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Tobias Stone • 30 • BPD/ASD • ΘΔ • artist
🤍@LeoHowler@RosenElytra 🤍
my little zone, my little area, my little dog bed
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@BlushingYokai
@boneglosspardon me


fluffy
@fluffy

So, hey, Bandcamp is a great service that a lot of musicians and fans rely upon for fair distribution and sales of music. It is a really great thing.

Unfortunately, Bandcamp's owners decided that having a sustainably profitable business wasn't Enough for them and sold it to Epic Games a year ago, with the idea that it'd become a money-printing factory that does All The Licensing.

And that didn't pan out, so a week ago Epic re-sold Bandcamp to Songtradr, which is basically an A&R pay-for-play scam with the trappings of respectability. Here's a video Benn Jordan did on the topic (focusing on a site called Taxi but Songtradr is the same basic thing):

Now Songtradr is blocking the Bandcamp union from actually being, y'know, a union. They aren't honoring the union terms, have locked workers out of critical systems, are completely ignoring the collective bargaining power of Bandcamp as a company and are doing all sorts of heinous shit.

However! This is not a time to boycott Bandcamp! All that does is make Bandcamp less valuable and gives Songtradr more sway over them, while disproportionately impacting the musicians who rely on it. Please look to see what the union is requesting in terms of support and solidarity. There's a lot you can do to show your support.

Independent musicians thank you.


dog
@dog

I can't stress this enough: if there's a union involved, don't boycott if they haven't asked you to. The union is leading the response here, and the best thing you can do is support the union in what they're asking for. If and when they ask for a boycott, act in support, but please don't launch your own boycott independent of them.


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in reply to @fluffy's post:

I’m genuinely curious, how is songtradr like the company Benn is describing in that video? I did some research on it briefly when the acquisition was announced and at least in terms of their actual product and business model I didn’t see anything terribly concerning.

(That’s not to comment on any of the ongoing issues with their recognition of the bandcamp union to be clear, purely talking about their business model here).

I found a good article about the situation on Create Digital Music: https://cdm.link/2023/09/bandcamp-sold-to-songtradr/

It doesn’t seem fair to call it an outright scam from what we know, but they’re still middlemen who take a cut like pretty much every other artist-oriented service out there, for better or worse. The thing they actually mostly offer, music licensing, is a genuine service as far as I can tell that will have value for some people. Whether they’re good to work with in that space or whether their terms are actually very good I can’t say.

Songtradr's core business is being a platform for musicians to submit music to A&R pitches. People who pay to submit get higher priority. Most of the pitches are just for Songtradr's own platform, and most of what's left are "for exposure" things or pay ludicrously poorly.

Oh and most of the pitches are just "We are looking for a song that sounds like, but is legally distinct from, this other popular song."

oh and also just like Taxi, Songtradr's got a lot of weird fans who go to every music production forum out there to hype it up as a way to make money on their music, and any pushback is met with platitudes about "👍just keep submitting to more things, you got this👍" and this cult-like obsession with making everyone think that Songtradr is the future of how music gets monetized.

Yeah I’m not trying to do that, I literally just only know what I’ve been able to research about them, and what I found was not very conclusive and nobody talking about them has provided any details on what’s bad about their service, so I’m like.. genuinely looking for info about what’s bad about them!

I just read that CDM article again. It doesn't really talk about Songtradr's licensing side in anything other than neutral, superficial terms.

Basically this is one of those situations where you can't really take the press at their word on stuff, because they oversimplify things for brevity.

A lot of people are similarly referring to Songtradr as a "licensing platform, aka DRM," but that isn't what they do at all. It's a misunderstanding of the term "licensing" in this context to say that. (Not saying that's what you did, just that it's a thing I'm seeing a lot of on Mastodon.)

That was not my understanding of licensing at all. I assumed this was a way for people to get their songs in commercials or video games or whatever (which, again, on its face sounds useful, assuming it even worked)

Your understanding was correct, and I wasn’t trying to imply that you had the wrong idea. :) I’ve just seen a lot of Mastodon threads where people spout off about the alternate meaning of “licensing” and definitively stating that Songtradr is a DRM platform without understanding what Songtradr actually does. just as an example of the kinds of misinformation I’m pushing against.

thank you! No accusations of such, just wanting actual info instead of “trust me on this” (which has been all of the analysis I’ve seen, that is to say, nobody else has been actually explaining why they’re bad. Appreciate it!)

Sure! Sorry for the deluge of replies, I tend to get overly-posty when I’m stressed.

Also I was slightly set off by your phrase “based on what we know” because “we” felt like it included “me,” and I definitely overreacted on that. I really shouldn’t have been stress-posting at 2 AM.

And i really appreciate the info from a first hand account. I think it’s common for people to share unintentional misinfo about bad things by glossing over the details and IMO the details of exactly how and why something is bad are really important in determining how to think about/approach the thing at times! Especially with something like this where IMO it is not cut and dry or obvious.