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Comment by arwhatever | Hacker News Reader

Would Bandcamp the business model + Bandcamp the website necessarily be difficult to reproduce, particularly in an environment in which the Bandcamp niche just became no longer fulfilled due to changing practices on the part of Original Bandcamp?

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I can't imagine the infrastructure to do it is trivial, but I would say the larger burden is network effect. Bandcamp has existed for a long time and I know of indie record labels who use it as their default distribution. I am aware there are indie alternatives (some of which provided in the comments to my first comment). Also disruption of service often results in loss, would someone who is no longer focused on music move there stuff over if things changed dramatically? Would people download in time, etc?

Obviously this is all speculation, bandcamp could continue on as it has been for the conceivable future, but I am less pleased about that future than I was before I saw this news.

Makes me curious about the idea of a nonprofit organization whose purpose is to manage a platform that gives as much money as possible to artists. Perhaps that's a naïve vision, but I feel like a lot of artists would hop onboard if the interface worked, and that could overcome the network effect.

Look at this sideways for a second and you'll see that you just described precisely and exactly the structure and supposed-mission of every performing rights society in the world.

And yet they just don't seem to have any interest in it.

The people that handle the money can get away with taking more from themselves in this scenario, so they definitely will.

Don't forget the third ingredient: wide adoption by underground artists and listeners. Bandcamp is, in some circles, cool. A new service would need to work very hard to earn that kind of cachet.

It seems like the perfect thing for Facebook (err Meta) to do with their social network. Bands already use Facebook for announcing tours, events, etc. so it would be a logical step to let them sell digital goods/music and give a small percent to FB. But I dunno if Meta actually cares about this business anymore.

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