Another Time at Bandcamp

September 29, 2023 4:44 AM

BANDCAMP Acquired By SONGTRADR as Epic Games Sells Bandcamp Amid Layoffs

Songtradr blog: This acquisition will help Bandcamp continue to grow within a music-first company and enable Songtradr to expand its capabilities to support the artist community ... Songtradr will also offer Bandcamp artists the ability and choice to have their music licensed to all forms of media including content creators, game and app developers and brands. This will enable artists to continue to own and control their music rights, and increase their earning capacity from Songtradr’s global licensing network.

What is Songtradr?

Songtradr is where music meets data, ideas meet innovation, and brand missions are transformed by sound. ... Songtradr is the world’s largest B2B music company, delivering the only full-stack solution for all business music needs ... We're on a mission to change the music industry for good through technology, creativity, and transparency. Trusted by global businesses, agencies, and labels, our fully integrated products and services help amplify brands while enabling artists and rights holders to realize the full potential of their catalog ... Whether with a classic song or a trending tune, a global music strategy or a sonic identity, we help translate ideas into powerful, ROI-driven solutions to ensure content always hits the right note.

Previously

posted by chavenet (82 comments total)

man what went wrong with the planning of the acquisition that they spun it off a year after buying it. after a year you’re still integrating the new company with your own. that’s an incredibly expensive mistake
posted by dis_integration at 5:08 AM on September 29, 2023 [16 favorites]

powerful, ROI-driven solutions

oh no
posted by mittens at 5:10 AM on September 29, 2023 [46 favorites]

Welp, time to start building a Bandcamp alternative I guess
posted by timdiggerm at 5:13 AM on September 29, 2023 [17 favorites]

Shit. This seems bad?
posted by Faintdreams at 5:19 AM on September 29, 2023 [6 favorites]

man what went wrong with the planning of the acquisition that they spun it off a year after buying it.

Bandcamp employees unionized.
posted by mhoye at 5:19 AM on September 29, 2023 [52 favorites]

I think everyone saw it was an irrational purchase when it happened. I remember lamenting the loss of Bandcamp already back when it was purchased by Epic. It was a boneheaded move from the start.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 5:23 AM on September 29, 2023 [6 favorites]

"Songtradr shares Epic and Bandcamp’s values around ensuring artists are fairly compensated for their work,” said Steve Allison, Vice President and General Manager, Store at Epic Games.

Surely, a wild statement to make while laying off 16 percent of your workers.

I am once again concerned about my favorite music distribution platform and hope for the best.
posted by bigendian at 5:29 AM on September 29, 2023 [12 favorites]

> Surely, a wild statement to make while laying off 16 percent of your workers.

Devil's Advocate says: One of the reasons they're laying off workers is surely because their policy of giving artists outrageous payouts for Epic Games Store exclusivity deals wasn't economically sustainable. Their desire to "compensate artists fairly" only extends as far as grabbing market share.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 5:35 AM on September 29, 2023 [2 favorites]

This makes me sad and scared. Use Bandcamp extensively, for many projects.
posted by tiny frying pan at 5:39 AM on September 29, 2023 [4 favorites]

Two artists I love just released new stuff last week that I haven't even had a chance to check out yet!

DAMMIT CAPITALISM, I DIDN'T INVITE YOU
posted by wenestvedt at 5:47 AM on September 29, 2023 [9 favorites]

As icky as some comments there can be, the Hacker News thread has links to some methods for downloading your full collection. It also includes a few comments by Bandcamp and Songtradr employees.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37695035
posted by wenestvedt at 5:50 AM on September 29, 2023 [9 favorites]

I feel more threatened by this acquisition than the last one. Epic seemed like they just wanted small things from Bandcamp: Integration into Fortnite and a legal example to further their case against Apple and Google. It was a frivolous spend by a company that (at the time) thought they could be loose with money.

Songtradr looks very unlikely to leave Bandcamp alone.

