About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off
(www.theverge.com)
from narwhal@lemmy.ml to technology@lemmy.ml on 17 Oct 2023 03:05
https://lemmy.ml/post/6593321
from narwhal@lemmy.ml to technology@lemmy.ml on 17 Oct 2023 03:05
https://lemmy.ml/post/6593321
#technology
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
One of the worst tech labor years ever continues with the news that roughly half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off.
Epic Games bought the indie music platform back in 2022 for an undisclosed amount before selling it barely a year later.
Late last month, Epic Games laid off 16 percent of its workforce, or 830 employees, due to what CEO Tim Sweeney described as overspending.
Epic also revealed that it would sell the Bandcamp business to California-based music licensing company Songtradr.
Employees who did not receive offers from Songtradr were notified today and will be eligible for severance.
In an email to The Verge, Songtradr confirmed that 50 percent of Bandcamp employees have been extended offers to join Songtradr and reaffirmed from a previous statement the company’s commitment to keeping the Bandcamp experience the same.
The original article contains 212 words, the summary contains 137 words. Saved 35%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
I’m so fucking tired, you guys.
Stop reading the news and spend some time in your local community. It’s the best way I’ve found to shake that feeling of dread and exhaustion
We meet under the 5th street bridge at midnight, the code word is sic semper tyrannis
How so?
Doubt you’ll get a reply because it is bullshit. I’m not a fan of Epic within the games space and they may not have improved things like the Bandcamp app but to say that it has “gone to shit” under them is just straight idiocy. More accurately they have done nothing to or with band camp really.
Care to elaborate why you’re calling them Evil Games?
They are better for developers via unreal engine.
They are better for both developers and publishers via the markets lowest cut of earnings via their store front.
They pay well to try break steams monopoly. If anything, steam are the bad guys via their extortionate cut. (30%)
They are better for indie Devs on Fortnight compared to Roblox.
They do everything better than most… so place your anger correctly. I’m sick of people hating on epic while they’re the only company trying to beat the monopolys…
That may be so, but they also got deals with quite some games that were supposed to be cross-laumcher to become (timed) Epic exclusive instead. This forces you to use their garbage-teir launcher. Besides that, Epic doesn’t really seem to take any action to help Linux adoption like Steam does. And as a Rocket League fan I’m also specifically pissed about how they have been running my favorite game into the ground slowly.
Epic isn’t trying to beat monopolies, it’s just trying to become another one.
Linux one, I wasn’t aware of but that does suck.
Unfortunately, due to the behaviours of the audience they are trying to gain that is likely the best and cost effective way to gain new users. But I do totally agree their launcher sucks ass and needs work.
Epic Games has literally done nothing with Bandcamp, what are you talking about?
Why was Epic even interested in Bandcamp in the first place??
This fucking blows. Start downloading all your music you’ve bought, you soon won’t be able to own anything online anymore.
I’m pretty sure they Epic bought Bandcamp for their battle with Apple and then did literally nothing with it.
Since I discovered bandcamp in 2017, I always downloaded all the music I bought
Same since 2010, but most of it was ogg files, so I’m currently downloading everything as FLAC for proper archival.
I loved Bancamp because you could download CD-quality FLAC. Yeah, I can stream my music there but I want to load it up to my personal media server and just have it in the best reasonable quality possible (I know there’s better than CD quality).
I don’t have a 1k€ sounds system, so there is no difference in quality for me.
It’s hard to justify as it’s mostly subjective but objectively I think having music archived in a lossless format allows me to transcode to more practical lossy codecs as things evolve.
It’s kind of like in the olden times owning the CD and you could re-rip anytime and whatever format you needed/wanted.
That’s why I downloaded everything as FLAC. But I’m saying quality of playback does not go into it ;)
I feel like back in March 2022 Epic did not really anticipate market conditions to continue to worsen. Big miscalculation on their part.
Why wouldn’t you plan for the worst?
I really don’t understand how on one hand all of these CEOs and investor types are geniuses and just built different but on the other hand they’re hiring people and firing people because they couldn’t predict the line on graph doesn’t always go up.
If I had to guess, it’s because of money. There was more incentive at the time to grow fast and try to maximize profit than to limit growth and potential profits in case of a market downturn. Tim slightly explains what happened.
Epic doesn’t care about any particular product or service. They are a publishers with aims to become a storefront, but plan to do so by passing off customers and devs and partners.
If you didn’t download it, then what’s the point?
I didn’t even know they sold them again :( I thought there was a chance that Epic would be a good steward, but now a random music licensing company?
Apparently the biggest in the world, but B2B …
Anyway, might as well mention the bandcamp collection downloader in case anyone needs all their FLACs.
edit: It’s done. 110 albums/EPs for 40.5 GB of FLACs, took around 20 minutes. In case anyone wants to peek into my library (mainly if you are into folk or extreme metal): My collection
I’m really surprised by the number of people who doesn’t already have all their music locally
I did, just not in FLAC.
I mean before epic games purchased it. It simply sound natural to me to have local versions of your music no matter what
Yes, I also did so before :D The only thing I changed, was that now I downloaded the FLAC files instead of only ogg.
Wow, I don't think Epic ever did anything with Bandcamp. What a terrible way to end it. What will become of the artists who use it as their main platform? I source a significant amount of my music from these artist, from that site.
Why do you think this is the end?
My apologies, I mean a terrible way for Epic to end their ownership. I hope that Bandcamp will continue and thrive but this move doesn't seem encouraging. Songtradr is monopolizing music at this point.
But they still own it?
Epic sold it last month, they kept it barely a year
Ah I see, now the discussion about the other site makes a lot more sense lol
Anyone got alternatives?
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.
So far it looks like it’s just the internet’s usual doomspeak, with a side of anti-Epic circlejerking.
Effectively firing half the employees seems like a strong sign that the new owners are going to ruin what made Bandcamp good.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Three of the editorial employees announced that they were laid off, and they seem to have received a lot of praise from artists, small labels, and fans.
Here’s the blog:
daily.bandcamp.com
I think it really depends on the music scene. I have not once read their blog in my 13 years of using BC. I just checked it, and it’s okay, but I don’t feel like I’ll be missing something without it.
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.
Since they were purchased by epic games last year, roughly half of the original staff were laid off. Being bought by a corporate entity that values profitability over all esle is devastating to a website like this where music (and culture) have thrived
This has to end at some point. Practically everything is owned by like 5 companies, and they don’t even acquire them for any particular reason, other than to prevent someone else from doing the same.
Reminds me of my monopoly strategy
Yeah, it’s their monopoly strategy too. Difference is that we’re playing it with toy pieces, and they’re playing it for real
Man, I wish Bandcamp would catch a break already, I actually like (liked?) the platform. I like supporting artists I like and I like supporting platforms that sell DRM-free music. If Bandcamp goes away and no other DRM-free alternative comes up, it’s back to piracy for me.
Man… we can’t have anything nice… damn capitalists fucking every thing up
Fuck you Epic for many reasons, but for this one in particular
Sweeney and his supporters talking about how they give devs a better cut while also making devs work overtime and file for unemployment.
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