Have you used Bandcamp? It's a way larger feature set than an iOS app for picture sharing.

Yes I used it, it looks like a website from 2004, clearly their core competencies can not be about building their own file upload, payment etc. but creating Customer Friendly Sexy Branded landing, working with labels etc. which they failed to do with 100 ppl

This website from 2004 is more usable than many of the websites from 2023, it is clearly working well enough (or I guess those other websites aren’t doing their jobs right.)

People came to Bandcamp for music, not some fancy eye popping website. I'm glad they have not redesign their website.

Ah yes, the halcyon days of 2004, when websites were all…minimalist?

Bandcamp has been one of the most functional and user-centered designs on the web for a long time now. They asked for far less commission on sales, and they provided options for downloading music in FLAC and even WAV formats, and were well ahead of the curve with “pay what you can” pricing. I have been a musician all of my life. I used Bandcamp exclusively to distribute my music online, and every musician I have ever known prefers it over every other option—by wide margins. Part of what we liked was how little it engaged in feature-creep and bloat.

What are you talking about? They work with a ton of labels. The landing page is tailored to discovery... they are long past the sexy branding stage, having millions of users and being the most loved independent music platform.

Instagram was an outlier, and I think you know that.

Instagram had no revenue at acquisition.

Headcount always grows disproportionally whenever you start dealing with payments.

Not just directly taking them but all of the associated compliance and legal issues.

Ah good point! I didn't think about international payments in my first WAG - you're right that that would certainly need some people. So I would up my initial guess based on that, like maybe up another 25-30%, but that would still land us at around where songtradr is going if they are laying off 50%.