292
About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off
(www.theverge.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2023
292 points (96.5% liked)
Technology
34973 readers
117 users here now
This is the official technology community of Lemmy.ml for all news related to creation and use of technology, and to facilitate civil, meaningful discussion around it.
Ask in DM before posting product reviews or ads. All such posts otherwise are subject to removal.
Rules:
1: All Lemmy rules apply
2: Do not post low effort posts
3: NEVER post naziped*gore stuff
4: Always post article URLs or their archived version URLs as sources, NOT screenshots. Help the blind users.
5: personal rants of Big Tech CEOs like Elon Musk are unwelcome (does not include posts about their companies affecting wide range of people)
6: no advertisement posts unless verified as legitimate and non-exploitative/non-consumerist
7: crypto related posts, unless essential, are disallowed
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
So far it looks like it's just the internet's usual doomspeak, with a side of anti-Epic circlejerking.