17 ms·

They can and will ruin everything you love

308 points by cdme 3y ago

jimbob45 3y ago
Nobody will preserve the culture you care about for you. Nobody can make it better but us. Internet Archive is doing a pretty incredible job of just that.
- phailhaus 3y ago
  The Internet Archive was never sold to a third party. That's the point: they've always retained control of their company and therefore their vision.
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    Well, you've gotten to the crux of it. Stop trusting culture to for profit companies who will be flipped as soon as majority stakeholders get a whiff of "cash me out." Brewster Kahle takes the role of the Internet Archive and its mission very seriously. It has been organized in a manner to defend against this peril and will survive a custodian transition. https://winners.webbyawards.com/2017/specialachievement/130/internet-archive https://winners.webbyawards.com/2017/specialachievement/130/... https://archive.org/details/2017-Webby-award-video https://archive.org/details/2017-Webby-award-video “The Internet Archive…is building a home for Universal Access to All Knowledge, open to everyone, everywhere, to use as they like. Open to all societies of the future that care to build on our triumphs and learn from our mistakes.” -- Lawrence Lessig, narrator EDIT: TLDR Build public goods if motivated and resourced, defend them through legal, logical, physical, and technological controls.
  - nijjle 3y ago
    [flagged]
- Almondsetat 3y ago
  Internet Archive won't read your mind and automatically archive everything you desire, you still have to explicitely tell it what to save
  - kuhaku22 3y ago
    Exactly. And there's tons of stuff out there it doesn't have, waiting to be converted from analog media or out of the clutches of overreaching copyright.
- kuhaku22 3y ago
  I think the message is more about self-organizing and takings steps to be active in preservation. The Internet Archive does great work, but putting all our eggs in that basket creates a huge risk if it becomes a Library of Alexandria, and publishers would love for it to no longer exist. [0] [0] https://time.com/6266147/internet-archive-copyright-infringement-books-lawsuit/ https://time.com/6266147/internet-archive-copyright-infringe...
  - kffan 3y ago
    [flagged]
- adventured 3y ago
  Internet Archive can never exist in the EU in regards to hosting because they're so egregiously violating basic consumer rights, including the right to privacy and the right to be forgotten. They make it intentionally difficult, and often impossible, to get content removed from their archive (especially if you don't control the domain). They're oblivious to how many violations of personal information they contain within their own archives - by design grabbing content without having any idea what it is - and stand no chance of ever meeting stringent EU laws on such matters including GDPR. And that's something to celebrate? No, it's something HN nearly universally somehow overlooks in every single conversation about Internet Archive, because they get a pass (the end justifies the means essentially). Internet Archive should be illegal because it violates human rights.
  - nijjle 3y ago
    The 'right to be forgotten' has always been one of the more ill-conceived ideas coming from the EU. Censoring lawful and factual information is dubious in principle and flawed as a means of protecting privacy. Since its introduction, it has been widely abused as a tool to hide misdeeds and embarrassments, to pretend they never actually happened.
    - KETHERCORTEX 3y ago
      By the way, I think I should remind you that you must bear no memory about Herostratus, arsonist who burned down the Temple of Artemis.
  - Nevermark 3y ago
    > Internet Archive should be illegal because it violates human rights. You raise some interesting points, but the kill-it-with-fire solution ignores the great (necessary!) benefits the archive provides to humanity, by protecting useful public/published information from constant churn. Humanity is just beginning to find its moral/ethical way forward, in this new integrated world of information, by feel in the dark. In the meantime, its unavoidable that many things will be imperfect balances, and people will disagree where the balances should be.
  - 3y ago
- Analemma_ 3y ago
  Internet Archive is great, but to be clear: it's a museum of dead cultures for historical examination and appreciation. That's a valuable service, but it's not at all the same thing as supporting a living community. By its nature, the Internet Archive can never do that.
kuhaku22 3y ago
Would be nice if the title could mention Bandcamp, since it's very dramatic without context and could be about anything.
- omoikane 3y ago
  It's mostly about Bandcamp but it could indeed be about anything, as later parts of the article mention how MySpace and Twitter are ruined in much the same way.
  - scoot 3y ago
    Did anyone ever actually love Twitter? I can't remember ever getting meaningful value from it. I can't comment on MySpace as it seemed to come and go so quickly (yes, I've been online since before the web, so your dilation may vary).
    - agumonkey 3y ago
      I wonder if I ever loved a social network website at all.
      - swader999 3y ago
        This one?
        lostlogin 3y ago
        Before any agreement here, we will need a definition for love and an argument on whether this is a social network.
        swader999 3y ago
        For hear I'd say treating people the way you would hope to be treated is good enough?
        3y ago
thenoblesunfish 3y ago
I have long mused that there needs to be a differently structured way to do what bandcamp does (soon, did). Who has experiences with those structures that can still deliver technically? Co-ops? Values-first companies like iFixit? Non-profits?
- citizenkeen 3y ago
  I believe you're looking for a B-Corp? Corporations that aren't bound by Dodge v Ford Motor Co would be real nice.
  - nvy 3y ago
    I think Co-ops are the way to go, because if your employees and your customers are also your owners (shareholders) then doing what's right for the customer is by definition what's best for shareholders.
    - ekidd 3y ago
      Co-ops are a very flexible and successful business structure. For example, people in the northeastern US probably know of Cabot Cheddar. This is part of the Agri-Mark co-op, which does something like $1 billion in annual business and employs about 1,000 people. Agri-Mark is a "producer co-op," which means that it's owned by dairy farms. There are also very successful "consumer co-ops," as well as "worker co-ops." There are many nice things about co-ops: - They can be economically competitive. - They're democratically run. (Larger ones often elect a board and/or appoint management.) - They're strictly voluntary associations. There are also reasons why you don't see more co-operatives: - They don't have huge incentives to scale. There are plenty of amazing grocery co-ops, for example, that have one or two excellent stores but no desire to expand. - They raise capital through their members. Details vary, but they tend to scale more like bootstrapped businesses than startups. But a musicians' producer co-op could absolutely build something like Bandcamp. It would be a lot of work, and it would require some genuine organizational talent. A lot of the big open source foundations (the Linux Foundation, the Apache Foundation, etc) are essentially producer co-ops for open source software, even if that's not what the paperwork says. I think we should absolutely build more co-ops, for things that really matter.
jdkee 3y ago
Anyone know how much the founders received from the initial sale to Epic? https://blog.bandcamp.com/2022/03/02/bandcamp-is-joining-epic/ https://blog.bandcamp.com/2022/03/02/bandcamp-is-joining-epi...
x0x0 3y ago
eh, going to be completely contrarian. Bandcamp appears to have been making almost no money / very little net profit. That's fine, as long as the owner is ok running it that way. The users of bandcamp -- both artists and fans -- will likely be on far more stable ground if bandcamp earns a reasonable profit. If the owners view it as an asset instead of a charity endeavor or a labor of love. Because in the latter case, people eventually want to move on, as the original creator did after 15 years.
- raincole 3y ago
  But people just want free stuff. If you try to break even they go like "why does everything has to be monetized?" (sent from their $799 iphone).
  - f1refly 3y ago
    Bandcamp is built on people paying though. They're already past that big hurdle.
  - _hcuq 3y ago
    Bandcamp was literally about paying for stuff.
- digging 3y ago
  > Bandcamp appears to have been making almost no money / very little net profit. That's fine, as long as the owner is ok running it that way. That literally is fine. There was never a need to turn it into a highly profitable service. If it was paying bills and salaries, it was an absolute success.
  - MichaelZuo 3y ago
