4 ms·

Epic Games Sale of Bandcamp Has Left the Artist-Friendly Music Platform in Limbo

117 points by em3rgent0rdr 3y ago

flyinghamster 3y ago
Shades of mp3 dot com, which was once the Bandcamp of its day but now is owned by CBS Interactive and has been basically become a parked domain. I hope it doesn't go the same way. ETA: Of course, history doesn't repeat itself, it just rhymes. Mp3 dot com embarked on a music locker project that basically got it killed by the RIAA, and Bandcamp didn't repeat that mistake.
- slothtrop 3y ago
  Notably, artists on bandcamp often belong to smaller record labels. I'm not sure to what extent the RIAA deals with it at all, so I wonder what the existential threat could be.
- juunpp 3y ago
  > Of course, history doesn't repeat itself, it just rhymes. Is there a song for that on Bandcamp?
stewvsshark 3y ago
[flagged]
- isjamesalive 3y ago
  Which comments sounded entitled? I didn't get that from any quotes in TFA.
ledauphin 3y ago
ooof. Bandcamp is the only place I know of that provides an actually user-friendly experience for buying music. They've seemed maybe a little too good to be true in this modern age.
stathibus 3y ago
Bandcamp wasn't on my enshittification bingo card
fnfjfk 3y ago
> customer support specialist ed blair and software engineer Blade Barringer Weird editing here—one name in lowercase? > posted on X (formerly Twitter) Speaking of editing—oh my, are we going to do this parenthetical forever? > Barringer, the Bandcamp software engineer, says that a handful of engineers are still performing the critical tasks needed to keep the site running, but otherwise they can’t commit new code. He found a minor bug this week but couldn’t access the program he needed to fix it. This is interesting! They're locked out of the tools for committing code, but have production access? (SSH?) But if they are trying to demonstrate their necessity and want to form a union, not doing those critical tasks may be a better idea? If the company is not showing interest in supporting you, don't support the company?
- staplers 3y ago
  Speaking of editing—oh my, are we going to do this parenthetical forever? X isn't a brand, it's a foundation of our alphabet and used for many different things in society. So yes, we will do this likely until it's no longer used. Thank elon for that.
  - kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 3y ago
    When someone types "posted on X" in no way does anyone think someone posted something to a letter. They know it means X the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. So, really, there's no need to keep doing this parenthetical.
    - hresvelgr 3y ago
      It's pretty common to see "posted on X" or "posted on XYZ" as a way of indicating interchangeability for the record.
    - ggurface 3y ago
      I didn't know there was a rename. Hopefully they can keep up calling out the old name to let people know!
    - 3y ago
dralley 3y ago
So many great companies die this way. Bought by a big corporation with no idea what to do with all their money, neglected, then sold to some monopolist that doesn't give a damn outside of squeezing the market.
- qwery 3y ago
  It's true. Except it was the people in charge of the great company that sold it to the big corporation / monopolist in the first place. Bandcamp was doomed when it was sold to Epic -- everybody knew that. They knew that doing that was bad for the product and bad for the company and they did it anyway, because they didn't and don't give a damn.
  - marcinzm 3y ago
    So what should they have done? Continued running the company until the day they died? Then what? Converted it to a non-profit/co-op/etc. and effectively donated 90% of their net worth and tens of millions of dollars (a tall order for most people)?
    - xboxnolifes 3y ago
      You can run a company for-profit, and still make a good product that respects their customers.
    - praisewhitey 3y ago
      They should have retired and put someone else in charge of operations.
    - qwery 3y ago
      Your response seems disproportionate, maybe you read a bit beyond what I actually wrote? To respond to your question anyway: I don't really like telling people what to do (don't tread on anyone and all that) but if it was up to me to choose what they did, then not selling the company to Epic, or any other hungry hungry corpos, would have been a default stance. Considering how successful the platform is/was -- and the excellent financial situation they apparently were in for the last decade -- it seems like selling the company to Epic (a random and unnatural fit) would be a gamble at best. There's a negligible chance that it could have ended well for the artists or the users but I'm sure it's ending well for some of those involved. Also, yeah, convert your business to a not-for-profit or hand it down to the employees when you're dying / done with it. That sounds like the sort of thing that makes the world a better place, which is commendable.
manicennui 3y ago
That didn't take long. When the acquisition was announced someone from Songtradr was on here trying to reassure people. Wonder how they'll spin this.
- DANmode 3y ago
  If they show.
bakugo 3y ago
Saw this coming from a mile away when they were first acquired. I legitimately can't remember the last time a megacorporation's acquisition of a smaller company ended well.
- ekianjo 3y ago
  Its a feature. Big corps buy to kill.
sdenton4 3y ago
Worker co-op!!!!
mistyvales 3y ago
Waiting for Discogs to die soon (as it has slowly been for a few years).
- secretsatan 3y ago
  I haven't checked in on it in ages, I thought it was doing what it always did, I really wish a service would just stick to what it's good at. Catalogue my vinyl and give me the opportunity to interact with fellow enthusiast
  - mistyvales 3y ago
    The sad part is that the catalogue was ALL user-originated so if the company sells or goes under, a decade-plus worth of work could just be gone.
  - southwesterly 3y ago
    Yeah, unfortunately things are going on over at Discogs https://www.theverge.com/23899461/discogs-sellers-vinyl-cds-community-fees https://www.theverge.com/23899461/discogs-sellers-vinyl-cds-...
    - notsurenymore 3y ago
      Wow we really can’t have nice things.
emmanueloga_ 3y ago