There are not many great alternatives to Bandcamp. I’ve seen people sell albums on itch.io, but few are looking for music there, and the support for streaming and previewing aren’t there.

Also, I hope some researcher finds out what makes super rich founders like Ethan Diamond go from being super rich and satisfied with helping listeners and musicians to wanting to sell to Epic to becomes mega rich. That guy just did not seem all that interested in being the richest man in the graveyard.

There was some study that found that even millionaires felt poor. Was it that? Did he really believe Epic would be serious stewards of music culture?

He’s so far from being the worst CEO, and I’m not trying to tear him down. I think any reasonable human can get into whatever conditions he was in as a successful owner of an honest business and maybe make the same decisions he did. I just want to know more about what those conditions are.
posted by ignignokt at 6:00 AM on September 29, 2023 [5 favorites]

That python script seems great for the techs among us but myself and many of my artist friends will be lost on that. Bandcamp also limits you downloading your own music! So archiving is difficult. Luckily I did a lot during the last acquisition but dammit.
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:20 AM on September 29, 2023 [3 favorites]

That Songtradr (lol) blurb sounds like a private equity shell company extruded bullshit. Too bad for Bandcamp.
posted by snwod at 6:36 AM on September 29, 2023 [19 favorites]

Wait, there are people who solely use the bandcamp online streamer instead of downloading the files the second bandcamp provides a link? Weeeeeeird. Life's rich pageant, indeed.
posted by Kyol at 6:37 AM on September 29, 2023 [21 favorites]

We'll see where this goes - didn't really notice much of a change during Epic's stewardship as it happened (though had no desire to support them in any way) but these Songtradr people seem quite creepy.

Curious to know why you would need to download your own music - presumably you have your masters already to have been able to upload in the first place, so it seems redundant to have to do that?

As for collections, do people really listen to streams rather than downloading in full resolution? Bandcamp's streaming quality has always been terrible, totally unsuited to hi-fi listening.
posted by remembrancer at 6:39 AM on September 29, 2023 [1 favorite]

For me, I'm talking about music I or my bands have made and put on bandcamp. There's a lot of it.
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:40 AM on September 29, 2023 [1 favorite]

(I have a lot of my masters already...sometimes without the proper titles or artwork put on bandcamp. In addition, one of my bands has over 250 rehearsals on a secret bandcamp. When bandcamp last limited me, I think I had properly archived around 180. Will need to get back at it.)
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:41 AM on September 29, 2023 [1 favorite]

Yeah, this seems not great.

It crosses my mind that it's not that hard to set up an online store of one's own. A lot of the tools for this are open-source. The one thing that Bandcamp does that these existing tools don't do off-the-shelf is transcoding to the customer's preferred format. It wouldn't be that hard to put together a "musician's store" package that collects all these bits and pieces, and links in LAME to cover the transcoding bit. This would give artists more control over their own destiny.

After that, it's a problem of discovery and aggregation, and increasingly we can use decentralized platforms for that. But once you discover an artist, you don't need to go through an aggregator or search platform—you can just go directly to the artist, and even if an aggregation platform turns full-evil, it can't interfere with that relationship.
posted by adamrice at 6:44 AM on September 29, 2023 [2 favorites]

Well, this sounds like shit. I hope the union's ready to fight.
posted by heteronym at 6:48 AM on September 29, 2023 [4 favorites]

(I have a lot of my masters already...sometimes without the proper titles or artwork put on bandcamp.

Ah, ok, I was talking about my own music too - I have all my masters (digital and analogue) archived going back to 1986, all the digital stuff on multiple drives in case one fails, everyone I know does this so I'm always surprised when people don't.
posted by remembrancer at 6:50 AM on September 29, 2023 [1 favorite]

I am furious about this news. Angry at Epic for mishandling something without even doing a damn thing to really try to improve it, it was a poor attempt at a capture for game music and they dicked the artists over and more enshittification to more corporate middlemen.