    The parent mentioned that the original owner got tired of this, hence why it was sold in the first place?
    - digging 3y ago
digging 3y ago
I would love to hear from people who worked at Bandcamp during the sale to Epic. Even at that moment I seriously feared for what was once one of my favorite media services ever. Even if Epic seemed like they wanted to be hands-off, I can't imagine working at Bandcamp and being excited to be owned by a company like Epic - not necessarily "evil", but clearly not aligned with Bandcamp's founding ethos.
underbluewaters 3y ago
I struggle to think of any institutions the VC/tech/internet era has produced with any long-term value. My assumption is that these companies go through a cyclical pattern of providing value and then destroying it once successful. That timescale also seems to be getting shorter. Any going against that trend?
- swagasaurus-rex 3y ago
  The money can provide incentive for entrepreneurs to create real or perceived value in hopes of being acquired for large sums. That just feeds into the trend, unfortunately.
- tsunamifury 3y ago
  You struggle to see why any company who has been founded in the last 20 years isn't providing long term value. 1) Obviously, first and foremost, this is a tautology. 2) There is little proof that companies that last long term, do so for good reasons 3) What does it matter... at all? Wide and short, Long and narrow, short and sweet, all these forms of impact have nothing to do with their inherent value
  - the_snooze 3y ago
    They've been around a bit longer than 20 years, but Valve comes to mind as a company that completely changed PC gaming in a fairly sustainable long-term way, likely because they're not beholden to VCs or external shareholders. This matters because they've built up immense trust that the games bought 10, 15, 20 years ago will still be there today, with minimal BS. This made people feel OK buying digital-only games. I don't think we'd have all these online delivery game stores these days if Valve had jerked people around to maximize short-term earnings.
    - rexpop 3y ago
      You're right; if only they worked on real problems and not virtual opiates.
throwaway290 3y ago
TL;DR Bandcamp. > The companies that buy up sites like Bandcamp are interested in nothing except ensuring the executives’ pockets get lined appropriately I like how it presents things as if Bandcamp's original management had no part in selling. This is not China. They were not forced to sell. They were the ones who had to decide whether to do it or not, but somehow they are not to blame for any consequences.
- SleepilyLimping 3y ago
  I think this gets exacerbated with the "we're a family!" culture of employee in-groups. Feeling like a company is your home amplifies the disappointment and feeling of betrayal when the CEO decides to sell.
pradn 3y ago
Communities that form around a website or service are living things - they need nourishment to thrive, and can certainly be killed. The only sustainable way forward is to form artist-driven, bottom-up, non-profit organizations to nurture communities like BandCamp. The rule is: every for-profit company will lose its way in the drive for higher and higher profits, or it'll be killed for having not kept that promise. It's inevitable. Every company in existence now will die one day. There's no guarantee a democratic organization would last forever, but at least its not subject to the artificial drive to grow forever.
- Gibbon1 3y ago
  There is a premise that the myopic optimizations beloved by economists and MBA's eventually paint companies into a corner and then they die. Sort of the classic way naive lost hiker in the mountains will walk downhill with it getting steeper and steeper till they slip and fall to their death. In the case of a companies they run on thinner and thinner margins until some event drives them negative.
- chasd00 3y ago
  > Communities that form around a website or service are living things when a living thing stops growing it starts dying
  - vonjuice 3y ago
    a person who becomes a gluton will grow bigger and bigger as they age and die a person who watches their health might become smaller and live longer and better because of it the growth first mindset is not wise
  - zanellato19 3y ago
    You can still have unhealthy growth.
- 15457345234 3y ago
  > form artist-driven, bottom-up, non-profit organizations to nurture communities Unfortunately those sort of things (that are genuinely good) attract the wreckers like a flame attracts a moth.
lowbloodsugar 3y ago
At the end of the day, Bandcamp's founders sold to Epic. We all knew that was going to have a bad ending, we just didn't know the details. Now we know the details. I mean, sure, "they" being "capitalist overlords", created a world where the Bandcamp founders would need to sell out in order to have am assured secure life for themselves and offspring. But they did sell out. Epic is just doing what Epic does.
- bee_rider 3y ago
  It seems odd—Bandcamp was basically a small company that could have chugged along with small but non-zero profits indefinitely. Epic did nothing with them, and now they are being sold to a company that will almost certainly just destroy their value. Why? This is dumb. I can see why Bandcamp’s owners would sell, but no rational buyer would buy Bandcamp, it is a company that is only valuable because of the goodwill that it has. Their niche is very-online music enthusiasts who are into the community feeling. We’re going to notice and leave as soon as the cash-in change happens. Why didn’t Epic and this other company whoever they are just light some little piles of money on fire instead. At least they could have warmed their feet.
  - lowbloodsugar 3y ago
    The narrative for why Epic did it is believed to be that it was an arrow in the "Apple is a monopoly" quiver. Epic would build a music-buying iOS App, and then complain to the government that Apple demands 30% of the revenue.
- lapinot 3y ago
  > a world where the Bandcamp founders would need to sell out in order to have am assured secure life for themselves and offspring. "need" is a bit twisted, i'm not sure anyone "needs" a million or so. If they really wanted to get out of it and keep it nice they most likely could have set up a non-profit or something, raised some money from the community and probably still get a small rent in some way. Also it's not like the CEO of such a company (smallish but still) is strapped on cash already. > But they did sell out. That's it.. There's no excuse and as you said, everyone knew this kind of constant downhill had a very high probability to happen. They definitely took the 90% chance coin-flip to hose the community and get "an actual bit of capital" much of money.
skybrian 3y ago
I think the lesson is that successful companies (and other organizations, and bands) are often temporary and you should enjoy it while it lasts. Don’t let a sad ending ruin the good memories.
- kelseyfrog 3y ago
  I think the lesson is that we have a system in place which incentives this categorically and there's no escape hatch from it. What systems could be developed which would counter or de-incentivize this from occurring?
  - Minor49er 3y ago
    Be careful. Any system that stops behavior that you don't want might also stop the thing that you are trying to help from being created in the first place
    - kelseyfrog 3y ago
      Right, there's one way to verify this, using the scientific method and empirical observations. There's also one clear way of guaranteed failing: giving up before even starting.
      - Minor49er 3y ago
        I look forward to reading your results
  - skybrian 3y ago
    There is no simple rule that tells you what's worth preserving and what can be thrown out. There are incentives to not break things that are working as long as they make money. But incentives only go so far. There was little incentive for Musk to do what he's doing at Twitter, but he did it anyway after he got caught in a trap of his own devising.
zitterbewegung 3y ago
If you want to solve the problem of not relying on a company with your sales then you need to either setup the online store yourself. The problem is that people want the experience to be frictionless and that is best achieved by a corporation. Maybe someone could clone Bandcamp feature list but payment processing will be a hassle . Regardless artists make more on merch and doing shows than streaming . I see many artists investing in merch sales (and I will buy that) and or “collector edition” products. Is it capitalism ? Sure. Can it be truly solved . Not really. People don’t want to be bothered to make their own websites with a shop and do everything themselves. Open source will get you 90% there but honestly just doing shows and selling it in person is profitable and giving away the music online or stream using twitch .
- syndicatedjelly 3y ago