Honest question, what does Bandcamp provide? As far as I can tell, it has music file storage gated behind a paywall (or not, plenty of music is offered for free), a few very basic functionalities like liking/wishlisting albums, and “following” musicians (fwiw… not sure what’s the value of that… a personalized feed?) and… that’s pretty much it? I guess the front page, which I assume boost sales a little bit for the included musicians? What am I missing?
- notsurenymore 3y ago
  Discovery… at least to an extent While you can find a some of the big names in specific genres on bandcamp, it’s always struck me as more of a place for underground and tiny artists. The genre breakdown categories tend to be pretty good, and you can find some interesting stuff that’s not easily found elsewhere. Sometimes I’d just go into a specific genre and start listening to anything that caught my eye. I usually found it much better than streaming platforms, that just continuously recommend the same stuff I’ve heard time and time again, but just didn’t have in a playlist. I do have a problem with their mobile app though: It doesn’t allow you to change the sort method, so you end up seeing a lot of stuff you’ve already seen before. To be honest, I don’t use it as much as I used to. Nowadays, I’ve mostly found YouTube channels that upload and curate various rare and underground content for specific genres and that’s how I do most of my new (and new old) music discovery.
- RodgerTheGreat 3y ago
  It's not Spotify, it's not a social media site, it's a simple no-frills store where you can just buy music with no dark patterns or manipulative bullshit. The simplicity is the value proposition.
- mjr00 3y ago
  > Honest question, what does Bandcamp provide? A place to purchase and download music legally, in lossless formats, mostly from smaller artists. In some ways it's closer to Patreon than iTunes. Most people don't buy music anyway so it's a niche product, and a niche even within that as Apple Music/Amazon Music etc have a larger selection. No clue what Epic was doing with this purchase. My best guess is big plans to make it the next Spotify that got derailed by ZIRP ending.
joblessjunkie 3y ago
Bandcamp workers voted to unionize five months ago. Is this a bust?
qwery 3y ago
Surely it was left in limbo when it got sold to Epic. Epic discarding it is simply a continuation of the downward spiral.
ytoawwhra92 3y ago
> “Based on its current financials, Bandcamp requires some adjustments to ensure a sustainable and healthy company that can serve its community of artists and fans long into the future,” This is interesting. Bandcamp's website says they've been profitable since 2012.[0] If that's still true what other adjustments might be needed? [0] https://bandcamp.com/fair_trade_music_policy https://bandcamp.com/fair_trade_music_policy
- marcinzm 3y ago
  > “Based on its current financials, Bandcamp requires some adjustments to ensure a sustainable and healthy profit margin to cover the cost of being bought by its new owner.,”
fold3 3y ago
We need an alternative from Bandcamp that is a co-op fediverse kind of system. I know there is people working on making alternatives like ninaprotocol.com but it's tainted by web3/crypto selling the songs as collectibles NFTs. Not even lossless.
Sakos 3y ago
Another victim of modern tech acquisitions. I hate it. I hate seeing another service potentially dying because it was bought out by a big tech company that actually didn't give a rat's ass about the service. Google has done it to so many great services, some of which that I really loved. The worst thing about Bandcamp is that it's a platform for smaller artists to sell their music, which affects them in a way other tech acquisitions don't. Also, what? > “Based on its current financials, Bandcamp requires some adjustments to ensure a sustainable and healthy company that can serve its community of artists and fans long into the future,” says a statement provided by Songtradr chief marketing officer Lindsay Nahmiache. It says the company will be extending job offers to Bandcamp staff over the next few weeks as the sale is finalized. Since when does Bandcamp have financial issues? Or is it just not profitable enough and now Songtradr wants to squeeze it for all they can?
drcongo 3y ago
I will never give Epic a penny. Their purchase of Bandcamp was such a scumbag move.
- marcinzm 3y ago
  Bandcamp's owners chose to sell despite the company being healthy financially.
solarkraft 3y ago
This is about the only time I'll defend the modern idea of "NFTs". I want to show off the albums I bought to the world, ideally with some way to prove that I really spent money on them. The albums are comparable to NFTs (though fungibility is arguable in both cases), with the caveat that the Bandcamp system is entirely centralized. If the company goes bust, so does my collection. Though I appreciate that their ethics kept them from doing it, if anyone should've jumped on the NFT wagon, it should've been them. This would've detached the proof of ownership from the company and allowed a secondary market to exist (also important, should the company stop existing/change terms).
- prepend 3y ago
  I think there are systems like this like last.fm/audioscrobbler that already scratch this itch by logging every song you listen to. So you can show your interest in an artist by listening to them. I don’t want to buy an NFT to “show off albums I bought” as this seems like no real new value to me. I can already show off these albums I listen to (much better than just bought I think).
  - solarkraft 3y ago
    This probably relates to whether you put more value on money or your time. Personally, I don't want to collect all music that I listen to (which I can do for virtually free through streaming services). I also find the likes of last.fm cool, but for different reasons. I'm looking for the digital equivalent of a CD/vinyl collection, which these are not.
g-b-r 3y ago
Wow I had not heard about the acquisition by Epic, I was heartbroken, but this Songtradr seems much more likely than Epic to leave Bandcamp what it is. Not transferring the employees (and their union) though is very worrying, I hope they'll step back on that. I found out that Songtradr had also acquired 7digital, my go-to general music store (the only vast drm-free store with decent privacy policies that I could find)
g-b-r 3y ago
The workers' petition to have Songtradr rehire everyone and recognize their union: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/songtradr-recognize-bandcamp-united?source=direct_link https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/songtradr-recognize-band...

