[HN Gopher] Epic Games acquires Bandcamp
___________________________________________________________________
Epic Games acquires Bandcamp
Author : kylestetz
Score : 510 points
Date : 2022-03-02 17:14 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (variety.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (variety.com)
| danso wrote:
| Maybe change of ownership won't significantly affect Bandcamp's
| operation, but my limited consumer-facing experience with Epic --
| via its game store -- has given me such a bad taste that I'm not
| keen on using any storefront service managed by Epic.
|
| And this is despite the vast majority of my Epic game library
| being free (literally hundreds of games) or deeply discounted --
| the storefront is really that bad. For example, when AWS went
| down a couple months ago, both the store app was non-functional.
| Apparently, the game store depends on S3 for game thumbnails and
| other metadata, and its caching is...non-optimal. I think I
| could've accessed my games by running their executables directly
| from file explorer. But 4 years in, this kind of slapped together
| design decision -- on top of EGS _still_ being bare bones
| compared to Steam -- seems indicative of poor management.
|
| Obviously, Bandcamp as a relatively mature storefront is not in
| the same situation. And remaining alive and sustainable probably
| outweighs what negatives Epic might bring as owner.
| MikusR wrote:
| Steam has been running for 18 years and still has problems.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| "when AWS went down a couple months ago, both the store app was
| non-functional. Apparently, the game store depends on S3 for
| game thumbnails and other metadata, and its caching is...non-
| optimal."
|
| I don't see that as some kind of dealbreaker. Just an unideal
| choice for a consumer who may want everything to be offline and
| cached. The storefront is very likely some electron wrappper
| for their website, so I wouldn't be too surprised if their
| thumbnails were stored on some other server. Steam isn't too
| different in regards to that architecture (just not using AWS,
| since they preceeded that).
|
| Games are available offline as of some year+ ago so that outage
| should not have affected your ability to run games.
| aasasd wrote:
| Could 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.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| My main gripe is their willingness to support systems that are
| functionally gambling directed at children. I also didn't love
| their attempt to essentially "weaponize" their young teen
| fortnite audience when they got into that dispute with Apple a
| few years ago over in-game purchases transferring from their
| end to the iOS version.
| dancemethis wrote:
| Uh-oh.
| almet wrote:
| It's really sad to see these almost "public goods" platforms be
| acquired by other companies, which will probably turn them in
| something else at some point because their vision isn't the same.
|
| This could probably be avoided by using different strategies. For
| instance, if Bandcamp was an NGO of some sort, or has a social
| contract attached to it, etc. it could have terms for not being
| acquired.
|
| You, capitalism. Again.
| conradfr wrote:
| I don't get it and I don't see this being positive for me as a
| customer of Bandcamp, which is the only place I buy music online
| from.
|
| Now if they can finally make the Android app a decent music
| player I'll revise my judgment :)
| [deleted]
| hemloc_io wrote:
| Here's a thought.
|
| Maybe Epic's strategy is to fight Apple/Steam (Marketplace
| monopolies more generally)?
|
| They're already fighting Apple/Steam w/ gaming, maybe they're
| looking to have a music store already. I think undercutting fees
| charged by either could be a big win in their eyes.
| prepend wrote:
| I use all three and Epic is by far the worse software. Their
| platform requires root access on machines. It starts up when I
| don't want it. It acts like malware. It also pegs my cpu at
| 100% at unpredictable times and download lots of data.
|
| It's good that someone is fighting Apple and Steam, but I wish
| some better company would enter the fight. As it is now, I'd be
| sad if Epic won.
| heleninboodler wrote:
| I think it's interesting to note that Bandcamp has the same
| quarrel with Apple that Epic does. Doesn't (or didn't) their
| app have a brief explanatory note about why they have to send
| you to the browser to make a music purchase that was a subtle
| complaint about Apple's shitty policies?
| ryantgtg wrote:
| Yes, "music purchases are not available on your device" or
| some such. Apple's terms forbids them from saying it's due to
| Apple's policy. Furthermore the Apple policy forbids them
| from directly linking to the website purchase page.
|
| I'm sure bandcamp received a huge amount of customer support
| messages about this. It's confusing to most people.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| If epic wants to "fight" Apple they need a far better UX.
| Severian wrote:
| Fucking god dammit. This is all I have to say. My one joy and
| it'll probably be ruined with bullshit.
| [deleted]
| throwhauser wrote:
| I don't know anything about Epic Games, but as a huge fan of
| Bandcamp, this feels like a bit of a drag.
|
| There's something about Bandcamp that seems exactly right. It's
| an open, fair and creative way to discover and publish music,
| that is really distinct from the rest of the music business.
|
| I'm struggling to see how that fits into a gigantic video game
| company. If it has to pull in so much money that it "moves the
| needle" at Epic at all, I don't see how it can remain anything
| close to what it is today.
| munificent wrote:
| Every time a small successful tech company gets swallowed by a
| behemoth, I feel sad. Bandcamp was one of the good ones. If
| Panic ever gets bought, I'll straight up cry.
|
| An ecosystem thrives by having a variety of organisms of
| different species and sizes interacting. The tech business
| ecosystem increasingly looks more like a giant pasture of
| uniform grass being grazed by half a dozen aging tumorous cows.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Everyone's forgotten that monocultures are bad.
|
| For what it's worth, Panic appears to be one of those smaller
| indie developers similar to say Bare Bones Software or the
| Omni Group. I think those are sustainable non-startup
| software shops that can exist and persist on their own.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| If you think of Epic not as a videogame company but as any
| other multi-billion dollar company that exists to "Maximize
| return for our investors by any means necessary," It makes
| sense. Take a company that is making money and has a large
| user-base, then "increase profits" (usually to the detriment of
| everyone involved except the company).
| ryantgtg wrote:
| I'm with you. Never heard of this Epic Games company. This is
| worrying.
|
| I fell behind on downloading all of my 426 purchases on
| bandcamp, but now I feel a strong desire to catch up.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| "Never heard of this Epic Games company. "
|
| Creators of Unreal Engine, one of the two de facto 3rd party
| game engines in the industry, created way back in the 90's.
| You very likely played some game or 6 that was made using it.
| Also the developers of several games themselves like Gears of
| War, Unreal Tournament, Infinity Blade, and Bulletstorm.
|
| But I guess more recently people would call them "The
| creators of Fortnite", that free to play battle royale that
| usurped PUBG as "the face" of the genre. They also have a PC
| game store that is relatively recent and under some ire from
| consumers for reasons that'd take a whole essay to fully
| explain.
|
| As a middleman between games and developers, the reasons to
| purchase a music vendor is numerous. Time will tell what they
| do with it, but most of their previous aquisitions are hands-
| off.
| ryantgtg wrote:
| Thank you. Ok, I guess have heard of them then. I played
| Unreal! And I've heard many mentions of the Unreal engine.
|
| > but most of their previous aquisitions are hands-off
|
| Thanks.
|
| Given the immediate negative reactions that people have to
| this news (see the countless "what is a bandcamp
| alternative?" posts going around right now), I wonder how
| it will impact one of Bandcamp's most important assets:
| their Daily blog. From what I can tell, the blog posts are
| largely written by independent music journalists. The
| topics are all over the place (in a good way), and they are
| fun, personal ways to discover music. Will we see some of
| these core writers leave (on their own volition)? Likewise,
| will the direction of what is highlighted in these posts
| shift to align with other Epic assets?
|
| On the technical end, there are plenty of legitimate
| complaints about Bandcamp's app. I would imagine Epic =
| more resources for the app, for better or for worse.
| petarb wrote:
| This makes me happy for the Bandcamp employees who will hopefully
| get a good payout for their hard work but sad for what Bandcamp
| will become in the future under Epic.
|
| I've really enjoying going into their record store / small
| intimate venu in Oakland, CA.
| drewda wrote:
| I misread this as Epic Games acquiring Basecamp and was
| scratching my head for a few minutes :)
| lghh wrote:
| I read this correctly and I'm still scratching my head.
| vernie wrote:
| Welp this fuckin' sucks. Good going Tim Epic.
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| I haven't been in an active band for over a decade, but back when
| I was bandcamp was the only way we ever got money online. We had
| it set to optional to pay, and we would randomly get $5-30 from
| people around the world. It wasn't much, but it always felt nice.
|
| I also like the way they handled payments to artists, I'm not
| sure if they still do it this way, but back then your first 9
| payments would go directly to your paypal, and the 10th would go
| to theirs. And they would balance it out to keep it where they
| only took %10.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| This is one my concerns. They will lose touch with the little
| guys. Also, I have several musician friends and I only buy
| their music from Bandcamp or straight from them. Some prefer
| not to even bother with CDs/Vinyl and just point people at
| Bandcamp as preferred vendor as they get a good cut of the
| money. They seemed to be like a company that wasn't controlled
| strictly by slick marketing (and empty promises) and bean
| counters.
| hwers wrote:
| Got really confused because I thought it said Basecamp.
| dang wrote:
| Url changed from https://blog.bandcamp.com/2022/03/02/bandcamp-
| is-joining-epi... to what looks like the best third-party
| article. If someone knows a better URL, we can change it again.
| NAR8789 wrote:
| Why prefer a third-party article rather than the original
| announcement? Presumably for neutrality? My gut instinct is to
| prefer the original announcement because it seems more of a
| primary source. How do you weight primariness vs neutrality?
|
| I respect your long experience moderating HN, so asking mostly
| with the intent enrich my own intuition. Not a rhetorical
| question.
| dang wrote:
| It's because corporate press releases are so lame [1]. They
| don't give relevant background, they're saturated with
| dystopian smarm (" _Since our founding in 2008, we've been
| motivated by the pursuit of our mission_ "), and they're
| ultimately all about spin. I don't mean to pick on particular
| cases--it's across the board. You'd think the smarter people
| at some of these companies would realize how well they'd
| stand out by _not_ writing that way, but that 's surprisingly
| rare.
|
| You're right to reference HN's 'original source' rule ("
| _Please submit the original source. If a post reports on
| something found on another site, submit the latter._ " -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), because
| this is an exception to it. The reason we have exceptions is
| that there's a higher organizing principle on HN, namely that
| we're trying to optimize the site for curiosity [2].
