Rockstar, Necrosoft and other game devs slam Epic and Songtradr for "trashing" Bandcamp as layoffs announced
Rockstar, Necrosoft and other game devs slam Epic and Songtradr for "trashing" Bandcamp as layoffs announced
You're viewing a single thread.
Yep. Somehow actually paying independent artists is not a profitable business model. Someone needs to suck the blood out of them for the "system" to work...
I mean... it is basically the same problem as youtube/video. Audio is orders of magnitude less storage (unless you are a FLAC sicko), but it is also played a lot more. And people generally don't want to have to plug their zune into their computer to grab mp3s before they go for a drive, so you still need a content delivery service. All of which costs money.
And then you have monetization. Just look around at all the people losing their god damned minds over youtube caring about adblockers. Hell, just look at how every single youtube video gets a bot reply that basically says "Hey, want to dick over this content creator? use this link instead". And, evil google or not, most creators (who don't get demonetized because of their content...) will point out that youtube is pretty nice in terms of revenue and that they give a very good cut of the premium ad-free subscribers.
Which gets back to music. Someone will probably pay for Tay-Tay's latest album because she is the biggest musician on the planet. But Biffy Clyro? They are great to listen to in a mix but are they REALLY worth the 15 bucks for an album? I mean, sure you listen to them every single day but...
These kinds of arguments remind me of when someone (I think it was Snoop?) was ranting about how much they hate spotify and gave what, on paper, sounded like a small number. And if you actually broke down the amount of money per listen they were asking for and then normalized against the cost of an ad on various services, it was actually REALLY expensive.
You make a fair point but in Bandcamp's case they offer a download like Steam or streamed playback if someone prefers. It's the one place where I DON'T HAVE to resort to piracy or buying massive collections of CDz if I want to be able to listen to music without restriction. I want to pay the people who did the creative work. I don't want to pay a whole bunch of people with a small fraction of it reaching the original creator.
Again, the normal case is not people maintaining their own giant collection of mp3 files. Just like with physical copies of games and movies, most people have decided they want the convenience of not having to manage an mp3 player library.
Same with purchasing. It is great that you want to pay the people who did the creative work. ... Does that mean you buy every single album you listen to? Because you ARE going to have to buy a "massive collection" unless you only listen to one or two bands endlessly. Or, more likely, you will do what everyone does and decide "Well, I barely listen to that band and only like one or two of their songs so it it really worth buying?".
It sucks for the artists who have lost their bandcamp revenue. But it was bound to happen because the model itself is fundamentally incompatible with the modern consumer base.
I'm weird that I do listen to the same 7 song album for hours some days. (Turbo being one example)
But also other artists I listen to like Michael Jackson aren't on Bandcamp and I haven't found a local used CD shop since I last moved. They also aren't stuffing money I'd give for Michael's music into his grave anyway.