291–300 of 485 posts
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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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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 forum…
They made a lot of money.
> it only buys popular software, because it's goal is getting more people locked into it's walled garden Epic store.
The rev stream is royalties from engine use since the free tiers are locked to UE, not EGS.
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> 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
> 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 ... in SV/the tech industry. That's kinda my entire point. Stealing someone else's analogy: If you went to a bank to get a small business loan to open up a coffee shop, and you told them "Yeah, I'm hoping to take a bunch of…
I've spent thousands of dollars on Bandcamp. This makes me really, really sad.
This seems like an odd move for a gaming company. But I wonder about its implication for streamers who deal with DMCA takedowns for playing copyrighted music. Perhaps a scheme where partnered streamers are granted limited license to play music from across Bandcamp while they stream games from the Epic Store.
For a lot of indie games, it's not uncommon to see the game soundtracks available for download on Bandcamp. Part of me wonders if they could potentially integrate soundtrack bundle downloads with the Epic Store a little better.
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Just wait to see what happens when Gabe of Valve decides to retire and needs to diversify his holdings.
You think the guy who bought a racing team for funsies (and for charity!), the guy with an extensive forge setup in his palatial basement, needs more money? I know it's hip to be cynical and all, but seriously. Even if he were so motivated by money, could anyone even put together a payout that'd be better than "continue to watch the Steam Store print money, beholden to no one because Valve is a privately-held company…
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…
> Now I'm not sure what to do I mean, why not continue doing what you are doing until the thing that you like actually goes to shit?
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Tidal pays better than most other streaming services afaik. It’s sad to see Bandcamp go. Because in tech an acquisition means loss of that independence.
As a chronic music pirate- I love Bandcamp. I've purchased more music through Bandcamp than anywhere else. I'm not going to let myself be bummed by this news until Bandcamp actually changes for the worse. Once again everybody is letting themselves be upset by some hypothetical scenario where the new owners drive the service into the ground.
When the original managers leave, you get replacements from the parent company. Or managers who want to “change things” so they can impress the upper echelons. Seen it too much.
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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.
Yeah, as far as I can tell, they took a seed round and a series A and have been profitable since... 2014? If memory serves? If you look at their staff growth, it's been very slow and very steady. At the time of acquisition they were sitting in the 100-150 headcount range, which is modest for a company that's almost 15 years old. Given their claim of 207M to artists last year and their touted 18% average rev share, we…
A company with 100 employee isn't a lifestyle business. The term we used to use for that before VC swallowed the world and decided that anything less than a billion is chump change was simply "business". A 100-person company with millions in revenue is a successful medium-sized business.
The only reason it doesn't feel successful and stable today is because we live in a unprotected corporate environment where any of the giant behemoths may anti-competitively crush a smaller business if they so choose to and there won't be any repercussions.
I wouldn't be surprised if the main motivation for Bandcamp selling was simply the fear of being either bought out by someone worse, or crushed by them. (Likely Spotify, which is two orders of magnitude larger than them.)
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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?
Why do things need an exit strategy, why can they not simply exist and do good work and pay people fairly? Does everything have to exist purely to maximise profit?