Bandcamp is a group enterprise which is constructed out of the work of around 60 people or so.
None of those employees actually *own* the enterprise though, the enterprise's ownership is abstracted away from membership of the group of people that make Bandcamp work.
Which means the owners, without consulting with the members of the group, can sell the group to other owners.
And that is indeed what has happened.
The new owners of the group are likely to insist that the members of the group enshitify their service and impoverish themselves and their customers.
This is capitalism: The abstraction of the ownership and control of a group enterprise to make it separate from membership of the group itself.
The boss's bosses ain't in the group, and they don't care about the mission or the music or the bands.
They only care about return on investment.
The only way to prevent capital from selling out your group enterprise is to never let capital own the group enterprise in the first place.
Try to work for co-ops, and if you are a worker or musician at Bandcamp, maybe just quit and start something that isn't owned by money.
This is actually pretty weird. Can you imagine trying to explain it to an alien?
So the people that work there can just be sacked and the whole org shut down without their consultation?
And the people who use the service don't need to be consulted either?
The only people who are seen as having an interest in the group enterprise are a bunch of share-holders of a different enterprise who decided to sell them?
Capitalism is actually utterly mad.
@pre "Mad" is a terribly polite way of putting it.
@conniptions I'm sure you already know that the only cannon copy of your music should be on your own hard-drive. Your only copy isn't there on their servers.
Hope the buy-out turns out good for you and everyone, but then not much of what I hope for actually happens.
@pre Oh yes, for sure, and not just backed up seven ways to Sunday but also, finally, the answer to the question, "why did I still do CDs last time around". There's extra redundant offsite backup for you :)
As for what's will happen, I've been expecting an eventual enshittification of BC for a long time now: let's hope I'm as wrong now as I was when Epic bought it, but also, realistically, let's choose now to stare very hard at things like this (by @fluffy I think) too:
Also: When Iron Source bought Unity I had a quick look at Godot to see if it would do, and it looked like probably it wouldn't.
Since then Godot released version 4, Unity enshitified their terms of service, and I was told of the existence of Monado!
I am so much happier with the entire project now I know it can have a fully open entire-stack. And I might never have to boot into Windows again!
And the software I'm writing is better not only because anything is better 2nd time around but also because Godot actually is better in some ways that requires now fewer horrible hacks and workarounds.
Boycott Capitalism is a thing we can actually do in the software world at least.
[Edit: Iron Source bought Unity, not Epic, bad spelling of Monado]
@pre Ha.
I have no choice but to deal with Unity things at work, alas, for now.
But for me, in terms of Engine That Does All The Things I Need, Godot has been it since I discovered it.
Filing away Monando in case I ever want to do that kind of thing also, ta.
@conniptions The thing about Monando is that on Windows my VR rig used to stutter. Just like drop one frame below 90 fps every second or so.
The graph on the SteamVR debug-window looked like ..|.....|.....|....
I actually think Monando on Linux though X is doing better. The stutter is gone.
Nothing other than Godot seems to support it in any way at all. I have failed at getting any games to run though it what so ever.
But my own code is suttering less now on the free systems.