THE MOST WONDERFUL TIME OF THE YEAR

October 1st is here, along with crisp morning air, a long walk, and coffee from a local joint called Four Monkeys.

This time of year is magic for me. Since I’ve been working in the “music biz” since the mid 2000s and all, things always slowed down around this time. The flow of press releases, big news, tours, the overall volume of information kinda calmed down, and I always try to form these months around that, even though it’s a different era.

The world ain’t gonna form around my vibes, so I will bring the vibes I need, in both work and personal life, and that means being more present, more morning walks, less stressing about the things I have no control over.

STREAMING WILL EAT ITSELF

The streaming music platforms will soon follow the lead of the streaming video platforms and continue to raise their rates, which I’m sure will be helped along by the record labels that increase their licensing fees because they want as much of the action as the video streaming platforms.

Source: https://www.statsignificant.com/p/is-tvs-golden-age-officially-over

The whole ecosystem will eat itself, and we’ll all go back to pirating music again (but the cool kids will keep buying vinyl and CDs and digital copies off of Bandcamp).

I’ve been seeing it mentioned in comment threads on some of the sites that have posted about Disney raising the rates again, notably MacRumors and I think something similar on The Verge. Monthly rates will continue to go up. Meanwhile, external hard drives and basic MP3 players are cheaper than ever on Amazon. It’s inevitable.

ART VS POLITICAL NONSENSE

A blog is a wonderful time capsule, for both the good and the bad. This from a recent email newsletter from the German band Elder:

Unfortunately, the timing for this release coincides with the change in tariff policies of the US government. Our (Stickman, based in Germany) uses a number of services to ensure the cheapest possible worldwide shipping, but all of them are currently not servicing the US while they re-tool themselves to handle the current situation.

As such, before these tariffs went into effect we only managed to get 100 copies of the EP into the US! If you are in the States and want to get your hands on one, you will need to order either via Armageddon Shop or Echodelic, both of which have only 50 copies.

We know that techincally tariffs shouldn’t affect vinyl as it falls under the banner of “informational materials”. Our shipping partners are not currently servicing the US and our hands are tied. Apologies for that.

Hope to look back on this post five years from now and shake my head at the current state of political affairs.

And holy heck, that album art is soooo good.

STREAMING PLATFORMS FILLED WITH FAKE MUSIC

You have to be on the streaming platforms!

The streaming platforms:

Deezer says it now receives over 30,000 fully AI-generated tracks daily, marking a sharp increase from the 20,000 figure it reported in April and the 10,000 it disclosed in January when it first launched its proprietary AI detection tool.

It’s hard enough to stand out from the crowds on the social media platforms when competing with actual musicians and bands. Now you throw in 30,000 AI-generated tracks EVERY DAY and you’re just buying lottery tickets and hoping for the best, you’re literally swimming upstream just trying to buy those lottery tickets in the first place.

Go play shows. Busk. Stream live. Do whatever you gotta do to get in front of actual humans, create fans, get their email address, rinse and repeat for years.

THERE IS NO RULE THAT SAYS WE HAVE TO STAY ON SOCIAL MEDIA

If we can go back to vinyl records and film cameras, we can go back to blogs and RSS feeds.

The common excuse is that no one will go back to blogs or RSS feeds. Yet we never say the same about film cameras or people that buy vinyl records. Sure, if we mean people as in everyone, then sure, no one will go back. But vinyl sales continue to rise, and people keep taking photos with film cameras.

Do we need permission from the masses before we do something that might bring us joy?

NOT WHY BUT WHAT?

Great reflection from Devon Yanko:

I have been asking myself the wrong question: Why? Why was this the wrong question for me? Because you don’t need to make meaning out of every feeling. I have become so accustomed to working on myself that self-interrogation has become second nature. And it is not always the right tool. Introspecting on every single thing does not in fact create more insight. I kept trying to fix the past through understanding it and ensure that I would be safe in the future. But it doesn’t work that way. Making meaning doesn’t inoculate you against future failures.