| Optimizing means that when there's a conflict between that
| rule and any other rule, the curiosity rule wins.
|
| Funnily enough the curiosity rule is an instance of itself
| because it often produces decisions that are
| counterintuitive, yet at the same time are surprisingly
| clear. This case is one of the clear ones--it's obvious that
| corporate press releases don't serve curiosity, and in fact
| they're largely intended to smooth away anything that people
| _would_ be curious about.
|
| [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&
| sor...
|
| [2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&
| sor...
| basisword wrote:
| Thanks for explaining this. When I noticed the URL change I
| was surprised but this makes sense. It would be great if we
| could pin the original source link as the top comment
| though. Frustratingly Variety doesn't seem to link to it
| anywhere in their article and it's nice to have the
| official release along with the commentary.
| dang wrote:
| If you want to post that link as a separate comment and
| email hn@ycombinator.com (so I don't forget!) I'd be
| happy to pin it to the top.
|
| Eventually we're going to build software for aggregating
| related URLs.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >You'd think the smarter people at some of these companies
| would realize how well they'd stand out by not writing that
| way, but that's surprisingly rare.
|
| it's all about CYA. Better to be "smarm" than create any
| opening for a legal storm that ruins the entire
| acquisition, or tanks any public shares from the news.
|
| I'm still not too sure if the "curiosity" rule applies to
| this new link, however. Half the article is just quoting
| the source and another 40% just quoting the CEO's on how
| happy and great the oppurtunity is. Not much real analysis
| or introspection unless the audience had no idea what a
| Bandcamp is.
|
| That's unfortunately better than 80% of modern jounralism,
| but I digress.
| HellDunkel wrote:
| Lots of disappointed comments here. Would you guys really prefer
| seeing bandcamp beeing bought by Apple?
| fundamental wrote:
| Ideally I (and I'd assume other commenters) would have
| preferred to see bandcamp remain independent. It's not like
| there's a huge need to scale up quickly or provide large
| partnerships. Bandcamp was an effective way of paying small
| independent musicians with a good overall website which should
| have given bandcamp a reliable revenue source. Acquisition
| likely means the website will get worse, artists will be driven
| of onto other platforms (i.e. harder to discover ones), and if
| there's alternative financial incentives then small artists
| will likely end up making less (e.g. track streaming revenue).
|
| I'd be disappointed if apple had made the purchase, though it
| would be less out of left field.
| HellDunkel wrote:
| I too would have prefered seeing bandcamp stay independent
| but they were a privately owned company so that would have
| required a huge amount of idealism (which eventually wanes)
| or ambitions to compete with spotify. You can't always get
| what you want.
| fundamental wrote:
| Personally I don't buy that line of argument. The endgame
| for a business is not a binary choice between acquisition
| or taking over the entire market.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| > The endgame for a business is not a binary choice
| between acquisition or taking over the entire market.
|
| That's been the state of tech ever since Web 2.0 or so.
| kevincrane wrote:
| Hard agree, I really hate the trend of businesses having
| to have "an exit", be it IPO or get swallowed by one of
| like 6 behemoth companies. I love a good "we know who we
| are and are happy being it" success story which I thought
| Bandcamp was.
| HellDunkel wrote:
| Dont get me wrong, I am not happy at all about this
| silicon valley ,,winner takes it all" mindset. Let me
| explain how i see things. Bandcamp is for djs and
| indepenent music lovers. Although djing has managed to
| evaded streaming so far, it is almost inevitable to come.
| I am sure the folks at bandcamp were very clear about
| that and were looking to find a way to deal with the
| situation.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| It kind of is now (and I hate it).
|
| If you don't sell, it's likely the large companies trying
| to buy you will copy you and use their piles of money to
| undercut you out of business (and if they don't, any VC
| backed startup can try).
|
| So you either survive as small and unnoticed, or become
| big enough to be interesting (and then bought or killed
| unless you achieve absurd growth).
|
| Tech is kind of a dark forest now
| (https://thoughtcatalog.com/christine-
| stockton/2021/02/heres-...).
|
| I've worked for 2 companies that didn't sell and were
| obliterated this way.
| lghh wrote:
| Why did they have to compete with spotify? They are not a
| music streaming service (at their core) or a podcast
| publisher.
| HellDunkel wrote:
| Because streaming makes more sense and provides far
| better metrics for artist compensation.
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| Except for those that, you know, prefer to _own_ music.
| Their actual core audience.
| HellDunkel wrote:
| Can you really own music? See i have been collecting
| vinyl for 20 years and know about the pleasure it can
| provide. But with digital files scarcity, age, smell,
| looks, condition no longer matter. There is nothing left
| to ,,own". The only thing you own is your hard disk.
| throw_nbvc1234 wrote:
| > It's not like there's a huge need to scale up quickly or
| provide large partnerships
|
| Is "good enough" compatible with "capitalism"? Even ignoring
| the money aspect of things; you mention the website getting
| worse but I'm not sure the website has fundamentally changed
| (for better or worse) in a decade. Their iOS app isn't even
| compatible with ipads, it's locked to a phone aspect ratio
| with massive black bars surrounding it. Yet one could make
| the argument that things were "good enough" tech wise.
| Bandcamp (in my opinion) was a product/company that was good
| enough. But there's doesn't seem to be societal incentives to
| keep companies like that around in today's world... or maybe
| you just don't hear about them lol
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| I'd rather it remained independent, but if it was a choice
| between Apple and Epic I'd pick Apple. Of course, Apple would
| never buy them because they have iTunes. Since you raised the
| comparison, what do you think Epic is going to do? How do you
| think being dragged into Epic's war against Apple is going to
| impact Bandcamp as a service? It clearly isn't being bought so
| that it just continues as is (despite the promises). It's going
| to be used as a weapon, which means it's going to have to
| change. That change is likely to increase costs. Ultimately the
| day will come were "We are sorry that Bandcamp doesn't meet our
| customers' needs" [it no longer meets our needs of making
| enough money, because of all the shit we added] "And so we are
| adding new features to improve your experience" [ads, tracking,
| selling your data, subscriptions, increased price].
| HellDunkel wrote:
| I think the plan is to turn bandcamp into a streaming
| service.
| nerdponx wrote:
| I think most people would prefer to see them remain independent
| and successful as an independent company.
| danShumway wrote:
| Why on earth are those the two options?
|
| Somebody breaks into my house and tracks mud all over the
| floor, and the response is, "well, would you rather they killed
| your dog? It could have been worse."
| politelemon wrote:
| While that would be worse, being acquired doesn't have to be
| the only choice. The main reason everyone liked Bandcamp is its
| independence. That independence translated into an excellent
| marketplace which was great for users and artists. The
| preference is that Bandcamp continues to be Bandcamp, not part
| of an umbrella.
|
| Hope that explains it a bit. I'm quite sad and pessimistic
| about this. We'll see how well our reactions fare in about 2-3
| years.
| HellDunkel wrote:
| Give them a chance- epic doesnt have a reputation of blowing
| their aquisitions. It could be far worse!
| p_j_w wrote:
| >epic doesnt have a reputation of blowing their
| aquisitions.
|
| They ditched the Linux version of Rocket League. That
| counts as a blown acquisition to me.
| posterboy wrote:
| presumably it has a fall back in wine.
|
| Not supporting linux as a gaming platform is a down to
| earth decision. It's reasonable, whether necessary or
| not. As a linux user, I see a difference between the
| expectation of Linux plus driver vendors to support games
| and a game vendor to support linux, when it is often
| depending on a busfactor of 1.
| gxqoz wrote:
| For me I'd rather it just remain independent. It already does
| what it does well enough. There aren't any obvious features
| that would improve the site for me, just a lot of further
| monetization crap for users who fall for that stuff.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Not everything has to be a buy out. Why can't a business just
| be a business and make some money for the owners and provide a
| service for the users and grow organically (or not). I know HN
| crowd often see that as an unnatural business model but it has
| worked for small business for eons.
| bluetidepro wrote:
| I don't care who you are, when you get an offer for millions
| and millions, I'm sure you'll quickly sing a different tune.
| I'm sorry, but this kind of thinking is just silly. It's
| always easy to say this kind of thing from the outside.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Sure but not everyone is driven strictly by profit. I
| prefer to stay naive to not being motivated only by profit
| in my life decisions. Yes, I've made decisions that turned
| down large sums of money to maintain my happiness and sense
| of being a moral human being.
| _bohm wrote:
| I'd prefer seeing Bandcamp continue to grow and prosper as its
| own company
| AndyKelley wrote:
| This is why, as a user, you should prioritize relying on non-
| profit services and software rather than for-profit companies.
| donutshop wrote:
| I hope they keep Bandcamp Fridays!
| lostgame wrote:
| Nothing good can come of this. :(
| btdmaster wrote:
| In case of DRM: https://www.defectivebydesign.org/guide/audio
| g_sch wrote:
| I'm having a little trouble understanding the motivation for this
| move. Did Bandcamp have a poor revenue/profit outlook and were
| they looking to scale? Was this just an exit for founders? I was
| under the impression that they had a relatively stable and
| profitable business, and strongly valued their branding and
| positioning as independent.
| matt_heimer wrote:
| From the Epic side - they have to be looking at selling music
| in-game as a source of additional revenue. You'll be able to
| buy cassette tapes or virtual vinyl for your characters
| boombox. Of course there will be a matching dance you can also
| buy but maybe there will be a discount bundle.
| paxys wrote:
| Motivation for founders is a lot easier to understand than that
| of the acquiring company. What on earth is Epic going to do
| with Bandcamp?
| Macha wrote:
| Turn the Epic Games Store into a more general Play
| Store/Apple Store competitor by expanding into other media
| types?
| paxys wrote:
| The Epic Games Store is barely even functional for video
| games. They haven't been able to implement table stakes
| features like reviews and a shopping cart, despite
| promising them for years now. Going wider and increasing
| its surface area even further doesn't really sound like a
| winning move.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| User reviews are in the pipeline and shopping cart was
| added last year. And I doubt there were technical
| barriers that kept them from making this. Just a matter
| of other priorities on the store not immediately visible
| to western eyes (e.g., they have aggressively pursued
| regional pricing for the last 18 months).