117 points by em3rgent0rdr 3y ago

Shades of mp3 dot com, which was once the Bandcamp of its day but now is owned by CBS Interactive and has been basically become a parked domain. I hope it doesn't go the same way. ETA: Of course, history doesn't repeat itself, it just rhymes. Mp3 dot com embarked on a music locker project that basically got it killed by the RIAA, and Bandcamp didn't repeat that mistake.

slothtrop 3y ago
Notably, artists on bandcamp often belong to smaller record labels. I'm not sure to what extent the RIAA deals with it at all, so I wonder what the existential threat could be.
juunpp 3y ago
> Of course, history doesn't repeat itself, it just rhymes. Is there a song for that on Bandcamp?

stewvsshark 3y ago

[flagged]

isjamesalive 3y ago
Which comments sounded entitled? I didn't get that from any quotes in TFA.

ledauphin 3y ago

ooof. Bandcamp is the only place I know of that provides an actually user-friendly experience for buying music. They've seemed maybe a little too good to be true in this modern age.

stathibus 3y ago

Bandcamp wasn't on my enshittification bingo card

fnfjfk 3y ago

> customer support specialist ed blair and software engineer Blade Barringer Weird editing here—one name in lowercase? > posted on X (formerly Twitter) Speaking of editing—oh my, are we going to do this parenthetical forever? > Barringer, the Bandcamp software engineer, says that a handful of engineers are still performing the critical tasks needed to keep the site running, but otherwise they can’t commit new code. He found a minor bug this week but couldn’t access the program he needed to fix it. This is interesting! They're locked out of the tools for committing code, but have production access? (SSH?) But if they are trying to demonstrate their necessity and want to form a union, not doing those critical tasks may be a better idea? If the company is not showing interest in supporting you, don't support the company?