  > Maybe someone could clone Bandcamp feature list but payment processing will be a hassle . Why is payment processing considered a hassle? Set up a Paypal account, create a link and have customers pay through that. Done. Payment processors are in the business of making it easy to pay people. Use any of the myriad of payment processors to get money from people. Is it slightly less frictionless than standing up a half-million dollar website with options to pay via CatCoin? Yes, but is it really worth it to optimize for 1% of customers who can't be arsed to pay with anything other than their favorite, obscure method of payment?
  - ipaddr 3y ago
    "Payment processors are in the business of making it easy to pay people." The most important role is to prevent fraud and keep reputation high. Making it easier to pay is way down the list or using a US credit card from Laos location wouldn't trigger alarms and prevent the transaction requiring a manual override
- scoot 3y ago
  > then you need to either setup the online store yourself. Or?
omscs99 3y ago
> Beloved websites are destroyed by money hungry ghouls everyday. Seems like a common theme: people build a community around something, it becomes something really cool, and then a bunch of businesspeople insert themselves and liquidate the trust that’s been built The problem is money, it pits people against each other. It draws in all of these sociopathic businesspeople. It turns people into ass kissers. It liquidates trust. It destroys community Build a culture where people think money = God and this is what happens. It consistently brings out the absolute worst in people
- SleepilyLimping 3y ago
  >Seems like a common theme: people build a community around something, it becomes something really cool, and then a bunch of businesspeople insert themselves and liquidate the trust that’s been built So do the people who let the business people in just get to dodge the blame? "Oh well, we can't expect anyone to have principles in the face of so much money, so we shouldn't hold anyone to a standard?"
  - atq2119 3y ago
    Don't hate the players, hate the game. This applies to all the actors here as long as they abstain from getting involved in politics in a way that perpetuates the rules of the game.
chasd00 3y ago
i kept waiting for the punchline in the paragraph comparing BandCamp to MySpace but it never came. "Bandcamp and MySpace were both built by people who genuinely love music." MySpace was sold by "Tom" to a large company which then, eventually, abandoned it... just like what is likely to happen to BandCamp. Tom made out like a bandit.. just like the owner of BandCamp likely did.
- spamizbad 3y ago
  MySpace as a major hub for musicians was probably an accident - originally it was just a clone of friendster, a social media site that was notorious for going offline. Too bad too, because back in the aughts (even after the News Corp acquisition) bands still relied on it for an internet presence, advertising shows, etc.
sinistersnare 3y ago
This article asks a good question. What is the point of capitalism? If these acquisitions exist simply to make the line go up, why? Bandcamp will NOT be better off under this new rule, we will all be worse off as listeners of music. Why allow this at all?
sirmike_ 3y ago
It would be good to get some background on the original owner(s) and why they sold. Was it retirement? Was it move to the next thing? unknown. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandcamp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandcamp
- ipaddr 3y ago
  Ethan Diamond says they sold to "provide the resources to bring a lot more benefit to the artists, labels, and fans who use the site" like vinal pressing .."Epic ticked all of the boxes" He sold for money. He planned on continue to lead the team (CEO). So he was part of the plan to fire everyone before Epic sold to this new company
b59831 3y ago
[dead]
Semaphor 3y ago
I have been praising Bandcamp for years. How it's a great site, how I love buying music there instead of streaming. But what I never did? Read their blog or used any of their social features. So as long as Songtrader keeps paying artists, and keeps offering downloads while letting me stream the music for free until I can decide if I want to buy it or not, I'll be fine with them.
- Pxtl 3y ago
  Okay but this layoff process didn't look like a strategic move where they cut the excess services from bandcamp. It sounds like it was an across-the-board 50% slash. Half the blog staff is still around.
- theandrewbailey 3y ago
  Same. I always find music somewhere else like Youtube or Soundcloud, and find the link to Bandcamp from there.
- zanellato19 3y ago
  "They are not ruining for me _specifically_ so this article is moot" is not a great point
  - peruvian 3y ago
    Classic HN comment though - adds nothing to the discussion outside of "I want to smugly have my thoughts out there". Of course, upvoted to the top.
    - yamazakiwi 3y ago
      It's not weird to share opinions on a forum, I don't read any smugness in their tone.
      - permo-w 3y ago
        smug is pretty much the baseline on HN
legitster 3y ago
> The data Discogs has – just like Bandcamp and just like what has been lost at MySpace – is irreplaceable and ever growing. So to have years of culture on Twitter – everything from the continued existence of legacy accounts to the basic usefulness of news organizations being verified – been ravaged by Elon Musk’s vanity. The internet is forever, until it’s ripped away by people who don’t add value to it. I am not actually sure I agree with the author's premise at all. Nothing digital is forever, if anything, the opposite is true. The internet is completely ephemeral. And it's only through the persistence, hard work, and money of dedicated people that anything is preserved. Secondly, hoarding lots of data on the internet != a community. Maybe it's the activity that a community could build itself around, or maybe it's the public space that they use. But the reason places like Geocities or MySpace collapsed is because they held feverishly onto all of the data but none of the community. And maybe it's worth it to hold onto stuff that's been abandoned (even if it's borderline hoarding), but I would argue that it is entirely irrelevant to what went wrong with the Bandcamp situation.
- jxramos 3y ago
  I’m curious on the swipe at Elon. What’s the story with the legacy accounts she references? Also what’s the bit about news organizations and verification? I feel like I’m missing context here. What are these issues about precisely?
AlbertCory 3y ago
Is there a reason why Bandcamp can't be cloned but as a 501(c)(3)? Lots of people would donate to it. If you want a real example, go to https://kkup.org/ https://kkup.org/ I did some work for them back in the 80's, and they're still around.
- dingnuts 3y ago
  I'm pretty sure Bandcamp could be cloned as a dapp and then nobody would have to worry about acquisition, but then, that would cut the middle man out and labels won't like that
  - AlbertCory 3y ago
    You seem to be answering a different question entirely. dapp or centralized doesn't matter; it's the corporate structure that's important. Bandcamp 2.0 can cut the labels in, or not.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
phendrenad2 3y ago
It's a natural cycle: Someone makes something cool, they get a huge buyout offer and sell it, the new owner destroys it. Rinse lather repeat. What we have is a shortage of people who make cool things, and an overabundance of corporations looking for things to destroy.
sshine 3y ago
When the founders exit with a pile of cash, a little part of the soul of the company dies. It’s understandable that they would rather secure their family more, and switch to a new adventure. I look at those Japanese family run businesses who have made baozi on the same street corner for hundreds of years. Fortunately, a lot of the world’s small businesses are run by people who stick around and don’t sell out.
- fnikacevic 3y ago
  If any of the world's small business were offered millions of dollars in secondaries they would secure their families too.
Nevermark 3y ago
The internet is sorely missing a layer of infrastructure for communities, that allow entities to create, nurture and profit from communities, but not be able to rug pull previously delivered functionality and community provided content down the road. Communities need to be able to gracefully fork if they need to. Besides protecting a community's investment, this would better align the short & long term profit interests of corporations with their communities. It's clear that ethics, values and internet protocols need more alignment. The open source community, their licenses and tools, are a good example where similar issues have been (and continue to be) hashed out.
buzzert 3y ago
