Lots of disappointed comments here. Would you guys really prefer seeing bandcamp beeing bought by Apple?
I'd be disappointed if apple had made the purchase, though it would be less out of left field.
If you don't sell, it's likely the large companies trying to buy you will copy you and use their piles of money to undercut you out of business (and if they don't, any VC backed startup can try).
So you either survive as small and unnoticed, or become big enough to be interesting (and then bought or killed unless you achieve absurd growth).
Tech is kind of a dark forest now (https://thoughtcatalog.com/christine-stockton/2021/02/heres-...).
I've worked for 2 companies that didn't sell and were obliterated this way.
That's been the state of tech ever since Web 2.0 or so.
I care about one thing, and one thing only: an irrevocable right to experience a particular piece of media where and when I please in the original form it was released, subject to natural degradation of the physical medium. Now that music is digital, I expect the "when" to be "at any point in my life, starting from when I purchased it", and the "where" to be "any device with the ability to play music".
Streaming is essentially asking for permission to re-experience a piece of media every time I want to do so, and Spotify's and YouTube's answer is often "no". My music library is simply a necessary evil that facilitates security against their whims.
Is "good enough" compatible with "capitalism"? Even ignoring the money aspect of things; you mention the website getting worse but I'm not sure the website has fundamentally changed (for better or worse) in a decade. Their iOS app isn't even compatible with ipads, it's locked to a phone aspect ratio with massive black bars surrounding it. Yet one could make the argument that things were "good enough" tech wise. Bandcamp (in my opinion) was a product/company that was good enough. But there's doesn't seem to be societal incentives to keep companies like that around in today's world... or maybe you just don't hear about them lol
Hope that explains it a bit. I'm quite sad and pessimistic about this. We'll see how well our reactions fare in about 2-3 years.
They ditched the Linux version of Rocket League. That counts as a blown acquisition to me.
Not supporting linux as a gaming platform is a down to earth decision. It's reasonable, whether necessary or not. As a linux user, I see a difference between the expectation of Linux plus driver vendors to support games and a game vendor to support linux, when it is often depending on a busfactor of 1.
Somebody breaks into my house and tracks mud all over the floor, and the response is, "well, would you rather they killed your dog? It could have been worse."
what all these "disappointed commenters" wanted was for Bandcamp to continue to provide an excellent service, charging enough to stay in business and grow at a reasonable rate while allowing artists, who did the vast vast vast vast majority of the effort represtented by each sale, to profit and - unironically - connect with fans.
peolpe wanted bandcamp not to give in to uber-capitalism and expect them to fight an uphill battle against spotify and the likes. That is a bit much to ask for in my view. They are forced to move towards streaming. What if pioneer comes up with a seamless spotify integration tomorrow? Usb ports would quickly become a rarity on dj equipment. i get that you like to „own“ your music and have it on your hd- but you also expect to be able to re-download things if you loose your files, right? so you are basically expecting bandcamp not to change in the future and that is out of touch with reality.