| traskjd wrote:
| I'm sure it's no coincidence that Apple is big in music and
| they don't like Apple. Wonder what Tim is cooking up for Tim
| on this one.
| jerrybender wrote:
| Metaverse concerts and fighting against Apple
| acomjean wrote:
| I can never tell if comments are sarcastic are not...
|
| but "fortnite" by epic already had concert/online
| experiences. They've been pretty fun. Maybe getting band
| camp allows them access to artists they didn't have before?
|
| https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/news/fort-nite-concert-
| seri...
| bentcorner wrote:
| They recently acquired Harmonix (original makers of Guitar
| Hero and other rhythm games). Maybe they're trying to build a
| GaaS music game?
| kmfrk wrote:
| Comedy option? The Epic Games Store will be the new iTunes.
|
| Licensing As A Service is probably a neat thing if it can be
| done at scale on par with the Unreal Engine Marketplace. But
| a lot of it boils down to "imagine if we could make IP law
| straightforward" which is somewhat of a moonshot.
| stu2b50 wrote:
| Create a market for music licensing that Unreal engine
| developers can use?
| finder83 wrote:
| This is my guess as well. Pretty much every Epic
| acquisition is for Unreal.
| wildpeaks wrote:
| Game soundtracks are usually sold on Bandcamp, even for games
| that aren't on the Epic Store.
|
| Also could be a source of creative content to generate NFTs,
| maybe even tie that to licensing of music used in game
| livestreams.
| prepend wrote:
| I assume it's because Epic presented a ton of cash and a small
| but profitable company found it attractive.
|
| I can't imagine anyone wanting to work for or be part of Epic,
| so that's my assumption of gobs of cash.
| pier25 wrote:
| But what's in it for Epic?
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| The Metaverse (Epic has hosted music events in Fortnite
| that have had millions of attendees), diversifying their
| game store. They've also bought art and 3D asset companies
| recently.
| xxr wrote:
| Perhaps Epic originally wanted to purchase itch.io but
| couldn't settle on a deal so they went to the O.G. instead?
| merlincorey wrote:
| You must have missed the recent news about Simon Peyton Jones
| leaving Microsoft for Epic Games[0], then.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29131996
| efficax wrote:
| Staff moves at that level are a lot different than your
| average joe, huge paychecks involved and lots of insulation
| from the product org
| merlincorey wrote:
| Are you suggesting the primary reason SPJ moved to Epic
| Games is because they offered him more money than
| Microsoft?
|
| Reading the message from SPJ[0] seems to indicate he is
| excited for the people and projects he will be working on
| as well as being given the freedom to continue working on
| education, functional programming research, and
| continuing to work in the Haskell ecosystem.
|
| Of course large amounts of money are involved for an
| engineer of SPJ's renown and experience - that
| requirement exists for any company that want's SPJ's
| time.
|
| [0] https://discourse.haskell.org/t/an-epic-future-for-
| spj/3573
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| "I can't imagine anyone wanting to work for or be part of
| Epic"
|
| creators of one of the two largest third party game engines?
| A chance for your product to be integrated in a tool used by
| game studios throughout the world? You really can't imagine
| any reason past the monetary to work with Epic?
| prepend wrote:
| I think their products suck and are sleazy. I don't think
| I'll ever be in a position where I have the opportunity,
| and I'd work if I was starving, but I don't want to work
| for a company that makes bad products as a result of a bad
| philosophy.
|
| It's nice to be a programmer and have options but I
| wouldn't work with a company that makes such invasive
| software.
| bstar77 wrote:
| For first world issues, this is terrible. I love Bandcamp and
| love supporting artists there. Epic is a scourge.
| MisterTea wrote:
| Not good in my book. I've been a huge fan and proponent of the
| platform since 2017 and have made over 600 purchases since.
| Mostly digital but also plenty of shirts, patches, an even
| physicals of select albums. My only gripe was the somewhat
| wanting android client which has just been fixed up (playlists
| and queuing).
|
| I like it because its a simple and focused hub for artists and
| fans. The social interaction of the site fells like a perfect
| balance of presence and connection without any noise. You can see
| who purchased an album and leave an album review but unable to
| directly message users. User profiles are simply their collection
| and a 400 character bio that can contain links. Another plus is
| the simple web design they employ gives access to the mp3 if you
| scrape the album page. As a plan 9 user without a modern browser
| this made it easy to play the music by writing a script that
| scraped the album page for the mp3 links and fed those into
| play(1) creating a simple bandcamp player.
|
| Epic will bring nothing good to the service.
| aarpmcgee wrote:
| This is a little heartbreaking. The world just got a shade darker
| so that a few people could become a lot richer (I assume).
| vibemasterxl wrote:
| If so, did those people not build (and thus own) this platform?
| Is it not their right to sell it to others? I am not asking
| this so much to challenge your statement, as I agree that it's
| darker, but to demonstrate that clearly the platform delivered
| value to music consumers like myself, and perhaps we as music
| consumers should be willing to compensate the folks who build
| "glue" like Bandcamp more in order to provide such a great
| service in the future.
| mkr-hn wrote:
| If Bandcamp saw people who bought music on Bandcamp as
| consumers, then Bandcamp didn't understand the people who
| used it, and this might be for the best.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >If Bandcamp saw people who bought music on Bandcamp as
| consumers, then Bandcamp didn't understand the people who
| used it
|
| If they DIDNT see people who bought music as consumers,
| they'd be shut down instead of acquired. It's still a
| business, not a charity case. It costs money to host music
| and pay the payment processors for the ability to let
| people use credit cards.
|
| People who want some truly decentralized form of music
| hosting/publishing would be better off going back to the
| limewire dys than expecting a steady, supported website
| provide all the expected niceties.
| posterboy wrote:
| Conversely, if Sweeney saw users as _participants_ , for
| lack of a better word, this might be for ... the good?
|
| For whatever you have in mind, the question was basically
| whether you see the users as the _owners_. I thought it is
| a misleading question because it is riffing on a legal
| notion of property and possession, without clearly
| characterising that property, leaving open any illegal
| aspect to be pointed out if that was your moral basis of
| the argument. And indeed, one could attempt a hyperbolic
| retort in which it should be definitely illegal, say, to
| change a running system. Or how is leninist marxism for a
| debatable mindset. Understandably you have rejected that
| debate. Of course the users are an integral part of the
| platform, and it 's a consequential facet of the culture
| that some are already feeling sold-out.
|
| Eventually it's kind of subjective, when everyone values
| the entity differently.
| mkr-hn wrote:
| I can't tell whether there's some point directed at the
| comment you replied to or if this is some stream of
| consciousness thing.
| QuikAccount wrote:
| Everyone here is really gloom and doom about this news but as
| much as I love Bandcamp, they have made some decisions that
| really made me not want to use the platform. For example, if an
| artist releases a free song as part of an album, it is not
| possible to add that song to your library without purchasing the
| whole album. This makes no sense when I only like and want to
| purchase say 2 or 3 songs off the album. This alone made me
| uninstall the Bandcamp app and just go back to Spotify.
| H1Supreme wrote:
| That's not Bandcamp's fault. Whoever listed the album
| configured it that way. There are settings for artists (or
| labels or whoever) to allow people to purchase single songs, or
| require that they buy the entire album.
|
| I've bought plenty of single tracks from albums. A few of them
| as recently as this past weekend.
| QuikAccount wrote:
| Either I didn't explain it correctly or you didn't read what
| I said entirely.
|
| If an album has a free song or single, you cannot add the
| free song to your library unless you purchase the whole
| album. Even if you are allowed to purchase individual songs
| on the album.
| moogly wrote:
| It could be argued that the artist could've released that
| free song as a single/its own "album". It's not uncommon to
| see that.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| I don't think Bandcamp's policies were ever going to work for
| everyone, but I appreciate them, and am a pretty active
| customer and user. I may have to reconsider that now if Epic
| starts "improving" the service.
| slothtrop wrote:
| Absolutely terrible. It does not bode well for consumers when all
| the good small players sell out. I feel like this has been a
| worsening trend.
|
| Someone should get started on a viable alternative. Is it
| possible to yield a mvp over a couple of weekends? :P
| uncomputation wrote:
| I really hope this is just one bad move and doesn't point to a
| larger, inherent flaw in the business models of smaller, indie
| companies. With Bandcamp now gone, there's one less case study of
| truly free consumption and ownership in an increasingly
| rented/"streaming"/subscribing world.
| shmerl wrote:
| That sounds worrying. Will they mess up DRM-free FLAC releases? I
| have little trust for Epic.
| MadcapJake wrote:
| Is there any good kit out there for artists to self host their
| own store/player?
| indigochill wrote:
| I don't yet know if it's any good, but I'm looking into
| Funkwhale right now, which was originally created as an open
| source alternative to Grooveshark. It is, however, explicitly
| designed for music under free licenses (whether creative
| commons or something else), so it's not an option for many
| artists.
|
| Another option I just came across is
| https://codeberg.org/simonrepp/faircamp which sets out to be an
| open source Bandcamp clone, conveniently enough. It does appear
| to have payment options, but I'm unsure whether they're
| actually functional since I haven't tried it myself yet (but I
| plan to).
| basisword wrote:
| Does anyone know Bandcamps funding situation? Did they need an
| exit like this? Or can people not run businesses long term for
| profit anymore?? Such a shame. If you think Epic will just leave
| them alone you just need to read the corporate speak in the first
| paragraph of the announcement:
|
| "I'm excited to announce that Bandcamp is joining Epic Games, who
| you may know as the makers of Fortnite and Unreal Engine, and
| _champions for a fair and open Internet._"
| Keyframe wrote:
| What's next for Epic? Streaming and video sharing?
| devmunchies wrote:
| This could even be a ecommerce/merch thing or something for
| creators. I think I remember reading that Bandcamp does like 9
| figures in merch volume
| Keyframe wrote:
| Could be a boost with content for well, content/game creators
| using UE among other things.
