Writer, musician, wizardly guide to platform independence
So “Polymarket is Doubling Down on Substack,” the CEO of Substack is “hyped,” a gaggle of Substack writers are up in arms over a for-profit company doing for-profit things, while onlookers are aghast, voicing their “I told you Substack is bad” quips on the very fine and respectable Twitter platform. Burn it all down.
I believe this with all my heart:
Go beyond the idea that you “need eyeballs” for your efforts to be worthwhile, and believe that writing about what you do in a lower stakes manner might be the best thing for your work.
I’ve been blogging since 2001, writing and publishing and hitting post or send for 26 years. Heck, even before that in the late 90s when building websites for bands and sending email newsletters for tiny music venues.
I always hear “if I leave social media, I’ll miss out on so much.”
But here’s almost 900 personal sites. Blogs. (via Naive Weekly)
Here’s 12 albums on the best selling Electronic > Down tempo genre on Bandcamp. Use your taste, pick one, and hit play. Don’t like it? There’s 1,000 more.
We have taste, computers have luck. Choose accordingly.
Love this from Rolling Stone: “Johnny Blue Skies, the guy formerly known as Sturgill Simpson, will release a new album only in physical format.”
No streaming, just vinyl, CD, and cassette.
As Steve Vai once said, “I get paid the most.” As more artists call the shots, and resist the allure of giving everything away for free, then we’ll see some actual change in the creative world.
Spotify won’t one day wake up and start paying more. Nor will the general public just stop streaming everything for $10 a month.
Until there’s less music available to stream.
Love music? Support it, or watch it go away.
Got 40+ registered for tomorrow’s BREAK UP 💔 WITH SOCIAL MEDIA Day Zoom call tomorrow at 12pm EST (Feb 14, of course, still time to register).
Three hours a day is… a lot. I’ll be deleting the YouTube app (too easy to get caught up in scrolling Shorts while making lunch, or reheating my coffee), and the Substack app. Now that I can schedule Live streams via the desktop, I can finally ditch the app, as that too is just way too easy to scroll scroll scroll a few times a day, which adds up.
I love doing live stream stuff, and I feel like I need to figure out how to do that via YouTube or something at some point.
MIST: Like Google Docs, but for Markdown files, by Matt Webb.
I want to be able to share a Markdown doc as easily as sharing a link, and have real-time multiplayer editing, suggested edits, and comments, without a heavyweight app in the background.
Via Brad Barrish.
It was 13 years ago today that NPR’s Ask Me Another Twitter account gave my Skull Toaster project a little shout.
I posted well over 2,000 nerdy metal trivia questions on Twitter, and also over 1,000 email newsletters with the answers (and backstory). From 2011-2018 I did this as a living resume; showing potential companies that I could build audience, build community, and handle daily content for both social media and email newsletters, which is now the basis of my work over a decade later.
This stuff takes time. Don’t let the online guru’s fool you – it’s not as easy as just “pick your niche” and then “post content.” Anyone can buy a domain name and post for a month, but it takes belief and vision to do it for the long haul, even with no guarantee of making $10,000/MRR or an email list with 5,000 subscribers.
Installed the latest re:AMP music player beta and loving it. Keyboard commands to load up folders of music. Classic look. Love it.
I’ve been listening to RTJ4 on and off since it came out in 2020. Five years, and I haven’t paid a dime to anyone in the Run The Jewels camp.
You can buy the digital album directly from the artist via their own website, which puts the most money in their pocket (Apple takes a cut, Amazon takes a cut, every download store takes a cut). This album isn’t even available on their Bandcamp page.
Jesus christ on a stick, this is amatuer hour.
I found via The Trend Report that Kamala Harris is launching Headquarters, “the new Gen-Z led progressive content hub.”
The announcement video was posted on the official HQ Twitter account (here), a 28 second video clip made in a conference room explaining that it’s where you’ll find the latest of what’s going on, and meet and revisit with courageous leaders.
No mention of the URL, or any sort of call to action. Just to “stay engaged” and “I’ll see you out there.”
So the HQ Twitter profile has a link: headquarters.news, which links to…
… a Substack Welcome page.
This annoying Welcome page “feature” can’t be turned off, but a quick Google search will tell you how to avoid it.
I skipped this by clicking the tiny X in the upper right corner. C’mon, take me to the “the new Gen-Z led progressive content hub” already!
That’s it, folks. That’s the new Gen-Z led progressive content hub.
No video (nah, save that for social media, I guess).
This was posted on Feb 5th, and I’m writing this on the 8th (I guess nothing much has happened since this initial post).
And the Substack About page hasn’t been updated, leaving the generic default text; “Join the crew,” are you kidding me?
How do you launch this without some already published “meet and revisit with courageous leaders” posts, as mentioned in the kick off video?
How do you launch this without having an updated ABOUT page?
How do you launch this without any video, branding, or images?
How do you launch this without links to resources about registering to vote, or how to contact your elected officials?
How do you launch a “content hub” like this in 2026?