Originally published at: Bandcamp lays off half its workforce | Boing Boing
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Not cool. I feel for the people who worked on this awesome product who were hit by layoffs.
I blame myself when I depend on a free product that gets enshittified and becomes useless, but in this case I have invested a lot over the course of a decade, so it is uniquely aggravating.
The layoffs have already caused enough damage to the brand; stop the stupid meddling!
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Same here. I discovered a lot of music there, paid for it, and loved the “low bar” for publishing. I could at least be confident that most of the 
was actually going to the musicians.
Songtradr acquired a wildly successful business, when measured in terms of what Bandcamp set out to achieve. By gutting that business Songtradr have demonstrated contempt for Bandcamp’s goals, and an inability to see past their own, very different model. It feels to me like an “embrace and extinguish” maneuver.
Either way, Bandcamp is IMHO finished. I’ve downloaded my tunes and erased my account.
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Surely a web site that lets artists upload tracks and albums in lossless format and charges for the download, with some customisation available for the sellers, and different formats to download for the buyers would not be tooooo difficult to implement in 2023 -
are there other any sites offering close to bandcamp.com functionality out there?
bandcamp.com was such a good site for so long I guess nobody bothered, but perhaps there is a reason to bother now?
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I swear, someone has to come along and ruin everything decent. I mean, technically, they haven’t fucked it up yet, but I have a feeling they will after laying off a bunch of people. That’s the first step.
I have very much liked using bandcamp over the years and purchased quite a few lossless downloads. My preference for music purchases runs towards soundboard audio from live shows, and they have been offering more of that in the last couple years and I’ve grabbed things that I can’t get from nugs dot net.
I hope no one ruins that one, too.
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i think this sign might come in handy here 
from:
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Is this that they’re keeping the streaming & licensing of music but ditching the excellent editorial stuff?
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From this reddit post:
https://old.reddit.com/r/Techno/comments/179ym5v/big_layoffs_at_bandcamp_after_sale_to_songtradr/
found a link to this possible Bandcamp alternative?
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For now yes. But it looks like the start of the death spiral of private equity. Remove some functions that cost money and don’t generate revenue directly. Watch sales tank. Remove core function bit by bit. Workers stiffed. Bills unpaid. Company dead. Vultures rich.
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Ooooh… thank you for that link. 
They have an interesting “free play” that overlays a synth voice “helpfully” telling you what you’re listening too. That’s fair, IMHO. 
They seem to carry the sort of stuff that goes into my “Audio Caffeine” playlist.
There’s not so much of the stuff that goes into my “solving the equations of the universe” playlist, but that’s easier to come by here and there.
But… wait… no! They don’t sell to 
for “tax” reasons.
Whaaaat? We were one of the first countries to whiteout “
” from a trade treaty and put “
” in there.
Now there’s an idea! Optimize code by removing all the lines that don’t generate profit.
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Possibly a side-effect of C-11, either through actual regulation or hoops to jump through?
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I asked. It’s the HST regulations, thresholds, etc. etc. They are working on getting it all sorted out.
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“A departing software engineer tells me that cuts were spread out “fairly evenly” across all departments except for customer support and editorial, which were hit harder.”
I know that playbook. “AI can do that” says the capitalist greedpig hatchetman.
404media has a story that, by an extraordinary coincidence, the entire union bargaining team were amongst those laid off.
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Half their employees let go, yes, including the entire Union bargaining team, the same day they were set to resume negotiations.
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