staplers 3y ago
Speaking of editing—oh my, are we going to do this parenthetical forever? X isn't a brand, it's a foundation of our alphabet and used for many different things in society. So yes, we will do this likely until it's no longer used. Thank elon for that.
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 3y ago
  When someone types "posted on X" in no way does anyone think someone posted something to a letter. They know it means X the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. So, really, there's no need to keep doing this parenthetical.
  - hresvelgr 3y ago
    It's pretty common to see "posted on X" or "posted on XYZ" as a way of indicating interchangeability for the record.
  - ggurface 3y ago
    I didn't know there was a rename. Hopefully they can keep up calling out the old name to let people know!
  - 3y ago

dralley 3y ago

So many great companies die this way. Bought by a big corporation with no idea what to do with all their money, neglected, then sold to some monopolist that doesn't give a damn outside of squeezing the market.

qwery 3y ago
It's true. Except it was the people in charge of the great company that sold it to the big corporation / monopolist in the first place. Bandcamp was doomed when it was sold to Epic -- everybody knew that. They knew that doing that was bad for the product and bad for the company and they did it anyway, because they didn't and don't give a damn.
- marcinzm 3y ago
  So what should they have done? Continued running the company until the day they died? Then what? Converted it to a non-profit/co-op/etc. and effectively donated 90% of their net worth and tens of millions of dollars (a tall order for most people)?
  - xboxnolifes 3y ago
    You can run a company for-profit, and still make a good product that respects their customers.
  - praisewhitey 3y ago
    They should have retired and put someone else in charge of operations.
  - qwery 3y ago
    Your response seems disproportionate, maybe you read a bit beyond what I actually wrote? To respond to your question anyway: I don't really like telling people what to do (don't tread on anyone and all that) but if it was up to me to choose what they did, then not selling the company to Epic, or any other hungry hungry corpos, would have been a default stance. Considering how successful the platform is/was -- and the excellent financial situation they apparently were in for the last decade -- it seems like selling the company to Epic (a random and unnatural fit) would be a gamble at best. There's a negligible chance that it could have ended well for the artists or the users but I'm sure it's ending well for some of those involved. Also, yeah, convert your business to a not-for-profit or hand it down to the employees when you're dying / done with it. That sounds like the sort of thing that makes the world a better place, which is commendable.

manicennui 3y ago

That didn't take long. When the acquisition was announced someone from Songtradr was on here trying to reassure people. Wonder how they'll spin this.

DANmode 3y ago
If they show.

bakugo 3y ago

Saw this coming from a mile away when they were first acquired. I legitimately can't remember the last time a megacorporation's acquisition of a smaller company ended well.

ekianjo 3y ago
Its a feature. Big corps buy to kill.

sdenton4 3y ago

Worker co-op!!!!

mistyvales 3y ago

Waiting for Discogs to die soon (as it has slowly been for a few years).

secretsatan 3y ago
I haven't checked in on it in ages, I thought it was doing what it always did, I really wish a service would just stick to what it's good at. Catalogue my vinyl and give me the opportunity to interact with fellow enthusiast
- mistyvales 3y ago
  The sad part is that the catalogue was ALL user-originated so if the company sells or goes under, a decade-plus worth of work could just be gone.
- southwesterly 3y ago
  Yeah, unfortunately things are going on over at Discogs https://www.theverge.com/23899461/discogs-sellers-vinyl-cds-community-fees https://www.theverge.com/23899461/discogs-sellers-vinyl-cds-...
  - notsurenymore 3y ago
    Wow we really can’t have nice things.

emmanueloga_ 3y ago

Honest question, what does Bandcamp provide? As far as I can tell, it has music file storage gated behind a paywall (or not, plenty of music is offered for free), a few very basic functionalities like liking/wishlisting albums, and “following” musicians (fwiw… not sure what’s the value of that… a personalized feed?) and… that’s pretty much it? I guess the front page, which I assume boost sales a little bit for the included musicians? What am I missing?

notsurenymore 3y ago
Discovery… at least to an extent While you can find a some of the big names in specific genres on bandcamp, it’s always struck me as more of a place for underground and tiny artists. The genre breakdown categories tend to be pretty good, and you can find some interesting stuff that’s not easily found elsewhere. Sometimes I’d just go into a specific genre and start listening to anything that caught my eye. I usually found it much better than streaming platforms, that just continuously recommend the same stuff I’ve heard time and time again, but just didn’t have in a playlist. I do have a problem with their mobile app though: It doesn’t allow you to change the sort method, so you end up seeing a lot of stuff you’ve already seen before. To be honest, I don’t use it as much as I used to. Nowadays, I’ve mostly found YouTube channels that upload and curate various rare and underground content for specific genres and that’s how I do most of my new (and new old) music discovery.
RodgerTheGreat 3y ago
It's not Spotify, it's not a social media site, it's a simple no-frills store where you can just buy music with no dark patterns or manipulative bullshit. The simplicity is the value proposition.
mjr00 3y ago
> Honest question, what does Bandcamp provide? A place to purchase and download music legally, in lossless formats, mostly from smaller artists. In some ways it's closer to Patreon than iTunes. Most people don't buy music anyway so it's a niche product, and a niche even within that as Apple Music/Amazon Music etc have a larger selection. No clue what Epic was doing with this purchase. My best guess is big plans to make it the next Spotify that got derailed by ZIRP ending.