| readingnews wrote:
| Dang first Putin invades, then this? I am just not sure how much
| bad news I can take in one week.
| [deleted]
| aaaaaaaaaaab wrote:
| Fuck, please no :'(
|
| I've spent thousands of dollars on Bandcamp. This makes me
| really, really sad.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Big Corporations always ruin the good stuff. It was a good site
| with good content and fair practices. Alas bandcamp we hardly
| knew ye. I hope the owners made out like bandits I guess, they
| put in a good effort for a long time.
| amar-laksh wrote:
| Rented games, rented music, rented health, rented lives but hey
| at least you got your own misery!
|
| As the lyrics of a contemporary classic goes, "20,000 years of
| this... 7 more to go."
| basisword wrote:
| Bandcamp Press Release:
| https://blog.bandcamp.com/2022/03/02/bandcamp-is-joining-epi...
| susodapop wrote:
| 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.
| gowld wrote:
| > This seems like an odd move for a gaming company.
|
| Amazon is a bookstore.
|
| Epic sees Steam and Apple (and Amazon) and knows that the
| platform is the chokepoint where all the money is.
| bduerst wrote:
| Yeah, this is just Epic blurring the lines between video
| games and music content as it moves to become more of a media
| company.
|
| It's also an easy way to to procure licensing to sell music
| content in games. I'd be interested to know why they passed
| up others like SoundCloud.
| posterboy wrote:
| How would it make licensing easier?
|
| As for SoundCloud, either they didn't come to terms for
| whatever reason, or they didn't try to begin with if
| marketing considerations favor BP.
| bduerst wrote:
| >How would it make licensing easier?
|
| If you have a platform that artists allow purchasing of
| their music through, you can extend it to allow customers
| to sell/license songs in their games (developer) or buy
| snippets of song in Fortnite (gamer).
|
| Sound Cloud would achieve these features too, and I am
| certain they considered more than just Bandcamp, as well
| as kept everyone under NDA during the shopping around.
| MikusR wrote:
| They are also a gaming tools company.
| merlincorey wrote:
| I think of them as primarily a gaming tools company.
|
| Fortnite and other games are really just Unreal Engine
| advertisement vessels that got successful in their own right
| and now serve that purpose plus making lots of money on their
| own.
| danbolt wrote:
| 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.
| pedrogpimenta wrote:
| The FTL soundtrack was my first purchase on Bandcamp and I
| think how I discovered it. I love it. Farewell.
| runevault wrote:
| I'm assuming that, while the store will also remain separate,
| there will be at least backend ties into the Unreal asset
| store. Could see them trying to work with some music creators
| to set up licenses for people to buy to add their music to
| Unreal games.
| SahAssar wrote:
| This is incredibly disappointing. I bought quite a bit from
| bandcamp, to both support the platform and the artists, and I
| don't think epic should be the middleman in that transaction.
| Thanks, I hate it.
| makach wrote:
| Noo... It feels as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in
| terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has
| happened...
| devmunchies wrote:
| The technical co-founder (Joe H.) left at the beginning of the
| year, went to Disney Imagineering. He has had a very impressive
| career (was an engineering manager at Apple in the 90s).
| notesinthefield wrote:
| This explains the slew of bug ridden releases they were radio
| silent about this past month. A shame.
| Jhsto wrote:
| Can't wait to show off my indie vinyl collection in Fortnite!
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| actually this is a good angle, people might not be giving
| credit to bandcamp's social aspect. every album has a list of
| people who purchased it, and you can go to each person and see
| what albums theyve collected. You can even curate/hide albums
| in your collection basically choosing what to recommend.
|
| I can see Epic building off the infrastructure there for games
| and in-game collectibles (of which your vinyls are now a part)
| plorg wrote:
| I find the social graph stuff frustrating, even though I
| generally like Bandcamp (fingers doubtfully crossed). Using
| the app or the online streaming requires an account that
| can't be opted out of the social graph, and this makes your
| Bandcamp profile publicly searchable by username, a thing
| that is completely unnecessary to both the use of the service
| and the goal of music discovery.
| nxoxn wrote:
| No. No no no. Bandcamp was where I went to get DRM free music and
| feel like my money was going to the artists.
| qwertox wrote:
| So next news will be that EA is acquiring SoundCloud.
| RodgerTheGreat wrote:
| This _really_ sucks. Bandcamp has been my go-to store for buying
| music for a long time. No dark patterns, lightweight site, free
| previews, good terms for indie artists. I don 't think I can
| ethically shop there anymore given Epic's ownership and business
| practices.
| politelemon wrote:
| > No dark patterns, lightweight site, free previews, good terms
| for indie artists
|
| I am with you. One of the biggest draws for me was these what
| you have described. Their website experience was
| straightforward and honest.
|
| They are now being acquired by a company that is the complete
| opposite. We won't have to wait long for Epic's dark patterns
| and policies to creep into a once great marketplace.
| Macha wrote:
| Or just flat out discontinuing the web store to put it in the
| windows-only Epic client.
| masklinn wrote:
| I know you're right but did you really have to hurt me so
| much?
| rvense wrote:
| My favourite thing is that they have all sorts of social
| features so you can really engage with other fans and make
| lists and explore and do things... but you can also just ignore
| the hell out of that and buy some music that you like.
| tasha0663 wrote:
| IIRC, this is what MySpace was supposed to be in the first
| place. They made the mistake of leaning into a more general
| social media audience while Facebook was on the rise, but it
| seems to me like Bandcamp excels at being what MySpace could
| have become.
| danShumway wrote:
| Was Bandcamp draining money or something? Were they not
| profitable?
|
| I hate this. Why does everything need to roll up into other
| companies. I don't want anything Epic is bringing to the table,
| and every interaction they've had with open platforms as a
| business has been negative as far as I can see.
|
| I hate how much consolidation is going on right now.
| antris wrote:
| Welcome to capitalism
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > Bandcamp will keep operating as a standalone marketplace and
| music community...
|
| 40% of which will be owned by Tencent, possibly more in the
| future based on the whims of Tim Sweeney and the performance of
| Epic's primary business (Video Games).
|
| Really unfortunate to see an independent source for music become
| part of a huge conglomerate.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Tencent as a game studio is even more hand-off than Epic. I
| haven't heard of any of their many acquisitions really being
| affected after purchase.
| tombert wrote:
| Forgive a bit of ignorance on my end...what has Tencent
| actually done? I know they own stake in Epic and I've heard
| there's controversy, but I don't know what it is.
| mdoms wrote:
| There hasn't been any evidence that Tencent has influenced
| Epic, or have the power to do so. Sweeney has defended the
| rights of players and publishers on Epic to speak out against
| China and the CCP.
| gman83 wrote:
| Well, they own WeChat:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WeChat#Controversies
| mdoms wrote:
| Epic Founder and CEO Tim Sweeney has addressed this a number of
| times and so far given no reason to doubt it,
|
| > I'm the controlling shareholder in Epic Games, and have been
| since 1991. We have a number of outside investors now. Tencent
| is the largest. All of Epic's investors our friends and
| partners. None can dictate decisions to Epic. None have access
| to Epic customer data.
|
| > Tencent is a Chinese company founded in 1998. CEO Pony Ma and
| the other co-founders played a lot of Unreal Tournament back
| then, and visited Epic in the early 2000's. In 2012 Epic was
| looking to move to online games, and we invited Tencent in as
| an investor to help us.
|
| > I've never regretted it, and the recent anti-China rage
| doesn't change that even slightly, as its completely unfounded.
| Epic has only had positive interactions with Tencent at all
| levels.
|
| > All of Epic's big decisions are made here in the USA and as
| CEO I'm 100% responsible for them. I'm grateful for everyone
| who has spoken in support. I also read and respectfully
| consider all dissenting arguments of fact and principle. Just
| please keep it real.
|
| https://twitter.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/111396399928729190...
|
| Although I completely agree with you that it's a shame to see
| yet another indie source get swallowed up by a big corporation.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I think it's naive to think that the opinion of a 40%
| shareholder has no influence on the CEO. Even if that just
| presents as a bias in their decision making.
|
| > Although I completely agree with you that it's a shame to
| see yet another indie source get swallowed up by a big
| corporation.
|
| For the record, I don't think that Tencent is any more evil
| than Disney, Sony, or Microsoft in this regard.
| mdoms wrote:
| > I think it's naive to think that the opinion of a 40%
| shareholder has no influence on the CEO. Even if that just
| presents as a bias in their decision making.
|
| I'm more than willing to accept that I'm being naive. All I
| ask is some actual evidence of this influence/bias.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| Given almost literally all of recorded corporate history
| in the United States, the onus is very much on the other
| side to continually demonstrate a lack of influence/bias.
|
| Edited to add: I find the blind faith people place in
| billionaire CEOs insane. Maybe save the empathy for
| people who need it and treat the obscenely wealthy with
| healthy skepticism?
| mdoms wrote:
| Maybe you could start with what kind of evidence would
| convince you? It seems like you're asking Tim Sweeney to
| prove a negative, which is difficult.
|
| I don't think "blind faith" is fair - I just haven't seen
| any reason to believe Epic is controlled by Chinese
| interests.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| "the onus is very much on the other side to continually
| demonstrate a lack of influence/bias."
|
| does 10 years of lack of influence count? Like, all
| Tencent did was try to make some LoL mobile game in china
| (in Unity, ironically enough). That's the one thing I
| can't imagine Riot/Epic doing without influence. But
| that's not really a smoking gun. China, mobile market
| huge, LoL big IP. No effect on LoL proper outside of the
| devs working on it.
|
| Tencent don't seem to be the kind of company that cares
| about sticking fingers in the pudding of what works. They
| invest in successful companies and help other companies
| (including Sony and Nintendo) operate within China. At
| this point it feels like the skepticism is unwarranted.
| nemothekid wrote:
| There are many American companies that capitulate to
| Chinese political pressure without even being owned by
| the Chinese. Tencent owns 2 of the top 5 biggest gaming
| platforms in the US, but the one that got accused of
| being too close to the Chinese is now owned by Microsoft.
|
| I think the question is why is there an expectation that
| Tencent is somehow more nefarious than any other billion
| dollar conglomerate?
| joemi wrote:
| Defending one's investors is expected and fairly meaningless,
| though, isn't it?
