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Comment by atwebb | Hacker News Reader

They could look at purchasing Bandcamp, which has done a great job of promoting and selling independent music.

Bandcamp lets me download lists of people who've bought my music and of people who follow my profile. This is because they understand the business is mine, and they're simply a service provider for that business. Even their subscription system runs right through the musician's own Stripe account, so you can always take your subscriptions elsewhere.

I don't have any reason to trust that a VC-fueled monster like Spotify understands this. If Spotify bought Bandcamp, I would remove my music from it.

VC-fueled behemoths like to make people dependent on them. I can't trust my business to a company that gets most of its money from outside investors instead of the people who use the service. Their incentives are fundamentally misaligned with my interests.

Apologies if I come across as harsh but as a consumer, I would prefer my consumption activities to remain as private as possible. In light of FB news, I don't think even some Options > Privacy Settings on Bandcamp would be sufficient since most people wouldn't do it. I hope Bandcamp is opt-in for this info.

It is opt-in if you pay for it, but almost no one leaves it unchecked. There's also the option to not require an email for free downloads.

Often these are people I've sent from somewhere else, and we talk regularly. It's not like with Facebook where it's a faceless corporation unless you're spending enough on ads to get an account specialist.

They generally knew me before they gave me money. I'm not collecting any data on them other than the email. I don't even run analytics on web pages I control. I wouldn't even know what to do with it that would tell me anything I don't already know, or that I couldn't get by just asking.

It's opt-out, I normally leave it checked, you get the option clearly when purchasing music/items. The artist can then send updates/you get follow notices, the volume is pretty low at the moment for me at least.

That's still generally seen as opt-in among marketing types, though I can understand the perspective where pre-checking the opt-in is a kind of opt-out.

Please dear god no.

Bandcamp is maybe one of the few examples of a service/shop that actually benefits artists and fans. Having them bought out by some VC tech behemoth will almost certainly see their offering ruined.

Off topic.

Bandcamp's site loooks like it was designed by a schizophrenic person.

A lot of music sites in general seem to prefer form over function IMHO.

Discogs.com is a notable exception of course.

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