Someone was like "it's a good fit for band camp" maybe maybe not. It sounds like shit but assuming its' "good" - it's still more control to middle men and I am getting sick of these finance silicon valley bros scraping all this money off of us for their millions. It's disgusting.
posted by symbioid at 6:53 AM on September 29, 2023 [6 favorites]

It's a ton of work! It takes time to archive these things and keep track of it all.
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:54 AM on September 29, 2023 [2 favorites]

And look, the tools got better over time too. I didn't used to have Google Drive and external drives and all that.

I feel for those without the ability, time, and Google accounts, etc who may lose a lot. I also feel for myself cause the pittance of money that bandcamp brings in is lovely and it really ain't more than a pittance anyway but don't want to lose that either.
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:56 AM on September 29, 2023 [1 favorite]

Surely some of the anger ought to be directed the ex-owners/founders who sold it to Epic Games in the first place. Once a business enters the world of acquisitions, there's no telling where it will end up, no way to assure its future for its users.
posted by timdiggerm at 7:20 AM on September 29, 2023 [10 favorites]

"Wait, there are people who solely use the bandcamp online streamer instead of downloading the files the second bandcamp provides a link? Weeeeeeird. Life's rich pageant, indeed."

I have something like 1250 albums I've bought on Bandcamp. Some of those are full discographies, some are through artist subscriptions. The tl;dr is that I don't always get around to downloading these things the moment they hit my account. The important thing to me is that I'm passing money to these artists (or record labels and then artists w/subscriptions) and that the material will be there when I want it.
posted by jzb at 7:29 AM on September 29, 2023 [11 favorites]

I don't get good vibes from the announcement, but I felt similarly about Epic's acquisition of it in the first place... and that turned out fine. They didn't mismanage it, or really mess with it at all. They continued to run Bandcamp Friday, which was originally only going to be during Covid lockdowns (and I wait to do all my music buying, and some of my releases, on those days). And then Bandcamp unionized too.

So... I'm not hopeful exactly, but trying not to be too pessimistic either.

As a musician with a lot of free/pay-what-you-want releases on BC I would be somewhat inconvenienced if the site went to shit, but it wouldn't be a disaster. As a listener, I'd definitely be sad... it's been pretty decent for discovery, and I very rarely buy music anywhere else anymore.
posted by Foosnark at 7:29 AM on September 29, 2023 [8 favorites]

Why did bandcamp decide to sell themselves in the first place? It's fun/satisfying to blame the big corps doing the buying, but they can only buy if bandcamp chose to sell. Their blog post announcing the decision to sell to Epic doesn't really explain anything.
posted by mrgoldenbrown at 7:35 AM on September 29, 2023 [5 favorites]

I do hope someone builds an alternative, and soon. I love Bandcamp, it's hugely important to me for music discovery and acquisition. Not sure there should "be only one" though. But I can understand how, for artists, having an Indie site that is the primary site for this is more valuable than two or fifty of them.

From my vantage point, I feel like Bandcamp hasn't been (even before Epic) developed to its full potential. The site seems mostly aimed at casual listeners and people who have specific bands in mind rather than making it real easy to discover new music. It has little help for managing your collection if you have a large collection on the site.

Its social features are pretty barebones. It'd be awesome if they had proper forums for genres, for example. I could go on. Kudos to the content they do produce, though - their monthly roundups, Daily Album, and Bandcamp Daily are great.

Anyway, I really hope they don't eff it up. I'm hopeful if it was effed up that an alternative would spring up in its place, but the interim would be bad for artists and fans.
posted by jzb at 7:42 AM on September 29, 2023 [4 favorites]

Guess I picked a good month to fall out of love with music.
posted by infinitywaltz at 8:33 AM on September 29, 2023 [1 favorite]

Songtradr is a startup that just finished a D round of funding so it's in cancer mode/maximum growth. A quick internet search of the the CEO Paul Wiltshire claims is that he wrote and produced a bunch of pop pablum.

