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bandcamp acquired by epic games?!


species8472

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Where does this NFT stuff come from? I'm probably thick af but when I read about them supporting open and free internet I thought they were referring to net-neutrality?

 

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just spoke to a friend who has a friend (i know.. friend of a friend) who works at bandcamp. he said they've been growing exponentially but need capital to keep pace with the growth. so, hiring people and i guess scaling up the service. so maybe this will be good for the immediate future then who knows.. 

the big elephant in the room is if down the road someone like Sony buys Epic games or something. then it's like well.. everyone is along for the ride. 

1 minute ago, user said:

Where does this NFT stuff come from?

the butthole of the metaverse 

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Just now read the automated email from the Bandcamp CEO. Seriously tho...why

Don't even get me started on Tim Sweeney. I was hoping to compose and release an EP on BC later this year too. This whole announcement just feels like a poop sandwich.

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1 hour ago, logakght said:

tho it is interesting that  video game companies are starting to become the monopolies of today.

It would've at least made more sense if Sony or Microsoft bought them since they both have or still do venture into music. Of the three Sony probably would've been the best since they're pretty hands-off with their smaller companies. I don't think Epic has good intentions at all and as others said it will probably be tied into some NFT or metaverse bullshit.

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1 hour ago, DavieAddison said:

It would've at least made more sense if Sony or Microsoft bought them since they both have or still do venture into music. Of the three Sony probably would've been the best since they're pretty hands-off with their smaller companies. I don't think Epic has good intentions at all and as others said it will probably be tied into some NFT or metaverse bullshit.

the tencent holdings company that owns part of Epic games also owns part of universal music and warner music and spotify. it's all "media" or content or whatever now so... 

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37 minutes ago, thefxbip said:

Well there it is. Might not even be the CEO decision?

Well it was good while it lasted.

there's a dude over at the elektron forum who's wife works for bandcamp. said it's gonna be a big cash infusion so they can hire people to keep up w/demand but who knows.  apparently their growth has been steady and exponential yada yada.. maybe it'll mean more features in the mobile app etc. no idea really. can't be arsed. 

if it comes down to it i'll put all my releases in zip files on my site and link to youtube for previews but i don't expect anything to be that dramatic any time soon w/changes at bandcamp that would be so negative as to make me go through the effort to do anything. 

seems low on the priority totem pole these days. 

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This feels like a This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things™ type situation, but I, for one, am not throwing in the towel yet. I understand that the original BC investors/personnel with a stake in it would want to cash out (eventually), it's just how the cookie crumbles with platform-type services, which BC is - it's not a community per se, because entities (labels, artists) are in their respective silos and there's no commons,  but still, the data graph BC has on us and the entities and their music (following, purchases, streaming) is very much monetizable. I don't use the entity threads nor the mobile application at all, I get everything via email and I control what I check out or not. From my point of view BC is almost unusable for some general use cases, especially when your collection is sizable (I've got 3859 items, well nigh all full releases) - searching, filtering, tagging, grouping etc. is barely rudimentary or nonexistent, but BC is still currently the best outlet for digital music there is. I hope things get better when BC gets an infusion of development resources/money, but I agree that there's a definite possibility of things going down the drain, which in itself is sad that a thought like that is almost automatic with news like this. The Tencent dimension of this makes even me cringe, but the actual ramifications of the change in ownership remains to be seen. I'm not emergency ejecting for the time being.

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There will be ads out the ass now during streaming, and you’ll have to pay for some ad-free tier. Maybe FLAC & WAV files will carry a premium price now, like bleep & Beatport do, they will monetize any opportunity they see, now and in the future. Hope I’m wrong.

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Epic are good owners -- as many have said, they have a reputation for not interfering with their subsidiaries. Bandcamp needs more £££ as the platform is lacking atm, and hard to scale without serious investment in engineering talent (which is super expensive). Can see it working tbh. 

Worth adding that it's the perfect platform to take on Spotify with -- given how much bad press Spotify's been getting of late. A hybrid Premium streaming/ Bandcamp service would be great.

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It's always bothered me that BC doesn't have any competitors keeping them honest, imo a strong market is a good thing and a VC backed monopoly is surely always going to take a wrong turn at some point. This might not be that point, but if it isn't it'll be something else down the line.

So whattup Bleep/Warp? C'mon guys, you're most of the way there already.

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The thing is Epic wouldn’t do this unless they thought they could squeeze significantly more money out of BC than it’s making now. None of the ways I can think of that they could do that are going to make it better for the kind of users that love it for what it is today. 
 

The Tencent connection is gross too. 

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1 hour ago, kuniklo said:

The thing is Epic wouldn’t do this unless they thought they could squeeze significantly more money out of BC than it’s making now. None of the ways I can think of that they could do that are going to make it better for the kind of users that love it for what it is today. 
 

The Tencent connection is gross too. 

They can do this by growing the revenue base -- there's no need to change the mechanics of the site, or the payouts to artists etc.

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8 minutes ago, thefxbip said:

good to know bandcamp is now half owned by people that collaborate with genocide

Americans have some of that, too, and the Brits, maybe throw in all the rest colonialist countries for good measure. Good to know that all capitalism is built on genocide.

Edited by dcom
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