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Comment by mkr-hn | Hacker News Reader

Too bad. It was one of the few good independent websites left. As always, the CEO said they'll remain independent and blah blah blah in the email, but we know how that goes.

Good tip for people on the music side, and something to suggest to them:

1. Set up but do not publish your Bandcamp Subscriptions

2. Add all your music to it

3. Now it's all downloadable in your own user-side Bandcamp library. Check the format: FLAC is best.

Assuming not everyone holds on to masters once they're uploaded.

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I look forward to not being able to download my purchases :(

That already happens with Bandcamp. If the artist removes a song/album, you have no way of downloading it again even if you've purchased it. You only get a license to download the music while it's still available on the website. I've lost a few tracks/albums this way, thankfully I had local copies already.

Although, oddly, I do have one album which is no longer available for streaming in the web client, but remains intact in the Android app.

I haven't had this problem, unless artists can do something that looks identical to this on the face.

I had an artist take "Album 1", "Album 2", "Album 3", and "Album 4", which I purchased through a whole-discography purchase, and merge them into "Album 1-4". It turns out I was able to download the originals anyways.

I purchased a few albums from Ghost Mice, who deleted the albums or their account (and made a new one?). They are no longer downloadable. In the entry in my purchases history, it says:

> Deleted Artist

> Sorry, Strays by Ghost Mice is no longer available. Please contact Ghost Mice for more information.

It's definitely possible. Bandcamp will even warn you before deleting something.

I haven't had this happen with albums that I can verify are currently unavailable on bandcamp, but I have ran into an issue before where an Artist updated the album with more tracks and a "remaster" which means I couldn't get the originals anymore. Luckily I usually buy the CD and keep it in storage as a backup I can rip from.

Not to mention the inevitable "we have updated our privacy policy" and the proliferation of tracking and fingerprinting on the increasingly slow-and-bloated site.

Maybe at least they'll add some kind of "Now Playing" feature in Fortnite, that would probably be fun for some people.

Looks like China is trying to invade the music industry as well.

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