Not to defend Bandcamp in this particular scenario, but I feel there's something people often miss when psychoanalyzing why companies behave this way that I think explains quite a lot. Web properties, just like any property even in the physical world, become more expensive to operate in the long term. Very rarely do I hear of companies spending less money to operate something in the future than they did early on. Part of this is scale, as things become more popular, it takes more people to keep it running. Another part of it is macroeconomics, stuff they rely on, particularly labor (landscapers in the physical world or server admins, for instance) can become more expensive due to a number of factors. A lot of people, like the author of this post, assume that once a web property is built, it exists forever (like a statue or monument), but that's of course not the case. When a company needs to make decisions to increase their margin, a lot of people attribute it to "growth," and use it almost in a derogatory way. I think a more charitable way to see it is that it's not necessarily growth (although I'm sure that is a factor), but just to even keep the website running, a lot of times the same decisions need to be made (i.e., layoffs, charging for stuff that used to be free, etc). When you think about it this way, it really seems like either these sites make decisions like this to continue to exist, or they cease existing. This seems to track pretty well with a lot of cases I can think of. I think some very ideologically motivated people can work extremely hard to keep operating costs down to avoid this scenario (Craigslist comes to mind), but this is not easy, and it's very far from being the "default".
- meindnoch 3y ago
  Please explain how exactly is running Bandcamp becoming more expensive in the long term? It's literally just a basic band website template with the cheapest read-heavy cloud storage. Ok, there's payment processing too. But that's about it.
  - buzzert 3y ago
    If it’s so easy, why aren’t there 100’s of viable competitors?
- rangerelf 3y ago
  This part is what many have a problem with I think: "...When a company needs to make decisions to increase their margin..."; why? Why do you _NEED_ to increase your margin? You can increase your profit amount without increasing your margin by extending your customer base, by being smarter about expenses, by being a savvier customer to your online infrastructure, etc. But what is the _NEED_ (emphasis is mine) to, literally, squeeze that rock harder to get more blood out of it, therefore ensuring it will crumble in the future? The only thing I can think of is that there is no care for said future, "I'll squeeze as much as I can now, I got mine, so screw everyone else".
mlsu 3y ago
"Goodwill" is fungible only in one direction. Goodwill turns into money but money never ever turn into goodwill. (Can you think of an counterexample? A small, beloved indie business that was bought out by a megacorp and had consumers love it more because it had more money?) So, it's like entropy. The latch only moves in one direction. Given a consumer beloved business, the only possible thing that can happen is that its goodwill is turned, quickly or slowly, into money. This is actually ok. Every beautiful living thing will eventually die. It's simply a fact of life. Cherish the good things while you can, because entropy will always win.
- spencerflem 3y ago
  We can do that and also be mad at the people and systems doing the killing. Everyone dies in the end, but I'm still mad about murder, etc.
- 1propionyl 3y ago
  "Fungible in one direction" is a roundabout way of saying "non-fungible".
- rondini 3y ago
  Our current economic system is not some immutable law of nature, we can change it if it's harmful to our society
  - marssaxman 3y ago
    That is true to the extent that "we" refers to the wealthy and powerful.
- kouru225 3y ago
  Money turns into goodwill all the time… just not usually in terms of company buyouts.
- slg 3y ago
  It is more than that. It seems like the capitalists are shifting to the mindset that goodwill provides no actual benefit for a business so might as well cash in immediately. Now there is a belief that whenever a customer or business partner leaves an interaction with you with any surplus value, that is an indication that you left money on the table. Happy employees are paid too much. Happy suppliers aren't being squeezed hard enough on pricing. Happy customers mean you missed an opportunity to extract more revenue. People should only barely tolerate doing business with you. That is the new corporate mindset.
hn8305823 3y ago
Different take: The end-game of private equity/IPO gives incentive for people to create great things in the first place. That they inevitably die on the vine after several acquisitions is still better than having nothing in the first place.
JackFr 3y ago
> The companies that buy up sites like Bandcamp are interested in nothing except ensuring the executives’ pockets get lined appropriately. What about the people who sell sites like Bandcamp? It seems to me they want their pockets lined as well. To me it points to something fundamentally unsustainable. If cycle of “people who love music/support the artists” create sites/publications/etc. and then invariably sell out to some larger corporate body who dilutes or destroys the operation - what is going wrong?
- unfamiliar 3y ago
  Like growth needs to continue because just maintaining value is not acceptable for shareholders, maybe the problem is that the founders/sellers need a big payday because just having a steady income is not acceptable (to them).
  - compiler-guy 3y ago
    Running a business isn’t just a steady income though. It’s also annoyance and hassle and long nights. I don’t fault anyone for wanting to get off that carousel.
TheRealDunkirk 3y ago
Seems that most people in this country really do fall into the "temporarily inconvenienced millionaire" category, who favor no rules or regulations for how big corporations can get, or how many business lines they can own under one roof. First they came for the manufacturers, but I didn't buy raw steel or wood by the train load. Then they came for the programmers and consultants, but I didn't need any software written or any business advice. Then they came for literally EVERYTHING in retail, and I squirmed, but bought Prime anyway. Then they came for my TV and music, and... Hey! Wait just a dad-gummed minute here!
bambax 3y ago
> In March of 2022, Bandcamp was acquired by Epic Games That's one way of putting it. Another might be that the original owners/creators of Bandcamp decided to sell it, to a company that didn't have any connection whatsoever with Bandcamp's business or mission, and a less-than-stellar reputation. If we're going to play the blame game we might as well start here.
iainctduncan 3y ago
The problem I have with these sorts of articles is the "they". I love bandcamp, I'm not happy to see it being cut way down, but who is at fault here? It's not Songtradr. And it's not Epic. It's the original founders who sold the majority shares. They took it from being a company with a culture that they built, and a community of employees and users and musicians, and said "We are ok with this all going who knows where if we cash out now for enough money." They know damn well anything could happen from then on. Any hiring or firing decisions from that point on are a part of someone's money-making plan that (almost always) ends in another sale (whether private or IPO). Did anyone honestly think Epic was going to be a good custodian? No one has to do that. Songtrader and other giants and all the PE big funds in the world can't make someone do that. The world is full of companies that never sell 50% of the shares because they care about what they have built more than cash and would prefer to keep a modestly profitable business going that employs their friends and families and continues to embody their values. Some of these even take outside investment from private equity funds - I've done diligences for them - where the deal is very clearly that less than 50% is ever going to be for sale. (These are called "minority" or "growth" investment, less common, but they exist a plenty.) Ableton famously refuses to take outside investment because the founders care more about the thing they have made and their position in the music and technology culture than they do about being as rich as possible. And they have been an excellent new owner for Cycling 74. I hope bandcamp makes it, because I still think it's a great alternative to other options. But I'm under no illusion that it's the same thing it was in the beginning. That ship sailed with the first transaction.
camdenlock 3y ago
Cognitive dissonance. Celebrating the possibilities of our free market system (Bandcamp) while simultaneously decrying it as irredeemably evil (Songtradr). It’s almost as if, at the end of the day, it’s really all just a bunch of humans exercising their free will to make companies and do as they please…
ProxCoques 3y ago
I've been looking at alternatives to Bandcamp, and while sadly Ampled has decided to shutter at the end of the year, https://resonate.coop https://resonate.coop is a possibility in terms of a new music "business model". For a more standard Bandcamp-like model, https://artcore.com https://artcore.com is looking interesting too (I can declare a connection with Artcore as it was created and is run by an ex colleague of mine).

