This is a bummer, but I'm getting giddy at all of the opportunities for indie devs to rebuild the web. It's a guarantee anything acquired is going to get destroyed in the mid to long-term and people will be thirsty for something that isn't a corpo-nightmare. Even more fun is the opportunity to do that with decentralized data.
Epic Games acquires Bandcamp
301–310 of 485 posts
Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp
#302Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which is a big middle finger to those who had purchased the game. And I can't think of a game that didn't have the quality of its player base (and so, gameplay) decline after going F2P (looking at you, TF2).
The costs and benefits around a game going F2P are too numerous to list in a HN comment, but I think it is extremely reductive to call it a “middle finger” just because you spent $20 four years and 500 hours of game time ago. More people playing the game you like is very good for that game receiving more investment/developer time. Shorter queue times, more revenue for the game in the form of mtx, and gameplay in a co…
TF2 has competitive matchmaking. And anecdotally I’m usually placed in casual matches with similarly ranked players.
Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp
#303Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where does the drive for an "exit" come from? It's a jargon term not used in the entrepreneurial side of most other industries.
> It's a jargon term not used in the entrepreneurial side of most other industries. That's because in most of the industries you are thinking of, you can get traditional financing. The need for an exit of some sort follows from the financial structure.
I don't think elsewhere it's called an "exit strategy" to seek financing, be that IPO, Shark Tank, or the much more common and mundane options. I'm not even naively proposing that it's somehow bad to sell a profitable business in this way. I know selling a piece of your business involves diluting your control, but it is nearly always contractually required to not involve an "exit" (in terms of involvement) outside of tech. (Selling it wholesale does in any industry)
I'm just confused by two interlinked things. The terminology of "exit" and the implicit need for an "exit".
To me, the focus on "exit" does imply moving away from involvement with the business (in how the phrase sounds, and most importantly, in how it seems to be most often used). Which to me signifies a culture built around starting businesses and ultimately around becoming a VC yourself. Doing this is not notable, but presuming it is.
So either "exit" is any kind of large financing, and it doesn't involve "exit" in terms of involvement, in which case the term "exit" is strange to me.
Or "exit" is selling control and does imply "exit" in terms of involvement, in which case it's interesting that this is presumed to be the goal of starting a profitable business.
It seems in practice to be just jargon that covers both, but more the latter.
Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp
#304When shopping for content around didgital platforms, the #1 decision that I take into account is how much of my purchase price actually goes back to the creator. Bandcamp seems to give the best cut for music, aside from directly purchasing from an artist's website, and Epic's acquisition might end up being a net positive for getting new users & overall growth. Personally I think it's a good fit and look forward to th…
Can you elaborate on what makes it a good fit? I'm curious what your thought is.
I would have, at face value, considered the acquisition a bit odd given Epic's primary product.
Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp
#305This 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…
Some people put a 17.5kHz low pass and high pass at 20Hz on the master. It's dumb and you have very few reasons to do it, but people still do it and keep it as default settings in "mastering chains" that get passed around and dropped on random tracks. So you can't be sure if you're looking at a reencoding or a lossy file or not.
There are definitely good reasons to high pass at something low like 20 Hz. Very low frequency signals eat up a lot of headroom, make speakers work harder, and make it more likely to encounter distortion during parts of the signal path, all for zero audible benefit.
Having what is practically a DC offset in your signal doesn't do anyone any good.
Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp
#306This 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…
> That being said if anyone knows of any place to buy flacs of music with great selection would love to know Bleep offers FLAC (even 24 bit WAV). https://bleep.com/ It's mostly alternative and electronica stuff though. It was founded by Warp records (Aphex Twin, Autreche, Boards of Canada, etc) but it now sells stuff for other labels as well.
Major problem with bleep is I can't redownload purchases years later if my storage/backups were to be destroyed. I've got a pile of old Autechre purchases I can't get access to anymore which is frustrating, but not the end of the world.
Bandcamp has no cap on redownloading my library, and a decent mobile app for the stuff I don't keep stored on my devices.
Bandcamp isn't a perfect platform (they finally added a volume slider after a decade+), but they were a great solution to buying and releasing music for me since the birth of Bandcamp.
Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp
#307This 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…
> That being said if anyone knows of any place to buy flacs of music with great selection would love to know (especially for Japanese music which I generally have to import, thankfully they love CDs).
For buying FLACs of Japanese music, I'm a satisfied Ototoy[0] user, though I'm not sure if people outside Japan can create an account.
Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp
#308This 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…
I still think Epic will allow download and ownership of FLAC files. They are quite open to ownership of content, I believe what they are trying to build is a stronger moat around their "app store". Longer term I think they will be looking to force Apple/Google to allow 3rd party app stores onto their platforms and in doing so need content. This is a play to get content and direct relationships with producers, I don't…
Hopefully they figure out how to let you backup game libraries once of these days. At least in MacOS I still can't back up an install like I can Steam games when moving to a new machine or wiping my current machine.
Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp
#309I can't help but think we never solve "how to pay musicians" until we first jettison the absurdities, specifically "paying for downloads." Start with the assumption; mp3s are free to create and copy, and there is no point in pretending that this isn't simply how it is, and should be considered a universally good thing. Even streaming a song a second time is stupid. Now that we've accepted this, how can we collectivel…
While not perfect, this is how I (and others) use Patreon.
I'm not sure it exactly fits your ideal, but it's closer than anything else I've seen to how I'd like it to work.
Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp
#310Could I please get an overview of Epic's bad practices and decisions? Currently my frustration from this is rather unfocused—and mostly comes from Bandcamp being a couple heads above everyone else in terms of user-friendliness and having outstanding selection: from Gruuthaagy, Jungle Death and Mamaleek to big names.