So is this tosser going to enshittify Bandcamp? My prediction is yes.
posted by zenon at 8:38 AM on September 29, 2023 [6 favorites]

please don't fuck up the last genuinely good thing on the internet and the only fair deal left for artists
posted by Gerald Bostock at 8:38 AM on September 29, 2023 [8 favorites]

Wait, there are people who solely use the bandcamp online streamer instead of downloading the files the second bandcamp provides a link? Weeeeeeird. Life's rich pageant, indeed.

I basically just use Bandcamp as a way of giving the artists I listen to through streaming services my money more directly - I usually buy the albums on Bandcamp with some extra cash thrown in and then continue to listen on Spotify since that also gives them money (sure, it's pennies, but still contributes) and costs Spotify money.

I realized as a result of this second Bandcamp sale that I should at least back up a list of what I've purchased on Bandcamp, since I also end up buying things more than once because I forget I already bought it elsewhere or because I decide I like something enough to also buy a physical copy (usually LP). I also try to download my bandcamp stuff to my computer at least once a year so I have the files for when streaming eventually goes belly up.
posted by urbanlenny at 9:08 AM on September 29, 2023 [5 favorites]

I don't know what to make of this. I mourned the death of one of the last independent platforms when they sold to Epic. The usual long term path for this sort of thing is that the company that bought you is bought by a company and that company is bought by a company that eventually merges with Comcast or Disney or a Hedge fund and the enshittification begins. OTOH, there's a slight chance that this company, rather than squeezing musicians by say, increasing their vig with vague promises of access to licencing, actually treats bands as their customers rather than their product and everybody wins. That would be nice.
posted by gwint at 9:48 AM on September 29, 2023 [1 favorite]

Songtradr is a startup that just finished a D round of funding

Series D was two years ago I think. Couldn’t tell you how that road to profitability in 2023 has ended up!

Bandcamp doesn’t seem like the worst fit with what their core business purportedly is (a platform for licensing music) but yeah involuntarily joining a 2023 IPO-seeking startup is a little concerning inherently. Plus it sounds like many Bandcamp staff are still in employment limbo at the moment. I was concerned last time, too, though, so I’m only, like, 20 percent more concerned this time.
posted by atoxyl at 9:52 AM on September 29, 2023 [5 favorites]

Man, it was fun while it lasted. I'll start making sure I've got downloads of all the stuff I've bought, I guess.
posted by ryanshepard at 10:29 AM on September 29, 2023 [1 favorite]

What is especially frustrating is that there is no need for Bandcamp to change. People are largely happy with the features, interface, and terms of service. As far as I know, prior to sale their business was stable. I don’t understand how venture capital / private equity is a thing that exists just to take nice things and smash them for $$$$.
posted by q*ben at 10:40 AM on September 29, 2023 [6 favorites]

While it sure seems prudent/useful to download what you've bought, I'm not sure I agree with all the gloom & doom, I mean it's possible but I don't think it's inevitable.

It's a platform that already operates well, if you buy it and trash it you just bought it for no good reason and lost your money. Of course there's room to make it worse-but-not-so-much-that-everybody-leaves, but this has a different look to me than when a big fish buys a smaller one operating at a loss to monetize their users.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 10:42 AM on September 29, 2023 [2 favorites]

I usually buy the albums on Bandcamp with some extra cash thrown in and then continue to listen on Spotify since that also gives them money (sure, it's pennies, but still contributes)

I have a few pay-what-you-want items on Bandcamp that nobody ever listens to -- although one kind MeFite does usually throw us a buck every time we release something (thanks, for real!) -- and I don't even pay attention to streaming revenue because it's negligible.

