#capitalism breeds innovation

[lunacygansita]

i guess 2023 is the year animation dies. christ.

[clouds-of-wings]

Power Metal reddit currently has a discussion about Nuclear Blast, about what has changed with them and why, and man I have learned a lot of disturbing facts about what has happened there in the past 5 years. Someone posted an in-depth investigative article about it (from November 2021), which you should read if you speak German and are interested, otherwise or if it's too long here are the main points...

If you're into Nightwish, Sabaton, Blind Guardian etc., this is relevant information.

In 2018, the French Believe Music, which is a large corporation that mainly specializes in digital distribution, became majority owner of NB

Believe is not really interested in physical media like CDs and vinyls even though the people who worked at NB told their new corporate overlords that metal fans like physical media, both because many fans of especially the oldest and most successful bands are 50+ and because it's more ingrained in the subculture. Believe doesn't care and doesn't listen. They have their experiences from pop and hip-hop, where phone-based streaming subscriptions are the norm, and that's all they want to know. They are also ignoring printed magazines and don't advertise there much anymore.

Less focus on physical media means that bands now earn less, that they rank less highly in album charts, which in turn means that they lose negotiation power when they try to plan tours and negotiate with venues etc., because they "look" less successful

Believe has been dealing with this by signing mainly bands that are easy to market digitally and ending co-operations with bands that aren't, even ones that had been with NB for decades (like Rage and Nile, who went to Napalm)

The personal cooperation between bands and NB has really suffered, everything is more profit-oriented and impersonal, a lot of budgets have been decreased and the real decisions are made by Believe in Paris, not by any specific NB team

Believe has been stock market traded since 2021. Their stock value went down at first, was at about the price it had started out at when the article was written - I looked it up and in March 23 it's down 40% from its original value. Ouch.

The original founder of NB started a new label, Atomic Fire, and took "Amorphis, Helloween, Opeth, Sonata Arctica, Meshuggah, Primal Fear, Agnostic Front, Rise Of The Northstar, Silver Lake, White Stones and Michael Schenker Group" with him, also because Believe didn't really do much to keep many of these bands

It's certainly interesting to learn about, also because I had already wondered if NB, and some of their bands, had intentionally taken a more "commercial" approach in recent years, but I didn't know about the Believe thing. I thought it maybe had something to do with losses from the pandemic or something. Turns out they have a new owner.

[unscharf-an-den-raendern]

[bigassbowlingballhead]

Amazon has a link to a store front with rwrb merch...

and it's... leaving things to be desired. Where is the claremont forward together shirt? just random tag lines?

some what looks like vkelley art, which is nice

the socks

we got the title

the line™️

the tag line

[acidbathcat]

you wanna know why there’s only 5 websites left?

[besnouted]

i love insurance my doctor has been putting prior auth requests for my stimulant increase through my insurance plan you know, as one logically would do, and we were wondering why they were just sitting there for weeks and weeks no matter how many we put in and. i call and theyre like Oh yeah you cant run prior auth through (insurance plan) you have to run it directly through the parent company. ok. what is the point. why are we doing this

[anarchywoofwoof]

CBS is a 15 billion dollar company and tumblr is a 80 million dollar company. CBS has like 13k employees, tumblr around 2.5k. not a single one of them said “hey there’s a typo in our inline ad”

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

The first mission to Mars is gonna have private sponsors with logos plastered all over the spacecrafts and suits, and the astronauts will be contractually obligated to read ads like it's a podcast, "the Ares Program was only possible because a lot of people knew the right stuff, and you too can learn the right stuff from home with a subscription to Great Courses Plus, just $15 a month when you use promo code NASA1969. They offer thousands of lecture series on hundreds of topics. Sign up today."

Skillspace and squareshark and surfshare, audible, nord, brilliant, raid shadow legends, mattress firm, me undies, zip recruiter, hello fresh, crunchy roll, whatever the fuck

[dragon-frootie]

[tinytrills]

More brands should call themselves the fuckin Quorngler or some shit because searching generic ass names online for them does not help at all

[sudaca-swag]

fucking windows we are stuck in a time loop of constant mandatory "actualizations" every two weeks or something that make our devices work even worse every fucking time

[high-theyre-frendough]

im mad that most phones these days barely have any buttons. please, please, please brin back buttons fuck have a camera button. a flashlight button make more interesting shapes. i want clunky chunky phones. yes it can still still have a screen but make it more interesting. make it interactive. make it tactile. i want to fee like i am using something. why do i need to buy a fucking case separately? make it part of the phone. make it interesting. do something new. let me feel alive.

[dianas-shortgalpal]

[cyeayt]

I hate this fucking country

[roseamongroses]

warner brothers on its supervillian shit once again

[hanthewriter]

I literally don't understand the desire to have a luxury car.

My neighbor and I both drive black sedans. Their's is a Lexus and mine is a Ford. They look almost exactly the same and mine was probably half the price.....