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About half of Bandcamp employees have been laid off
(www.theverge.com)
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this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2023
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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.