@pettter How are they being gutted?

@pettter This doctrine of ever increasing growth is just POISON in every way. I wish I knew how we could stop it dominating our lives.

@pettter This is what happened to journalism in the USA. Newspapers and local stations that were stable, useful, and profitable were crammed into investment models that depended on big debt and accelerating profit growth. I can't help but think these disasters are on purpose - anything that supports making people think is a threat to the one percent.

@pettter Låt oss hoppas att de nya ägarna gör rätt val med Bandcamp, vilket de kanske gör nu när de har sparkat halva styrkan. Även om det såklart suger för de som blev lovad något som troligen aldrig fanns.

@pettter first rule of organis(m/isation)s: if you’re not growing you’re dying

@pettter i have never used bandcamp...but now that i am dj'ing and would like to explore possibilities of making money with it...

where do i go if a place like bandcamp is no longer *the* place?

bc i dont know if using my website is the way forward since i dont have a following that is large

if you dont know, no worries, im just curious

@pettter i think the fundamental problem here is that capital that accept other models are eclipsed by capital that has to pay boomers pensions...

The rise of the 401k match boomers starting to fund their retirement and there is a reason it is that vast majority of capital markets today...

@pettter I really hope someone builds a non-corporate Bandcamp even if this one doesn't completely tank under the enshittification.

@pettter it’s one of the many flaws in our capitalist system that we aren’t allowed to talk about because doing so makes us communists, and that’s not allowed either.

@pettter Always chasing that exponential.

@pettter it's not enough to make money, you have to make More money, it's all so ridiculous.

@pettter @maxeddy The same with Gumroad.

But it’d have been very difficult to build these without outside capital, since they largely rely on network effects.

@pettter @alexcox

If neither survive the process, something will HAVE to take their place. The very reason they exist is to prevent killing the goose that lays the golden eggs- the only way creatives can still make a living with out being wrung dry and thrown away by some jackass in a suit.

@pettter Let me introduce you to Tom Nicholas and his video on why Patreon and financiers ruined it for everyone.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mXyN3-gQwJw

@pettter Is it so bad to make an engine that runs well? Rather than an engine that spins so fast it breaks.

Investors are a problem.

@pettter That’s a shame! I didn’t like Patreon too much, but I think it was mostly their player that I thought was lacking, not the majority of the service. I have noticed that growth is the only model capitalism accepts! And when the market is flat or goes down, people go bananas, and let their lizard brains take over.

@pettter

This.

@pettter 💯
but this is a reminder to us all that there's no good companies.

@pettter @chopaganda And what's crazy is that realistically, logically, ever increasing growth is not only impossible to achieve, it's literally killing our planet.

This is apparent, everyone sees it, but turns a blind eye to it because 💰💵💶🤑

@pettter
The Stock Market was a mistake.

@pettter Patreon I understand a bit better. Jack Conte didn't WANT to be the microtransaction crowdfunding app for indie creators.

He WANTED to be the Ticketmaster/Major Label replacement for musicians. Give Amanda Palmer $20/mo to get tickets to her shows and her new albums. But Trent Reznor and Tori Amos weren't interested and a whole bunch of indie musicians, artists, YouTubers, podcasters, comic creators, and more were.

And he's been pissed off about the accidental success ever since.

@pettter Exactly what I have been thinking. I’ve been watching a video on Patreon, and it wasn’t clear to me that it got much VC money.

It still isn’t clear to me how much money you really need to run a Patreon-like business, especially when there is a steadyish income stream when things work. But there apparently must be perpetual growth which crashes at some point.

@pettter I have the long standing suspicion that this is why the German economy has a reputation of stability.
I feel that here, people take much more pride in providing a popular product or service and being reliable than a quick and easy path to adding more zeros to a bank account.
I feel, and that might be entirely subjective, that German entrepreneurs are more interested in building a legacy than cashing out.

@pettter SERIOUSLY. Like, come ON.

@pettter Yvon Choinard called this the “cancer model” of business.

@pettter Patreon could have made discovery better on the platform to increase everyone's income, instead they just added more marketing work for artists. Patrons brought in by artist efforts outside the platform & are therefore more limited.
It's a terrible platform imo.
Discouraging for artists trying to develop support. Only good if you already have support in which case their platform is giving them your time, income, & fanbase contact list for nothing. Either way, it's a waste.

@pettter funny AND sad.

@pettter going back to how badly PureVolume.com and Virb.com — from the same founder/product teams — tanked after their acquisitions, I don’t think the goal is ever to create enduring products that make people happy, at least not once capitalized. It’s to be able to buy fancy cars and put stuff like this on your resume:

"PureVolume was sold to Buzz Media (now SpinMedia) in 2010, one of the web's fastest growing entertainment publishers and a ComScore top 50 property.”

@pettter rotting patreon may be king, but at least there's alternatives like Liberapay, OpenCollective and even Ko-Fi.
my only hope is that such platforms rise to compete with Bandcamp.

@pettter well said, and precisely why I'm encouraging people who are considering building post-BC replacements to go full Fediverse non commercial/capitalist, a pure FOSS platform with instances run directly by artists and labels on rented or owned infra, possibly with a Patreon style subscription/fanclub feature for stable income, but the point being no middleman at all, no corporate entity taking any slice, all transactions directly from artist/label to consumer.

@pettter I agree with your sentiment and I loved what bandcamp was doing

but, they didnt have to sell. they chose that.