Except that the last album we released is made up of very-short songs. And it turns out the shortest song you'll get paid for by Apple or Spotify is :30. There are two tracks on this album that run just over :30 and we've been getting just under half a cent per stream for them. I wonder how many 24-hour streams they'll pay us for before they pull the plug... because that's about $12 a day, which adds up pretty quick when you just want some pocket change to put towards the next record.
posted by uncleozzy at 11:21 AM on September 29, 2023 [2 favorites]

FYI Bandcamp Friday is next week (10/6) for those who observe it.
posted by gwint at 11:31 AM on September 29, 2023 [4 favorites]

It's a platform that already operates well, if you buy it and trash it you just bought it for no good reason and lost your money.

Best case: they just think acquiring a lean, profitable business like Bandcamp is a smart move in a time of uncertainty for VC-backed startups. Maybe they try to incorporate their licensing platform stuff in an unobtrusive way.

Worse case: they try really hard to incorporate their licensing platform stuff in a harebrained way.

Worse case: they also start squeezing artists for “pro” subscription services

Worst case: that and they also fire everybody from Bandcamp, I guess.
posted by atoxyl at 11:51 AM on September 29, 2023 [1 favorite]

As someone who has music on both Bandcamp and Songtradr, I have a bad feeling about this.
posted by wondermouse at 11:51 AM on September 29, 2023 [2 favorites]

Tangentially related: Letterboxd, Film Discussion Platform, Sells to Investment Firm
posted by gwint at 12:08 PM on September 29, 2023 [1 favorite]

I wonder how difficult it would be for Bandcamp, or something similar, to become a worker owned/artist owned technology cooperative.
posted by nikoniko at 12:24 PM on September 29, 2023 [1 favorite]

Why did bandcamp decide to sell themselves in the first place?

Because it put a lot of money in the pockets of the then-owners. Why would there be any other reason?
posted by timdiggerm at 12:28 PM on September 29, 2023 [4 favorites]

> FYI Bandcamp Friday is next week (10/6) for those who observe it.

damn i only somewhat recently learned about this and since have always saved my buys for it, but i was under the mistaken impression that it was every friday. RIP artist money, sorry i'm so useless 😭
posted by glonous keming at 12:43 PM on September 29, 2023 [3 favorites]

I am one of those people who downloaded everything as soon as I bought it (mostly chillhop) because I prefer music on my phone, table or PC rather than streaming it, but I probably should make sure. I'd hate to lose any of my City Girl albums.
posted by lhauser at 12:46 PM on September 29, 2023 [4 favorites]

I'm kind of shocked that everyone doesn't download everything they buy on Bandcamp. How else do you take your music on airplanes, or camping, or anywhere else where the internet isn't reliable or available?
posted by grumpybear69 at 12:59 PM on September 29, 2023 [2 favorites]

please don't fuck up the last genuinely good thing on the internet and the only fair deal left for artists
posted by Gerald Bostock at 10:38 AM on September 29 [3 favorites +] [!]

Hey! Metafilter's still here! :P
posted by symbioid at 1:06 PM on September 29, 2023 [5 favorites]

People are largely happy with the features, interface, and terms of service.

I find it bloody terrible for discovering music, it really doesn't do "if you like this, then you'll like that" very well at all and I've often wished it was better. Some more community features would be very welcome too.

Mind you if adding either of them was going to fuck up what's there now please leave it alone.
posted by deadwax at 1:24 PM on September 29, 2023 [2 favorites]

I'm not sure I agree with all the gloom & doom, I mean it's possible but I don't think it's inevitable.

