Category: Internet

No One Asked

Loved this bit from the Extra Paint podcast with Meg Lewis, at about the 16:30 mark; about making stuff that no one asked you to create.

Not hired. No committee. No poll. Just making something because you want to see it in the world.

I started Skull Toaster in 2011 (oh my god, TEN years ago) because I wanted to put something on Twitter that didn’t send you off to read something elsewhere. I wanted to put the meat right where you were; on Twitter. No one asked.

No one asked me to start ‘Goodnight, Metal Friend,’ but I wanted to hear dark ambient and drone metal songs with NO DRUMS, because dammit I wanted to fall asleep to it! So I made it, and now I’ve made 12 mixes and a few fans! NEATO.

If want to stream, stream your thing. Write your thing. Post your videos. The world needs to see your own unique, different, oddball stuff because some people like unique, different, oddball stuff! Right now it’s just hard to get any traction because of all the algorithms and noise on social media. But do your thing, put it on your own website and promote it.

No one asked, and that’s fine.

Photo by Vlad Fonsark from Pexels

Daily Loop #18

Today I beat Instagram. Today, on MLK Jr. Day. I scrolled once, twice, and knew the comfort that it brings. I could just crawl back into bed, pull the covers up, and swipe, swipe, swipe.

But I cracked open Abelton Live, plugged in my gear, re-arranged some stuff, and got to it. Maybe saying “got to work” is a bit much, but maybe that’s true, as well.

If you write, you’re a writer.

A friend told me recently she met Victor Wooten, the amazing, other-worldly bassist. She mentioned that she was taking lessons from someone he knew, so he exclaimed, “oh, so you’re a bassist,” to which she replied, “well, umm.. I mean…”

She told me he squared up, looked her in the eyes, and said, “you’re a bassist.”

LIKES

“To our LGBTQIA fans and fellow musicians: we love you. Thank you for being who you are. Metal (and the rest of the world) is stronger because of your voices and power. We are grateful for y’all.” @khemmisdoom

Daily Loop #17

Don’t discount yourself. That’s something I struggle with a lot these days. “Oh, I just ran a mile today,” is something that came out my mouth recently, when just 4-ish years ago I couldn’t run a mile without being in pain for a week afterwards.

I’m tempted to discount this loop today, as there’s so much more that could be done here. Better arrangement, better mix, more vocals, more sizzle, more pop… the list goes on and will never end.

But this baby got out today, and that’s all that matters. This is the public facing audio treat, and that’s final. It’s not the final mix, and frankly no one cares.

LIKES

“blasting shoegaze while driving means turning it down every five seconds to make sure that the weird noises in the song aren’t coming from your car,” @dniellechelosky

“I’m not one for ‘told ya so’s but in 1989 when David Duke won the state House seat in Louisiana, some of us said this was an inflection point in American politics. This wasn’t just the logical result of Reaganesque racial dog whistling. It was something different,” @timjacobwise

“I’m just thinking again about how many lives would have been saved had the US had competent — or even vaguely interested — national leadership when the pandemic hit,” @AstroKatie

Video by Anthony from Pexels

Daily Loop #16

Today’s Daily Loop gets a little raunchy, featuring a vocal sample and a mish-mash of other sounds and debris. Still getting the hang of the APC40 but woo, I love it.

LIKES:

“I love @YouTube and put a music video on there the other day… how can this be happening? I don’t want my fans or anyone to be funding hate or violence,” @selenagomez

https://twitter.com/Ang_Ramm/status/1350308428569337856

Daily Loop #16 Video by C Technical from Pexels

Let Your Work Cook

During a recent Instagram Stories doom-swipe session, I noticed Kendriana post about one of her posts being removed because IG thought it broke some rule. A physical trainer I follow had their entire account wiped out because of some unknown one-and-done rule breaking (thankfully they got their account back).

With each day that passes, it’s never been more important to move your followers to your website. To your email list. Get your biggest fans to follow you to a platform you own.

Social media is so enticing for artists, photographers, musicians, etc because of the instant feedback. The interaction. The release of endorphins that come from instant validation.

The entire system is built on that, but it’s a system to benefit them, not you.

