Promotion strategies

[Crapahute]

@simon

I’m wondering if it’s useful to have a conversation about “why discovery matters.” Is the aim to get listened to by more people, or is it to be able to make time to make your art?

I was thinking lately that we’ve been accustomed to make our art behind curtains, and then show it to the public when it’s “done”. Maybe we should learn to create in public again, and weave together creation and play.

[Mel]

Brilliantly put. Yeah, expectations-wise: I don’t think it’s realistic that DIY artists could compete with the rich, powerful major labels for the world’s attention. But corpo social media’s notion of virality encourages us to feel terrible about it, and waste time trying to win a rigged game.

However, what I do think is possible: we could create a music discovery ecosystem that helps listeners find art we love. Art that improves our lives and minds. (As opposed to wallpaper “perfect fit” or AI playlist-fodder, for workdays and gym sessions, as Spotify prefers).

I think a fair and art-focused system would naturally encourage smaller, niche pockets of fandom — hopefully enough to support the artist in a real way.

[Crapahute]

@Mel

I don’t think it’s realistic that DIY artists could compete with the rich, powerful major labels for the world’s attention.

Filthy rich and powerful labels may own the final product, but they can’t own your creation process. At least, it’s not common to sell the creation process for an art piece because it’s usually not marketable, not easily so.
I still think this is the best thing we have as artists: the time we invest in our work is valuable, and we can leverage it. If we show our trials, our errors and failures, our successes of course, however big or small they may be, it will help people see the value in our art even more.
However my reasoning falls totally flat as the quality or popularity of an art piece can never be directly paralleled to the amount of work that was invested but it’s a possible promotion strategy nonetheless !

@Mel

we could create a music discovery ecosystem that helps listeners find art we love. Art that improves our lives and minds.

How would we go about it ? Taste/appreciation is so subjective. Like in love or friendship where a sign of appreciation depends on the individuals involved and their context, a sign of appreciation from a person to an art piece can be very complex and take many forms. You may never leave a single like or comment under an artist’s publication, never give them any money, but still thoroughly enjoy their work.
For example: i love music, i really do. I listen to music about once or twice a month, the rest of the time i’m the one making music. Some tracks stay with me for days or weeks, i hum them out loud or hear them in my mind. How would you build an online discovery system which accomodates that ?
Do we need to teach music lovers how to interact with a system we deemed “beneficial” so that every person involved, listeners and artists alike, enjoy the process and benefit from it ? This isn’t a rethorical question by the way, i’m really wondering: we’ve been taught to interact with art and media in general in a certain way… should we unlearn that ?

EDIT: just read the other topic about promotion on the Fediverse, lots of post that could be cross referenced here, but i’ll just quote Icaria this time:

@icaria36

I’m looking forward to switch to a TSMN-friendly alternative, but it needs to be hands-free with likes and follows or equivalent. I won’t stop house work because discovering new free/social music requires my focused attention and my hands.