Welcome to Metafilter!
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 2:16 PM on September 29, 2023 [3 favorites]

please don't fuck up the last genuinely good thing on the internet and the only fair deal left for artists

The music streaming service Resonate, being a coop, looks like it has very fair terms. But it's pretty new and the current audience is surely a lot smaller than currently-mainstream services.
posted by a faded photo of their beloved at 2:20 PM on September 29, 2023 [2 favorites]

This is one of those things where being a pessimist is easier because it's better to be pessimistic and be wrong than to be optimistic and end up emotionally devastated by a miscalculation.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 3:22 PM on September 29, 2023 [3 favorites]

Sometimes, though, the reality of being a pessimist is just freaking out about the worst-case implications of one thing after another and never getting around to noticing when some of those things actually turn out okay.
posted by atoxyl at 3:48 PM on September 29, 2023 [4 favorites]

If anything has gotten better for music artists online, I'd love to know about it, sincerely.
posted by tiny frying pan at 4:10 PM on September 29, 2023 [2 favorites]

(It all feels bad lately)
posted by tiny frying pan at 4:20 PM on September 29, 2023 [2 favorites]

Bandcamp streaming works on my very restricted secure laptop so that’s my office music!
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 6:29 PM on September 29, 2023 [2 favorites]

Reading the forums over on Resonate.coop makes it sound deader than dead, not much of a viable alternative for artists today.
posted by ics at 8:15 PM on September 29, 2023 [3 favorites]

It wouldn't be that hard to put together a "musician's store" package that collects all these bits and pieces, and links in LAME to cover the transcoding bit.

As someone who helped build the company that inspired the original Bandcamp dudes in the first place: it definitely would be that hard.

In fact, we jettisoned our direct to fan digital content sales product in 2014 because it was extremely clear that market was over. Then Apple Music came out the next year and things were extremely over. Almost no one was buying digital music after that. Definitely not enough people to keep a market alive. Just because Bandcamp took the longest to sell out to a sucker doesn’t mean they were making any money.
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 11:55 PM on September 29, 2023 [7 favorites]

Almost no one was buying digital music after that

Do you mean that everyone was streaming? Or that they were pirating? (Or both, but not buying?)
posted by wenestvedt at 6:52 AM on September 30, 2023 [1 favorite]

As someone who helped build the company that inspired the original Bandcamp dudes in the first place: it definitely would be that hard.

Thanks for that perspective, Back At It Again. I was thinking in technical terms, not business terms, but I take your point.
posted by adamrice at 9:28 AM on September 30, 2023 [3 favorites]

I'm among the "almost no-one" buying digital music, I was thinking about Patreon and helpng artists connect with people who pay to patronize those artists (and I'm old enough to use the archaic sense of 'patronize') from siderea on dreamwidth: If You're Going To Compete With Patreon. Payment processing seems to be the challenge for Patreon, definitely micropayments stymied the viability of the long tail.
posted by k3ninho at 9:55 AM on September 30, 2023 [1 favorite]

Yeah, I mean for what it's worth I have a smart playlist in iTunes whose sole rule is "Cloud Status is Apple Music" that I peruse every now and then to see if there's an album I'm actually listening to (as opposed to albums I just opportunistically / mechanically added to my library and never listened to), and once I find an album I go off to Bandcamp to find it because while you _can_ still buy DRM-free(-ish) music from Amazon and Apple, they don't go out of their way to make it obvious.

I mean, the annoying thing is that in twenty-goddamn-twenty-three contractual obligations and legal requirements and wah fucking wah mean that it's still hard to buy "foreign" music through more normal means. But if the band retains the rights and sells it on bandcamp? Well goddamn, here's some money, everybody.

(And that's before getting into streaming vs non-streaming rights, because it definitely makes sense that I can stream music that I can't buy grrrmblemrmble.)
posted by Kyol at 10:49 AM on September 30, 2023 [3 favorites]

Bandcamp took the longest to sell out to a sucker doesn’t mean they were making any money

I think it’s quite unlikely that they were losing money, although the amounts involved might be pocket change to Apple. It helps that they provide a storefront for physical media and merch as well as digital downloads.
posted by atoxyl at 12:42 PM on September 30, 2023 [4 favorites]

Certainly they publicly claimed profitability as early as 2012 and as recently as 2020. It’s undoubtedly a niche but it’s a niche they pretty much own.
posted by atoxyl at 12:49 PM on September 30, 2023 [4 favorites]

