It might sound weird to say this about the impact of a website, but Bandcamp really has transformed my musical interests and, as a result, my life. I have been able to cultivate & help support a small, shifting, virtual community of artists and listeners that I learned from over the past 13 years. So, it is very sad to hear about the recent sell-off, layoffs and plunder.
cc/ @bandcampunited
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This post from @pettter has me wondering if there are any efforts yet to start to think about what a similar #coop run service might look like?
https://mastodon.acc.umu.se/@pettter/111249022267794376
It seems like Bandcamp is past the startup stage where it could #ExitToCommunity?
https://www.colorado.edu/lab/medlab/2020/08/31/exit-community-community-primer
As much as I personally align with decentralization, there does seem to be some value in a centralized platform for managing payments, storage and discovery for artists whose livelihood depends on trust.
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If anyone has any leads for how to tap into, or start, a conversation about what a #coop run music platform like bandcamp could look like please let me know.
It seems like there must be a very large number of people who would be supportive of a cooperatively run AND FUN site like Bandcamp, that was self sustaining, supported artists, supported its workers, and had a clear governance model.
If it was open-source and could federate that would be great of course too. But first things first.
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PS. I might need to blame @dchud & ️ for prompting this line of thinking. It's not the first time I've had wild ideas after a conversation with him :-)
I keep taggging the Bandcamp union @bandcampunited to see if they're interested.
Would it be an insider trading illegal thingy if the rest of the employees quit in solidarity and then bought the newely tanked company to make it a co-op / worker self-directed enterprise?
@kostyn @bandcampunited Yes I've been wondering something similar. I guess there may be NDAs at play?
It seems like (in theory) what @Gargron did for Mastodon riffing off of TweetDeck could be repeated for some new app that riffs off of Bandcamp?