Thread for awesome stuff on Bandcamp that costs money but is still awesome

"There is a strong piece in white-collar tech workers who make north of 70k a year appropriating the language of the legitimately oppressed for anyone with the guts to write it," Keyes wrote in an Instagram stories post in May, shortly after Bandcamp workers voted 31 - 7, overwhelmingly in favor of forming a union. "TL;DR: Fuuuuuck Bandcamp United."

70k a year isn't what it was in the 80s, buddy. it can be comfortable, but throw 3 or 4 kids, a debilitating chronic illness combined with a high deductible health plan, and/or a few major house repairs, spouse being laid off etc and the belt is still tight, motherfucker.

xpost emil.y otm

Good comments from Phil S at the end:

"I have a lot of respect for Joe—I wrote for him at eMusic and then Wondering Sound—so obviously his comments sadden me," Sherburne told 404 Media in an email. "And I hope it goes without saying that I don't want Bandcamp to fail; it's hugely important to me as both a listener and a label owner, and I will be thrilled if in five years I can look back at my piece and think, ’Boy, I sure overreacted.’ But from Epic and Songtradr's lack of transparency around the layoffs to the very nature of Songtradr's business model, nothing about these events has inspired confidence in the future of the company. I would love to be proven wrong."

Yeah, JEK brought me on at BC after we worked together at Wondering Sound. He's a good editor, and this is pretty disappointing.

Indeed. I very much agree with Phil, solid editor, encouraging. But, you know, I've been a union guy for over a quarter of a century now, and as one of those 'privileged workers' -- like, in the sense that only now AFTER all that time does my pay approach that amount he mentions, shall we say, but more importantly, who knows that 'office' work or admin work or anything like that is still frickin' WORK, thanks -- I know where my line is.

its weird to read a business article where i know the people in it! i didn't know that phil s. had a label. J. Edward has always been nice to me. such a fucked up time in the world all around. people need to get away from these mammoth money companies if they can.

there has to be a way to have a streaming/selling site that is a co-op model or worker-owned model or whatever.

It’s the most normal thing in the world to be a journalist and in a union in this part of the world; indeed it would be very weird to find a newsroom that isn’t packed with NUJ members unless they’re student journos who don’t know any better.

There's this, which I should seriously start using more: https://resonate.coop/

But as always I imagine the difficulty is getting a critical mass of users to transition...

xp

unfortunately, you need a lot of money to make it a thing. and when you need a lot of money you need to go to the money people. why can't any of these asshat tech billionaires fund something cool like that? and then never get involved with it. like a tax write-off.

it gets worse

This guy uses Bandcamp's back end to annoy anonymous artists' via their personal email accounts (he did it to a band I was in and also a friend of mine who prefers to keep a low profile). That's not journalism, that's a data breach. https://t.co/8HySoFH137

— jon 🎃 (@ronofjosenthal) October 24, 2023

Post has been deleted?

feel weird posting this (but also can't you still see deleted tweets if you log out?):

This guy uses Bandcamp's back end to annoy anonymous artists' via their personal email accounts (he did it to a band I was in and also a friend of mine who prefers to keep a low profile). That's not journalism, that's a data breach. https://t.co/8HySoFH137
— jon 🎃 (@ronofjosenthal) October 24, 2023

Sorry I wasn't clear -- the embed is still visible here but the actual post over there got deleted.

have known that dude parasocially/professionally since forever, like at eMusic, this is a real disappointment. the "these people make plenty of money, they don't need a union" schtick is so basic and wrong. you know who they don't make as much money as? the bosses! "unions only for people whose jobs suck" is a really stupid position to take

what does "annoy anonymous artists" mean?

like shitposting them unprovoked?

I was trying to figure that out before tweeter deleted the tweet

prob trying to get interviews? point being that the email address was supposed to be private.

sounds like a shitheel through and through.

i'm guessing the tweet above wasn't deleted for reasons of factual inaccuracy as much as "having second thoughts about having livelihood destroyed for sticking neck out", which is understandable

I also wrote for eMusic from 2007-2009 and am angry and depressed.

holy shit i wrote stuff for emusic. i had no memory of it until now. i don't know who asked me to. or what i wrote.

I reviewed Jon Meacham's Andrew Jackson, among other things.

Resonate looks promising but it's balls-achingly slow.

