Comment by zaps | Hacker News Reader

Comment by zaps | Hacker News Reader

Switching to full-on Dirty Hippie mode here but, goddammit why why WHY can’t we just have nice things without profit motives or acquisitions or shareholders or growth hacking and just enjoy the ride and the gifts that these kinds of resources give to the world? Why is the default setting “always sell out”?

IUMA was the Bandcamp of the early aughts. It was THE place to go for discovering new exciting music that you never knew could exist, the equivalent of listening to pop radio all the time and then one day turning the knob left to the local college station. (“What is this?” “It’s NEW.”) This was what the internet was FOR—accessing the inaccessible. Then some corporation bought it and smashed it into ash.

I get it, really. I’m naive af. People need to eat. Infrastructure isn’t free. Licenses need to be licensed. But fuck, I’d rather these sites never existed in the first place than have my heart broken like some middle schooler seeing their crush dancing with the rich kid.

They do exist, but yeah they are rare. Both Ableton Live and Reaper refuse to take outside investments or sell. The Live owners are famous for telling them to screw off. Major reason I use both of them. The music tech business is getting rocked by acquisitions recently.

Reaper rocks. I love that the installer is so small, shows that nothing is in the code but what's essential. I also love that they allow scripting within the DAW, and that they ported to Linux, and I love the payment model, and and...

Just an amazing company all round.

Worth noting here that the main guy behind Reaper is Justin Frankel, creator of Winamp - would seem like he doesn't really need or want outside investment.

I am really worried about Ableton. Feels like music production industry is going through a consolidation stage (NI/Izotope) and Live is absolutely the prime real estate in the business.

You can find interviews with them talking about this, they really don't like that side of the business. I don't know what happens if the owners die mind you, but I'm not worried about them changing their minds.

Good point. I don't know if Robert Henke still has a big stake in the company. If he does - the company is safe.

It's worth noting, though, that Justin can afford to not take outside investments for Reaper because he already "sold out" by selling Nullsoft to AOL for ~$50 million. I say this not to throw shade or anything like that -- I really like and respect Justin and am literally developing an extension of the Reaper API and a product built off of it as we speak -- but in the context of this discussion, it's worth noting that often the financial freedom to do awesome stuff and not sell out is enabled by wealth made somewhere else first.

I do believe that the original founders had a fantastic vision that they mostly realized. But at some point they decided to sell the business and move on. Unfortunately that meant that the vision, and, more importantly, the full control over that vision have vanished. Don't know what the solution is for businesses like that... A worker owned co-op? A non-profit? Some legal structure that is capable of withstanding investor pressure and just existing as a fairly successful business.

There are known methods to retrieve power from the jaws of capital.

Because profit has somehow become the goal. Take away profit as a target and then you’re just left with people doing what they want.

> you’re just left with people doing what they want.

God forbid

And that’s a bad thing?

Not to me, it wouldn’t be.

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