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

only just now noticed that "The Time Has Come To Open Thy Heart/Wallet" popups are more frequent on some releases than others, I'm assuming this can be set by the label?

like, some never have it and some have it up all the time

or is it related to # of listens?

You can set how many free listens to give people, and to turn off the popup altogether if you like.

This is very odd.

I’m excited to announce that Bandcamp is joining Epic Games, who you may know as the makers of Fortnite and Unreal Engine, and champions for a fair and open Internet.

Bandcamp will keep operating as a standalone marketplace and music community, and I will continue to lead our team. The products and services you depend on aren’t going anywhere, we’ll continue to build Bandcamp around our artists-first revenue model (where artists net an average of 82% of every sale), you’ll still have the same control over how you offer your music, Bandcamp Fridays will continue as planned, and the Daily will keep highlighting the diverse, amazing music on the site. However, behind the scenes we’re working with Epic to expand internationally and push development forward across Bandcamp, from basics like our album pages, mobile apps, merch tools, payment system, and search and discovery features, to newer initiatives like our vinyl pressing and live streaming services.

Since our founding in 2008, we’ve been motivated by the pursuit of our mission, which is to help spread the healing power of music by building a community where artists thrive through the direct support of their fans. That simple idea has worked well, with payments to artists and labels closing in on $1 billion USD. And while over the years we’ve heard from other companies who wanted us to join them, we’ve always felt that doing so would only be exciting if they strongly believed in our mission, were aligned with our values, and not only wanted to see Bandcamp continue, but also wanted to provide the resources to bring a lot more benefit to the artists, labels, and fans who use the site. Epic ticks all those boxes. We share a vision of building the most open, artist-friendly ecosystem in the world, and together we’ll be able to create even more opportunities for artists to be compensated fairly for their work.

Whether you joined Bandcamp recently or have been with us since the beginning 14 years ago, thank you for being a part of this incredible community, and we look forward to serving you for many years to come!

Ethan Diamond
Bandcamp co-founder and CEO

Hah oops, bumped a different thread about this just now too.

This seems... concerning.

what the FUCK

today in "capitalism ruins everything"...

I don't see a problem. What he describes is Epic as investor, giving them money to do what they're currently doing better. But as I said on Twitter, maybe don't turn a record store into the basis of your religion.

who knows where this leads, but it would be cool if literally everyone would just wait and listen and learn more before posting to conclusion (yes, i am new here on the internet)

"Basis of your religion" is unfair, given that it's a highly accessible option for musicians to have control over selling their music, and a lot of people have had more success there than with any other shitty option available to them.

Oof, this is definitely worrying.

"Basis of your religion" is unfair, given that it's a highly accessible option for musicians to have control over selling their music, and a lot of people have had more success there than with any other shitty option available to them.

I run a small label. I know what Bandcamp is, and what it does. I make good money there. But I also have my releases on streaming platforms via Distrokid, and a physical distributor who gets them to Amazon and record stores. I think this will be a good thing for Bandcamp in the long run, and I suspect that a lot of the people crying the loudest right now don't actually have any skin in the game. Because that's how the internet works.

not crying, just concerned. your point about "they are just an investor" is a good one, as long as they don't now own a majority.

And just in case this gets into a broader discussion of music industry ethics, the deal I offer the artists I work with is very simple:

- the artist brings me a finished recording (in one case, I had an idea for an album and paid each contributing artist $1000 up front to do their part)
- I design the packaging and have the CDs manufactured, and pay all associated costs
- I pay the artist 60% of the profits, forever
- if the artist wants to re-release the album someplace else, or get another label to press up an LP version, they can do that stuff at any time, no hard feelings

Sure, I have my releases on streaming platforms and other digital stores too, and make way more on Bandcamp (and personally I'm not interested in doing physical releases anymore). And I'm aware that it varies by genre and artist, but there's a strong scene for dance music on Bandcamp and people understandably feel very attached to it. Not to mention that it feels much better to be able instantly upload a release whenever you want, change it, take it down, message followers, etc whereas doing it through a digital distributor is more of a pain and has lag times.

Hopefully this will be good not bad, but when a company buys another company, they always say that nothing is going to change and that's almost never true.

xp

That's a very good deal, but I don't really see what it has to do with Bandcamp.