308 points by cdme 3y ago

Nobody will preserve the culture you care about for you. Nobody can make it better but us. Internet Archive is doing a pretty incredible job of just that.

phailhaus 3y ago
The Internet Archive was never sold to a third party. That's the point: they've always retained control of their company and therefore their vision.
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  Well, you've gotten to the crux of it. Stop trusting culture to for profit companies who will be flipped as soon as majority stakeholders get a whiff of "cash me out." Brewster Kahle takes the role of the Internet Archive and its mission very seriously. It has been organized in a manner to defend against this peril and will survive a custodian transition. https://winners.webbyawards.com/2017/specialachievement/130/internet-archive https://winners.webbyawards.com/2017/specialachievement/130/... https://archive.org/details/2017-Webby-award-video https://archive.org/details/2017-Webby-award-video “The Internet Archive…is building a home for Universal Access to All Knowledge, open to everyone, everywhere, to use as they like. Open to all societies of the future that care to build on our triumphs and learn from our mistakes.” -- Lawrence Lessig, narrator EDIT: TLDR Build public goods if motivated and resourced, defend them through legal, logical, physical, and technological controls.
- nijjle 3y ago
  [flagged]
Almondsetat 3y ago
Internet Archive won't read your mind and automatically archive everything you desire, you still have to explicitely tell it what to save
- kuhaku22 3y ago
  Exactly. And there's tons of stuff out there it doesn't have, waiting to be converted from analog media or out of the clutches of overreaching copyright.
kuhaku22 3y ago
I think the message is more about self-organizing and takings steps to be active in preservation. The Internet Archive does great work, but putting all our eggs in that basket creates a huge risk if it becomes a Library of Alexandria, and publishers would love for it to no longer exist. [0] [0] https://time.com/6266147/internet-archive-copyright-infringement-books-lawsuit/ https://time.com/6266147/internet-archive-copyright-infringe...
- kffan 3y ago
  [flagged]
adventured 3y ago
Internet Archive can never exist in the EU in regards to hosting because they're so egregiously violating basic consumer rights, including the right to privacy and the right to be forgotten. They make it intentionally difficult, and often impossible, to get content removed from their archive (especially if you don't control the domain). They're oblivious to how many violations of personal information they contain within their own archives - by design grabbing content without having any idea what it is - and stand no chance of ever meeting stringent EU laws on such matters including GDPR. And that's something to celebrate? No, it's something HN nearly universally somehow overlooks in every single conversation about Internet Archive, because they get a pass (the end justifies the means essentially). Internet Archive should be illegal because it violates human rights.
- nijjle 3y ago
  The 'right to be forgotten' has always been one of the more ill-conceived ideas coming from the EU. Censoring lawful and factual information is dubious in principle and flawed as a means of protecting privacy. Since its introduction, it has been widely abused as a tool to hide misdeeds and embarrassments, to pretend they never actually happened.
  - KETHERCORTEX 3y ago
    By the way, I think I should remind you that you must bear no memory about Herostratus, arsonist who burned down the Temple of Artemis.
- Nevermark 3y ago
  > Internet Archive should be illegal because it violates human rights. You raise some interesting points, but the kill-it-with-fire solution ignores the great (necessary!) benefits the archive provides to humanity, by protecting useful public/published information from constant churn. Humanity is just beginning to find its moral/ethical way forward, in this new integrated world of information, by feel in the dark. In the meantime, its unavoidable that many things will be imperfect balances, and people will disagree where the balances should be.
- 3y ago
Analemma_ 3y ago
Internet Archive is great, but to be clear: it's a museum of dead cultures for historical examination and appreciation. That's a valuable service, but it's not at all the same thing as supporting a living community. By its nature, the Internet Archive can never do that.

kuhaku22 3y ago

Would be nice if the title could mention Bandcamp, since it's very dramatic without context and could be about anything.

omoikane 3y ago
It's mostly about Bandcamp but it could indeed be about anything, as later parts of the article mention how MySpace and Twitter are ruined in much the same way.
- scoot 3y ago
  Did anyone ever actually love Twitter? I can't remember ever getting meaningful value from it. I can't comment on MySpace as it seemed to come and go so quickly (yes, I've been online since before the web, so your dilation may vary).
  - agumonkey 3y ago
    I wonder if I ever loved a social network website at all.
    - swader999 3y ago
      This one?
      - lostlogin 3y ago
        Before any agreement here, we will need a definition for love and an argument on whether this is a social network.
        swader999 3y ago
        For hear I'd say treating people the way you would hope to be treated is good enough?
      - 3y ago

thenoblesunfish 3y ago

I have long mused that there needs to be a differently structured way to do what bandcamp does (soon, did). Who has experiences with those structures that can still deliver technically? Co-ops? Values-first companies like iFixit? Non-profits?

citizenkeen 3y ago
I believe you're looking for a B-Corp? Corporations that aren't bound by Dodge v Ford Motor Co would be real nice.
- nvy 3y ago
  I think Co-ops are the way to go, because if your employees and your customers are also your owners (shareholders) then doing what's right for the customer is by definition what's best for shareholders.
  - ekidd 3y ago
    Co-ops are a very flexible and successful business structure. For example, people in the northeastern US probably know of Cabot Cheddar. This is part of the Agri-Mark co-op, which does something like $1 billion in annual business and employs about 1,000 people. Agri-Mark is a "producer co-op," which means that it's owned by dairy farms. There are also very successful "consumer co-ops," as well as "worker co-ops." There are many nice things about co-ops: - They can be economically competitive. - They're democratically run. (Larger ones often elect a board and/or appoint management.) - They're strictly voluntary associations. There are also reasons why you don't see more co-operatives: - They don't have huge incentives to scale. There are plenty of amazing grocery co-ops, for example, that have one or two excellent stores but no desire to expand. - They raise capital through their members. Details vary, but they tend to scale more like bootstrapped businesses than startups. But a musicians' producer co-op could absolutely build something like Bandcamp. It would be a lot of work, and it would require some genuine organizational talent. A lot of the big open source foundations (the Linux Foundation, the Apache Foundation, etc) are essentially producer co-ops for open source software, even if that's not what the paperwork says. I think we should absolutely build more co-ops, for things that really matter.

jdkee 3y ago

Anyone know how much the founders received from the initial sale to Epic? https://blog.bandcamp.com/2022/03/02/bandcamp-is-joining-epic/ https://blog.bandcamp.com/2022/03/02/bandcamp-is-joining-epi...

x0x0 3y ago

eh, going to be completely contrarian. Bandcamp appears to have been making almost no money / very little net profit. That's fine, as long as the owner is ok running it that way. The users of bandcamp -- both artists and fans -- will likely be on far more stable ground if bandcamp earns a reasonable profit. If the owners view it as an asset instead of a charity endeavor or a labor of love. Because in the latter case, people eventually want to move on, as the original creator did after 15 years.

