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Comment by x0x0 | Hacker News Reader

eh, going to be completely contrarian. Bandcamp appears to have been making almost no money / very little net profit. That's fine, as long as the owner is ok running it that way.

The users of bandcamp -- both artists and fans -- will likely be on far more stable ground if bandcamp earns a reasonable profit. If the owners view it as an asset instead of a charity endeavor or a labor of love. Because in the latter case, people eventually want to move on, as the original creator did after 15 years.

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> Bandcamp appears to have been making almost no money / very little net profit. That's fine, as long as the owner is ok running it that way.

That literally is fine. There was never a need to turn it into a highly profitable service. If it was paying bills and salaries, it was an absolute success.

The parent mentioned that the original owner got tired of this, hence why it was sold in the first place?

Which sounds to me like an unfortunate betrayal of the company for personal profit. But I don't know all the details.

I'd be surprised if the employees were in it for the guiding mission of "build an artist-centric and fan-centric platform, putting middleman profits after great experiences, until the day I get tired and cash out."

It seems doubtful whether any employee genuinely excluded the possibility of the owner eventually leaving when they signed up. It's not some rare or obscure edge case.

It was a company founded with a purpose and recent actions threaten that purpose - that's easily characterized as a betrayal.

Either way, there's no slippery slope here. I do believe already that most business owners are acting immorally in the pursuit of personal gain. I don't believe "wanting to get richer than other people" is actually a defensible motivation for actions that either worsen the experience of other people or prevent others from getting a share of that wealth.

edit: the content of the comment I'm replying to completely changed while I was writing my reply, but I'm just going to leave this here.

> It seems doubtful whether any employee genuinely excluded the possibility of the owner eventually leaving when they signed up. It's not some rare or obscure edge case.

Of course they know it's a possibility, but surely most hoped the temptation would be resisted. Again, the whole point of the platform was to focus on artists first, and fans second, and growth somewhere behind that. But all that is only talk without contractual obligations, and so we see the company sold out and gutted because they can.

Yes, I was writing a two part comment, the first part a longer point about slippery slopes but then I realized it wouldn't necessarily develop into one, so I deleted it. I'm surprised it got published though, it couldn't have been more than a few seconds between button clicks.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by the last paragraph though.

The employees themselves signed up, received compensation, and then spent that, partly, on self-interested things, without exception as far as I know.

So it would be pretty odd for them to hope that the owner wouldn't also have some self-interest.

> So it would be pretty odd for them to hope that the owner wouldn't also have some self-interest.

They expected the owner to get paid a salary, yes. They did not expect the owner to go trade the entire mission of the company for a huge payday. These are different things.

Perhaps you've confused the timeline?

The owner sold the company to Epic, which did keep the company's mission the same for a year afterwards, it's then Epic which made this recent decision.

I guess the counter to that is can bandcamp remain bandcamp when run with a view to increased net profit. Remains to be seen but the answer may be no.

Some things probably work best when the aim is to break even, not to increase profit. Which has it's own set of challenges.

If musicians just want shopify but for music, you can cut all the editorial and just be a store backend. So yes, I bet they can. Which is what the new owners seem to have done.

Which would be fine, but then upfront and clear about your goals and plans rather than use bullshit marketing spin.

But people just want free stuff. If you try to break even they go like "why does everything has to be monetized?" (sent from their $799 iphone).

Bandcamp is built on people paying though. They're already past that big hurdle.

Bandcamp was literally about paying for stuff.

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