This is my complaint- they were fairly forward about having a positive balance sheet. Not insanely profitable but a solid small business. But because it’s music and tech, “potential valuation” allows for someone to swoop in and gut it. It’s so frustrating when this happens, makes me feel like internet based companies are not allowed to just operate to the benefit of their user base, if it’s not stripping from the users to line someone else’s pockets this must be rectified immediately.
posted by q*ben at 4:02 PM on September 30, 2023 [5 favorites]

"Wait, there are people who solely use the bandcamp online streamer instead of downloading the files the second bandcamp provides a link? Weeeeeeird. Life's rich pageant, indeed."

I download at home, but since I've got uh about 4 tb of digital music, it's often easier to just stream stuff from my collection through the bandcamp app rather than dealing with the NAS or iTunes, and on my phone, fuck it, I just stream from their app.

"Bandcamp doesn’t seem like the worst fit with what their core business purportedly is (a platform for licensing music) but yeah involuntarily joining a 2023 IPO-seeking startup is a little concerning inherently. Plus it sounds like many Bandcamp staff are still in employment limbo at the moment. I was concerned last time, too, though, so I’m only, like, 20 percent more concerned this time."

Honestly appreciate this pretty measured take in a sea of MeFi's bootleg Bill Hicks Gen X doom generation spinning.

I'm not going to pretend that I've looked into the details of Songtradr or their financials, but a company that's about increasing distribution through licensing deals to non-traditional partners is… basically one of the very few ways independent musicians can make money, especially from recordings, in a post-scarcity music world.

Like, complaints about "enshittification" seem particularly off-base. The whole premise of "enshittification" is that platforms turn from being focused on the end users as the audience to deriving their revenue from the producers and taking end-user hostile design choices to maximize that. But Bandcamp already derived most of their revenue from the activity of the bands, and that was inherent to the end user design choices — even part of the appeal, because it was about bands getting paid.

So then, the company that bought it, bought it with the theory that they want to offer bands more ways to get paid, and increase the access of their other clients to an easy licensing platform? Sure, there's no ethical consumption under capitalism, but the basic premise seems to be that by investing in some backend and boilerplate licensing shopping carts, they can make licensing music affordable and frictionless to people like indie game designers who, just from my experience of playing some Twine and Renpy games, default to being absolutely ass at actually finding great music for their work. Likewise, so many ads use unlicensed music.

My socialist fantasy is that we just tax billionaires so much that every bedroom mumble rapper has healthcare and ProTools, but in dealing with the actual problem of getting people paid for the music they make, Bandcamp is a net good, and linking them to a broader platform that makes getting paid easier is better.
posted by klangklangston at 5:54 PM on October 1, 2023 [7 favorites]

klangklangston, I wish I shared your optimism. I think the anxiety centers around what was previously a fairly small organization, focused on the core business of hosting, promoting, and selling music, to ownership by a larger, more agressive company that may be preparing for an IPO. I think the core concerns are either a) changes to terms of service that increase profits for Bandcamp to juice the balance sheet and / or fund development in parallel areas (not dissimilar to what has happened with, say reverb), or b) a hard pivot to a different business model / profit center that leads to abandonment of the previous core user base (aka “doing a flickr”). I don’t think either of these fears are unfounded. I will try to see the positive sides but with trust only through observed action.
posted by q*ben at 2:56 PM on October 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

Bandcamp Employees Ask Songtradr to Recognize Union and Extend Job Offers to All:

Employees of Bandcamp sent a letter to Songtradr CEO Paul Wiltshire on Tuesday (Oct. 3) asking him to recognize their union, “extend [job] offers to all Bandcamp employees” and “maintain everyone’s current employment status,” including “current pay, working conditions, and benefits.”
...
The employees union issued a statement on Wednesday saying that Epic had told them that Songtradr “would be offering positions to some Bandcamp employees but not all.” Adding to the feelings of uncertainty and disarray: Most employees “have had critical systems access revoked by Epic management [since the sale was announced] and have been unable to do their jobs.”