raincole 3y ago
But people just want free stuff. If you try to break even they go like "why does everything has to be monetized?" (sent from their $799 iphone).
- f1refly 3y ago
  Bandcamp is built on people paying though. They're already past that big hurdle.
- _hcuq 3y ago
  Bandcamp was literally about paying for stuff.
digging 3y ago
> Bandcamp appears to have been making almost no money / very little net profit. That's fine, as long as the owner is ok running it that way. That literally is fine. There was never a need to turn it into a highly profitable service. If it was paying bills and salaries, it was an absolute success.
- MichaelZuo 3y ago
  The parent mentioned that the original owner got tired of this, hence why it was sold in the first place?
  - digging 3y ago

digging 3y ago

I would love to hear from people who worked at Bandcamp during the sale to Epic. Even at that moment I seriously feared for what was once one of my favorite media services ever. Even if Epic seemed like they wanted to be hands-off, I can't imagine working at Bandcamp and being excited to be owned by a company like Epic - not necessarily "evil", but clearly not aligned with Bandcamp's founding ethos.

underbluewaters 3y ago

I struggle to think of any institutions the VC/tech/internet era has produced with any long-term value. My assumption is that these companies go through a cyclical pattern of providing value and then destroying it once successful. That timescale also seems to be getting shorter. Any going against that trend?

swagasaurus-rex 3y ago
The money can provide incentive for entrepreneurs to create real or perceived value in hopes of being acquired for large sums. That just feeds into the trend, unfortunately.
tsunamifury 3y ago
You struggle to see why any company who has been founded in the last 20 years isn't providing long term value. 1) Obviously, first and foremost, this is a tautology. 2) There is little proof that companies that last long term, do so for good reasons 3) What does it matter... at all? Wide and short, Long and narrow, short and sweet, all these forms of impact have nothing to do with their inherent value
- the_snooze 3y ago
  They've been around a bit longer than 20 years, but Valve comes to mind as a company that completely changed PC gaming in a fairly sustainable long-term way, likely because they're not beholden to VCs or external shareholders. This matters because they've built up immense trust that the games bought 10, 15, 20 years ago will still be there today, with minimal BS. This made people feel OK buying digital-only games. I don't think we'd have all these online delivery game stores these days if Valve had jerked people around to maximize short-term earnings.
  - rexpop 3y ago
    You're right; if only they worked on real problems and not virtual opiates.

throwaway290 3y ago

TL;DR Bandcamp. > The companies that buy up sites like Bandcamp are interested in nothing except ensuring the executives’ pockets get lined appropriately I like how it presents things as if Bandcamp's original management had no part in selling. This is not China. They were not forced to sell. They were the ones who had to decide whether to do it or not, but somehow they are not to blame for any consequences.

SleepilyLimping 3y ago
I think this gets exacerbated with the "we're a family!" culture of employee in-groups. Feeling like a company is your home amplifies the disappointment and feeling of betrayal when the CEO decides to sell.

pradn 3y ago

Communities that form around a website or service are living things - they need nourishment to thrive, and can certainly be killed. The only sustainable way forward is to form artist-driven, bottom-up, non-profit organizations to nurture communities like BandCamp. The rule is: every for-profit company will lose its way in the drive for higher and higher profits, or it'll be killed for having not kept that promise. It's inevitable. Every company in existence now will die one day. There's no guarantee a democratic organization would last forever, but at least its not subject to the artificial drive to grow forever.

Gibbon1 3y ago
There is a premise that the myopic optimizations beloved by economists and MBA's eventually paint companies into a corner and then they die. Sort of the classic way naive lost hiker in the mountains will walk downhill with it getting steeper and steeper till they slip and fall to their death. In the case of a companies they run on thinner and thinner margins until some event drives them negative.
chasd00 3y ago
> Communities that form around a website or service are living things when a living thing stops growing it starts dying
- vonjuice 3y ago
  a person who becomes a gluton will grow bigger and bigger as they age and die a person who watches their health might become smaller and live longer and better because of it the growth first mindset is not wise
- zanellato19 3y ago
  You can still have unhealthy growth.
15457345234 3y ago
> form artist-driven, bottom-up, non-profit organizations to nurture communities Unfortunately those sort of things (that are genuinely good) attract the wreckers like a flame attracts a moth.

lowbloodsugar 3y ago

At the end of the day, Bandcamp's founders sold to Epic. We all knew that was going to have a bad ending, we just didn't know the details. Now we know the details. I mean, sure, "they" being "capitalist overlords", created a world where the Bandcamp founders would need to sell out in order to have am assured secure life for themselves and offspring. But they did sell out. Epic is just doing what Epic does.

bee_rider 3y ago
It seems odd—Bandcamp was basically a small company that could have chugged along with small but non-zero profits indefinitely. Epic did nothing with them, and now they are being sold to a company that will almost certainly just destroy their value. Why? This is dumb. I can see why Bandcamp’s owners would sell, but no rational buyer would buy Bandcamp, it is a company that is only valuable because of the goodwill that it has. Their niche is very-online music enthusiasts who are into the community feeling. We’re going to notice and leave as soon as the cash-in change happens. Why didn’t Epic and this other company whoever they are just light some little piles of money on fire instead. At least they could have warmed their feet.
- lowbloodsugar 3y ago
  The narrative for why Epic did it is believed to be that it was an arrow in the "Apple is a monopoly" quiver. Epic would build a music-buying iOS App, and then complain to the government that Apple demands 30% of the revenue.
lapinot 3y ago
> a world where the Bandcamp founders would need to sell out in order to have am assured secure life for themselves and offspring. "need" is a bit twisted, i'm not sure anyone "needs" a million or so. If they really wanted to get out of it and keep it nice they most likely could have set up a non-profit or something, raised some money from the community and probably still get a small rent in some way. Also it's not like the CEO of such a company (smallish but still) is strapped on cash already. > But they did sell out. That's it.. There's no excuse and as you said, everyone knew this kind of constant downhill had a very high probability to happen. They definitely took the 90% chance coin-flip to hose the community and get "an actual bit of capital" much of money.

skybrian 3y ago

I think the lesson is that successful companies (and other organizations, and bands) are often temporary and you should enjoy it while it lasts. Don’t let a sad ending ruin the good memories.

kelseyfrog 3y ago
I think the lesson is that we have a system in place which incentives this categorically and there's no escape hatch from it. What systems could be developed which would counter or de-incentivize this from occurring?
- Minor49er 3y ago
  Be careful. Any system that stops behavior that you don't want might also stop the thing that you are trying to help from being created in the first place
  - kelseyfrog 3y ago
    Right, there's one way to verify this, using the scientific method and empirical observations. There's also one clear way of guaranteed failing: giving up before even starting.
    - Minor49er 3y ago
      I look forward to reading your results
- skybrian 3y ago
  There is no simple rule that tells you what's worth preserving and what can be thrown out. There are incentives to not break things that are working as long as they make money. But incentives only go so far. There was little incentive for Musk to do what he's doing at Twitter, but he did it anyway after he got caught in a trap of his own devising.

zitterbewegung 3y ago

If you want to solve the problem of not relying on a company with your sales then you need to either setup the online store yourself. The problem is that people want the experience to be frictionless and that is best achieved by a corporation. Maybe someone could clone Bandcamp feature list but payment processing will be a hassle . Regardless artists make more on merch and doing shows than streaming . I see many artists investing in merch sales (and I will buy that) and or “collector edition” products. Is it capitalism ? Sure. Can it be truly solved . Not really. People don’t want to be bothered to make their own websites with a shop and do everything themselves. Open source will get you 90% there but honestly just doing shows and selling it in person is profitable and giving away the music online or stream using twitch .