The better question to ask myself is: What? What am I feeling? What do I need right now? What am I excited about? What do I want to do? If I follow those questions with a Why? I feel immediately defensive and shutdown. I can feel my chest tighten. I have spent my life justifying and explaining myself, and I have worked so hard to not feel like I have to. I have worked so hard to trust myself and my deep inner knowing. I have asked enough “why” in therapy and self-work that it is no longer the right question for me.

That part, “you don’t need to make meaning out of every feeling.”

I actually heard Alex Hormozi talk about that, too. Fuck the feeling, it is what it is, sort of onto the next.

Okay, maybe I’m paraphrasing and off topic, but I like where Devon takes it.

THE FAKE MUSIC ON SPOTIFY IN 2020

The beauty about keeping a blog is you have an archive about certain subject and quotes from certain people.

I’m hosting Sean Cannon today (Aug 21, 2025) on my Escape Pod Zoom call, a weekly gathering of the paid members of my Social Media Escape Club.

I searched his name on this blog, and found this post “Streaming Problems,” from January of 2020.

I clicked the source link, his Twitter feed, and then found this gem, regarding Spotify:

“So you have the biggest company in the space creating “fake” music to drive up margins, trying to create user habits that promote NOT interacting with artists or their songs, and trying to crowd music out of everyday users lives.”

Oh, how unaware we were at the time at how fake the music would get! He was talking about “fake bands” that made music for a fee, thus removing the royalty aspect. Fill the playlists with “freelance” bands, and profit!

But here we are five years later, and Spotify is littered with music created by AI.

THE AUTUMN WOODS

Noah Kalina used another HUNTERTHEN track for his ambient videos. Stunning shots, ambient sound, and I just love hearing Noah in the woods with the sound of rain and thunder in the background.

Definitely go subscribe to his new ambient channel KALINA.

SOCIAL MEDIA BUBBLE BURSTING

Before social media, we had the blogs, right? The forums. The websites.

Getting traction meant being mentioned on any of them. You wrote something, someone else liked it, they linked to it.

This was actually my job in 2008 when I was working in Audience Development at AOL.

We had writers who wrote stuff, and then we emailed relevant sites (well, blogs) so they’d hopefully link back.

This was a long process. We were basically fucking cold-emailing the editors of these sites! We had to make reports and shit.

Along comes social media, where “everyone” sort of rushed to because blogs were getting bought up by megacorps, plastered in ads (CPMs were going down down down), and drenched in SEO slop (we’ve had slop now for decades, long before AI).

The thing I’m getting at – was while some folks benefitted from the early social media days – traction, eyeballs, listens, etc. it was inflated. It was artificial. The bubble had to burst, and I think we’re seeing that now.

Things existed before “everyone” was on social media, and now we’re going to have to figure out how to do that again.

We can’t rely on 10,000 people seeing a thing. We need to get 50 people really into what we’re doing before we hit 100.

JUST START BLOGGING

Fuck a Square Space, fuck a newsletter, fuck a social media platform and just freaking write, preferabbly on your own domain or least something you pay for so you can export yoru work if it ever goes belly up.

Fuck the full-width photos. Fuck the buttons. Fuck the H2 tags.

We’ve spent hours everyday posting and consuming social media content. Now it’s time to get radical. Reverse thrusters and lock in the auxiliary power. Pull the emergency brake and abort, it’s to get back to blogging.

Every new blog post is a signal to the reader, the curious visitor. There is no confusion, there is no navigation, there is THE FIRST POST.

It’s the menu, it’s the directions, it’s the manual – we start here. Today, this first post. This is where we start today.

Don’t like it? Scroll down, there’s another post. Not for you? Take a hike.

I guess I could say this blog is a failure for not landing me some big giant six figure client or whatever, but I’d say it’s a success because it’s fended off any shit-ass hiring manager from hiring a ding dong like me and that’s fine.

This blog is a signal. This is me. This is what you get. And it’s not ever video!

But the blog serves a purpose. Each post is like an email to the universe, a signal saying “this is what you get.”

Some might be curious and dive in. They might even email you.

Otherwise all those busy, cluttered, slow loading square space sites are just bogged down with static photos, text that was written three years ago, and a bunch of buttons to “sections” where it’s just more of the same.

Fucking write on your blog like your life depends on it because I’m thinking right about now it does.