Premier Rock Forum

jfv wrote: Mon Oct 16, 2023 12:21 pm

penningtron wrote: Thu Sep 28, 2023 12:06 pm I thought there was a specific thread for this but "bandcamp" and "epic" are difficult search terms and this will have to do. Echoes of layoffs at Bandcamp are making the rounds, probably to the surprise of no one.

Yeah.. just saw some stuff on Bluesky related to this.

Fuck. Bandcamp is/was awesome. Just.. ugh.. fuck..

Not sure if the person that worked for Bandcamp is on here (I know very few of you in real life) but I’m so sorry.

JSS may have posted here a handful of times. I think this is also just the tip of the iceberg now that BC is being passed around like some junk bond or something.

pie-in-the-sky idea: if it's being passed around why couldn't one of the musician's unions buy it out? Or some sort of co-op program where the contributors actually own the platform?

Half of the company was laid off, including lots of tech staff. The platform could quickly fall into disrepair, and eventually irrelevance a la Myspace. It was good while it lasted..

https://www.vulture.com/article/epic-ga ... yoffs.html

My band's label's web presence is two pronged. The much stronger prong is a meticulously organized band camp page where all 200 or so releases are visible, audible and cataloged. It would significantly set back the operation if band camp petered out.

Garth wrote: Mon Oct 16, 2023 1:23 pm pie-in-the-sky idea: if it's being passed around why couldn't one of the musician's unions buy it out? Or some sort of co-op program where the contributors actually own the platform?

Wondered the same thing. Also wondered if labels could put pressure on the owners by threatening to pull all their catalogs if Songtradr does dumb shit. Of course, they have already done dumb shit, so it's a harder threat to now make.

Garth wrote: Mon Oct 16, 2023 1:23 pm pie-in-the-sky idea: if it's being passed around why couldn't one of the musician's unions buy it out? Or some sort of co-op program where the contributors actually own the platform?

Been thinking about this since our text exchange yesterday. Posted this in the bad place:

PRF Musician Owned & Operated Co-Op
PRF-MOOCO?
New platform. No venture capitalists.
WHEN?

There's no reason to think this can't be built out in AWS. You'd need a front end website, some sort of e-commerce solution, a big database, etc, but with AWS you pay for what you use. If artists are selling tracks, it'll pay for itself. Make it a giant non-profit and don't ever cede control to tech bros.

I can be a fair-to-middling project manager on something like this. I don't have the programming chops and I'm sure there's an AWS systems architect with more experience than me, but I'll try to herd cats if we decide to do this.

dontfeartheringo wrote: There's no reason to think this can't be built out in AWS. You'd need a front end website, some sort of e-commerce solution, a big database, etc, but with AWS you pay for what you use. If artists are selling tracks, it'll pay for itself. Make it a giant non-profit and don't ever cede control to tech bros.

front end: I just used (and recommend!) Astro to build a static page within the last week. There are a lot of templates available to get you up and running, and it can be as customizable as you want (you can import React to make it into a single page app if you want to take it that far).

e-commerce: I don't have any great solutions here other than a 'pay what you want' donation model for digital music.

back end: To get things up and running quick I have files hosted on Dropbox Pro. I'm in a free trial period but then it'll cost $18/mo, which isn't super cheap for something like this (though I can get plenty of personal use out of it too). While I don't really wanna give Bezos more money I'm sure AWS could be more cost effective, and may have to look into that.

p.s. none of this is meant to 'replace' Bandcamp: its wide adoption by indie labels, the community, the daily content. I don't know if we'll ever see such a thing again because it's "not profitable".

dontfeartheringo wrote: Mon Oct 09, 2023 3:22 pm but capitalism is the most efficient way to deliver goods and services for the best price

https://www.stereogum.com/2240332/spoti ... ists/news/

"In an earnings call in July, UMG CEO Lucian Grange reportedly announced a “newly expanded agreement” with Spotify, claiming that it’ll be “artist-centric” and that it’ll benefit “real artists with real fanbases.”"


(and yes I know DFTR was being sarcastic)

Does Apple Music actually have a true shuffle feature?