syndicatedjelly 3y ago
> Maybe someone could clone Bandcamp feature list but payment processing will be a hassle . Why is payment processing considered a hassle? Set up a Paypal account, create a link and have customers pay through that. Done. Payment processors are in the business of making it easy to pay people. Use any of the myriad of payment processors to get money from people. Is it slightly less frictionless than standing up a half-million dollar website with options to pay via CatCoin? Yes, but is it really worth it to optimize for 1% of customers who can't be arsed to pay with anything other than their favorite, obscure method of payment?
- ipaddr 3y ago
  "Payment processors are in the business of making it easy to pay people." The most important role is to prevent fraud and keep reputation high. Making it easier to pay is way down the list or using a US credit card from Laos location wouldn't trigger alarms and prevent the transaction requiring a manual override
scoot 3y ago
> then you need to either setup the online store yourself. Or?

omscs99 3y ago

> Beloved websites are destroyed by money hungry ghouls everyday. Seems like a common theme: people build a community around something, it becomes something really cool, and then a bunch of businesspeople insert themselves and liquidate the trust that’s been built The problem is money, it pits people against each other. It draws in all of these sociopathic businesspeople. It turns people into ass kissers. It liquidates trust. It destroys community Build a culture where people think money = God and this is what happens. It consistently brings out the absolute worst in people

SleepilyLimping 3y ago
>Seems like a common theme: people build a community around something, it becomes something really cool, and then a bunch of businesspeople insert themselves and liquidate the trust that’s been built So do the people who let the business people in just get to dodge the blame? "Oh well, we can't expect anyone to have principles in the face of so much money, so we shouldn't hold anyone to a standard?"
- atq2119 3y ago
  Don't hate the players, hate the game. This applies to all the actors here as long as they abstain from getting involved in politics in a way that perpetuates the rules of the game.

chasd00 3y ago

i kept waiting for the punchline in the paragraph comparing BandCamp to MySpace but it never came. "Bandcamp and MySpace were both built by people who genuinely love music." MySpace was sold by "Tom" to a large company which then, eventually, abandoned it... just like what is likely to happen to BandCamp. Tom made out like a bandit.. just like the owner of BandCamp likely did.

spamizbad 3y ago
MySpace as a major hub for musicians was probably an accident - originally it was just a clone of friendster, a social media site that was notorious for going offline. Too bad too, because back in the aughts (even after the News Corp acquisition) bands still relied on it for an internet presence, advertising shows, etc.

sinistersnare 3y ago

This article asks a good question. What is the point of capitalism? If these acquisitions exist simply to make the line go up, why? Bandcamp will NOT be better off under this new rule, we will all be worse off as listeners of music. Why allow this at all?

sirmike_ 3y ago

It would be good to get some background on the original owner(s) and why they sold. Was it retirement? Was it move to the next thing? unknown. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandcamp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandcamp

ipaddr 3y ago
Ethan Diamond says they sold to "provide the resources to bring a lot more benefit to the artists, labels, and fans who use the site" like vinal pressing .."Epic ticked all of the boxes" He sold for money. He planned on continue to lead the team (CEO). So he was part of the plan to fire everyone before Epic sold to this new company

b59831 3y ago

[dead]

Semaphor 3y ago

I have been praising Bandcamp for years. How it's a great site, how I love buying music there instead of streaming. But what I never did? Read their blog or used any of their social features. So as long as Songtrader keeps paying artists, and keeps offering downloads while letting me stream the music for free until I can decide if I want to buy it or not, I'll be fine with them.

Pxtl 3y ago
Okay but this layoff process didn't look like a strategic move where they cut the excess services from bandcamp. It sounds like it was an across-the-board 50% slash. Half the blog staff is still around.
theandrewbailey 3y ago
Same. I always find music somewhere else like Youtube or Soundcloud, and find the link to Bandcamp from there.
zanellato19 3y ago
"They are not ruining for me _specifically_ so this article is moot" is not a great point
- peruvian 3y ago
  Classic HN comment though - adds nothing to the discussion outside of "I want to smugly have my thoughts out there". Of course, upvoted to the top.
  - yamazakiwi 3y ago
    It's not weird to share opinions on a forum, I don't read any smugness in their tone.
    - permo-w 3y ago
      smug is pretty much the baseline on HN

legitster 3y ago

> The data Discogs has – just like Bandcamp and just like what has been lost at MySpace – is irreplaceable and ever growing. So to have years of culture on Twitter – everything from the continued existence of legacy accounts to the basic usefulness of news organizations being verified – been ravaged by Elon Musk’s vanity. The internet is forever, until it’s ripped away by people who don’t add value to it. I am not actually sure I agree with the author's premise at all. Nothing digital is forever, if anything, the opposite is true. The internet is completely ephemeral. And it's only through the persistence, hard work, and money of dedicated people that anything is preserved. Secondly, hoarding lots of data on the internet != a community. Maybe it's the activity that a community could build itself around, or maybe it's the public space that they use. But the reason places like Geocities or MySpace collapsed is because they held feverishly onto all of the data but none of the community. And maybe it's worth it to hold onto stuff that's been abandoned (even if it's borderline hoarding), but I would argue that it is entirely irrelevant to what went wrong with the Bandcamp situation.

jxramos 3y ago
I’m curious on the swipe at Elon. What’s the story with the legacy accounts she references? Also what’s the bit about news organizations and verification? I feel like I’m missing context here. What are these issues about precisely?

AlbertCory 3y ago

Is there a reason why Bandcamp can't be cloned but as a 501(c)(3)? Lots of people would donate to it. If you want a real example, go to https://kkup.org/ https://kkup.org/ I did some work for them back in the 80's, and they're still around.

dingnuts 3y ago
I'm pretty sure Bandcamp could be cloned as a dapp and then nobody would have to worry about acquisition, but then, that would cut the middle man out and labels won't like that
- AlbertCory 3y ago
  You seem to be answering a different question entirely. dapp or centralized doesn't matter; it's the corporate structure that's important. Bandcamp 2.0 can cut the labels in, or not.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

phendrenad2 3y ago

It's a natural cycle: Someone makes something cool, they get a huge buyout offer and sell it, the new owner destroys it. Rinse lather repeat. What we have is a shortage of people who make cool things, and an overabundance of corporations looking for things to destroy.

sshine 3y ago

When the founders exit with a pile of cash, a little part of the soul of the company dies. It’s understandable that they would rather secure their family more, and switch to a new adventure. I look at those Japanese family run businesses who have made baozi on the same street corner for hundreds of years. Fortunately, a lot of the world’s small businesses are run by people who stick around and don’t sell out.

fnikacevic 3y ago
If any of the world's small business were offered millions of dollars in secondaries they would secure their families too.