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| Just wait to see what happens when Gabe of Valve decides to
| retire and needs to diversify his holdings.
| revolvingocelot wrote:
| 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 held by you"?
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| How many people expected Gates to do something like the
| Gates Foundation?
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >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 tech companies right now (and more in the
| future). 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.
| ghostly_s wrote:
| 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.
| andrewzah wrote:
| 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.
| tarentel wrote:
| I am glad I only made physical purchases through bandcamp now. I
| don't really get what Epic Games isn't going to do with the
| company besides make it more hostile to artists.
| throwaway889900 wrote:
| Is it just me, or does this seem like a rather lateral move to
| get into more of the "marketplace" like Epic has been doing
| recently? Is there some grand goal that I'm not seeing here?
| hunterb123 wrote:
| Maybe they want a music catalog to play/merge into their
| games/social platforms like Fortnite.
| detcader wrote:
| "So sad" "I'm disappointed" Ok but everything like Bandcamp will
| always go away because it's not efficient enough. If it exists
| _today_ , it's treading water! It is on borrowed time! Bandcamp
| was like a character in a video game with 1HP and a temporary
| shield called "Startup." Bandcamp is to the way capital works as
| life is to mortality. Nothing workable will ever exist at scale
| unless our species is completely overhauled.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| So... Epic's iTunes? eTunes.
| indigochill wrote:
| Well, crap. Bandcamp was the perfect place for hosting my music.
| Hopefully Itch starts hosting music if they haven't already. I'd
| switch immediately. Are there any other good places to host low-
| budget indie music?
|
| Soundcloud doesn't count because I get at least one spammer
| interacting with my tracks every single time I upload something.
| It's got to the point that I've started only uploading things
| secretly and sharing the private links with the people who will
| actually listen to the music.
|
| Edit: I'm gonna experiment with self-hosting on Funkwhale. We'll
| see how that goes.
| samirsd wrote:
| https://mixtape.ai
|
| big new release coming this month with artist-side album
| drafting and merch features
| drcongo wrote:
| Is that website supposed to be almost entirely empty with
| just an App Store button?
| stemlord wrote:
| Release your app for android and I'll try it out if it's free
| acabal wrote:
| That's a pity. Bandcamp is my go-to for getting DRM-free FLAC
| files straight from the artists. The site was a little crusty but
| they were a huge benefit as a tech-friendly independent music
| community.
| rorymalcolm wrote:
| They aren't shutting down? Bandcamp's model is so directly
| connected to DRM free lossless downloads it'd be an incredibly
| bold decision to remove it.
| nerdponx wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if Bandcamp shuts down entirely in
| the next 2-3 years, to be replaced by some limp attempt at an
| integrated Epic music/streaming/gaming platform.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| This is Epic, not google. They've only had 2 aquisitions
| "shut down", both of which were game studios. One being a
| studio that became independent again, _People Can Fly_
| (Makers of _Outriders_ ).
|
| From a dev perspective of someone who's worked with several
| Epic tools I'm not immediately worried about what seems to
| be more of a technical acquisition. Historically they do
| seem to actually leave their subsidaries hand-off,
| integrating their tech into Unreal instead of absorbing it
| entirely. I imagine the extend of the ramifications here
| include some way to expand Unreal's Asset store to include
| music or SFX (which artists can opt into offering on the
| asset store).
| immibis wrote:
| Similar things have happened before
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I actually like the site, it's simple and fast. Rare attributes
| on today's web.
| nerdponx wrote:
| My only complaint about the site is its nearly-useless search
| feature, which uses some deranged fuzzy full-text logic that
| is almost guaranteed _not_ to return the result you want.
|
| Oh, and there's no "open in app" feature on the site, or a
| "copy URL" feature in the app.
|
| Otherwise, I share the sentiment that Bandcamp itself is
| (was) a great place to buy indie music in high quality, and
| that this feels like the beginning of the end.
| ryantgtg wrote:
| The search is laughably bad. Searching for an exact album
| title, when that album is on a label's page, will often
| have no results. Luckily search engines know what's up!
| gloosx wrote:
| Not sure if it's a good thing pals, I'm a big fan of bandcamp and
| I have a really nice collection there, should i expect some
| drastic changes to the platform?
| kregasaurusrex wrote:
| When 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 their success.
| Ruthalas wrote:
| 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.
| eezurr wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_Games#Acquisitions
|
| This appears to be the first company they are acquiring that is
| outside of the video game industry. This may start a new era for
| Epic Games. I wonder what direction they are going to take? I'd
| guess a new player in the multi-media field, but I really dont
| know.
| BaseballPhysics wrote:
| > This appears to be the first company they are acquiring that
| is outside of the video game industry.
|
| ArtStation also falls outside the core videogame industry and
| would seem to be similar to Bandcamp, insofar as its a two way
| marketplace connecting artists with fans.
| runevault wrote:
| Or just helping set up ways to license music for games made
| with Unreal as part of their asset store/offerings.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| Given the Unity acquisition of WETA, I thought Epic Games's
| next acquisition would be to buy a movie or FX studio to
| compete - that is, if they aren't building their own. I think
| the end result of these acquisitions is that the line between
| making a game and a movie will no longer exist. Sometime in the
| future, everyone could build and render their own Star Wars in
| Unreal or Unity.
| SbEpUBz2 wrote:
| Epic Games acquired and recently discontinued Houseparty, a
| video chat app. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houseparty_(app)
| randomsilence wrote:
| Why would they shut it down? Discontinuing a successful
| social app during Covid times doesn't make sense at all.
| Bandcamp seems to be too big to be closed like that though.
| rglover wrote:
| 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.
| siver_john wrote:
| This 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 can rip my own) continue
| to disappear.
|
| This feels like a potential last step of true music ownership and
| that makes me incredibly sad.
|
| 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).
| pier25 wrote:
| > _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.
| officeplant wrote:
| 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.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| HDTracks for purchasing and downloading. Deezer and Tidal
| provide high fidelity streaming.
| prox wrote:
| 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.
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| Bandcamp was the only music store I was happy to throw my
| money at. I guess the ol' tricorn hat may be getting dusted
| off real soon if anything material about the company or the
| selection changes.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| 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.
| officeplant wrote:
| I don't even really need a hypothetical scenario. All
| that could happen does indeed suck, but I'm mainly irked
| about giving my money to Epic after 15 years of loving
| Bandcamp.
| minusf wrote:
| i am old. it's not the first takeover i have seen. it's
| for a reason many people are sceptical here.
| prox wrote:
| I hope you are right, but the track record for take-overs
| isn't very good.
|
| 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.
| kinnth wrote:
| 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 think they will change the business model.
| officeplant wrote:
| 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.
| glenstein wrote:
| This does not fit your criteria of flacs with wide selection,
| however I think Resonate is the most interesting pro-artist
| option out there at the moment, albiet with an extremely
| limited catalog:
|
| https://resonate.is/
| almet wrote:
| Resonate is nice and I like the fact that it's a co-op, but
| there is something missing that was present on band-camp,
| unless I missed it: the possibility to pay for real albums
| that will be shipped to you, or for you to download the .flac
| or .mp3 files to add to your library.
|
| It's actually possible to download the files but the price is
| fixed and it seems to be track by track.
|
| So it looks more like a replacement for Spotify to me.
| zippergz wrote:
| "Nothing will change in the short term" is the story of every
| acquisition, almost all of which end up with major changes for
| the worse at some point. (So yes, I agree with you.)
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| 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" acquisitions
| which have rarely lead to the kinds of ends that, say,
| Google's Aquisitions have.
| jamal-kumar wrote:
| It's a company that's been successful, while also mired in
| a variety of legal problems and scandals, often related to
| how their games are so deliberately addictive.... I don't
| doubt what you say about their good intentions, I just
| honestly worry more about any fallout from that kind of
| business practice leading to an acquisition.
| superkuh wrote:
| 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 forums just like the Rocket League linux client
| the minute there's any more profit to be squeezed out.
| stonith wrote:
| > look at what happened to PUBG when they used Epic's
| engine
|
| 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.
| smileybarry wrote:
| >> 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 battle
| royale mode that retained the fortification aspects.
| Known as Fortnite Battle Royale, Epic later released it
| as a standalone free-to-play game in September 2017.
| Shortly after its release, Bluehole expressed concerns
| about the game, acknowledging that while they cannot
| claim ownership of the battle royale genre, they feared
| that since they had been working with Epic for technical
| support of the Unreal engine, that they may have had a
| heads-up on planned features they wanted to bring to
| Battlegrounds and could release it first.
|
| Quote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PUBG:_Battlegrounds#
| Epic_Games...
|
| Article: https://www.pcgamer.com/pubg-exec-clarifies-
| objection-to-for...
| superkuh wrote:
| When Epic bought the game "Rocket League" they promised not
| to change anything. At that time it had Windows, Linux, Mac,
| xbox, and playstation clients. 6 months after they aquisition
| they killed off the linux client (even for people who bought
| in-game purchases).
|
| Epic lies. It is what they do. They are the epitome of a
| dangerous megacorp.
| smoldesu wrote:
| For the record, Rocket League is still perfectly playable
| on Linux (even online) through WINE or Proton. But yes,
| they did axe the native version.
| riskable wrote:
| The input latency is noticeably higher when you play like
| this though. It drove me nuts last time I tried it (using
| Steam Controller and Dualshock 4 controller). It's a big
| reason why Rocket League sucks so bad on the Nintendo
| Switch (input lag).
| ffpip wrote:
| They also made the game free to play.