joblessjunkie 3y ago

Bandcamp workers voted to unionize five months ago. Is this a bust?

qwery 3y ago

Surely it was left in limbo when it got sold to Epic. Epic discarding it is simply a continuation of the downward spiral.

ytoawwhra92 3y ago

> “Based on its current financials, Bandcamp requires some adjustments to ensure a sustainable and healthy company that can serve its community of artists and fans long into the future,” This is interesting. Bandcamp's website says they've been profitable since 2012.[0] If that's still true what other adjustments might be needed? [0] https://bandcamp.com/fair_trade_music_policy https://bandcamp.com/fair_trade_music_policy

marcinzm 3y ago
> “Based on its current financials, Bandcamp requires some adjustments to ensure a sustainable and healthy profit margin to cover the cost of being bought by its new owner.,”

fold3 3y ago

We need an alternative from Bandcamp that is a co-op fediverse kind of system. I know there is people working on making alternatives like ninaprotocol.com but it's tainted by web3/crypto selling the songs as collectibles NFTs. Not even lossless.

Sakos 3y ago

Another victim of modern tech acquisitions. I hate it. I hate seeing another service potentially dying because it was bought out by a big tech company that actually didn't give a rat's ass about the service. Google has done it to so many great services, some of which that I really loved. The worst thing about Bandcamp is that it's a platform for smaller artists to sell their music, which affects them in a way other tech acquisitions don't. Also, what? > “Based on its current financials, Bandcamp requires some adjustments to ensure a sustainable and healthy company that can serve its community of artists and fans long into the future,” says a statement provided by Songtradr chief marketing officer Lindsay Nahmiache. It says the company will be extending job offers to Bandcamp staff over the next few weeks as the sale is finalized. Since when does Bandcamp have financial issues? Or is it just not profitable enough and now Songtradr wants to squeeze it for all they can?

drcongo 3y ago

I will never give Epic a penny. Their purchase of Bandcamp was such a scumbag move.

marcinzm 3y ago
Bandcamp's owners chose to sell despite the company being healthy financially.

solarkraft 3y ago

This is about the only time I'll defend the modern idea of "NFTs". I want to show off the albums I bought to the world, ideally with some way to prove that I really spent money on them. The albums are comparable to NFTs (though fungibility is arguable in both cases), with the caveat that the Bandcamp system is entirely centralized. If the company goes bust, so does my collection. Though I appreciate that their ethics kept them from doing it, if anyone should've jumped on the NFT wagon, it should've been them. This would've detached the proof of ownership from the company and allowed a secondary market to exist (also important, should the company stop existing/change terms).

prepend 3y ago
I think there are systems like this like last.fm/audioscrobbler that already scratch this itch by logging every song you listen to. So you can show your interest in an artist by listening to them. I don’t want to buy an NFT to “show off albums I bought” as this seems like no real new value to me. I can already show off these albums I listen to (much better than just bought I think).
- solarkraft 3y ago
  This probably relates to whether you put more value on money or your time. Personally, I don't want to collect all music that I listen to (which I can do for virtually free through streaming services). I also find the likes of last.fm cool, but for different reasons. I'm looking for the digital equivalent of a CD/vinyl collection, which these are not.

g-b-r 3y ago

Wow I had not heard about the acquisition by Epic, I was heartbroken, but this Songtradr seems much more likely than Epic to leave Bandcamp what it is. Not transferring the employees (and their union) though is very worrying, I hope they'll step back on that. I found out that Songtradr had also acquired 7digital, my go-to general music store (the only vast drm-free store with decent privacy policies that I could find)

g-b-r 3y ago

The workers' petition to have Songtradr rehire everyone and recognize their union: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/songtradr-recognize-bandcamp-united?source=direct_link https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/songtradr-recognize-band...