The Social Music Network has started its outreach in the Fediverse, which is our comfort zone. All good, but most (aspirational) professional music makers and related creators are not here yet. How do we reach out to them?
How can we help existing members bring people from their circles?
Are there associations or other types of collectives we could invite?
How do we approach the corporate platforms where many of these people can be found?
Are there other outreach channels we should consider?
I think a big part of the conversation is how do we create something that builds on the years long efforts of all current actors, most of which have already sunk in thousands of hours of work into understanding tech related issues, social issues, money exchange issues, governance issues and so on and so forth.
I think what we need is more conversation about how to convert all that wealth of knowledge, tools, and expertise for it to not turn into a winner takes all race to the bottom, but rather something that can meaningfully reward all these efforts and turn them into a collaborative project that can actually materialize into something useful.
The more there’s one big space to handle that conversation, the more likely it is that we align eachother where it counts, and differentiate eachother in ways that are useful to all.
One last footnote however : This space needs to not become somewhere where the “community at large” (Fedi or otherwise) puts pressure on the tool builders to answer their questions, etc. I think one essential thing to keep in mind is how burnout prone this work can be, and that by its very nature as a place where we aim to build alternatives, it means money is scarce, fundings are close to inexistant, and business models relly a lot on goodwill and volunteer energy.
Aw LLK, I can tangibly feel your burnout through that post!
Totally agreed. I see this place as a possible hub of coordination between all the diverse indie platforms, artists, and other music workers. My particular areas of interest here are:
Another benefit for this spot would be a place for collective knowledge…a repository for useful ideas, technology, tools, etc. Things that people find practical and useful. The exact opposite of all the music industry or DIY “gurus” promising to give you the keys to endless success and a career…once you buy their course.
IMO, that makes it a place for people to come for things that will help them along the way, instead of another place online for them to argue about stuff. (I also think moderation will play a large role in that as well).
Ok, thank you for your feedback. Here is an imperfect summary of the discussion so far, focusing on the outreach:
We need to host conversations that our core audience of music makers and projects supporting them consider beneficial, useful to them.
We need to invite the projects and communities already working on fair music distribution and exchange.
We need to build on the existing knowledge of all these actors, which is currently spread and hard to find.
We need to promote cross-project collaborations with specific common goals that actually materialize into something useful.
We need to offer a space that (aspirational) professional music makers and related project roles feel safer, productive, and rewarding – not another place where “the community at large” puts pressure on them for support and features.
Even more condensed:
focus on high quality discussions for our core audience
continue inviting projects relevant for these discussions
build a knowledge base capturing what we know and supporting discussions about what we don’t know yet.
I fully agree with all this, and will prioritize related work on Betatesting TSMN accordingly.
At the same time, are you saying… If you build it, they will come? Because so far nobody has mentioned outreach-outreach activities beyond reaching out to friends and to projects in our immediate neighborhood. It’s fine! Not complaining, there is enough to do for starters. Just checking that this is what we (collectively) mean.
Oh my… I started to write a small proposal and Discourse recommended some similar topics and I clicked on this one, from 20 days ago, and, uh, how did I miss this?
Thanks so much for these really throughtful comments. They feel profound and pertinent.
I came here, tho, with the idea to start a wiki page/post with “recommended” fediverse instances (for micro/mezzo blogging) that accept new members (immediate or under review) and have a strong moderation policy. Maybe not even music releated (or maybe separated into sections).
I would be really happy to see also reasons or short descriptions of those instances, their particularities etc.
The problem I see with such list is that the fedi-landscape of servers keeps chaning - many instances come and go, so this list should be kept updated.
There’s also another consideration - consent. We know (“our”) part of fedi is big on consent. Do you think recommending some instances here would be non-consensual?
I also had a thought while reading ideas above, to preface such a list with few considerations - one of them would be also “consider expenses (in hours and money) of running an instance and make sure you donate to the admin”.