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/15/21438194/rocket-league-
| fr...
| superkuh wrote:
| That is because Epic was buying up popular games,
| removing non-$exploitable$ platforms from them, and
| securing them behind it's software walled garden. The
| point of buying Rocket League and then giving away "free"
| versions of it away was to get people stuck in their
| walled garden with the hope they'll use it and buy other
| things. They also ramped up the microtransactions.
|
| I don't like not being able to play the game on my OS
| anymore, but that's just a tree in the forest of
| behavior. Epic anti-competitive monopolist behavior is
| completely transparent if you've been watching from the
| start. They also attacked companies that created popular
| games using their engine by copying the games and
| releasing them for free to undercut their own engine
| customers (see: Fortnite vs PUBG).
|
| Epic uses their "free" software as a weapon, just like
| Microsoft did in the 90s.
| dymk wrote:
| 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).
| Zambyte wrote:
| As someone who bought the Rocket League and plays on
| Linux... :(
| shaggyfrog wrote:
| "Because I paid for the game, and despite the fact I was
| happy to pay for it and I enjoy playing it, I think
| everyone else should need to pay for it, too. Otherwise
| all that enjoyment I had will be undone."
|
| c.f.: sunk cost fallacy
| dymk wrote:
| I'm happy to pay for a game I enjoy playing, the game is
| made F2P, it becomes inundated with Eternal September
| players, it is no longer fun to play, I am annoyed.
| brimble wrote:
| The changes made when games go F2P tend to change the
| product you paid for in significant ways, often in ways
| that some players will think ruin it.
|
| There's a reason I haven't played TF2 in years, and it's
| not because I'm indignant that others didn't have to pay
| for it.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| As a long time player I'll say that surfing definitely
| increased by a lot when it went free to play, it's not
| entirely sunk cost fallacy. Im high enough now that it's
| not much of an issue but lower ranks are rife with
| surfing and even in my diamond 1 games I see them enough
| to be annoying, at least.
| ketzo wrote:
| 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 competitive multiplayer
| game should never (this is a big _should_ , but in the
| ideal) get worse for an existing player because of skill-
| based matchmaking (something TF2 lacks).
| riskable wrote:
| Making Rocket League F2P meant that skilled players could
| register as many new accounts for themselves as they
| wanted and "rank up" their buddies in competitive
| matchmaking. This completely ruins the competitive aspect
| of the game since it's far too common to join a game and
| get completely crushed by some grand champion playing on
| a brand new account, teamed up with his friends.
|
| Another problem it enables is trolls: People make new
| accounts then join games to ruin the fun for everyone
| else. Account got banned? No problem: Make a new one.
| Repeat.
|
| The ranked play aspect of the game was completely ruined
| after Epic bought Rocket League.
| ketzo wrote:
| Those are problems, true, but literally every modern
| competitive ladder deals with the three problems you're
| describing: smurfs, boosting, and trolls. Overwatch dealt
| with all three even when the game cost $40!
|
| In return for those problems, the game gets an instant,
| massive increase in players. Monetization usually
| _increases_ , since modern mtx are usually much more
| effective than either subscription or one-time-purchase
| models.
|
| I'm not saying there are _zero_ problems with going F2P.
| Obviously there are. But just as obviously, since so many
| studios have chosen to go that route, the benefits are
| worth it for the company. If the revenue benefits are
| worth it, they keep developing the game, keep running the
| servers, keep fixing bugs, rather than just letting the
| game die. That seems pretty good.
| joeman1000 wrote:
| TF2 has competitive matchmaking. And anecdotally I'm
| usually placed in casual matches with similarly ranked
| players.
| enraged_camel wrote:
| Yeah, they are one of my least favorite companies in the
| industry.
| mooreds wrote:
| Hmmm. I tend to agree.
|
| Would be interesting to think of acquisitions where this
| wasn't the case. The only one that jumps to mind is Zappos.
| kingcharles wrote:
| There's a Twitter account I can't find right now (help!)
| which shows the statements companies put out at the moment of
| acquisition ("nothing will change, ever, we'll always be
| independent") and the statements they put out a couple of
| months later ("all your files have been deleted, we've closed
| the offices, everyone is absorbed into Parent Company, so
| long and thanks for all the fish").
| skyfaller wrote:
| Do you mean the "Our Incredible Journey" Tumblr?
| https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/
| kingcharles wrote:
| No wonder I couldn't find it anywhere in my Twitter
| history... thank you, you saved me going mad (for now).
| [deleted]
| Apocryphon wrote:
| 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?
| BaseballPhysics wrote:
| > And yet so many modern day startups have no viable exit
| strategy beyond acquisition
|
| Bandcamp was already profitable and has been for years. The
| pandemic dramatically increased their sales. They were
| doing fine.
|
| _Why did they need an exit_?
|
| That is the real flaw of SV thinking: that simply being a
| profitable, going concern is somehow inadequate. The result
| is monopoly accretion as small companies are repeatedly
| swallowed up by bigger ones.
| ballenf wrote:
| I think it's more so the result of cheap money than some
| way of thinking. Higher interest rates will curtail a lot
| of this activity. Might even see a wave of divestitures
| or spinoffs as companies have to look harder for sources
| of capital.
| BaseballPhysics wrote:
| The need to "exit" and the obsession with "growth" that
| occupies the minds of SV founders significantly pre-dates
| the low rate environment that's dominated since 2008. The
| only difference is the path: IPO vs acquisition.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| SV is not a homogeneous thought-entity. Maybe the
| founders were tired of running it or wanted to move on to
| do something else. Businesses get bought and sold all the
| time and don't need to be a lifetime commitment for the
| founder (it would still get sold or shutdown at that
| point anyway).
| pketh wrote:
| You make a good point, but I wonder what the real world
| business equivalent of this is? Is it the destiny of
| every successful cafe to become acquired by Starbucks one
| day? (assuming there's not a better comparison I should
| be thinking of)
| ribosometronome wrote:
| Successful restaurants, bars, etc do change owners from
| time to time as owners retire or simply want a change of
| pace. I imagine the difference is the amount of money
| involved. It's possible for an individual to save up
| several hundred thousand to a million to buy an existing,
| profitable small business. Less so the hundreds of
| millions to billion+ a business like this might go for.
| bigiain wrote:
| Around me in Sydney, there is a major "hospitality group"
| that's spent the last 10+ years buying up bars and pubs.
|
| There's a few smaller operations doing it as well.
|
| The big one, Merivale, seems to have practically
| unlimited money to throw at interesting or struggling
| venues. While I really don't like the changes they
| eventually make to most places they buy, I have a
| grudging respect for the business acumen of Justin Hemmes
| the owner.
|
| He seems to have an uncanny knack for having bought a
| good sized venue a year or two before, in every area that
| becomes cool and popular. Often they'll barely change for
| a few years, while the demographics around them shift,
| then one day they've suddenly been renovated and there's
| a queue of b-grade celebrities all dressed up and lined
| up around the block waiting to get in every weekend for a
| month or two.
|
| I totally get that my demographic spends less over the
| bar than the crowd he's so good at attracting, but he's
| ruined two of my local ex-favourite pubs in the last few
| years, and over decades he's turned some of my favourite
| music venues in things like trashy Mexican
| restaurant/bars.
|
| But yeah, even as successful as he is in his field, I
| doubt it'll get him into the three comma club.
| airstrike wrote:
| > 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
| BaseballPhysics wrote:
| > 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 your
| money, open a coffee shop, never return a profit, and
| then sell it to Starbucks", you'd get laughed out of the
| room.
|
| In SV that's a business model.
| charcircuit wrote:
| You won't get much money selling a small coffee shop
| which is why it won't work. There is a small upper bound
| to what you can possibly be worth.
| chris11 wrote:
| 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.
| BaseballPhysics wrote:
| 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 can guess they were generating
| around 50M per year gross, which is a very healthy
| cashflow for a company that size.
|
| Their strategy was clearly not to take over the world,
| but to carve out a niche and not bother to directly
| compete with the streaming platforms (which helps to
| explain, for instance, the incredibly rudimentary mobile
| player app).
|
| As for the senior management, Diamond had already
| previously started and sold a company. I'm sure he was
| doing fine. The same is true of Mark Hall, their VP of
| Product (who started 5-ish years ago, if I recall). The
| technical founders I'm less sure about, though apparently
| at least one of them had already moved on.
|
| I'd absolutely describe it as a sustainable lifestyle
| business that had a good long-term trajectory. It was
| never going to be a unicorn, but who cares?
| munificent wrote:
| _> a sustainable lifestyle business_
|
| 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.)
| BaseballPhysics wrote:
| Yup, excellent points all around. Well put!
| antihero wrote:
| 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?
| heleninboodler wrote:
| The employees who traded compensation for equity probably
| don't agree. Bandcamp's success is built partially on
| this trade and at some point it needs to pay off for
| them. I suppose they could stay private forever and give
| out profit-sharing bonuses, but I think people go into
| this expecting an exit.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Did Bandcamp offer employee equity?
| heleninboodler wrote:
| Would they have ever managed to hire anyone if they
| didn't?
| BaseballPhysics wrote:
| Some people just want to work at a decent company for
| reasonable pay, and aren't looking to get filthy rich
| busting their asses for a FAANG.
|
| Bandcamp is absolutely a company I would've considered
| working for. I'm long past the point in my career where I
| care about a lottery ticket. They were profitable, big
| enough to be sustainable, but small enough to be nimble.
| The management seemed to make all the right noises
| regarding their values and motivations.
|
| I'll take that over a massive tech company or a tiny
| startup any day of the week.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Who's to say they didn't? As mentioned elsewhere
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30532741), they
| were always focused on slow and steady growth and seemed
| to be more lifestyle business than wannabe unicorn. Not
| the shop to join if you wanted lottery ticket options.
| Maybe they didn't.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >Does everything have to exist purely to maximise profit?
|
| No, everyone is free to start a bandcamp alternative that
| does not sell out. But the probability of people wanting
| to "cash out" or trade equity for other things they want
| is pretty high. And so that is the world that we see,
| because it is a reflection of what people want.
