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This part is what many have a problem with I think: "...When a company needs to make decisions to increase their margin..."; why? Why do you _NEED_ to increase your margin? You can increase your profit amount without increasing your margin by extending your customer base, by being smarter about expenses, by being a savvier customer to your online infrastructure, etc. But what is the _NEED_ (emphasis is mine) to, literally, squeeze that rock harder to get more blood out of it, therefore ensuring it will crumble in the future?

The only thing I can think of is that there is no care for said future, "I'll squeeze as much as I can now, I got mine, so screw everyone else".



I think it's clear that they meant "profit" instead of "margin" from the context of the previous paragraph and the rest of the paragraph that your excerpt is from.


For lots of companies, 'increasing their margin' refers to increasing their margin from < 0 to > 0.

That would be my charitable reading of parent post, and does anybody believe that Bandcamp was profitable?


Yes, Bandcamp has been profitable for 13 years so this discussion is irrelevant.

https://blog.bandcamp.com/2016/05/19/bandcamp-downloads-stre...

Either things changed and Bandcamp suddenly was no longer profitable, which makes no sense, or the owners sold out for their own profit.


Yes, exactly. With a margin of <0, either someone is working for free or the company is running off of some kind of VC/angel investment, neither of which is sustainable.




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