I’m dogfooding here, because in my effort to promote fediverse to my own local community I keep coming back to some napkin-sketches of such a list and it feels so often that I’m starting from scratch.
I think it is a very good idea! You can start it, we turn it into wiki, and then add it to the Knowledge base index.
But why just micro/mezzo blogging only? We could open it to other fediversal platforms as well, PeerTube, etc.
Maybe in separate sections, yes, and then people can choose based on their priorities.
Ideally, at least the admins / members of the music-focused instances should be aware that this page exists, they appear there, and they can keep the information updated if they wish. We can also have a disclaimer at the top encouraging people to improve and update the page if they see anything outdated or missing.
EDIT: forgot to mention that I would be happy to reach out to admins of instances mentioned in the first version of this wiki page.
We haven’t talked about labels / netlabels. Do they have a role in social, fair, autonomous music distribution, and therefore in TSMN? If they do, how do we reach out to them?
Want to revive this topic as @limebar and I were talking about this earlier. Feel like most folks don’t know what the Fediverse or the social web is and just wondering how to remedy that really.
Kind of related, but also talked about small things that musicians can do for each other off the Fediverse. So one example is adding artwork to folks’ releases on last.fm (something I frequently like to do using Mirlo, Bandcamp or iTunes Artwork Finder) or updating their info on places like ListenBrainz. Are there any other small things that we could add like that that bolster the music and art community elsewhere? A newsletter aggregating several of the projects like NHAM, TIBTV, etc.? Given @icaria36’s new project, does a federated version of something like The Hype Machine make sense?
We have a list of services like this (more or less) on fediverse.party and it desperate needs an active maintainer. If this is something you’re still keen to do @prinlu , I’d be happy to make you the steward for a while. We’re all volunteers, but I like to think being part of Team FediParty comes with a bit of a cool factor
Agreed. We’re usually approached about a listing by someone involved. But otherwise, we reach out for permission before listing them. This courtesy is important because our goal is to help new/ smaller instances attract new members and reach critical mass, so we want to be sure getting a flush of newbies (hopefully) is what they want.
Thanks for spelling this out, I needed to read it, as I suspect I’m sometimes in danger of coming across this way. TSMN crosses the streams of 2 things I’m intensely passionate about - indie music and ethical media networks - and that I’ve been involved in on and off for about 30 years. I love to share what I’ve learned, and understand why other people come at things differently, and LLK’s comment here helps me understand how that can get a bit intense for some people sometimes (as have other’s comments in other topics).
I think TSMN is a step beyond promoting “the fediverse” (passionate as I am about it). Because it focuses on how federated tech can help people get stuff done that they care about; publish music, find music, share music, talk to other musicians/ listeners, that sort of thing.
So I’d lean into that. Talk about how the social web can help people, and talk about how the tech works only enough for people to get the basics of how it can help them with the stuff that floats their boat. So they see how they have skin in the game, and feel motivated to learn more and have a tinker.
This is why I tried to do in my interview on Deep INsessioNZ anyway.
@Mel mentioned Neodb in another thread, in case it helps.
But well, I believe the best tactic (strategy?) is to focus on more musicians being aware about fair distribution platforms and start using them. Mirlo for example feels familiar to anyone who is familiar with Bandcamp. It’s not a big step to try… Or better said, it is a big step, but it doesn’t feel lile that. Once a good artist decides to try, the curation projects in the Fediverse should be able to pick it up, and it is then that these artists will be more open to understand this corner that is bringing listeners, publicity, fedback, and maybe some sales.
Focusing on good artists (where each of us decides what is “good”) is also more impactful: they help bringing the level “up” (again, subjective), and they may bring others just by setting the example and talking to others in their circles.
In other words, I think inviting good artists to try fair distribution platforms and then promoting their music in the Fediverse is more effective overall than tryng to sell the Fediverse upfront to just anyone trying to create some music.
