Now that Bandcamp has had huge layoffs, what about an opensource, Fediverse-friendly replacement? What can a FOSS product bring to the community and do better than Bandcamp?

  • Discoverability?
  • Broader selection of payments platforms? Direct transfer to avoid processors? (I’m ignorant about the processing system, plus international considerations)
  • Ease of spinning up (SaaS?)
  • Content deliverability (on the fly transcode from sourced FLAC or WAVs? Rich video/multi track audio?)
  • ttmrichter@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    1 year ago

    The issue is “discoverability”. Producers “taking care of online distribution themselves” are dealing with, you know, the very problem that they are not discoverable. Unless they’re on a third-party service, of course.

    A commercial centralized discoverability service would enshittify REALLY quickly because of the profit motive. First they’d make everything nice for both listers and consumers. Make themselves indispensable to listers. Then lock the listers into an abusive relationship with no viable means out. (Kind of like bandcamp, come to think of it!) And once they’ve squeezed every last ounce out of the listers, the consumers get the screws next since there’s no viable option for them to escape to.

    A non-profit foundation has no profit motive (by definition) so has no incentive whatsoever to enshittify.

    • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      Or, you know, the music creators could seize the means of distribution and take care of it themselves… Again, discoverability for anything that’s decentralized has yet to be proven better than a centralized solution. I never search answers to issues on Lemmy, I search on Reddit or Steam forums (for game issues). I don’t go on Google to look for new music, I go on Spotify.

      Anyway, what’s the advantage for the artists exactly? They need to trust Sir_poop_up_my_butt with their music on their server and hope that they don’t just go offline at some point rendering their music inaccessible just like the content of some instances just disappeared because people got bored with Lemmy and hosting their instance?

      • ttmrichter@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        The. Advantage. Is. Discoverability.

        If you can’t figure out from there what the issue is, you’re on your own Sparky. Maybe talk to an artist struggling with the current system and tell them they just have to “take care of it themselves”. I’d advise not saying it in person, though, or you’ll wind up getting … ah … bruised. Slightly. Ever so slightly.

        • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          And as I said multiple times, discoverability sucks in a decentralized service because searching for things is nigh impossible.

          • ttmrichter@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            You asserted it multiple times, yes, but substantiated nothing.

            Go off and waste someone else’s feed, Sparky. I’ve got better things to bang my head against than brick walls.

            • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              You haven’t shown how a decentralized system is better for discoverability and the original claim was that it is, without anything to substantiate the claim. So far decentralization experiences show that it’s pretty much impossible to find content on there, heck, even Reddit is bad to share and accumulate content/knowledge compared to traditional forums and websites!