Epic Games acquires Bandcamp • Hacker News Board

Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

#481

Post by jsmith45 » Mon, Mar 07, 2022, 4:59 PM UTC

mrguyorama wrote: post #458

smileybarry wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> look at what happened to PUBG when they used Epic's engine > They made a lot of money. They reportedly worked with Epic Games on technical support for PUBG features, and Epic Games may've ended up using some of them in their own Battle Royale mode: > Notably, Epic Games updated their in-development title Fortnite, a sandbox-based survival game that included the ability to construct fortifications, to include a bat…

Aren't PUBG the ones who tried to sue people for using a frying pan as a melee weapon in game? Years after valve had it in TF2? There lawsuits seem a bit empty

Super Mario RPG did frying pan as a melee weapon back in 1996. Sure it was character locked, a single player game in a totally different genre, etc, but it still means frying pans ere an established video game melee weapon long before before TF2, much less PUBG.

Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

#482

Post by ghostly_s » Tue, Mar 08, 2022, 9:00 PM UTC

andrewzah wrote: post #317

ghostly_s wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, why not? Neil Young is 76, Sting is 70, Bob Dylan is 80. At that point it's better to just sell the catalogue for an enormous amount of money to do things with.

Because despite all the problems, there is at least a glimmer of a hope that an artist's estate will act in the interest of preserving their patron's legacy.

Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

#483

Post by joveian » Wed, Mar 09, 2022, 12:00 PM UTC

gen220 wrote: post #480

joveian wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the summary. I wish them luck with the more open approach and hopefully they will publish more at some point. I only looked quickly but the part about artists and labels is not sufficient. On Bandcamp, individual albums can be listed by an artist but on a particular label with a small link to the label. It appears in the list of albums for the label and for the artist. This dynamic is very important for fi…

Yeah, I built out some models for this as a weekend project, based on my limited knowledge as a bandcamp consumer. It's a surprisingly-complex domain! Simply modelling all of the relationships is a fun experiment. i.e. so-and-so is the producer and advertised co-artist, so-and-so is both an individual artist but also a member of bands X and Y, bands X and Y are part of the super-group Z; label A is a subsidiary of B,…

Showing what % goes to the various parties would be nice, although that can get even more complicated if you break out things like royalty payments for sampled music or individual band member portions. And without some kind of enforcement mechanism some people will just lie about it while it might be hard to get anyone to sign up if there is a penatly for incorrect information, unless it is an optional thing. Also I noticed the indiehd FAQ mentioning transfer fees can eat up most or all of a payment when sending small amounts of money, so the amount received also depends on how much they make in any particular period. I also once had a small label ignore or forget about Bandcamp for maybe a year and a half after I ordered a CD from them, I'm guessing some kind of email issue that caused them to not receive notifications, but any information that could change is unlikely to be kept up to date (as always :/). Direct payments or at least accounting sounds like a good feature, there do unfortunatly seem to always be people trying to rip off the people doing the actual work (I've heard of that being a significant issue in the game industry as well).

Good luck if you decide to work more on it!

Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

#484

Post by plainnoodles » Thu, Mar 10, 2022, 7:31 PM UTC

hackernewds wrote: post #427

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.

Part of it is just for fun. I like to collect the CDs. I like knowing the files I have are very faithful representations of the released media. And so on.

I really don't think it's hoarding - the overall data sizes here are small (relative to the fact that a 12TB WD Red is 250-300 dollars on amazon) and it's not like I spend my nights scouring ebay for this stuff. I just make sure I get best-available media while it's still widely and easily available.

Some of it is also that I just don't trust the current system to archive media. Sure, most popular things will be fine. But there's a lot of music that's not quite underground but also isn't popular and I wouldn't be surprised if it became hard to get ahold of the quality standards I have in 10-20 years.

Re: Epic Games acquires Bandcamp

#485

Post by HellDunkel » Sun, Mar 13, 2022, 11:00 AM UTC

bananapub wrote: post #350

HellDunkel wrote: post #37

Lots of disappointed comments here. Would you guys really prefer seeing bandcamp beeing bought by Apple?

what a bizarre invented dichotomy. what all these "disappointed commenters" wanted was for Bandcamp to continue to provide an excellent service, charging enough to stay in business and grow at a reasonable rate while allowing artists, who did the vast vast vast vast majority of the effort represtented by each sale, to profit and - unironically - connect with fans.

everyone wanted things to stay as they were, i get that. but i fail to see how that could have been more than a simple wish for anyone not owning any stakes in bandcamp.

peolpe wanted bandcamp not to give in to uber-capitalism and expect them to fight an uphill battle against spotify and the likes. That is a bit much to ask for in my view. They are forced to move towards streaming. What if pioneer comes up with a seamless spotify integration tomorrow? Usb ports would quickly become a rarity on dj equipment. i get that you like to „own“ your music and have it on your hd- but you also expect to be able to re-download things if you loose your files, right? so you are basically expecting bandcamp not to change in the future and that is out of touch with reality.