Yes. They acquired the company for no logical reason, did nothing with it, and then dumped it rather than spin it out because they don't care and want their money back.
From the perspective of a Bandcamp customer, does any of this actually affect their ability to browse, buy, and listen to music? "ruin" implies the quality degraded, while "nothing" implies a neutral progression.
The only degregation here is the layoffs from the torch passing, but I believe Bandcamp still has more employees now than they did before being acquired.
Nearly the entire editorial staff have been laid off, for music fans /artists of certain genres, these were the only people writing about their music. That's a significant degradation. The employee head count bit needs a citation I think, I wasn't aware that Epic had hired anyone at all into the Bandcamp team during their brief custody which would make that statement completely impossible.
And it was 118 at the time of layoffs, as you'd see in pretty much every article (and Wikipedia) talking about the topic. I can't exactly pinpoint how much they had when Epic swooped in, but even Bandcamp had a modest growth over the pandemic.
And my condolences for the editorial. I didn't even know Bandcamp had articles before reading this comment.
what did they edit? im honestly curious as in my perception bandcamp is something that i get a link to from a band and that i then use to buy music. have problably spent a couple of 100 € over the years there.
i just did and almost missed it. it looks like ads for albums except there is a small "feature" string. i'm honestly not sure i ever visited this page before. always went directly to the band site.
to understand my POV better, my usecase is:
- band that i like and follow (mostly newsletter, some social media, rarely friends that mention it drecty) sends an update "hey new stuff, click here"
- i click the link, listen a bit, buy and download
I understand perfectly your POV, but it's not the experience of all of Bandcamp's users, particularly artists who release there, DJs, or fans of niche genres. The loss of the editorial team is huge to these groups.
> They acquired the company for no logical reason, did nothing with it, and then dumped it rather than spin it out because they don't care and want their money back.
They acquired it to use as a tool in their antitrust lawsuit against Google.
Epic ruined it.