fluffy 💜Oct 4, 2023

oh god Songtradr’s takeover of #Bandcamp has ended up being way worse than anyone expected much more quickly. tl;dr: Songtradr isn’t honoring the union, has locked out employees from critical systems, and is basically trying to steamroll everyone in the handoff.

https://twitter.com/ethangach/status/1709588666216018411

At the very least this means this #bandcampfriday might not be so great, and most likely everything about bandcamp is going to shit very rapidly.

AmericanTruckSongs9 on X

Bandcamp employees say they've been locked out of critical systems and unable to do their jobs since Epic announced it was selling. This will hurt Bandcamp Fridays where 100% of the profits go to artists. They're bargaining over layoffs and severance. It's an epic mess.

X (formerly Twitter)
Show threadUnassuming Plural System

@fluffy

We of the #VoidConspiracy took matters into our own hands and are now self-hosting our music and storefront.

It hurts discoverability but ultimately the only way to not be a victim of mega corporations fucking with our music and our sales is not to play their game.

We actually make more per sale this way as well.

Not sure if it helps, but I wrote a post on how to do this.

https://www.voidconspiracy.com/creating-a-self-hosted-music-storefront-using-aws-s3-and-sendowl/

Creating a Self-Hosted Music Storefront using AWS S3 and SendOwl – Jessica B. Kelly & The Void Conspiracy

Oct 4, 2023 at 8:39pmWeb
Show threadfluffy 💜Oct 4, 2023
@jessica thanks, SendOwl looks pretty great. I can see a universe of using that along with pyBlamscamp for the encoding and previewing part, since one of the best features of Bandcamp is that they did an amazing job of encoding the files to begin with.
Show threadUnassuming Plural SystemOct 4, 2023

@fluffy

I have no stake in SendOwl but have been amazed by the simplicity of it all. Artists don’t have to worry about Personally Identifying Data or storing any data at all except their own music. And if people don’t want to use S3, they can upload directly into SendOwl.

I’m more than happy to help twist the knife in Songtradr 🔪

Show threadfluffy 💜Oct 4, 2023
@jessica Does it support other backing storage, like plain ol' HTTP or B2 or whatever? I'd rather avoid a dependency on AWS.
Show threadfluffy 💜Oct 4, 2023
@jessica oh wait, they charge a monthly fee, that's a bit disappointing
Show threadUnassuming Plural SystemOct 4, 2023

@fluffy

The only 'secured' non-SendOwl backing storage it supports is s3, but it can make a GET to whatever if you aren't worried about preventing unwanted downloads.

Show threadfluffy 💜Oct 4, 2023
@jessica I feel like I'd be better served by figuring out a better way of selling music via Gumroad and itch. I already have the itch process figured out, and all that's missing on Gumroad is the inability to put a preview player up there. (And now I wish Gumroad had an actual API for automated uploads and content formatting.)
Show threadfluffy 💜Oct 4, 2023
@jessica oh also does sendowl provide anything like a download library? or is it just a one-and-done file sending thing?
Show threadUnassuming Plural SystemOct 4, 2023
@fluffy if you have the link, you can access your order history, downloading each file up to 10 times
Show threadfluffy 💜Oct 4, 2023

@jessica Hm, that's a pretty significant limitation compared to how Bandcamp does things, as well as the other digital storefronts. And you still have to manage your own encoding and preview hosting. I guess in terms of raw pricing it can be better than the other storefronts if you make enough monthly sales, though.

I'd just love to see something like bandcamp that's run like a co-op or the like. Resonate was promising but they basically imploded and never had a path to profitability.

Show threadPJ "Vote Green" CoffeyOct 5, 2023

@jessica @fluffy

Nice Post. Shame if someone were to stick # like
#Music #SelfHost #StoreFront #AWS #SendOwl #IndependentMusic #AntiCorpo

On it and boost discoverabilty see?

And then tagging a music auto boosting group? Just bang out of order.

@music

Of course a real monster would also tag #LGBTQ and #Trans because everyone knows how much #Queer people hate independent musicians.

<Warning: this post may not be entirely serious. I do not normally talk like a gangster pastiche.>

Show threadfluffy 💜Oct 5, 2023

@Homebrewandhacking @jessica @music the main issue with sendowl is the same issue as any other random digital storefront: it only handles purchasing, not encoding. I don’t see sendowl as being any better than gumroad or ko-fi in that regard.

pyBlamscamp exists as a tool that handles the encoding but it’s not easy to start using. I should make a web thing for it. Although a local GUI makes more sense for everyone.