Urging calm and support for the artists we love in the face of the latest changes at Bandcamp
** IF YOU ARE FEELING AT ALL OVERWHELMED, NEED HELP NAVIGATING HOW TO FEDI GET THROUGH THIS, OR NEED TO TALK ABOUT HOW YOU MIGHT GO FORWARD WITH SHARING YOUR CREATIVE OUTPUT PLEASE DM @radiofreefedi@musician.social AND WE WILL DO OUR VERY BEST TO HELP, CONNECT TO HELP, ADVISE OR JUST BE A KINDRED SHOULDER TO LEAN ON! **
Last year our human artist in residence urged everyone to hold fire on kneejerk account deletions or boycotting Bandcamp for the sake of the artists. We encouraged all to spare a thought for the extreme scenario independent artists who may have been trying desperately to avoid padding the pockets of google, amazon, apple, spotify etc and provide relatively good transparent and ethical format, licensing and ownership options.
Bandcamp was and has remained the last least worst option for artists to be: 1. less ripped off on percentages 2. relative easy usage for artist and listener 3. pretty darn decent options for file formats, and respecting agency and licensing wishes 4. relatively widely accepted and adopted platform for some level of discovery, reach and trust
Is it a privacy panacea, no, is it better for many than having to run, manage, build or cost your own platform or infinitely seek, test and jump other platforms, yes.
Epic/Tencent as an absentee owner was a weird and scary transaction and should ideally never have happened but aside from workers needing to organise, and the workers absolutely supporting the artists throughout that process, it was happily a rather uneventful 18 months at least in terms of not ruining much for artists.
The new owner is a marketing first entity specialising in licensing deals and rights management. On precautionary principle there is a much higher probability of litigious power imbalances, artist exploitation and abuse from angles that simply have never been existent in Bandcamp to date. Further, they have an AI portfolio. You may be fine with all of that and none of it may be bad. But it hits different to the absentee owner who was at least semi-creative adjacent and did not meddle in a decent artist-centric model at scale. And if you were super interested in commercial licensing deals you would have been on other platforms like it already.
It feels appropriate for users and artists to backup their libraries and be agile for portability which is a good idea even not during a centralised platform buyout.
IF terms, pricing, power imbalance moves one iota under new ownership it will be fair to call that out. It will be fair to stand against it. But all the while please have the health and safety of the artists caught in the crossfire at heart.
It is an exhausting exercise for musicians to have to constantly ponder how they can achieve reach or support, even more so if including any ethical matrix for artist and supporter agency. Reach and material support is so important for many independent artists.
Please also consider that many artists may not or cannot possibly understand all the implications you might see or be able to act/react to every centralised corporate transgression as they try to survive out there.
We should also understand it is fair for end users to be concerned on the possible loss or fragmentation of their collection and discovery, or diminishing of their positive impact on artists and how they might coordinate following, supporting, and listening in varying degrees via new to them methods.
There is no greener pasture. We can appreciate there would be nowhere near an equal amount of support going to 5 million discrete artist shops as there is in one Bandcamp.
Most of the hyper open federated/distributed models are clunky and not ready to provide support, reach, agency, ease of use without a lot of work. Larger coop models have come and gone and those that exist are still poor experiences and/or very niche some even after years of building. The point here is jumping to something else or shouting to build something else can be a trap. This isn't being negative, it is just emphasising to approach these regular hurdles through the lens of not leaving artists in the lurch during platform lag and to consider that the more artists are fretting or hustling to manage platforms is time they are NOT making music.
At this latest concerning nexus it is important to do our very best to support independent artists in the ways they encourage if we can be at all amiable.
This hopefully allows them to focus on primarily creating and secondarily platform negotiations. This might be via corporate platforms, this might continue to be Bandcamp, this might be donation or subscription models via donation or direct payment gateways, it might be on free sources or archives, it might be on an artists' own setup or any combination of these. Please do what “works” for you, please strive for what might work better but hopefully not at the burn out expense of our collective ability to create, listen and support. Yes there are MANY “options” out there but please be mindful not to shout them at artists not asking. Do please help each other out with options and support if engaged.
We will be here trying our best to support fedi artists while continuing to in an agnostic manner list the support link they advise.
** IF YOU ARE FEELING AT ALL OVERWHELMED, NEED HELP NAVIGATING HOW TO FEDI GET THROUGH THIS, OR NEED TO TALK ABOUT HOW YOU MIGHT GO FORWARD WITH SHARING YOUR CREATIVE OUTPUT PLEASE DM @radiofreefedi@musician.social AND WE WILL DO OUR VERY BEST TO HELP, CONNECT TO HELP, ADVISE OR JUST BE A KINDRED SHOULDER TO LEAN ON! **
Take care of each other out there!
Kia kaha!
Ngā mihi me te aroha nui