posted by Gerald Bostock at 2:19 PM on October 4, 2023 [4 favorites]

There's also an interview with Songtradr's CEO where he says they have "no plans to change the existing [business] model" and are focused on adding opt-in licensing options.
posted by Gerald Bostock at 2:26 PM on October 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

Sign the union’s petition telling Songtradr to recognize it.
posted by Going To Maine at 3:20 PM on October 4, 2023 [4 favorites]

Apologies for the twitter link, but it doesn't look like this transition is going well. They've locked people out of critical systems and are fighting with the union.
posted by hippybear at 6:37 PM on October 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

Bandcamp Friday is tomorrow, let’s see what happens…
posted by Going To Maine at 2:52 PM on October 5, 2023

50% of Bandcamp staff have been laid off.
posted by Gerald Bostock at 1:16 PM on October 16, 2023

Bastards
posted by Going To Maine at 2:42 PM on October 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

Philip Sherburne at Pitchfork: “Is Bandcamp as We Know It Over?”
posted by Going To Maine at 8:58 PM on October 17, 2023

From @[e-mail], 17 October 2023

@[e-mail] and I are launching a project to build federated, open source, #bandcamp alternative.

We're building this because we need it. We're doing it ourselves because it will become a part of the larger media production and distribution ecosystem we have planned. We welcome other open source projects, and we might even contribute to a few of them, but for the next several months, this is our full time gig.

Long term vision: https://mountaintown.technology/
Repo: https://code.communitymedia.network/MountainTownTechnology/aural_isle/wiki/Home
How and why: https://ajroach42.com/the-uncertain-future-of-bandcamp/

posted by ob1quixote at 9:20 PM on October 17, 2023 [2 favorites]

From the Mountaintown post: "Don't get bogged down in the details, I'm selling the vision today."

Uuuugh. Sorry, no.

Open source and federation aren't going to solve this. Handing off "the details" and/or putting them off for another day ain't going to either.

Federation is complication and puts too much work on the already overworked bands and artists.

What is needed is exactly what Bandcamp is, but with an ownership structure that means it can't be bought and stripped for parts. That's it.

I love open source, but I get so tired of the unwillingness to face the business problems in addition to the technical ones. Whether we like it or not (I don't) our current system runs on money, which means you need to solve for those problems as well – receiving and spending money, paying people to do work that isn't fun, distribution, legal stuff, keeping books, etc.

There's been a good piece making the rounds about "so you want to build another Patreon" -- now there's a good one on Bandcamp. If your solution includes "federation makes everything better" and users understanding technology better than they understand it to use Bandcamp or Patreon, you fail.

Oh, and as an offhand - the piece includes a "businesses won't touch AGPL" comment. Some won't but as of now Microsoft and AWS offer AGPL'ed services (Grafana), so they've just gotten used to the idea of sharing changes (that's not what makes it magic for them) and don't care.
posted by jzb at 6:47 AM on October 19, 2023 [3 favorites]

“Bandcamp is dead? Now what do we do?”—Jameson Nathan Jones, 19 October 2023
posted by ob1quixote at 3:01 PM on October 19, 2023

“Bandcamp layoffs reportedly cut deep into customer service,” Peter Kirn, CDM, 18 October 2023
posted by ob1quixote at 4:19 PM on October 19, 2023 [1 favorite]

It seems like someone had the idea I mentioned, to create a "musician's online store in a box," and ran with it. Faircamp. No idea if this is any good, but it does exist. And here is a (so far very brief) index of faircamp sites.
posted by adamrice at 8:40 AM on October 21, 2023

The music site Bandcamp is beloved and unique. I shudder at its corporate takeover
posted by Artw at 1:31 PM on October 27, 2023