Nevermark 3y ago

The internet is sorely missing a layer of infrastructure for communities, that allow entities to create, nurture and profit from communities, but not be able to rug pull previously delivered functionality and community provided content down the road. Communities need to be able to gracefully fork if they need to. Besides protecting a community's investment, this would better align the short & long term profit interests of corporations with their communities. It's clear that ethics, values and internet protocols need more alignment. The open source community, their licenses and tools, are a good example where similar issues have been (and continue to be) hashed out.

buzzert 3y ago

Not to defend Bandcamp in this particular scenario, but I feel there's something people often miss when psychoanalyzing why companies behave this way that I think explains quite a lot. Web properties, just like any property even in the physical world, become more expensive to operate in the long term. Very rarely do I hear of companies spending less money to operate something in the future than they did early on. Part of this is scale, as things become more popular, it takes more people to keep it running. Another part of it is macroeconomics, stuff they rely on, particularly labor (landscapers in the physical world or server admins, for instance) can become more expensive due to a number of factors. A lot of people, like the author of this post, assume that once a web property is built, it exists forever (like a statue or monument), but that's of course not the case. When a company needs to make decisions to increase their margin, a lot of people attribute it to "growth," and use it almost in a derogatory way. I think a more charitable way to see it is that it's not necessarily growth (although I'm sure that is a factor), but just to even keep the website running, a lot of times the same decisions need to be made (i.e., layoffs, charging for stuff that used to be free, etc). When you think about it this way, it really seems like either these sites make decisions like this to continue to exist, or they cease existing. This seems to track pretty well with a lot of cases I can think of. I think some very ideologically motivated people can work extremely hard to keep operating costs down to avoid this scenario (Craigslist comes to mind), but this is not easy, and it's very far from being the "default".

meindnoch 3y ago
Please explain how exactly is running Bandcamp becoming more expensive in the long term? It's literally just a basic band website template with the cheapest read-heavy cloud storage. Ok, there's payment processing too. But that's about it.
- buzzert 3y ago
  If it’s so easy, why aren’t there 100’s of viable competitors?
rangerelf 3y ago
This part is what many have a problem with I think: "...When a company needs to make decisions to increase their margin..."; why? Why do you _NEED_ to increase your margin? You can increase your profit amount without increasing your margin by extending your customer base, by being smarter about expenses, by being a savvier customer to your online infrastructure, etc. But what is the _NEED_ (emphasis is mine) to, literally, squeeze that rock harder to get more blood out of it, therefore ensuring it will crumble in the future? The only thing I can think of is that there is no care for said future, "I'll squeeze as much as I can now, I got mine, so screw everyone else".

mlsu 3y ago

"Goodwill" is fungible only in one direction. Goodwill turns into money but money never ever turn into goodwill. (Can you think of an counterexample? A small, beloved indie business that was bought out by a megacorp and had consumers love it more because it had more money?) So, it's like entropy. The latch only moves in one direction. Given a consumer beloved business, the only possible thing that can happen is that its goodwill is turned, quickly or slowly, into money. This is actually ok. Every beautiful living thing will eventually die. It's simply a fact of life. Cherish the good things while you can, because entropy will always win.

spencerflem 3y ago
We can do that and also be mad at the people and systems doing the killing. Everyone dies in the end, but I'm still mad about murder, etc.
1propionyl 3y ago
"Fungible in one direction" is a roundabout way of saying "non-fungible".
rondini 3y ago
Our current economic system is not some immutable law of nature, we can change it if it's harmful to our society
- marssaxman 3y ago
  That is true to the extent that "we" refers to the wealthy and powerful.
kouru225 3y ago
Money turns into goodwill all the time… just not usually in terms of company buyouts.
slg 3y ago
It is more than that. It seems like the capitalists are shifting to the mindset that goodwill provides no actual benefit for a business so might as well cash in immediately. Now there is a belief that whenever a customer or business partner leaves an interaction with you with any surplus value, that is an indication that you left money on the table. Happy employees are paid too much. Happy suppliers aren't being squeezed hard enough on pricing. Happy customers mean you missed an opportunity to extract more revenue. People should only barely tolerate doing business with you. That is the new corporate mindset.

hn8305823 3y ago

Different take: The end-game of private equity/IPO gives incentive for people to create great things in the first place. That they inevitably die on the vine after several acquisitions is still better than having nothing in the first place.

JackFr 3y ago

> The companies that buy up sites like Bandcamp are interested in nothing except ensuring the executives’ pockets get lined appropriately. What about the people who sell sites like Bandcamp? It seems to me they want their pockets lined as well. To me it points to something fundamentally unsustainable. If cycle of “people who love music/support the artists” create sites/publications/etc. and then invariably sell out to some larger corporate body who dilutes or destroys the operation - what is going wrong?

unfamiliar 3y ago
Like growth needs to continue because just maintaining value is not acceptable for shareholders, maybe the problem is that the founders/sellers need a big payday because just having a steady income is not acceptable (to them).
- compiler-guy 3y ago
  Running a business isn’t just a steady income though. It’s also annoyance and hassle and long nights. I don’t fault anyone for wanting to get off that carousel.

TheRealDunkirk 3y ago

Seems that most people in this country really do fall into the "temporarily inconvenienced millionaire" category, who favor no rules or regulations for how big corporations can get, or how many business lines they can own under one roof. First they came for the manufacturers, but I didn't buy raw steel or wood by the train load. Then they came for the programmers and consultants, but I didn't need any software written or any business advice. Then they came for literally EVERYTHING in retail, and I squirmed, but bought Prime anyway. Then they came for my TV and music, and... Hey! Wait just a dad-gummed minute here!

bambax 3y ago

> In March of 2022, Bandcamp was acquired by Epic Games That's one way of putting it. Another might be that the original owners/creators of Bandcamp decided to sell it, to a company that didn't have any connection whatsoever with Bandcamp's business or mission, and a less-than-stellar reputation. If we're going to play the blame game we might as well start here.

iainctduncan 3y ago

The problem I have with these sorts of articles is the "they". I love bandcamp, I'm not happy to see it being cut way down, but who is at fault here? It's not Songtradr. And it's not Epic. It's the original founders who sold the majority shares. They took it from being a company with a culture that they built, and a community of employees and users and musicians, and said "We are ok with this all going who knows where if we cash out now for enough money." They know damn well anything could happen from then on. Any hiring or firing decisions from that point on are a part of someone's money-making plan that (almost always) ends in another sale (whether private or IPO). Did anyone honestly think Epic was going to be a good custodian? No one has to do that. Songtrader and other giants and all the PE big funds in the world can't make someone do that. The world is full of companies that never sell 50% of the shares because they care about what they have built more than cash and would prefer to keep a modestly profitable business going that employs their friends and families and continues to embody their values. Some of these even take outside investment from private equity funds - I've done diligences for them - where the deal is very clearly that less than 50% is ever going to be for sale. (These are called "minority" or "growth" investment, less common, but they exist a plenty.) Ableton famously refuses to take outside investment because the founders care more about the thing they have made and their position in the music and technology culture than they do about being as rich as possible. And they have been an excellent new owner for Cycling 74. I hope bandcamp makes it, because I still think it's a great alternative to other options. But I'm under no illusion that it's the same thing it was in the beginning. That ship sailed with the first transaction.

camdenlock 3y ago

Cognitive dissonance. Celebrating the possibilities of our free market system (Bandcamp) while simultaneously decrying it as irredeemably evil (Songtradr). It’s almost as if, at the end of the day, it’s really all just a bunch of humans exercising their free will to make companies and do as they please…

ProxCoques 3y ago

I've been looking at alternatives to Bandcamp, and while sadly Ampled has decided to shutter at the end of the year, https://resonate.coop https://resonate.coop is a possibility in terms of a new music "business model". For a more standard Bandcamp-like model, https://artcore.com https://artcore.com is looking interesting too (I can declare a connection with Artcore as it was created and is run by an ex colleague of mine).