Bandcamp's implosion and some alternatives

[fluffy]

I'm sure most of y'all have heard about the Total Bullshit going on with Bandcamp. Here's a quick-ish recap:

• Bandcamp was wildly successful and basically printing money in a sustainable fashion
• Bandcamp's owners got bored with being sustainably profitable and sold the company to Epic Games, makers of Fortnite, who had aspirations towards turning it into a licensing clearninghouse for Fortnite music
• Worried about the future, Bandcamp's employees started the process of forming a union, which was overwhelmingly supported by most employees as well as most of the many thousands of musicians who sell their music on bandcamp
• Epic, being ownred by high-powered capitalist-brained investors, needed to turn around and make this acquisition a source of exponential growth, and couldn't, so
• Epic decided to recoup their investment by flipping it over to Songtradr, an also-ran music distributor whose mainline profit center is a scammy pay-for-exposure A&R "service"
• Songtradr's very first act was to lock all Bandcamp employees out of the systems while they figured out who could stay and who would be laid off
• The union was like "Wait, uh, we have a union, you can't do that"
• Songtradr laid off over half the company, including everyone who was organizing the union

Anyway, sometime after step 2 (which happened in early 2022), a bunch of folks started building alternatives to Bandcamp. Most of these alternatives were in the form of web players that you can use to post your music on websites that let you embed HTML, but don't handle any of the encoding and metadata tagging and so on. Examples of things like this are Scritch and blamscamp.

I took a somewhat different direction and started building Bandcrash, which focuses on being a really good encoder and tagger and providing a means of easily publishing your stuff on itch.io (an independent games-and-tools-and-assets-and-books-and-whatever-else shop) as well as uploading it to things like Gumroad and Ko-Fi where you can provide files to download and a price to download them for. It currently uses blamscamp as its embedded player (since it's what was convenient and easy to integrate at the time) although I'm going to eventually move to scritch or to make a choice of embedded players or whatever.

Anyway, me being me I originally built it as a software library with a basic nerdy command-line tool, so nobody was using it, so for the last few weeks (ever since part 5 above) I've been crunching on finally building a GUI for it, which I finally released a beta of last night. It has a ways to go but it's at least usable now, and makes it much, much easier to list your albums for sale on itch.io in particular.

Another system that's been in development since step 2 is faircamp, which has gotten a lot of attention. I haven't tried it out just yet but it looks like it does some similar stuff as Bandcrash (such as encoding your album to a bunch of formats and building a player) but it's also a nerdy tool to actually run, and it builds a (very nice!) static website and kind of handwaves payments in a way I'm not terribly comfortable with. But some folks are really into it.

Anyway. Worth knowing what's going on in the world of independent music and ways of keeping it independent.

[ujnhunter]

While I was initially among those that were worried when Bandcamp sold to Epic (though I don't think it had anything to do with people being bored, and I can't blame people for taking a nice payday and retiring to a far-off island for all the hard work they did). The artists/end users didn't see any difference in "ownership" as far as Bandcamp was concerned and while we have yet to see if this will eventually change this time around now that Songtradr owns Bandcamp, as long as the artists/end users remain unaffected again... it's still the best platform for independent release. That being said, nice work to help people release in some alternative spaces.

[fluffy]

Yeah, hopefully Bandcamp remains a good choice for artists. I don't want to see it go away! But it's good to have alternatives ready just in case it does.

I have very little confidence in Songtradr keeping Bandcamp good. This feels like a Musk-and-Twitter situation all over again.

[ujnhunter]

I guess I'm of the "wait and see" stance because that's what I thought Epic would bring to Bandcamp... and it never happened and while I'm disappointed that Songtradr did away with their Unlimited FREE releases (I have used Songtradr to release tracks). I'm hopeful that perhaps Songtradr might be "good" for Bandcamp in that it might be able to keep it the same for artist/end users alike and also perhaps bring it's knowledge and distribution services to Bandcamp Artists. i.e. one hub that can also distribute Bandcamp releases to all the Streaming/Digital Storefronts. Maybe I'm being naive, but until something "bad" happens to Bandcamp... it's all I can do to wait and see.

Edit: Just to try and make it more clear, my hope is that Songtradr can be a one stop shop of uploading to Bandcamp and offering distribution EVERYWHERE, instead of Artists having to use Bandcamp + Songtradr/Distrokid Etc...

[fluffy]

Your optimistic view would be an ideal outcome, yeah. I'm not sure I can share that sort of optimism right now. But maybe if they can replace the godawful Songtradr uploader with the beautiful Bandcamp one (updated with the necessary metadata that Bandcamp doesn't currently collect) it won't be so bad.