Honest question, is there something cost prohibitive about specifically shipping to the U.S. from Belgium? I've ordered plenty of things from foreign countries through Bandcamp - from Poland, Italy, England, India, Japan, France, etc etc. But the shipping costs I've been seeing from this Belgian label are on a whole different level:

for a single CD:

that’s $13.70 USD, plus $21.07 shipping for United States.

that’s $23.18 USD, plus $23.18 shipping for United States.

i just shipped a single CD from the UK to the USA and was charged £18.80 which is $22.75 at the post office which seemed crazy to me but i never normally send CDs so maybe it is right.

Belgium's postal service seems very fucked up. I have a guy who buys CDs from my label, and when I send them to him not only do I have to send it using my personal address, not my business address, as the return address, I have to specify that it's a gift on the customs form, and send him a separate email telling him that I've sent him a gift, otherwise they'll charge him like $30 for customs duties. And it costs close to $20 in postage from the US to Belgium, but that's typical — it's about $20 for a single CD anywhere in Europe or Asia.

Tom Hawking on it all:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/27/epic-games-bandcamp-acquired-sondtradr

Bandcamp doesn’t seem particularly clever or hard to replicate. If they fail and the business model is sound (do you see what I did there), then someone will come along and do the same thing. It has a really dumb name anyway, it could use a rebrand.

maybe, but getting every label to jump to a new platform is easier said than done. there have been loads of soundcloud replacements but nothing ever managed to really replace it. i like the name fwiw.

name is kind of dumb, but has managed to overcome the american pie association, imo.
and i'm assuming it's less annoying than what would replace it, eg rcdstr or vinlhvn,

bndcmp

There’s no association beyond actual band camp for those of us who went to band camp.

lol yes, american pie does not own that phrase in my world

bndcmp feels a little out of date tho, now it would just be bands.ai

the name sucks and fuck you for this weakass criticism

Ok overstated sorry

lmao

I doubt Bandcamp’s business model was sound.

Idg this...investors aside, their cut of every record sold (except for Bandcamp Fridays) didn't outweigh the operating costs of servers, salaries, and freelance writer fees?

i do wonder how bandcamp Fridays skewed sales, possibly away from them.

In that case I think going back in time and eliminating Bandcamp Friday and never getting into bed with Epic Games and Sontradr would be an acceptable compromise

Bandcamp Friday is still going. I also think they benefited in myriad ways from those Fridays. They massively increased awareness of BC and reinforced in a lot of minds that this was a site about more than just making profit. there is definitely a type of BC customer and this fed right into their values. it was a shrewd thing to do as well as the right thing to.

I doubt Bandcamp’s business model was sound.

― Allen (etaeoe), Friday, October 27, 2023 4:08 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

??? how was it not

I took it as a pretty good dad joke

Important story at RA here -- Bandcamp United has filed an Unfair Labour Practice complaint against both Epic and Songtradr.

https://ra.co/news/79756

Some details:

Last month, Epic Games sold Bandcamp to Songtradr in the midst of lay-offs, and in the process also terminated at least 50 percent of Bandcamp's staff. None of the eight members of Bandcamp United's Collective Bargaining Committee received offers....Earlier this week, Bandcamp United also shared some stats about the Bandcamp lay-offs. The company's Black employees went from 19 to four amid the cuts, meaning the number of Black people at the company had been reduced by 79 percent overnight.

Last bandcamp Friday I got Speedy J's remastered 1990-2010 discography at 50% off and it's like 95% amazing (including two FAX ambient records I didn't know about & lots of classic singles too) - https://speedyj.bandcamp.com/

very nice

I'm not taking my BC page down, but I am creating a stand-alone website for my label so people can order CDs directly.

This may not be the right forum for this type of question but hopefully someone can help. I placed an order for a record on Bandcamp early last month. The platform gave an expected delivery date of mid month to the end of the month. I didn't receive so dropped a message to ask where it was and the guidance was to wait a 'week or two'. Then it would be a PayPal dispute. I haven't heard anything. The label has messaged me with new releases so I tried to do the same message again but not sure it's sending anything. I don't want to dispute.. and I'm happy to wait a month if that's the challenge. Perhaps I'm being impatient..

Have you emailed the label directly — like, at the email address they're using to tell you about their new releases — or just used Bandcamp's system? Try contacting them directly via their website or something.

Take those expected delivery dates with a big pinch of salt. If you go to your Purchases page, does it indicate that it’s been shipped at all?