Internet – Page 9 – HELLO, I'M SETH WERKHEISER

CULTIVATE COMMUNITY

How do you make it as a musician in 2024? Have fans that you can reach.

On Spotify, I can’t reach the people who follow me—I have no idea who those people are, and I can’t communicate with them. I’m just on a playlist or an algorithm. But here on Substack, I’m cultivating a community.
Fog Chaser

Without fans, you don’t have a career.

HIT THE ROAD, WIKIPEDIA

Bet you didn’t know that a handful of people wrote 15,000 articles about roads in the US! Well, the editors behinds have left Wikipedia behind and started their own site.

Despite minor disagreements, the US Roads Project mostly worked in harmony, but recently, a long-simmering debate over the website’s rules drove this community to the brink. Efforts at compromise fell apart. There was a schism, and in the fall of 2023, the editors packed up their articles and moved over to a website dedicated to roads and roads alone. It’s called AARoads, a promised land where the editors hope, at last, that they can find peace.

See, this is what I fucking love about the internet.

If you don’t like something, you can build your own thing.

Sure, AARoads might not get the views and traffic that Wikepieda provides, but… life is more than views and traffic, right?

It’s about writing, stories, history, humanity.

Split up the cost of a domain name and website hosting and you’ve got something sustainable and organic that you can hold onto for many years.

(via Simon Owens)

ENGADGET GUTTED

Engadget is looking to “increase their velocity.”

Ten people at (Engadget) are losing their jobs, and the editorial staff will be split into two sections. A memo says strategy will focus more on traffic and collaboration with sales and SEO

Founded 20 fucking years ago by Peter Rojas, it was then bought up by AOL in 2011, which eventually became Yahoo, which has a stellar track record of destroying everything they touch.

From Engadget GM Sarah Priestley (via Daring Fireball):

“[The changes] will allow us to streamline our work, increase our velocity, and ultimately deliver the best content to our readers.”

I love how the new leadership of these once-beloved brands are hell-bent on winning the race to the bottom.

GOODBYE, VICE.COM

From the Wall Street Journal (below copied from 512 Pixels, as the WSJ has a paywall):

“It is no longer cost-effective for us to distribute our digital content the way we have done previously,” Dixon told employees in the memo. He said the company could partner with established media companies to distribute its content. “As part of this shift, we will no longer publish content on vice.com.”

And before this:

A domain name and hosting aren’t overly expensive. Put out something that folks will pay for and maybe earn a living doing it.

The glory days are over. Time to get back to making good shit with some friends and hoping for the best. 404 Media is profitable after just six months. Jason Kottke is making it work.

“The market didn’t reject Pitchfork: Condé had a captive audience, and never bothered to make a pitch.”
Pete Tosiello

Newspapers were subsidized by ads decades ago. Classifieds meant local alt-weeklies could exist. Banner ads paid the bills for websites, until they didn’t.

Then came the corporate interests, the “smart” VPs with their business jackets and jeans outfits.

They came in, had their $400 lunches, made their money, and walked away just fine.

Like I said, “Maybe centralized kingdoms of power and influence aren’t the answer.”

BLOGS AND MP3S

Here I am in 2024, reading a post linked from Kottke.org, and listening to my music files using an app called Swinsian.

Back in my music blog days I got a lot of samplers, pre-release CDs to check out before anyone else.

One of them was rough cuts and demos of ‘De-Loused In The Comatorium’ from The Mars Volta. I remember this on a CDR, shipped in a padded mailer. That was in 2003, before I moved to NYC. My goodness, this is a gem.

Bands used to post demo MP3s on their websites, too. I have a handful of those, too.

I’ve also got some files that don’t play, which I think maybe are tied to the iTunes store? Thankfully I don’t have too many of those.

“Don’t write online for fame and glory. Oblivion, obscurity and exploitation are all but guaranteed.”
James Shelley

Via Patrick Rhone

YAHOO NOISE

The directories on Yahoo used to be edited by people, and as you can see from the image above (which I snagged from the Wayback Machine), it went deep.

The Yahoo Directory closed in 2014.

I’m inclined to write “imagine if we had something like this now?” But, anyone could build something like this for their local scene, for their state, their region.

And no one needs to make the BIG ONE, the supreme list of whatever. Everyone could have their lists of favorite bands, or art supply stores, or camera shops, whatever.

There are giant directories that exist like this today, I know. But they’re all flooded with SEO nonsense, scraped, void of humanity.

I think, if anything, we need to get back to human-curated directories and inspire everyone to make their own… de-centralized, as it were. This way there’s not one thing to rule them all, everyone just finds their favorites.

THE OLD MUSIC WEB

We need to get back to this.

The site is still active, and some of the links still work, but wow, remember when local scenes used to have websites like this?

I also found this page called Escape. There are lots of broken links, but it is still a reminder of what old websites used to look like.

I love how innocent and pure this bit of text is:

“An amazing unofficial Mudhoney page. It has everything about them, their side projects, and other sordid details.”

Like, there was a time when you couldn’t read every interview a band ever did online, or see all the photos they posted on Instagram.

Makes me think I should start an un-official band page or two!