Submarine Broadcasting Co Profile picture
Oct 17 14 tweets 2 min read Twitter logo Read on Twitter
Sorry for the rant, but there's a lot to digest.

Priorities first... the people of Bandcamp who've lost their jobs. It's horrible news, they deserved much better.

But whither us netlabels? A thread 🧵
Everything that SBC has achieved is down to Bandcamp. It would have not been possible with Soundcloud, nor the Internet Archive, nor CD Baby, nor the streaming distros, nor hosting our own storefront.
2/
Bandcamp provides a rapidly deployed, low cost, low risk mechanism to showcase and monetise music. And it provides an entire ecosystem that supports that. If you've ever sold anything on BC you'll be familiar with the emails that mention "the power of the network" 3/
So people who were looking for one thing find you instead. People who bought one thing from you find another. People who like artists like you find you.
And this is no accident. Unlike Last FM or Gnoosic, this is all integrated. Add to this the BC Daily and other editorials 4/
and you have a very powerful one-stop shop.
We also like the album-orientation of BC. Possibly because of our age, we believe that artists arrange and order their albums to be heard sequentially, and not cherry-picked by an algorithm. 5/
So unlike Spotify, which commodifies music, Bandcamp looks like the music-lover's platform. If you want to discover something new you can still go crate-digging, but the music is there as the artist intended it. 6/
So is it perfect? Nope. Some of the processes are very rigid, some things are counter-intuitive, new features only appear very occasionally. But if as an artist you want to showcase and sell your music and merch, you can be up and running in less than an hour. 7/
Compare and contrast some of the streaming distros who bitch and whine about your artwork or the casing of your titles or whether you can use words like "mix" or "version". Isn't BC a breeze by comparison? /8
So what will happen with the Songtradr acquisition? We don't know. Obviously BC will still exist and is unlikely to change overnight, but the overtures from Songtradr are not good. And look at their editorial style... much more akin to a streamer pimping /9
party bangerz than the eclectic outlook we've enjoyed from Bandcamp.
I suspect like many other netlabels we need to review where we go from here. We are, of course, fiercely uncommercial and our revenue from BC dwarfs our revenue from streamers by several magnitudes /10
but that aside, we lose money on physical merch so digital sales provide a little crumb of cashflow to paper over those cracks. Physicals are getting more and more difficult (see also Brexit and cossy livs) so digital sales really help. /11
Unlike the good staff of Bandcamp, SBC is a side hustle for us; we have proper jobs to pay the bills. But I can't imagine trying to maintain SBC without a BC presence - our website IS our BC page, pretty much.
So, time for some reflection on where to go. /12
Personally, in the real world, I've always avoided being the last person left to switch out the lights; I've always jumped before I was pushed. And that feels appropriate here. /ends 🧵
@threadreaderapp unroll, s'il vous plait.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Submarine Broadcasting Co

Submarine Broadcasting Co Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

:(