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Bandcamp's Entire Union Bargaining Team Was Laid Off

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Re: Bandcamp's Entire Union Bargaining Team Was Laid Off

#351

Post by ToucanLoucan »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #350
ToucanLoucan wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean Google started as a non-profit and basically defined the search engine and it's tools. Then it went private, continued briefly, and has slid more and more into yet another corporate rent-seeker ever since. I don't even think it's necessarily profit vs. non-profit, I think it's private vs. shareholder ownership. Once the shareholder brain-worms take root, a company will set itself on fire to maintain the illusi…

> if you somehow managed to dominate a market to complete exclusion of meaningful competitors, if you fail to grow, you are failing This is a trope in Silicon Valley, but it's simply not true. Most companies in a developed economy aim for a stable state, i.e. close to zero real growth with payments made to investors via sole proprietorship pay-outs, dividends and/or debt. Now a growth company is worth more than a sta…

I mean, fair point. But name a corporation that's publicly traded right now that isn't promising growth to shareholders? If they're all doing it, that's the status quo, irrespective of if they should be or not.

FFS, Amazon promises growth. Amazon! A company so formidable that even it announcing it's thinking about entering a market causes a small stock blip to any major companies in that market, because it's presumed they will fucking obliterate them.

Re: Bandcamp's Entire Union Bargaining Team Was Laid Off

#353

Post by milesvp »

gruez wrote: post #185
bananaquant wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an HR would say, those people are "a bad cultural fit", which legitimately raises the probability of them being laid off to 100%. Simple.

There's probably a performance component as well. If you're high performing, can pick whatever job they want, and therefore get paid well above your peers, why would want to join a union?

I will share an anecdote. A friend of mine, his dad owned a construction company. I was talking to him at a party and made a comment that was fairly anti union thinking he’d agree with the sentiment. His response was he loved unions because they gave him access to the best workers. He had 2 unions represented in his company, and his experience was that union workers were objectively better than non union workers. This surprised me because I couldn’t fathom a world where a capitalist would prefer to have unions in his company.

As to why a talented free agent would want to join a union. It seems to me that in an industry with strong union presence then union is obvious to join. It provides so many protections and adds leverage to intangibles that even high earning individuals can’t negotiate for.

Re: Bandcamp's Entire Union Bargaining Team Was Laid Off

#354

Post by JohnFen »

sspiff wrote: post #320
sickcodebruh wrote: post #209

For some context, it’s important to understand the degree to which Bandcamp’s success and ubiquity with independent music is built on a people-first, anti-corporate culture. Bandcamp is an obsession for a very large and engaged segment of the independent music world. A good friend, a professional musician, told me “I feel like I’m watching my childhood home burn to the ground.” This is far from a unique sentiment. Pe…

I was wondering why noone had started a bandcamp alternative as I read this article. Bandcamp isn't a complicated product. It's the people and content that define its value. If trust and goodwill are eroded, then the platform loses its value. Glad to see an independent initiative in this space.

> It's the people and content that define its value.

That's exactly what makes developing a replacement difficult. It's not the software. I'm sure that a very large majority of people here could write that in a reasonable amount of time.

But the software isn't really the main value that Bandcamp provides. For a service to replace Bandcamp, it needs to be trustworthy and have a track record of doing right by both artists (and mostly small indie artists) and audiences. That takes time.

Re: Bandcamp's Entire Union Bargaining Team Was Laid Off

#355

Post by cbsmith »

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #345
yoyohello13 wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VLC is developed by a non-profit (as far as I'm aware). I'm kind of interested in what the world would be like if all companies were non-profit.

I mean Google started as a non-profit and basically defined the search engine and it's tools. Then it went private, continued briefly, and has slid more and more into yet another corporate rent-seeker ever since. I don't even think it's necessarily profit vs. non-profit, I think it's private vs. shareholder ownership. Once the shareholder brain-worms take root, a company will set itself on fire to maintain the illusi…

> I mean Google started as a non-profit and basically defined the search engine and it's tools. Then it went private, continued briefly, and has slid more and more into yet another corporate rent-seeker ever since.

Wait, when was Google a non-profit?

Re: Bandcamp's Entire Union Bargaining Team Was Laid Off

#356

Post by erinnh »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #348
tomcam wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Super informative. I must reveal my bias toward a free market here, but I also remember keenly what it was like to be a powerless employee. Germany appears to have by far the strongest economy in the EU but with higher unemployment than the USA. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the balance there vs the USA? I can imagine compelling arguments for each approach.

Are unemployment benefits better in germany? If they are you’d expect it to be higher than the US, as in the US workers might run out of the social support network sooner and be forced to take any job just to eat and shelter.

They are.

What I was taught in macroeconomics in this topic (excuse me if I get something wrong, it’s been a few years)

In general it’s very expected unemployment to „generally“ be higher in Germany.

Because it’s harder to fire people here, people also get hired somewhat slower. However in the flip side it’s also expected that during harsh economic times people will be fired less because of how „hard“ it is to hire people.

So it’s a trade-off.

Re: Bandcamp's Entire Union Bargaining Team Was Laid Off

#357

Post by wnevets »

diggan wrote: post #330
wnevets wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The music itself belongs to the artists and labels, As if not owning the data has stopped AI companies in the past.

Exactly! So why would a AI company who want the music itself bother themselves with buying the company first? Just scrape it like everyone else.

If you have the kind of cash to throw at a bandcamp purchase its probably easier/faster to buy it than downloading and scaping every album.

Otherwise the new owner doesn't get bandcamp and why so many of its customers like it.

Re: Bandcamp's Entire Union Bargaining Team Was Laid Off

#358

Post by ToucanLoucan »

cbsmith wrote: post #355
ToucanLoucan wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean Google started as a non-profit and basically defined the search engine and it's tools. Then it went private, continued briefly, and has slid more and more into yet another corporate rent-seeker ever since. I don't even think it's necessarily profit vs. non-profit, I think it's private vs. shareholder ownership. Once the shareholder brain-worms take root, a company will set itself on fire to maintain the illusi…

> I mean Google started as a non-profit and basically defined the search engine and it's tools. Then it went private, continued briefly, and has slid more and more into yet another corporate rent-seeker ever since. Wait, when was Google a non-profit?

Started as a research grant-based program at Stanford in 1995. Three years later it became a company after building the basic product to a launch-ready state.

Re: Bandcamp's Entire Union Bargaining Team Was Laid Off

#359

Post by banannaise »

silenced_trope wrote: post #215
gruez wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't wait for the next layoff where my newly hired star performers get laid off because some bureaucrat thought tenure was more important than job performance or whether they were working on an important project or not.

[flagged]

You posted that yourself. You're spamming the same comment over and over while trying to create the illusion that it's a popular opinion.

Re: Bandcamp's Entire Union Bargaining Team Was Laid Off

#360

Post by superchroma »

0xpgm wrote: post #242
superchroma wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that businesses operate with laser focus on revenue is fantasy. Businesses are filled with individuals acting mostly on emotions and vibes, people who waste time empire building, etc.

That is true, but it eventually catches up with them. On the whole, large organizations with this kind of internal environment stagnate and are unable to innovate any longer. They then resort to buying startups to acquire products or talent.

Yes and they lurch on sucking the life out of parasitized host after host for decades.
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