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

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.

If it ain't broke? Make one's purchases playlistable and we'll be cooking on gas

huge potential for confusion/character assassination: Epic Games was founded by a dude called Tim Sweeney.

The good news is that Epic has left its other acquisitions alone so far.

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.

Why skeptical? Isn't this a real dilemma (as evidenced)?

Skeptical at the idea that if only more on "our side" were more pro-capitalist that would result in us coming up with a good alternative that wouldn't be bought out.

having actual capital more useful than one's attitude toward capitalism iirc

Yes, you need resources and motivation. You also need to be somewhat business oriented and probably employ people who are very much so if you're not to crash and burn. It's almost necessarily built in. (And that's what I took JCLC to be saying.)

That said, I'm surprised BC has sold out so soon.

Fourteen years is "so soon"?

I mean so soon into being really established. But I guess when you're winning is when you cash in / cash out (or seek partnership, more charitably.)

It seems to have come as a surprise move to just about everyone in any case.

It just really bums me out that the one avenue that really seemed, both by design and increasingly in practice, to help artists out through the pandemic couldn't just stay the pretty damn wonderful tool it was.

On a more selfish level, it became such a balm during the worst weeks of the pandemic to use Bandcamp Fridays as a way to replicate the record store shopping experience and get hipped to new things from all the great Twitter thread recommendations people started doing. It was a level of community engagement and support that was really nice to see. Even though I can regularly shop in stores again, I'd hate to see that crumble.

This is some interesting background:

This, my dear indie musician friends, is a private equity firm's exit strategy on its investment in Bandcamp, so (a) you're not wrong in feeling mangled by greed and (b) I'm going to tell you, in broad terms, what's behind the curtain. #bandcamp 1/? pic.twitter.com/IO7LeWKLZh

— Eilonwy has an emu, symbolically (@myemuisemo) March 2, 2022

yeah, i figured the sale was related to paying back an investor or some sort of debt obligation. i have spent most of the pandemic learning stuff about real estate financing and valuation, acquisition debt, bridge loans, construction loans ... and this is actually similar.

it's also weird thinking of Mat D as some sort of pundit, as opposed to the tech dude with a British accent lecturing me about the significance of dubstep outside West Oakland warehouse shows

Haha, didn't know you knew him. I knew he had that DIY/punk scene background, and it's kinda too bad his music with Herndon has been overshadowed by his web3 evangelism. He seems like a well-intentioned and smart dude, but I just can't hang with anything blockchain-related and if that makes me a regressionist old person, so be it.

well, i also associate him with GAFFTA (sorry, Gray Area, which for some reason was very annoyed by the use of the acronym GAFFTA ...) which has some cool programming but also some problematic aspects in terms of their vision/mission, which I understand, but I'm not really on board with, but possibly because I am not in techworld, and so I can't appreciate them? Idk. He left that org and moved to Europe prior to Ghost Ship, so I don't really associate him with the way Gray Area handled the relief funds and the fallout there.

the tweets pointing out that bandcamp had vc investment so something like this was inevitable go a long way to explaining it. i can certainly believe this was the least bad option from bandcamp's perspective.

He seems like a well-intentioned and smart dude, but I just can't hang with anything blockchain-related and if that makes me a regressionist old person, so be it.

being into cryptocurrency junk means he's not well-intentioned, or not smart, or both,

i'm trying to build a prestige cassette tape collection for a recently acquired 40-tape wall rack. does anyone have suggestions for must-have albums that are available in cassette format on bandcamp? thanks.

All the prestige Bandcamp-era tapes are sold out!

no I returned mine this morning, it was just a 60 minute cassette of Casey Kasem cussing over a dead dog dedication, so you should see that one back in stock soon

This is in print

https://dilla.bandcamp.com/album/donuts

Haven't really weighed in on the Bandcamp/Epic thing yet because I'm trying not to be negative. I do wonder where it will put people like me who put stupid amounts of bedroom recordings on there for free without the option to pay. Seems like that's something that will not stick around.

RE: cassettes — Donuts is indeed a fine choice. This is a recent favorite.

The mighty Horse Lords have a cassette on there: https://horselords.bandcamp.com/album/horse-lords-expanded

The Bitchin Bajas Sun Ra tribute album on cassette is great: https://bitchinbajas.bandcamp.com/album/switched-on-ra

Also enjoy Dan Melchior's guitar instrumentals on cassette: https://cudighirecords.bandcamp.com/album/other-odes-and-further-excursions

love that Bitchin Bajas one

it's cool that it's not some super limited thing, yeah it's great

also Sonic Youth just reissued Sister on cassette

Anyone know of an app that can compare one's music library to Bandcamp and generate a list of matches? I've been trying to go through artist-by-artist and it's tedious...

Add to your #BandcampFriday shopping list with this handy tool - takes your mean green music machine 2021 wrapped playlist and finds the albums on @Bandcamp https://t.co/FVvOLECUOa

— john jervis (@wiaiwya) February 26, 2022

this looks at your spotify playlists and finds matching bandcamp entries

Ooh, I need to try this.

so, any lawyers want to unpack these new user terms for me? has anything actually changed?

I don't understand the covers thing. You don't have to get permission to cover a song as long as you pay royalties to the songwriter.

For more than a year I haven't been able to create an account in bandcamp because my email was linked to a defunct account that I couldn't access, so all my purchases were made as a guest and download only. I finally reached out to customer support, and they very helpfully unlinked my email from the old account. I set up a new account, and like magic, all my guest purchases got automatically linked to it, so I can now stream them whenever I want.

Is the covers thing retroactive? If you've previously uploaded a cover, do you now have to remove it unless you have the artist's permission?