I just listened to some of @Roberta ‘s music on Mirlo and it occurred to me that I haven’t yet engaged much with the music made by all the amazing musicians gathered here. Which gave me an idea.
How about we have a monthly listening party, where we all get online at the same time and listen to a few albums by our forum members (albums for the month agreed in advance maybe with some random selection tool?). This is mainly for members of the.socialmusic.network to get more familiar with each other and our musical outputs, but I’m all for making it open to all, even posting invites on the fediverse.
Yes I think this could work well. The individual release parties are lovely but there’s always a terrible fear no-one will turn up, which I think puts people off having them.
But a group space reduces that risk a lot and might give an opening to people who wouldn’t usually do that sort of thing.
Thanks @limebar and @keef for your thoughts and the resources you’ve shared. There seems to be some interest in this. How can we get started on making it happen?
The MVP would be to just agree on a date and time, and a method for picking the albums to listen to, and stream them individually from wherever they’re hosted. But it occurs to me that if we had more than a handful of people join in, that might put strain on the services hosting them. Maybe we could partner with @TheIndieBeat radio on this?
One of the most complicated parts of doing a realtime online meetup with an international community is finding a time that works across multiple timezones. Any suggestions for a time of day that could work for this?
On international timing: we have this issue on a regular basis with the Bonk Wave launch parties. I don’t think there is an ideal time, but mid-evening UK time seems to be about the best compromise.
20:00 GMT takes in all of Europe and America, and gives New Zealand a fighting chance but it’s a bit early for Australia, especially Perth.
21:00 GMT helps a bit with Eastern Australia but is starting to get a bit late in Europe. And it’s still too early in Western Australia/ parts of Asia.
We usually pick one of these two as most of us are in Europe or America, but for Aussie musicians maybe trying to find a time that’s very early in America, midday in Europe might be an alternative. Or middle of the night in Europe and just hope everyone elsewhere can make it!
I hadn’t, thanks for the tip. I’ve boosted this invite with my Mastodon account and I’ll see if I can make it. Must check out the Fresh Fridays show too. So much exciting stuff happening!
EDIT: I see it’s at 7pm GMT on Friday, which is about 7 on Sat morning here. In the future I’ll do my best to plan around this (calendared with reminders!). But as it happens I’ve arranged a jam with a couple of friend this Sat, so I can’t cram anything else into the calendar at this point. Gutted. Hope it goes well!