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| Sure, but what people want as individuals and makes sense
| for them to individually do can nevertheless be harmful
| to society. That is what people are complaining about
| generally.
|
| I don't know how to combat the shift to a single
| monopoly/duopoly in every market though, but it's
| definitely going to make our lives worse. Especially with
| the erosion of private ownership for us plebeians.
| munificent wrote:
| Because in our current corporate environment where there
| is essentially no anti-trust enforcement, any small or
| medium-sized company is vulnerable to being destroyed by
| one of the giants.
| feoren wrote:
| The very term "exit strategy" answers your own question: if
| you're committed to building a sustainable product, with
| long-term sustainable profits, caring for your employees
| and your customers, without any explicit plans to sell off
| your company to random megacorp, where it will be scrapped
| for parts, then you're a _dumb loser_ trying to build a
| _lifestyle business_ and you deserve to be shamed out of
| Silicon Valley! How dare you waste our precious venture
| capitalist time with that crap!?
|
| I get it: venture capitalists are interested in the most
| efficient possible way to loot the economy, and funding
| non-viable startups until they're so overhyped that some
| other idiot buys the over-inflated toxic asset from them
| before it blows is a great way to do that.
|
| Of course speaking out against VC and startup culture on
| _Hacker News_ is going to get me downvoted to oblivion, so
| go ahead and mash that down arrow. Don 't forget to dislike
| and unsubscribe!
| Apocryphon wrote:
| HN is a lot more jaded towards startups and founders'
| games these days. Back in late 2019 there was this thread
| about a Garry Tan video where the tone of the discussion
| was fiercely against working for startups, saying it was
| better to join FAANG or start your own company instead:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21865065
| [deleted]
| cgrealy wrote:
| I completely agree, but this isn't just a VC problem. The
| entire current economic system incentivises this.
| hedora wrote:
| Yeah. They also could have IPOed, but either way the
| fundamental issue is that people looking for long term
| investments are willing to pay 10x forward earnings. How
| do you compete with that without getting employees to
| make major personal sacrifices?
| andai wrote:
| Doesn't exiting necessarily imply a change in leadership?
| Apocryphon wrote:
| IPOs are the alternative form of exit and they certainly
| don't.
| dundarious wrote:
| Where does the drive for an "exit" come from? It's a
| jargon term not used in the entrepreneurial side of most
| other industries.
| projectazorian wrote:
| Many people are attracted to this industry by the stories
| of Google/FB/etc early employees walking away with 8
| figure sums and retiring after a few years of work. Thus
| the exit obsession.
| ska wrote:
| > 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.
| dundarious wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| andrepd wrote:
| Prepare for a blog post titled Our Amazing Journey.
| maldusiecle wrote:
| Boomkat is also good, different selection than Bandcamp but
| comparable in size (they definitely have some Japanese stuff
| that Bandcamp doesn't, e.g. Tzadik's Japanese music line).
| slothtrop wrote:
| I just checked it out to confirm that they have John Zorn's
| catalog, and it seems so. Good find. I thought the man was
| married to physical only.
| arwhatever wrote:
| Would Bandcamp the business model + Bandcamp the website
| necessarily be difficult to reproduce, particularly in an
| environment in which the Bandcamp niche just became no longer
| fulfilled due to changing practices on the part of Original
| Bandcamp?
| nluken wrote:
| Makes me curious about the idea of a nonprofit organization
| whose purpose is to manage a platform that gives as much
| money as possible to artists. Perhaps that's a naive vision,
| but I feel like a lot of artists would hop onboard if the
| interface worked, and that could overcome the network effect.
| handelaar wrote:
| Look at this sideways for a second and you'll see that you
| just described _precisely and exactly_ the structure and
| supposed-mission of every performing rights society in the
| world.
|
| And yet they just don't seem to have any interest in it.
| siver_john wrote:
| I can't imagine the infrastructure to do it is trivial, but I
| would say the larger burden is network effect. Bandcamp has
| existed for a long time and I know of indie record labels who
| use it as their default distribution. I am aware there are
| indie alternatives (some of which provided in the comments to
| my first comment). Also disruption of service often results
| in loss, would someone who is no longer focused on music move
| there stuff over if things changed dramatically? Would people
| download in time, etc?
|
| Obviously this is all speculation, bandcamp could continue on
| as it has been for the conceivable future, but I am less
| pleased about that future than I was before I saw this news.
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| It seems like the perfect thing for Facebook (err Meta) to do
| with their social network. Bands already use Facebook for
| announcing tours, events, etc. so it would be a logical step
| to let them sell digital goods/music and give a small percent
| to FB. But I dunno if Meta actually cares about this business
| anymore.
| EamonnMR wrote:
| Don't forget the third ingredient: wide adoption by
| underground artists and listeners. Bandcamp is, in some
| circles, cool. A new service would need to work very hard to
| earn that kind of cachet.
| skyfaller wrote:
| I've been buying more mainstream artists (who aren't on
| Bandcamp) from 7digital: https://us.7digital.com/
|
| That said, I didn't spend nearly as much money there because
| Bandcamp showed a lot more evidence that they cared about
| ethics and getting money directly to artists. I have no idea
| how money works with something like 7digital, but I assume it
| doesn't pay artists as well.
| loudtieblahblah wrote:
| 7digital has really gone down hill in the last 2 years. They
| haven't updated their front page in forever and when they do
| its very slight. All the albums listed on the front page are
| from 2019.
|
| Albums disappear all the time and never return, your
| downloads from your library break when that happens too. So
| be like me, download immediately and back it up.
|
| I still use 7digital bc it's easier to actually download the
| mp3/flac, especially on mobile, without a 3rd party app (like
| Amazon) that makes you download one song at a time (as
| opposed to a zip of an album)
|
| But it's a rotting, decaying place where new music doesn't
| get added.
|
| I listen to mostly older shit. So no big deal for me. For
| now.
| vintermann wrote:
| Yes, my impression is that 7digital does the absolute
| minimum. This is the case with basically all streaming
| services that try to compete with Spotify. I've tried all
| the big ones except Tidal, which has its own problems for
| which I refuse to touch it.
|
| Want an example? Here's Deezer:
|
| https://www.deezer.com/search/%22Arrows%20in%20the%20Gale%2
| 2...
|
| Here's 7digital:
|
| https://no.7digital.com/search?q=Arrows%20in%20the%20Gale
|
| I probably can't post more links without getting auto-
| hidden by HN, but just try the search elsewhere too. Also
| try the album titles "Fresh Fruit", "I'm Looking for an
| Angel", "Day Dawn" or "My Car Sounds".
|
| That is one spammer. He releases 300+ albums at once,
| several times per months, to virtually all streaming
| services. They all have the same title, and the same
| generic album art, often a filtered stock image. They're
| officially "compilation albums". He has been doing this for
| about a decade as far as I can tell. He uses a different
| made-up label each time. If you blindly search up any song
| by one of the classic artists he targets, likely you will
| get one of his "compilations", and he will get money for
| every play.
|
| But Spotify is different. Those Echo Nest people have a
| special hatred of spammers, they kicked him out ages ago.
| fsflover wrote:
| > if anyone knows of any place to buy flacs of music with great
| selection would love to know
|
| https://www.fsf.org/givingguide/v12/ (scroll down).
| pl0x wrote:
| Are you willing to fund Bandcamp?
| masklinn wrote:
| Being a bandcamp customer, the answer seems quite obviously
| "yes" as I've literally done that.
| officeplant wrote:
| Given they've been profitable for years, yes.
| siver_john wrote:
| I do through my purchases and my general encouragement of
| traffic to the site, if I wasn't a broke graduate student and
| had the funds to invest in them, without a doubt in my mind I
| would.
|
| However, even if I am unable to invest in them I see nothing
| wrong about my expressing discomfort over someone else buying
| them. I have seen nothing as well that they needed cash to
| continue operations.
| antihero wrote:
| As an OG pirate in my teens and a what elite in my twenties
| I've been spending on average about PS50 a month on bandcamp
| for pretty much all of my thirties.
| aezell wrote:
| Qobuz markets itself first as a hi-res streaming service.
| However, it also offers FLAC purchases without DRM that are
| yours even if you don't continue to use Qobuz. Their selection
| is very large and might have more options for more well-known
| acts.
| Dubhead wrote:
| > 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.
|
| [0] https://ototoy.jp/top/
| noyesno wrote:
| Qobuz offers both streamed music and flac purchases from their
| store.
| siver_john wrote:
| You are a god send. If for no other reason than they have an
| album I had been looking to purchase I could find nowhere
| else.
| marrone12 wrote:
| Qobuz is the best
| vintermann wrote:
| Pretty sure it's just a front service for 7digital. All the
| big streaming services besides Spotify and Tidal are skeleton
| crew operations.
| bb010g wrote:
| Qobuz is not associated with 7digital.
| minusf wrote:
| is it known how they are compensating the artists? the main
| reason why i am boycotting spotify.
| marrone12 wrote:
| They pay literally an order of magnitude more per stream
| than spotify. .04 cents vs .003 cents
| https://www.soundguys.com/tidal-hifi-review-25846/
| mkr-hn wrote:
| Too bad. It was one of the few good independent websites left. As
| always, the CEO said they'll remain independent and blah blah
| blah in the email, but we know how that goes.
|
| Good tip for people on the music side, and something to suggest
| to them:
|
| 1. Set up but do not publish your Bandcamp Subscriptions
|
| 2. Add all your music to it
|
| 3. Now it's all downloadable in your own user-side Bandcamp
| library. Check the format: FLAC is best.
|
| Assuming not everyone holds on to masters once they're uploaded.
| StopDarkPattern wrote:
| Looks like China is trying to invade the music industry as
| well.
| dazzawazza wrote:
| I look forward to not being able to download my purchases :(
| zormino wrote:
| That already happens with Bandcamp. If the artist removes a
| song/album, you have no way of downloading it again even if
| you've purchased it. You only get a license to download the
| music while it's still available on the website. I've lost a
| few tracks/albums this way, thankfully I had local copies
| already.
| joe-collins wrote:
| Although, oddly, I do have one album which is no longer
| available for streaming in the web client, but remains
| intact in the Android app.
| officeplant wrote:
| I haven't had this happen with albums that I can verify are
| currently unavailable on bandcamp, but I have ran into an
| issue before where an Artist updated the album with more
| tracks and a "remaster" which means I couldn't get the
| originals anymore. Luckily I usually buy the CD and keep it
| in storage as a backup I can rip from.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Not to mention the inevitable "we have updated our privacy
| policy" and the proliferation of tracking and fingerprinting
| on the increasingly slow-and-bloated site.
