• Daniel@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Could someone fill me in on why we’re panicking about it being sold? Epic never seemed to do anything to it and it seems Songtradr is keeping it’s the same, does Songtradr have a bad track record or something?

    Sorry if this is a dumb question, I just feel out of the loop.

    • SamuraiBeandog@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Effectively firing half the employees seems like a strong sign that the new owners are going to ruin what made Bandcamp good.

      • Amju Wolf@pawb.social
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        1 year ago

        Holy fucking shit they fired 830 employees. Considering what Bandcamp has done (nothing for years despite being pretty terrible UX-wise) and how simple it is, why the fuck did they originally have 1600+ employees?

        A startup with < 50 people could make it work. They don’t need hundreds of employees. Lay off more and actually focus on development FFS.

        • small44@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          However, most of the employees they laid off are those in charge of the Bandcamp blog, which is full of good articles and music recommendations. I think it’s the best editorial team. Bandcamp really needs them if they want to keep the quality.

          • Amju Wolf@pawb.social
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            1 year ago

            It’s sad but how critical are those people / how many do they need? I didn’t even know Bandcamp had a blog. I use it in a very simple way: I find music I want to own somewhere, check out if it’s on Bandcamp, if it is, I buy it and download it to my library. If not, I have one other place to get it (a “local” eshop that also sells music for download) and then it is the high seas.

        • slouching_employer@lemmy.one
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          1 year ago

          No, the article says that Epic Games “laid off 16% of its [Epic Games’] workforce, or 830 employees”.

          I believe Bandcamp was ~120 people total – so 60 laid off.

          • Amju Wolf@pawb.social
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            1 year ago

            Ahh my bad, can’t read apparently. That amount of employees sounds way more reasonable, even if I feel like they weren’t doing much.

            • sugar_in_your_tea
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              1 year ago

              Just think of half of your company getting laid off, that’s going to be noticable regardless of the total number of employees.

              • Amju Wolf@pawb.social
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                1 year ago

                Oh yeah no question about that. My point was just that I don’t understand why you’d need so many people for such a fairly simple project - with such a narrow scope; but that’s moot since they didn’t have that many people after all.

        • r_se_random
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          1 year ago

          From a technical standpoint, sure.

          But there’s a large amount of conversations that happens with Studios and Artists to make sure that the fees are negotiated properly. Sometimes large partners have a singular manager for their coverage. That could always balloon the org size.

          • Amju Wolf@pawb.social
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            1 year ago

            Yeah, I can see how half of their workforce (which was apparently 120 people, I can’t read) could be just people who negotiate the deals and such. Best of luck to everyone.

    • ElderWendigo
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      1 year ago

      Songtradr is a music licensing middle man, charging both artists and those looking to license their music, and somehow despite money coming in at both ends they were losing money in 2022. That does not bode well for the status quo at their new acquisition, Bandcamp, especially considering that their very first move was to fire half the staff. Songtradr doesn’t care about artists or music fans, their singular and only priority is entangling artists and music distributors in their licensing scheme. They’re middlemen. Middlemen are great for exploiting the free market for profit. Middlemen are at best an additional drain on profits for everyone else. Bandcamp was one of the few places you could buy digital music that really felt like ownership and not licensing locked behind DRM. The songtradr acquisition has the potential to kill development of that kind of digital and DRM-free distribution marketplace and limit investment in anything else that tries to do something similar. If songtradr continuing to lose money after the Bandcamp acquisition, it will be an example to all investors that DRM-free digital music cannot be profitable.

    • Kayn@dormi.zone
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      1 year ago

      So far it looks like it’s just the internet’s usual doomspeak, with a side of anti-Epic circlejerking.