Mat Dryhurst is cackling over this

I don't really care about the epic/bandcamp thing but wouldn't it be nice if bandcamp users could see some of that upside

or if the service itself were an open protocol that couldn't change as a result of acquisition

you know

— Mat Dryhurst (@matdryhurst) March 2, 2022

receiving this as a clear signal web 3 music protocols are going to grow considerably

— Mat Dryhurst (@matdryhurst) March 2, 2022

um ok

That's his big thing

yeah I'm only vaguely aware of him, but I genuinely would like to hear how "web3" could replace bandcamp. everything I've read from Herndon about this stuff has been credibility erasing

Apparently a bunch of the Bandcamp Daily folks have either locked or deactivated their Twitter accounts. Despite J. Edward Keyes reassuring that nothing will change, it still feels like an ominous sign. Although maybe they just didn't want to deal with the social media burn.

fwiw

hi guys. i deactivated yesterday bc of personal mental health stuff; nobody’s made me do anything. will probably do it again but just wanted to let everyone know this was wholly personal. real bad brain times lately

— jes skolnik (@modernistwitch) March 2, 2022

Hey all. You may have noticed I locked down my account temporarily. Going off private briefly to clarify that this is for personal and security reasons/hacking concerns, and I’ll be back to regular posting soon. In the meantime I'll be continuing my work with the Daily! Thanks pic.twitter.com/m0w4jf4QTZ

— Zoe Camp (@jzcamp) March 2, 2022

I'm not going to knock whatever anyone needs to do for their mental health, but the timing of all this seems weirdly coincidental.

ok yeah I only follow Skolnik. that is odd, though I think fear of "social media burn" is the most likely reason

Oh I don't blame or fault them for wanting to avoid social media right now! It was just weird to notice in the wake of the announcement.

I don't know who any of those people are, but if the artists and writers who make BC cooler than mp3.com was all start jumping ship, leaving only bands who already make good money on other streaming services, it'll die quickly.

Granted, in an already far-less-than-optimal state I went straight to presuming "techbro acquisition" and sooner or later gutting and inverting of what's been good about Bandcamp...

Trying to hear the cooler heads in here...

But can anyone point me to any instance where a reasonably (yes yes still capitalism) entity took on a tech "partner" and didn't get destroyed, even if in frog-in-boiling-water way?

Even before understanding the Tencent connection (I'd never heard of Epic Games before today), I took it as telling me what I needed to know that Epic's statement says "ecosystem for content, technology, games, art, music and more"--"content" first, "music" tacked on...

OTM, beard papa. I like Bandcamp as a shop. I came to really believe they were something better because they actually pay artists. But I love their editorial staff, who genuinely celebrate excellent music however small/unheard.

yeah I'm only vaguely aware of him, but I genuinely would like to hear how "web3" could replace bandcamp.

the pitch is that with the power of blockchain/cryptocurrency tech then you could create some sort of open, distributed protocol to handle music commerce, which would then put the power back in the hands of artists because there would no longer any centralised middleman company, just this open, distributed protocol that no one controls.

the issue is of course that blockchain/cryptocurrency technology does not do that at all and can never do that while still having unbelievably bad externalities and myriad unsolvable design flaws (that are considered features and not bugs).

ufo otm, I have been arguing with a music industry friend about the pie-in-the-sky nonsense for a week or two

haha yeah sorry for misleading, I am actually familiar with the pie-in-the-sky narrative. What I meant was I would like to hear a clear and detailed plan. Among the problems ufo alludes to (e.g., energy), the fact that this imaginary new protocol would of course use crypto makes it not remotely a replacement for BC

well there's a pretty obvious reason no such plan exists and if one did it would likely be an obvious scam/not accomplish its stated goals/be a horrible experience for everyone (the tech doesn't really work) but this is a bit off-topic

anyone following this?
https://www.ninaprotocol.com/

think the big danger here is the possibility that epic (at some point, probably not immediately) throws a ton of money at bandcamp trying to make it a bigger, mainstream platform that more directly competes with spotify/apple etc. and totally bungles it, ruining its current appeal because epic leadership has no idea how to make a platform that people (both consumers & artists) want to use for its own merits in the way that bandcamp currently is. the epic games store is not (and is not trying to be) the bandcamp equivalent of games in terms of being open & developer-friendly (that would be itch.io, but it's much more niche), nor is it where you want to be if you actually want to sell digital pc games (that's still steam). while they have announced plans to open up the epic store, it's still currently a closed platform you need an invitation from epic to publish to.

