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   Dan Kletter 🥑 (soundclamp@mastodon.xyz)'s status on Friday, 06-Oct-2023 17:54:30 JST Dan Kletter 🥑

   Been thinking about the #Bandcamp news… Before they existed I bought music directly from record labels or mailorder like Midhaven/Revolver, Soleilmoon, Forced Exposure, Bleep, Boomkat, Fusetron, etc. That isn’t going to change. What makes Bandcamp special is connecting with artists, getting exposed to new music from curated editorial, or by idly checking out hashtags or what other people have in their collections. I’ve found communities here and elsewhere which fill that need quite well.

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     pettter (pettter@mastodon.acc.umu.se)'s status on Friday, 06-Oct-2023 17:54:23 JST pettter

     in reply to

     • Cory Doctorow

     @soundclamp @pluralistic The code and bandwidth is much less of an issue than the payment mechanism, honestly. Hosting songs is fine, _selling_ songs, especially _worldwide_ is a Very Tricky Problem that is Even More Tricky to solve for individuals than for a medium-large corporation.

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     Dan Kletter 🥑 (soundclamp@mastodon.xyz)'s status on Friday, 06-Oct-2023 17:54:25 JST Dan Kletter 🥑

     in reply to

     • Cory Doctorow

     This is a half-baked idea, but wouldn’t it be nice if #Bandcamp licensed standalone software (or maybe there’s an open source project already?) which allowed artists and labels to sell their music through their own websites without needing to know a lot about coding? Been thinking about it for a while, but this thread from @pluralistic drives the point home. https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/111183068362793821

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     Dan Kletter 🥑 (soundclamp@mastodon.xyz)'s status on Friday, 06-Oct-2023 17:54:27 JST Dan Kletter 🥑

     in reply to

     The conspiracy theories are… interesting: #Bandcamp was just a pawn in Epic’s ongoing lawsuit against Apple’s App Store pricing, inflation has hurt sales, the Chinese economy is on a downturn, Tencent (which owns a minority stake) called in a favor because Bandcamp employees unionized. I’m curious, but we won’t really know the details until journalists dig in.

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     Dan Kletter 🥑 (soundclamp@mastodon.xyz)'s status on Friday, 06-Oct-2023 17:54:28 JST Dan Kletter 🥑

     in reply to

     I didn’t really understand why Epic Games acquired #Bandcamp in the first place. I’m a bad armchair economist, but Fortnite has generated like a LOT of revenue over the years, inflation notwithstanding. Doesn’t seem like payroll is the problem? Also, am I the only person who had never heard of SongTradr before this?

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     Dan Kletter 🥑 (soundclamp@mastodon.xyz)'s status on Friday, 06-Oct-2023 17:54:29 JST Dan Kletter 🥑

     in reply to

     And yeah, getting a digital download in my preferred format with each purchase is a nice perk. If #Bandcamp becomes shitty, it’s going to hurt individual artists the most because who has the time, resources, or ability to run their own server? It’s hard enough to make a living and Bandcamp seems to have made the hustle a little less difficult.

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     pettter (pettter@mastodon.acc.umu.se)'s status on Saturday, 07-Oct-2023 14:01:45 JST pettter

     in reply to

     @soundclamp not saying it can't be done, but it's also a case where consumer friction matters quite a bit.

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     Dan Kletter 🥑 (soundclamp@mastodon.xyz)'s status on Saturday, 07-Oct-2023 14:01:47 JST Dan Kletter 🥑

     in reply to

     • pettter

     @pettter I know what you mean, but let’s remember that before the internet musicians used to do mail order all the time.