|
| Maybe at least they'll add some kind of "Now Playing" feature
| in Fortnite, that would probably be fun for some people.
| [deleted]
| jdlyga wrote:
| Nothing changes with acquisitions until everything changes. Just
| keep a close eye on Bandcamp.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| >"Fair and open platforms are critical to the future of the
| creator economy," Epic Games, best known as the company behind
| battle-royale game "Fortnite," said in announcing the pact.
|
| So how do 3D artists go about designing and selling skins to
| Fortnight players without giving Epic a cut?
| muglug wrote:
| This is a big out-of-left-field move. About 12 years ago I
| rebuilt a record label's site, and bandcamp integration was a big
| part of that effort. A founder there helped get everything
| working.
|
| The brand name now has a ton of cachet -- I hope it continues
| with the acquisition.
| inasmuch wrote:
| This is tragic for all the many, many reasons everyone else has
| outlined (DRM, Tencent, etc.), but for me the biggest blow is the
| loss of the last commercially viable (profitable!), but
| independent champion of underground and truly independent music.
|
| Say all you want about the freedom and quasi-independence of
| self-publishing to the various streaming corporations, etc., but
| for years now, the underground scene has thrived on and been
| virtually exclusively supported by Bandcamp.
|
| It's like every independent artist in the world just got signed
| to a major corporate label all at once, minus the benefits to the
| artists. I recognize that's hyperbolic, but fuck me, I feel
| physically sick over this.
| inasmuch wrote:
| If anyone wants to build an alternative/replacement/FOSS tool--
| whatever kind of remedy for this tragedy--I would eagerly
| partner up and design it (can't code well, sorry).
| gen220 wrote:
| It'd be reasonable to structure the development company as a
| non-profit, to prevent an outcome like Bandcamp's.
|
| I think it may be possible to build the marketplace in a
| purely FOSS-y way, but it would be illegal to operate it with
| the wrong configuration values. I'm thinking in particular
| about the accounting functions, such as earmarking x% of each
| sale for royalties, and ensuring they go to/from the correct
| bank accounts.
|
| In other words, one could plausibly release the code as FOSS,
| but the interface would depend on a set of corporate entities
| that are configured a particular way, so it would be of
| limited value to the median person.
|
| It would definitely lower the barrier to entry for people to
| fork the business, though, which is probably a good thing for
| the median person.
|
| ---
|
| I'd also be down to contribute as an engineer, if such a
| project already exists with momentum or if somebody wants to
| start it!
| mkka wrote:
| Totally not thought through, but it seems like it could be good
| if once a company hits a certain size they have to increase their
| difficulty level and only grown from the inside, no acquisitions.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| puyoxyz wrote:
| [ insert obligatory comment about epic games hating linux ]
| lukka5 wrote:
| It's difficult to understand how an indie focused site will sell
| to a big generic company. They obviously know that Epic is going
| to have different culture even if they say the contrary. So
| probably making money or exit was the priority here.
| jrm4 wrote:
| I 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 collectively figure out
| some way for me to send money to my favorite artists so they keep
| doing their thing?
|
| (And I say this as someone who does fairly regularly pay for
| digital downloads.)
| Ruthalas wrote:
| 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.
| vintermann wrote:
| Me too, but I use it in a way I know many music artists
| wouldn't be happy with.
|
| I don't care about "personal rewards", but I do care that my
| contribution makes a tangible difference to what the artist
| might be able to do. Basically, if they're already doing
| great, I won't be gilding their lilies, no matter how much I
| love them.
| kixiQu wrote:
| Well, time to hope https://resonate.is/ picks up the independent
| artists and doesn't do a blockchain.
| siquick wrote:
| Resonate has been around for a long time and hasn't gained any
| kind of traction, even with independent artists and labels.
| Would love to see them succeed but their identity/reason for
| existence seems to change regularly.
| skyfaller wrote:
| I'm not hopeful about this for a few reasons:
|
| - They used to be really into blockchain / smart contracts:
| https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/may/25/resonate-spoti...
|
| - Looking at their forum now, they say that they are not
| currently using or planning to use blockchains, but it seems
| like their founders aren't actually opposed to it, so I'm not
| sure they'll be able to hold the line against it:
| https://community.resonate.is/t/the-unreasonable-ecological-...
|
| They have a lot of discussion of how they'd like to try to
| achieve the effects of NFTs without actually using blockchain
| tech, which, uh... feels like flirting with disaster to me.
| Seems like they don't quite get the core issues and are in love
| with flashy technology and complex financial structures.
| kixiQu wrote:
| I don't really think a coop is a "complex financial
| structure" itself, but I am hoping that democratic control
| aspect can forestall the blockchainification. That might be
| naive.
|
| > how they'd like to try to achieve the effects of NFTs
| without actually using blockchain tech, which, uh... feels
| like flirting with disaster to me
|
| To be fair, the "you need to pay for a license to have your
| otherwise unassociated digital music file be legal" copyright
| situation is the bizarre NFT-like thing that we all take for
| granted.
| yathrowaway2424 wrote:
| Conflict in europe, and now this ?
| plainnoodles wrote:
| 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 technically already covered under the
| first bullet, but I call it out because I've seen it happen
| before: if I can open the flac in audacity and see it's obviously
| just a re-encode of a lossy format that clips the upper and lower
| frequency ranges off, that's a smell and I don't like it. (I
| know, most people can't tell etc, but this is less for listening
| purposes and more for archival purposes).
|
| * Supports the artist!
|
| Now, I'll admit, when push comes to shove, I drop the last bullet
| point first. So previously, my source for music was:
|
| 1. CD's (and I would follow What's guide for making Perfect
| Flacs)
|
| 2. What
|
| But then what shut down and I lost my main music discovery
| mechanism. Enter bandcamp! Now I've been very happy with:
|
| 1. Bandcamp (I buy CDs because I like the artwork and they're
| cool).
|
| 2. CD's (+ Perfect Flac ripping guide still)
|
| Now I'm not sure what to do. Epic has really soured me on their
| brand already, and I already boycott their launcher and any EGS
| exclusives. I guess I have to find some other way to get stuff
| now.
| antris wrote:
| > Now I'm not sure what to do.
|
| Just FYI there's sites that take in What refugees
| cauthon wrote:
| 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
| 22c wrote:
| I'm only really familiar with RED (I know there are others)
| but it didn't bounce back even close to What, unfortunately.
| Perhaps others did significantly better, but I think without
| a dump of the catalog, it's going to be next to impossible to
| ever get back everything that What had.
|
| Also FTR I'm a heavy Bandcamp users and I'm disappointed by
| this acquisition.
| ironmagma wrote:
| I get FLACs from hdtracks.com
| heleninboodler wrote:
| > 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?
| breakfastduck wrote:
| Because, and fairly so, people don't want their spending to
| go into the pockets of companies that get kids interested in
| gambling or buy exclusivity.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Yeah, Epic's acquisitions don't really affect the aquired's
| day to day.
|
| IDK why "protesting a launcher" means disassociating with
| every single thing a company does. Kind of hard to avoid
| every single Unreal Engine game, or Blender/Godot or any
| other company/game they gave no-strings grants to. Or games
| you played already but are on EGS when they get a PC port.
| heleninboodler wrote:
| I certainly understand being skeptical of the "nothing's
| going to change," which seems almost guaranteed to be
| wrong, but still, we don't need to lament the downfall
| before it actually happens, even if we think it's
| inevitable. If they change the amount of money going to
| artists, or cripple the feature set, or stop supporting a
| platform you like, or disable downloads... that's when we
| lament.
|
| Edit: for one thing, anyone who pops up with a "bandcamp
| replacement" right now is going to have a very difficult
| time arguing that their replacement is actually _better_ as
| long as bandcamp is still exactly the same thing they were
| emulating.
| duped wrote:
| 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.
| alternatetwo wrote:
| You can still see the difference in a high detail spectrogram
| like RX9 produces. There are some artifacts beyond just
| cutting off above 20khz.
|
| There are also full range mp3s, since iTunes by default
| doesn't apply a hard 20khz lowpass like LAME does.
| munificent wrote:
| 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.
| branon wrote:
| Consider alternatives to Plex (Jellyfin being the main
| competitor).
|
| With Plex, you may own the media, but Plex, Inc. owns the
| authentication. You're not allowed to access the service
| running on your own hardware unless you can log in with a Plex
| account.
|
| Also: losing What was indeed a massive blow, but there are
| others still carrying that torch...
| paularmstrong wrote:
| Unfortunately, nothing currently beats Plexamp in terms of
| quality music listening, shuffle, smart playlists, etc.
|
| You can still set up local login for Plex to avoid their auth
| on your own network or list of allowed IPs. It's not 100%
| what people want, but it's something.
| andrewzah wrote:
| 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
| newsclues wrote:
| I guess others were interested in the FortNite concerts.
| dleslie wrote:
| And now I'm using an automatic downloader to fetch all the FLAC
| encodings of the several hundred albums that I purchased from
| Bandcamp.
| redsolver wrote:
| which one are you using? I could not find an up-to-date one on
| GitHub. thanks!
| dleslie wrote:
| Bandcamper for Chrome. Just finished downloading over 300
| albums.
|
| https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bandcamper/nafpaeh.
| ..
| DrBoring wrote:
| It's my experience that when a buyout occurs, product quality
| usually suffers.
|
| I wonder if there is a directory if beloved companies whose
| quality goes down after a buyout.
|
| This past weekend, I was lamenting with a friend about how two US
| craft beer breweries we loved were bought out, and how they
| stopped producing their interesting niche beers in favor of more
| profitable ones. Their restaurant menus got bland too.
| mountainplus wrote:
| I am surprised slsk did not appear prominently in this discussion
| as alternative to share, own, collect lossless music. Is it due
| to its nature? It is certainly something of the past in terms of
| userbase but I can't imagine any of the services mentioned coming
| close to replacing bandcamp.
| siquick wrote:
| Because artists don't get paid when you download their music
| for free from Soulseek.
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