You feed their system day and night with content, with engagement, with interaction. In turn, they harvest your user data, habits, track what you look at and like, and sell it to advertisers.

So long as you keep feeding social media your time and effort, they will make lots of money.

The alternative is update your own website. Send an email to your newsletter subscribers.

Neither give you the instant feedback, but stop and consider that instant isn’t alway better.

Sometimes you need to let your work cook.

Make your site something that’s so rad that people would miss it if it were gone (via Seth Godin). Make it something that is a part of people’s lives. Something worth typing into an address bar (or even bookmarking).

Make your thing so great that people will trade you their email address and the sacred access to their inbox just to keep up with you.

When you spend four hours a day on social media, you helped sell a lot of ads.

When you fill your site with two years worth of content, you had a body of work. Anyone with a web-browser can see your talent.

Your magic.

Write For 10 Years From Now

From Seth Godin, who I’ve been reading and following since about 2003.

“The blog you write each day is the blog you need the most. It’s a compass and a mirror, a chance to put a stake in the ground and refine your thoughts.”

That Tweet or Instagram post might get 10 likes, but will it even exist in 10 years? You can read Seth Godin’s first post from 2002 on his blog right here.

Social media is the the box of sugary cereal, being that you have to eat a whole box to feel full, but it just leaves you feeling like garbage 20 minutes later.

Make Without a Map

Photo by Kerimli Temkin from Pexels

Saw this today from ‘That which is unique, breaks,’ via @hundredrabbits.

If you commoditize toys, you remove the toymaker. If you remove the toymaker, the toy is only an object of consumption. It ceases to be an object of wonder.

When tasked in 2009 to “fill up the search engines,” during my time at AOL Music, we published 20+ posts a day. Anything that people might search for, let’s have something written and published.

Here we had a stable of competent, knowledgeable writers – all uniquely qualified individuals – cranking out SEO-friendly “content” to be read and indexed by machines.

As an editor this pained me.

Throw away posts about band members getting arrested got more traffic than finely written interviews with notable artists.

Therefore, feed the machine. Find the drama. Find the bleeding story in the ocean of content, attract the swarm of sharks.

At this point, the inmates run the asylum. The child screams for a cookie, so feed them cookies.

“That which is unique, breaks.”

A unique offering, built with editorial discernment, breaks.

I do not need to spoil your view with visions of this architecture, I only wonder, what have their creators ever repaired?

Who has turned the ship around? Rebuilt the damaged hull? Fixed a site? Started from scratch?

As Seth Godin says, “If there were a map, there’d be no art, because art is the act of navigating without a map.”

Spending Some Time with Circle

In keeping Metal Bandcamp Gift Club going over the years (and sometimes not going, oops), it’s been a struggle to match the sense of community we had on Twitter back in 2016. As you know, quite a bit of things changed back in 2016.

I’ve resisted going all-in on Twitter again, mostly because a lot of people I know that were once involved don’t even do Twitter much anymore, for some pretty obvious reasons: their inaction against dangerous jerks, their inaction against harassment except when it might happen to men, nazi stuff – the list goes on and on.

I don’t want to tell my friends to come visit me at a dangerous bar filled with sexist creeps, jerks, and nazis, so why would I do so online?

So, Metal Bandcamp Gift Club has mostly been an email newsletter, and it’s been working well. Each day that there’s a birthday, we send out an email to about 120 people and a handful of those people buy music for someone they don’t know from their Bandcamp wishlist. It’s wonderful.

People feel good, they discover music, and artists and musicians and label make money.

But, that’s pretty much where it ends.

Yes, some members thank each other on Twitter, but blink and you’ll miss it. And heck, Twitter might not even let all that many people see that post, either.

Now a post on Circle (like above) is a post for every member to see. And if you blink, you can find it a day or a week later. Many times someone on Twitter will talk about a new album, or some gem they found, but if you’re not on Twitter right then and there, it could be gone forever. Same with year end album talk – there could be a great thread happening in real time on a Thursday night, but if you’re doing something else, and you check back in on Saturday, it’s probably gone.

I don’t know for sure if Circle is the solution, but I know for sure the current state of Twitter (and all of social media) is a big problem, and I’m trying to fix it for our little corner of the internet.