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Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

variety.com

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Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

#421

Post by andrewzah »

BaseballPhysics wrote: post #359
banana_maker wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Navidrome [0] has been a solid replacement for me. It has all the features I want aside from Keycloak/generic oidc integration, and the author is very responsive. 0: https://github.com/navidrome/navidrome

Second this. Navidrome is an impressive piece of work. Solid UX, decent core feature set, good performance, trivial to deploy (it's a single statically linked Go binary). I've definitely had some glitches with playback and so forth, so it's not flawless, but it's still very good.

Navidrome uses react-music-player [0], which unfortunately the author has very little bandwidth to maintain it. I've opened an issue about a bug where if you scrub the player to a different timestamp, and then move the mouse out of the tab so it unfocuses, it stutters. The issue got auto-closed as wontfix after inactivity, so yay...

Other than a few UX bugs I haven't had any real issues, so I'm happy with it.

0: https://github.com/lijinke666/react-music-player

1:

Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

#422

Post by revolvingocelot »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #237
revolvingocelot wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>I know it's hip to be cynical and all, but seriously. I mean, thats many of the comments about this news, despite Epic/Tencent historally ringing true to their words. >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 held by you"? Sure. It's just a middleman storefront, and there are trillionaire…

>I mean, thats many of the comments about this news, despite Epic/Tencent historally ringing true to their words.

I can't meaningfully reply to this because I don't understand your misspelled malapropism (words ring true, not their speakers). You seem to be suggesting that Epic/Tencent tell the truth, which historically I see isn't true (Linux support, Rocket League, etc), so I must be misunderstanding you.

>It's just a middleman storefront, and there are trillionaire tech companies right now

I think you misunderstand Valve, which is currently in the process of releasing a revolutionary console/handheld PC, and its profit margins, which might be healthier than you anticipate.

>Maybe Gabe leverages Valve and jumps to a whole other industry when he tires of games. Maybe he just sells it all off and turns that into assets to will off (better than giving family a company they can't manage). Nothing is certain and much larger internet darlings have been turned agaisnt faster

Moreover, I think you misunderstand Newell himself. Steam Machines, Proton itself, and now the Steam Deck suggest a dedication to pro-consumer practices generally and videogames specifically that don't really map well to the typical bloodless VC calculus that you're trying to understand this situation with.

Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

#423

Post by andrewzah »

paularmstrong wrote: post #362
banana_maker wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Navidrome [0] has been a solid replacement for me. It has all the features I want aside from Keycloak/generic oidc integration, and the author is very responsive. 0: https://github.com/navidrome/navidrome

I haven't seen this before, but at a quick glance, here's what I love about Plexamp that's missing for me: * Similar artists, tracks, etc * Auto-playing similar after listening to an album * "sonically similar" tracks/artists - not just some arbitrary decision that some artist is in the same genre, but that the songs have similar sonic profiles * Artist/track radio based on all of the above * "library radio": smart s…

Fair enough, I don't really use features like that as I manually explore artists. I use discogs credit lists + wikipedia entries to find albums based on a particular person or a rhythm section in a time frame.

In navidrome I view the random albums page until I find something I want to listen to. The only algo that I've found to bear fruit is youtube's recommendations, occasionally. I mostly just listen to music on there while working and occasionally it just drops great albums.

Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

#424

Post by revolvingocelot »

ghostly_s wrote: post #296
revolvingocelot wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Somehow Neil Young (the guy who bought a model train company for funsies) and a host of his ostensibly-principled contemporaries all decided recently that they needed more money by selling their catalogs, so I would hazard against assuming anyone is immune to the temptations of more money.

GabeN's personal financial stake in Valve likely realizes much more in the way of a) cashflow and b) control than any rocker's relationship with their catalogs.

Newell isn't the ageing rocker, smarting over the unfairness of the contract, he's the old-school cigar-chomping record executive, deigning to allow others to enrich him with their art. If he wants more money, he's just got to wait around for a bit. It'll arrive presently.

Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

#425

Post by revolvingocelot »

JaimeThompson wrote: post #216
revolvingocelot wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

How many people expected Gates to do something like the Gates Foundation?

What's the relevance of the Gates Foundation? Gates didn't sell Microsoft in order to start it, he used his own personal fortune (fine, Warren Buffet helped, but he didn't sell any golden geese to afford it, either).

Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

#427

Post by hackernewds »

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…

Can I ask your logic in why you go to these lengths? Almost seems like hoarding.

Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

#428

Post by Naracion »

chx wrote: post #366
cauthon wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you mind sharing any names? I don’t mind whatever ratio limits exist for new accounts, but I deeply miss finding music through staff picks and the forums

orpheus and redacted are the big ones. Getting in, of course, will be a challenge. rutracker is a pretty open alternative.

Having experience with these platforms, they wane in comparison to the gem that What was. It wasn't just a repository / archive, it was also a thriving community.

However, we need to move on. These are currently probably the best alternatives, so thank you for pointing these out. It's just What was too damned good.

Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

#429

Post by toastal »

superkuh wrote: post #279
johnnyanmac wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Rocket League lost Linux support shortly after. Any company cutting off previous Linux support is not a good one.

Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

#430

Post by toastal »

BaseballPhysics wrote: post #241
chris11 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I love the 'rudimentary' app. It was only recently I noticed a lot of people complaining about it. It was a surprise to me. I can search and find new albums, and I can listen to album from start to finish without any issues, share a track link to a friend, and purchase + download the album for offline. Only feature I would have liked to see is the niche addition of built-in ListenBrainz support. What else was missing?
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