is to the way capital works as life is to mortality. Nothing workable will ever exist at scale unless our species is completely overhauled.

Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

#276

Post by handelaar »

nluken wrote: post #235
arwhatever wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would Bandcamp the business model + Bandcamp the website necessarily be difficult to reproduce, particularly in an environment in which the Bandcamp niche just became no longer fulfilled due to changing practices on the part of Original Bandcamp?

Makes me curious about the idea of a nonprofit organization whose purpose is to manage a platform that gives as much money as possible to artists. Perhaps that's a naïve vision, but I feel like a lot of artists would hop onboard if the interface worked, and that could overcome the network effect.

Look at this sideways for a second and you'll see that you just described precisely and exactly the structure and supposed-mission of every performing rights society in the world.

And yet they just don't seem to have any interest in it.

Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

#277

Post by nemothekid »

KerrAvon wrote: post #201
mdoms wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Given almost literally all of recorded corporate history in the United States, the onus is very much on the other side to continually demonstrate a lack of influence/bias. Edited to add: I find the blind faith people place in billionaire CEOs insane. Maybe save the empathy for people who need it and treat the obscenely wealthy with healthy skepticism?

There are many American companies that capitulate to Chinese political pressure without even being owned by the Chinese. Tencent owns 2 of the top 5 biggest gaming platforms in the US, but the one that got accused of being too close to the Chinese is now owned by Microsoft.

I think the question is why is there an expectation that Tencent is somehow more nefarious than any other billion dollar conglomerate?

Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

#278

Post by prepend »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #247
prepend wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume it’s because Epic presented a ton of cash and a small but profitable company found it attractive. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to work for or be part of Epic, so that’s my assumption of gobs of cash.

"I can’t imagine anyone wanting to work for or be part of Epic" creators of one of the two largest third party game engines? A chance for your product to be integrated in a tool used by game studios throughout the world? You really can't imagine any reason past the monetary to work with Epic?

I think their products suck and are sleazy. I don’t think I’ll ever be in a position where I have the opportunity, and I’d work if I was starving, but I don’t want to work for a company that makes bad products as a result of a bad philosophy.

It’s nice to be a programmer and have options but I wouldn’t work with a company that makes such invasive software.

Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

#279

Post by superkuh »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #226
zippergz wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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" acq…

Tell it to "Rocket League" or look at what happened to PUBG when they used Epic's engine. Epic only makes those things "free", it only buys popular software, because it's goal is getting more people locked into it's walled garden Epic store. It is not because they are nice. As soon as they believe they have a critical mass of Epic store users you can damn well bet they'll treat Quixel, Sketchfab, and Artstation forums just like the Rocket League linux client the minute there's any more profit to be squeezed out.

Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

#280

Post by mountainplus »

I am surprised slsk did not appear prominently in this discussion as alternative to share, own, collect lossless music. Is it due to its nature? It is certainly something of the past in terms of userbase but I can't imagine any of the services mentioned coming close to replacing bandcamp.
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