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I’m not sure how I feel about this as regards the product. As a user, I’m happy for it to just be maintained. It doesn’t need new features, it doesn’t need edit

I’m not sure how I feel about this as regards the product. As a user, I’m happy for it to just be maintained. It doesn’t need new features, it doesn’t need editorial stuff, it just needs to continue functioning as it has done for a long time. As long as there are enough staff to fix bugs and keep it running…that seems like a good thing. Better than the risk of people changing it for little reason.

radlad 3y ago
It's worth noting Bandcamp was sold to Songtradr last month: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37695035 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37695035 This doesn't seem like a good thing to me, as a user.
- basisword 3y ago
  Yeah I was aware of that. I can’t see a reason to buy it and layoff staff other than “maintenance mode” though. Songtradr do licensing so having that catalogue available to them seems very useful.
  - silenced_trope 3y ago
    Apparently staffers are trying to unionize. Assuming they want to run it maintenance mode and have it not burn a hole in their pocket, they probably want people not pushing for raising wages, benefits, etc. in the future or now -- they'll likely sell off what remains to private equity or maybe try to get AI to run the show.
    - piperswe 3y ago
      Staffers did unionize, the union is trying to negotiate with the new owner.
      - freedomben 3y ago
        At what point is a shop a union shop though? Is it when they vote to unionize, or when the union receives recognition and a collective bargaining agreement? (That's not a rhetorical question, I'm genuininely interested in it from a philosophical and/or legal point of view)
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
amrocha 3y ago
The company was sold to epic, who then sold it off again a couple months later after staff unionized, and now they're laying half the company off. That does not seem like a good thing in any sense of the word.
Miraste 3y ago
This is a plague on the software industry. No one wants a new design language every two years, or all the buttons in the frontend to be moved to different places with different icons. It's not "innovative" or "exciting" or "friendly." It wastes whole lifetimes worth of time for the users. Whole cottage industries are devoted to retraining on the pointless changes. Yet it always happens anyway. I'm not sure how incentives could be restructured to stop this kind of churn, but if left unchecked it can kill whole companies.
- hamburglar 3y ago
  Agreed. I’ve seen a lot of complaining about how bandcamp’s UI is “stale” or “outdated” and as far as I can tell, what that means is it still works and does all the stuff it needs to do, but it would look different if it was built today and that bothers people. I don’t really get it, but then again, I still use Craigslist and old.reddit. Edit: although, full disclosure, I haven’t looked at Reddit in months so if they shut down the old interface as part of the recent fit of user-hostility, I haven’t noticed.
  - WCSTombs 3y ago
    old.reddit.com still works.
- gspencley 3y ago
  As a user who absolutely hates un-requested change being shoved down my throat: I can actually see it from both sides. Innovation almost always looks like throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. You have to "break" things to figure out what can be improved. The problem is that we've gone all in on SaaS and pushed updates. Pushed updates were a huge win for security, and SaaS has some pros for some users and certain niches. But long gone are the days where a company would invest time and money into beta test periods where they'd try out new features on focus groups who would give feedback and then the rest of us would wait for reviews from the early adopters before deciding if the upgrade costs and risks were worth it. These days we get "upgraded" whether we opted in or not. And we're all the beta testers 100% of the time. That has been the real plague on the software industry IMO. At least, it has ruined my enjoyment of computers and tech for the most part, and further driven to me towards native open source software (which I already used anyway, I just cling to it harder now because I feel like it is under threat). Now get off my lawn.

radlad 3y ago

It's worth noting Bandcamp was sold to Songtradr last month: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37695035 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37695035 This doesn't seem like a good thing to me, as a user.

basisword 3y ago
Yeah I was aware of that. I can’t see a reason to buy it and layoff staff other than “maintenance mode” though. Songtradr do licensing so having that catalogue available to them seems very useful.
- silenced_trope 3y ago
  Apparently staffers are trying to unionize. Assuming they want to run it maintenance mode and have it not burn a hole in their pocket, they probably want people not pushing for raising wages, benefits, etc. in the future or now -- they'll likely sell off what remains to private equity or maybe try to get AI to run the show.
  - piperswe 3y ago
    Staffers did unionize, the union is trying to negotiate with the new owner.
    - freedomben 3y ago
      At what point is a shop a union shop though? Is it when they vote to unionize, or when the union receives recognition and a collective bargaining agreement? (That's not a rhetorical question, I'm genuininely interested in it from a philosophical and/or legal point of view)

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

amrocha 3y ago

The company was sold to epic, who then sold it off again a couple months later after staff unionized, and now they're laying half the company off. That does not seem like a good thing in any sense of the word.

Miraste 3y ago

This is a plague on the software industry. No one wants a new design language every two years, or all the buttons in the frontend to be moved to different places with different icons. It's not "innovative" or "exciting" or "friendly." It wastes whole lifetimes worth of time for the users. Whole cottage industries are devoted to retraining on the pointless changes. Yet it always happens anyway. I'm not sure how incentives could be restructured to stop this kind of churn, but if left unchecked it can kill whole companies.

hamburglar 3y ago
Agreed. I’ve seen a lot of complaining about how bandcamp’s UI is “stale” or “outdated” and as far as I can tell, what that means is it still works and does all the stuff it needs to do, but it would look different if it was built today and that bothers people. I don’t really get it, but then again, I still use Craigslist and old.reddit. Edit: although, full disclosure, I haven’t looked at Reddit in months so if they shut down the old interface as part of the recent fit of user-hostility, I haven’t noticed.
- WCSTombs 3y ago
  old.reddit.com still works.
gspencley 3y ago
As a user who absolutely hates un-requested change being shoved down my throat: I can actually see it from both sides. Innovation almost always looks like throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. You have to "break" things to figure out what can be improved. The problem is that we've gone all in on SaaS and pushed updates. Pushed updates were a huge win for security, and SaaS has some pros for some users and certain niches. But long gone are the days where a company would invest time and money into beta test periods where they'd try out new features on focus groups who would give feedback and then the rest of us would wait for reviews from the early adopters before deciding if the upgrade costs and risks were worth it. These days we get "upgraded" whether we opted in or not. And we're all the beta testers 100% of the time. That has been the real plague on the software industry IMO. At least, it has ruined my enjoyment of computers and tech for the most part, and further driven to me towards native open source software (which I already used anyway, I just cling to it harder now because I feel like it is under threat). Now get off my lawn.