I met Nikki Lerner back in 2019, from Seth Godin’s Freelancer’s Workshops. We’ve been talking almost every Monday on Zoom ever since.
We originally connected over work. She had just left an office job to strike out on her own, I was trying to make my “helping busy music publicists with their digital dirty work” thing work better.
We used to over think the tiny bits, now we seek alignment in our work.
Last summer Nikki (a life long musician) wanted to work more in music, and wasn’t sure how it’d pay any bills, but just knew she had to do it.
So she formed a choir, and that led to a job offer (and more time working in music).
Sometimes we need to push into the work we want to be doing, even without any clear path of anything working out. Dare to start building ways to create tiny moments of fulfillment.
For some reason I got this video in my head tonight, and really had no way to find it. I remembered it was on Vimeo, but didn’t know to search under staff picks or whatever.
From the movie “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere,” manager Jon Landau explaining the release to the label exec
“I’m not asking for your understanding, and I’m not here to explain Bruce’s thinking or justify his artistic choices. I am here to make sure the album is released precisely the way he wants, that’s it.
Whether or not you believe in this particular album, in this office, my office, we believe in Bruce Springsteen.”
This movie rattled me in a few ways, but this is the part I carry in my mission going back to 2001, that being, “I just wanna help my friends in band’s sell albums.”
This mission has changed over the years, notably to, “I just wanna help bands sell albums” when I helped launch Noise Creep at AOL Music in 2008. In 2021, when I launched Heavy Metal Email, a newsletter to help heavy bands return to email lists and websites as a way to regain a direct connection with fans, to 2023 when I renamed it as Social Media Escape Club, my mission is broader, “I just wanna help creative people make their work.”
It’s not quite so noble, more selfish than anything. I just wanted to see my friends in bands, or people I looked up to, I just wanted them to keep putting out their music, and keep this great big circus going – the artists who painted album covers, photographers who took band photos, the journalists who wrote about rock and roll.
I just wanna help creative people do their thing, and to do that thing they need to be able to let their fans know when they’ve got a new art exhibit, a new album to promote, a new book to order, and that’s becoming harder on social media in 2026.
So yes, I think simple email lists and websites make that work, just like post cards and tube amps and print flyers still work in the year 2026. Because it’s people, not platforms. It’s DIY venues filled with weirdos and punks and freaks that will outlast the “too big to fail” monoliths.
I’m not asking for your understanding, or to justify these artistic choices. Whether or not you believe any of this, I believe in the art.
No-one gives a fuck about first-week numbers anymore, anyway. People care more about finding the record at your merch desk for the first time and buying it right then. I clearly remember asking (our label, SharpTone Records), ‘Why do people pre-order records?’ and being met with a minute of silence.
Olivia Rafferty briefly met Ilan Kelman, a Professor of Disasters and Health at UCL, after her talk about Pop Music and Geology. They met recently:
When I sat down with Ilan, I asked him: “what is the one thing related to your research that you wish the wider public knew?” and he said, “there is no such thing as a ‘natural disaster.’ There is just nature.”
Today is Bandcamp Friday, where Bandcamp waives their 15% fee of each digital purchase, putting more money into the pockets of artists.
To mark this occasion, I’ve made all my HUNTERTHEN music “pay what you want” for the day. Pay nothing, pay a dollar, pay $10, the choice is yours.
I’m a third generation musician. I joined my first band in high school playing my mom’s bass. But in recent years I just wanted to listen to music to fall asleep to, yet always had trouble finding the music that was just right. So I started making it myself, and have seven releases.
You can find my music in a few Noah Kalina videos, which is a huge honor for me.
Like Rick Rubin once said, “make stuff, and show it to your friends.”
This is operational, minimal, quietly persistent. Music for background processing.
This is what I want to hear, so I figured out how to make it. This is my seventh release, and I’m still learning how to create and shape these releases.
All sounds made on a Novation Bass Station II, recorded and mixed in Abelton Live, and the final full mix (available as a paid download only) is made with my minimal DJ browser app.
For licensing inquiries (films, videos, podcasts, installations) please get in touch.
