Bandcamp lays off half their Staff

[SoundscapeMN]

https://twitter.com/modernistwitch/status/1713962311579234428

about half the company was laid off today. some of the most incredible people i’ve ever worked with, including two of my amazing editorial
 and most of the incredible support staff among many others. this is a loss, no two ways about it

This is pathetic, but a couple of years ago when Bandcamp merged (got bought out), I was pretty wary of their future.

jeez..maybe more bands will start to sell their music on Soundcloud?

[ReaperKK]

Yea this is a bummer. I get the impression that when EPIC bought it they didn't really have an idea of what they were going to do with the site.

[HOF]

They were just bought out for the second time last month.

Some group called SongTradr

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/songtradr-acquires-bandcamp-epic-games-162200297.html

Songtradr, a music licensing platform and marketplace company supporting artists, labels and publishers, and Epic Games, a leading interactive entertainment company and provider of 3D engine technology, announced today that Songtradr is acquiring Bandcamp. Songtradr will continue to operate Bandcamp as a marketplace and music community with an artist-first revenue share.

Bandcamp is an online music store and community with over 5M artists and labels where fans can discover, connect with, and directly support the artists they love. This acquisition will help Bandcamp continue to grow within a music-first company and enable Songtradr to expand its capabilities to support the artist community.

Songtradr will also offer Bandcamp artists the ability and choice to have their music licensed to all forms of media including content creators, game and app developers and brands. This will enable artists to continue to own and control their music rights, and increase their earning capacity from Songtradr’s global licensing network.

Epic is exploring ways to partner with Songtradr to build an inventory of music where artists can opt in to have their music licensed for use in Epic’s ecosystem. Epic will continue to collaborate with Bandcamp on projects like Fortnite Radio and is investing in Songtradr to support Bandcamp’s successful integration into Songtradr.

[HOF]

Let's hope this is an overly pessimistic outlook on things. Bandcamp is such a great place to find/buy music, and I know a lot of bands rely on it as their main means of selling music.

https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/is-bandcamp-as-we-know-it-over/

[WilliamMunny]

Let's hope this is an overly pessimistic outlook on things. Bandcamp is such a great place to find/buy music, and I know a lot of bands rely on it as their main means of selling music.

https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/is-bandcamp-as-we-know-it-over/

I'm one of those artists/bands, and this news is pretty devastating.

[TAC]

Let's hope this is an overly pessimistic outlook on things. Bandcamp is such a great place to find/buy music, and I know a lot of bands rely on it as their main means of selling music.

https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/is-bandcamp-as-we-know-it-over/

I'm one of those artists/bands, and this news is pretty devastating.

Are there any communications that you may see as an artist that the general public doesn't see?

[WilliamMunny]

Let's hope this is an overly pessimistic outlook on things. Bandcamp is such a great place to find/buy music, and I know a lot of bands rely on it as their main means of selling music.

https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/is-bandcamp-as-we-know-it-over/

I'm one of those artists/bands, and this news is pretty devastating.

Are there any communications that you may see as an artist that the general public doesn't see?

That's a really good question–unfortunately, the answer is no.

I manage my personal page as well as a band page and a label page, so I am a customer on all fronts, and Bandcamp has yet to communicate with the artists in any way. There hasn't even been a 'don't worry' email.

Funny...a few years back I was in the running for a editorial position with them. I was massively bummed when I didn't land it at the time, but it now feels like a blessing in disguise.

[HOF]

Sorry man, hope it all shakes out alright for you.

I don’t ever pay attention to the editorial stuff, though I understand why that would be beneficial in general in terms of promoting artists. If that’s all that goes away though, at least bands will still have a platform to host/sell their music. Hopefully they don’t move away from that core model.

[Pebsie]

My band is about to release our 2nd album on BandCamp and it's my go-to for new releases. So many independent artists rely on it as the last bastion of music having any value what so ever. Streaming has killed this industry and if BandCamp goes down there really won't be much left.

With that said.... we saw Twitter, Facebook and others lay off huge swathes of their staff this year. The result was absolutely no noticeable change to the functioning of the platform. I say this as someone who works in tech (app development): there is so much dead weight at these companies. They get huge amounts of funding or explode overnight and so they hire more than they have real jobs for just in case they need them. Most dev teams I've worked on are only working maybe a quarter of the time because the amount of work needed in a week is less than the amount a developer can get done in a day -- and this is further complicated by the prevalence of bullshit middle man jobs like project managers or SCRUM masters.

This isn't a sign that the platform is going down, it may just be a sign that they're trimming the fat.

[lonestar]

Yeah, as someone who contracts out as office support for tech companies, their staffing is bloated as fuck.

[WilliamMunny]

My band is about to release our 2nd album on BandCamp and it's my go-to for new releases. So many independent artists rely on it as the last bastion of music having any value what so ever. Streaming has killed this industry and if BandCamp goes down there really won't be much left.

With that said.... we saw Twitter, Facebook and others lay off huge swathes of their staff this year. The result was absolutely no noticeable change to the functioning of the platform. I say this as someone who works in tech (app development): there is so much dead weight at these companies. They get huge amounts of funding or explode overnight and so they hire more than they have real jobs for just in case they need them. Most dev teams I've worked on are only working maybe a quarter of the time because the amount of work needed in a week is less than the amount a developer can get done in a day -- and this is further complicated by the prevalence of bullshit middle man jobs like project managers or SCRUM masters.

This isn't a sign that the platform is going down, it may just be a sign that they're trimming the fat.

I generally agree with you post, and I can definitely corroborate that no immediate changes have occurred.

I think my general thought is that this may be an ominous sign of things to come (again, I hope I'm wrong)