I worry that a much more likely outcome is that Songtradr decides to make Bandcamp's download store an expression of the Songtradr marketplace instead, though, forcing everyone to use Songtradr's awful song uploader/editor thing.

Also a lot of Bandcamp content isn't strictly-speaking legal to be released the way it is, and I suspect that Songtradr's going to have to reckon with a lot of unauthorized covers and so on. Which is technically something Bandcamp should have been doing all along.

[HeuristicsInc]

Hmm I was going to release an album soon, but I looked at bandcamp and it all still seemed legit. Is cdbaby's access to streaming services still a good deal?
-bill

[fluffy]

To be clear, bandcamp is still worth releasing your albums on. It's just a good idea to have a backup as well.

CDBaby's streaming stuff was pretty awful for a while but they've redone their pricing to actually be competitive. I think there's still better deals out there though.

Personally I still use Distrokid even though they're no longer the best deal, just because I already have all my stuff with them and switching would be too much of a pain.

[ujnhunter]

Bandcamp hasn't signaled any sort of change at all yet... in fact... Bandcamp Friday is tomorrow.

[fluffy]

Give it time. Songtradr didn't buy it just to keep it operating as it has been already.

[ujnhunter]

Neither did Epic. Though I did see something recently showing that when Epic had bought Bandcamp, it was challenging Apple Store/Google Play with their in-App purchases % by using Bandcamp's iOS/Android App as an example, showing that Bandcamp couldn't operate by only taking a small % if Apple/Google were going to try and take a % on top of it... so it appears to show that Bandcamp was a Pawn for Epic against Apple/Google.

[fluffy]

I get the impression that Epic *wanted* to make changes but their hands were tied by the union and they didn't quite know what to do with them. The first thing Songtradr did was destroy the union. You don't lay off half the fucking company if you don't intend it to change at all.

Regardless, it fucking sucks that these companies are using artists' livelihoods as pawns in their shitty game.

[fluffy]

And, like I've said a few times, I *hope* Bandcamp continues to be a good platform, because it still has a lot of stuff going for it that no other platform does. But I'm skeptical, and it's good to have a backup in place so it isn't a gigantic crisis if/when something does happen.

Songtradr has aspirations of using Bandcamp as a source of content for their licensing/placement platform (as did Epic) and a lot of stuff is going to have to change for that to happen. I'm not optimistic about the specific decisions that will be made when it does.

[Pigfarmer Jr]

You don't lay off half the fucking company if you don't intend it to change at all.

Two things (that isn't easy to believe) that Songtradr stated after the 50% layoff. 1) They basically laid off the staff that was already duplicated by existing Songtradr employees. Most of the editorial staff etc., and 2) they had no access to (or knowledge of) who was in the union, represented the union etc., when they announced their layoffs.

I believe the second point because it's good business to do your dirty work with plausible deniability. The first point seems more like a good excuse but I've not heard of any major gaps or lack of tasks being completed yet. (Keyword 'yet') I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt until I have any real evidence to the contrary. But I'm 100% with fluffy when she says that we should have backup plans in place just in case. *fingers crossed that bandcamp continues to be awesome for us little folk*

[fluffy]

Even if they really did have no knowledge of who was a union organizer or not (which sounds fake to me), making such a major decision without working with the union is also incredibly bad-faith, and possibly illegal. The point to a union is to have collective bargaining and the union was completely blindsided by it, with no input given into the choices made or the compensation given as a result.

[Pigfarmer Jr]

Bandcamp United filed an unfair labor act dispute against Songtradr and Epic. We'll see what comes of it. I'm really not trying to defend Songtradr, I'm just hoping bandcamp keeps being great. But Songtradr did give six months severance pay to those employees who were laid off which seems to "be quite generous in the tech field."

[Lunkhead]

To throw some anecdata into the fire, I know one software engineer from Pandora who'd quit earlier this year to work for BandCamp doing software engineering who was part of the layoffs. So, they didn't only lay off editorial staff. But maybe he didn't have enough tenure to be considered significantly more experienced with the Bandcamp code/systems than engineers at Songtradr or something. Hard to say.

[Pigfarmer Jr]

I'm assuming that the total number of software engineers at bandcamp and songtradr were more than they wanted to employ. But, it feels shitty either way. If they implement a purchase option for licensing on bandcamp and pretty much leave everything else alone then I'll be pretty happy with the service. If there are more changes then I'll be extremely worried.