epic's commitment to being 'artist/developer-friendly' is weird and inconsistent and significantly just a point of differentiation to attract both developers/consumers to their platform to try to compete with steam & also a weapon to challenge apple and google with, rather than a serious commitment to making something better than what currently exists. their attempts at competing with steam have been a mess and mostly consisted of them throwing their endless pit of fortnite money at developers to secure exclusive games, do giveaways to attract people to the platform, and subsidise their lower revenue cut. this hasn't even worked particularly well - epic have lost a ton of money, with much less gained from it than they expected and it's been good for developers only in that epic are throwing cash at them, but not in any sort of sustainable, developer-focused way. they haven't actually making much attempt to make it an attractive & usable platform for anyone beyond any of that - it sucks to use compared to steam & its market share is still pretty small, so there's much less money in it for devs just as a storefront, even with the increased revenue cut they get from epic. it's all a big shame because a serious steam competitor should have been a good thing for everyone but it's all been a very top-down throwing money at the problem approach, rather than seriously offering a better product.

epic seems to have serious media/tech conglomerate ambitions now that it has absurd amounts of money from fortnite, so this is probably just the start of them expanding beyond games.

I got the impression reading around earlier that the Unreal engine being used in tv/movies has also given them entry into the world beyond games (not that that sheds light on their interests here)

12 tweet thread re Epic Games buying Bandcamp https://t.co/W10QBq3vzd

— Steve Kiviat (@SteveKiviat) March 2, 2022

....the Twilight Zone?

xpost

OK if they actually bought it and are not just an "investor" then this is totally fucked. JCLC otm (via FB):

"yeah it's bad. it won't get bad quick, and people will Chicken Little even the slightest changes at first when they're not big deals, but Epic's not a good company and Bandcamp doesn't need fixed. Tech mergers ALWAYS mean a series of meetings where regular employees are reminded not to fear change and then somebody with no skin at all in the game pitches moronic new ideas that you can either pretend to get psyched about or become increasingly isolated in the workplace and either way you can't stop the train. the next year probably won't see much but as I say, two years from now I'm betting we're missing a lot of What Was Good About Bandcamp. Fortunately for our side all of [us] are too anti-capitalist to get a viable alternative up so, you know, hey, it was nice while it lasted"

everything I've read about it, other than Bandcamp and Epic's own statements, suggest it's an outright acquisition

well actually even Epic's statement basically says Bandcamp is a part of Epic now.

ugh

the tech press are all covering it as such

it's pretty clearly made out to be an acquisition in both the statements, they just don't state it outright as "epic bought bandcamp"

it's a fair way from the worst possible company to acquire them, epic does at least have some shared values (though their commitment can be somewhat superficial) and bandcamp has been similarly annoyed by apple's payment policies etc.

i don't expect epic to immediately ruin things with pure profit-chasing or anything but there's still a lot of room for things to go wrong trying to expand, upsetting the current model

or just being less responsive to what artists and consumers want etc

yeah this is about as clear a case of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" as I can imagine

i feel like car companies are good at this kind of thing i.e. being wholly owned subsidiaries and so forth

who is the JCLC referenced by sleeve?

Joan Crawford Loves Chachi

AKA Aerosmith's Steven Tyler

not really

This, basically.

tbh I think the thing bumming everyone out about Bandcamp is that we're being reminded that there's no room in the current way of the world for a modest, sustainable success that generally benefits everyone opting into it. the sane option just never stays on the table very long.

— Mike Sugarman (@sug_online) March 2, 2022

Fortunately for our side all of (us) are too anti-capitalist to get a viable alternative up so, you know, hey, it was nice while it lasted

Skeptical at this snark as it demands ppl on this side be pro-capitalist enough to come up with an alternative yet anti-capitalist enough for that alternative to not then get bought up eventually.