[HeuristicsInc]

CDBaby's streaming stuff was pretty awful for a while but they've redone their pricing to actually be competitive. I think there's still better deals out there though.

yeah, all my stuff so far is on cdbaby so that's kind of like you but on a different service. trying to follow that other thread, songtradr is no longer good, it seems, but maybe amuse.io is? or tunecore? i am not keen on paying a subscription fee for this.
-bill

[fluffy]

I mean, insofar as the services for getting your stuff on the mainstream streaming services go, they're all pretty much equivalent these days. I didn't have a good experience with amuse.io, pricing varies somewhat between the others, it's all just a pick-your-poison sort of thing at this point. Personally I think the whole streaming industry is fucking corrupt (sorry Sam) and if I didn't already have my distrokid subscription I wouldn't be bothering to put new stuff on streaming services.

[Lunkhead]

Personally I think the whole streaming industry is fucking corrupt (sorry Sam) and if I didn't already have my distrokid subscription I wouldn't be bothering to put new stuff on streaming services.

No offense taken. IMHO the whole "music industry" is fubared and the rot starts with the big three major record labels. Rant in spoilers.

Shoot, seems like the spoiler tag doesn't work. Well, here's the rant, sorry I can't make it hidden behind a click.

The three major labels ultimately hold all the power because they continue to own and control nearly 100% of what nearly 100% of people listen to nearly 100% of the time. I think it's very hard for folks like us to believe that listening is that concentrated, from our perspectives as mostly fringe weirdos who actively seek out alternative music. From the numbers I have seen for Pandora, listening really is that concentrated. No streaming service is viable without the content from the three major labels. As far as the three majors are concerned, streaming services exist to get their product to the masses and make them money doing it. Streaming services have to fulfill that role to be viable and then beyond that somehow have to try to profit off whatever minority of their revenue is not going straight to the labels. It's fundamentally not workable at a $10/month price point, maybe not at any price point that consumers would be willing to pay. That was only viable thanks to different bunch of corrupt assholes, venture capitalists, helped out by their good friends at the government banks, providing 10+ years of no-interest debt. I don't know how or if it's possible to get things out of the quagmire they've gotten into due to all the corruption throughout. In fact things seem to be getting worse. Streaming services' deals with the labels only last 2-3 years. In recent rounds of renegotiation some labels have started saying they want to take an even bigger cut of the royalties, a cut that better represents the "fundamental value" their content supplies (which in their minds is 100% of the value). They say it's in the name of "devaluing spam/junk/AI/fraudulent" content. In not too long it's probably going to take a lot more streams (like >1000 in a year) for a long tail artist to even qualify for any kind of royalty payout at all, because their content will be assumed to be spam/junk/AI/fraudulent until proven otherwise. Then will come the closing of the floodgates and reintroduction of barriers to entry to streaming services, most likely in the form of requiring artist to register for an ISNI before their content is allowed.

[fluffy]

The things that bother me about that line of thinking:

• The AI/spam/fraud crap works because it gets a lot of listens to begin with (and meets the threshold)
• It leads to a conceptual chicken-and-egg situation where indie musicians have no reason to put their stuff on streaming since they won't get paid, meaning they'll never hit the payment threshold, meaning they'll never have a reason to put their stuff on streaming

I'd be less frustrated by it if they instead took an approach of keeping royalty payments "in escrow" until the payment threshold is met.

Or, yeah, forcing artists to register for an ISNI? As long as that's accessible to folks I have no problem with that as a barrier to entry, especially if an ISNI can be revoked for doing fraudulent bullshit. It looks like I have a few associated with my various performing names, and apparently one came via MusicBrainz? Weird.

Oddly enough I'm not finding one for my legal name, and the one for my deadname is actually a distant cousin of mine who I've never met and happens to have the same name and isn't a musician (but he's a professional photographer so it makes sense he'd have one).

I'm surprised this isn't something ASCAP does automatically, but of course ASCAP and the whole PRO system is a thing I could unproductively rant about too.

[Pigfarmer Jr]

... indie musicians have no reason to put their stuff on streaming since they won't get paid, meaning they'll never hit the payment threshold, meaning they'll never have a reason to put their stuff on streaming

If you're trying to reach an audience then you need to be on streaming. Just because streaming doesn't pay (although, I'm proof you can make a few hundred dollars a year if you play the game) doesn't mean streaming is useless or not valuable. That being said, it's just as easy to use youtube as spotify or pandora and these days tiktok, and short videos on fb and insta seem to work just as well as anything else if you stick with it. So you may have a point. I'll just say that what few people I've reached has been mostly through spotify.