Discussion · bonfire.cafe

Andrew (Television Executive)

@ajroach42@retro.social · last year

This is a video that Weird Paul posted on Instagram yesterday. My wife sent it to me.

In it, he describes what it was like getting his first recording contract.

He mentions opening for a major local band on the strength of a DIY cassette release. He mentions that cassette release getting sold through a zine based record catalog. He mentions his first 7" being reviewed in other zines. He discusses that, on the strength of those zines, a bigger DIY label with some street cred reached out to him directly and put his first record out on cassette, CD, and LP.

Andrew (Television Executive)

@ajroach42@retro.social replied · last year

Think about the networks that had to exist in order for that to happen.

Think about the Discovery Process that had to be in place for a kid from suburban pitsburg to put out a tape at 16, end up opening for a band out of washington, and included in a catalog of records that that band endorsed and recommended to fans across the country while they were on tour.

Think about the Power in those kinds of networks, and the way that power has been diluted by search engines.

Andrew (Television Executive)

@ajroach42@retro.social replied · last year

Imagine, for a minute, that you:

1) still go to live music shows
2) go to a live music show in a suburb of the major metropolitan city in your area featuring a band that was big enough that you were willing to drive a little while to be there
3) arrive to find that the opening act is a 17 year old, and he's surprisingly good
4) find at the merch table that this band that you love has a printed catalog of music they recommend, along with prices and mailing addresses, and you can just ship an envelope with $10 in it (or however much tapes cost in 1988) and a few days later a tape would show up at your house, recommended to you by the band that you had just paid money to see.

I spent a *lot* of time in the modern DIY music scene. I ran a venue for several years. I still book shows.

I've almost never seen anything approaching that level of solidarity from modern artists. They have websites and bandcamps and instagram feeds where they share posts from "the homies" and they'll talk about "the homies" but they aren't taking the time to collate and curate the info. They depend on spotify for discovery. They get fucked.

@RealJournalism@mastodon.social replied · 2 weeks ago

@ajroach42 What music sites would you recommend instead that don't bust unions? #1u

Andrew (Television Executive)

@ajroach42@retro.social replied · last year

Anyway, the culture jammers and indie publishers of the 80s and 90s got a lot wrong, and they didn't know their own history very well.

But they really nailed some stuff too.

1) Print is good.
2) Sharing info about the things you love is *vital* to helping them survive
3) Give away a sample, encourage copying, make it crystal clear how to get the full thing (and keep that network running as well as you can for as long as you can.)
4) solidarity forever

Andrew (Television Executive)

@ajroach42@retro.social replied · last year

So, discussion questions:

- How can you lift others up?

- How can your work be a pointer to the work of others?

- How can you (re?)integrate Shareware Principles into your life and work?

- If someone's work brings you joy, how can you support or encourage them?

- How can we re-build and re-strengthen the networks that Google, Facebook, Youtube and Amazon have stolen from us?

- How can we reclaim the magic of tape traders, pirate radio, and zine culture in the modern era?

- When and why did we decide that Free was the most important consideration in media consumption and curation?

- Who is harmed by the spotify/youtube/netflix model? Does that matter?

- Who is harmed by piracy? Does that matter?

Andrew (Television Executive)

@ajroach42@retro.social replied · last year

I'm going to start talking about some of these, slowly, from the bottom up.

Andrew (Television Executive)

@ajroach42@retro.social replied · last year

Who is harmed by piracy? Mostly billionaires. Individual artists and authors and whoever mostly do better when people are exposed to their work.

Who is harmed by the spotify/youtube/netflix model? Mostly artists and creators, who used to be able to make a medium sized amount of money from direct sales, and who are now reduced to a very small amount of money (or to negative amounts of money) by streaming services. (There are exceptions! They are exceptional.)

We have a problem right now where it's not a choice between Piracy and Paying artists, it's a choice between Piracy and Paying Spotify/Netflix, et al. Both ways, artists lose!

There was a time in the recent past where widespread piracy resulted in a direct material increase in revenue, either from Ticket Sales, or Merch Sales, or Physical media sales.

This is rarely the case anymore.

Artists get ~half or less of what you spend on their tickets (because ticketmaster turns a $60 ticket in to a $160 ticket after fees. This is hardly an exaggeration, and the reason I'm not going to see bright eyes next year in spite of the fact that I could easily afford the base ticket price) and venues even horn in on merch sales, demanding a commission from the artists for the privilege of selling merch.

It's absurd.

We, as listeners, watchers, and consumers can help!

~16 more replies (not shown)

Andrew (Television Executive)

@ajroach42@retro.social replied · last year

When I say we can help, what I mean is this:

1) share the things you love as often and as widely as you can
2) Link back to whichever sales platform is the closest to giving money directly to the artist (itch, bandcamp) or is in direct control of the artist (personal website)
3) buy the things that bring you joy. Give your money to artists instead of publishers and gatekeepers. Fuck spotify.

Andrew (Television Executive)

@ajroach42@retro.social replied · last year

When and why did we decide that Free was the most important consideration in media consumption and curation?

I dunno when it happened, but I understand more or less why it happened.

We were sold a false bill of goods w/r/t the ad supported internet. We were told that it was sustainable for publishers and readers. (It wasn't! It was only sustainable for Double Click/Google)

But once the promise of free and ad supported took hold, getting people to pay for information (regardless of how valuable that information was) became a very difficult task!

And, once internet connections got fast enough, lots of people embraced piracy over payment. (and, generally, those people were also the people who spent the most on media, but that's a separate conversation.)

And so we ended up in the position we're in now, where Free is the overriding concern. Folks pay for spotify and netflix, but they don't engage in a transaction. It's an auto-refill. They don't think about it. Most of them don't notice it. For them, those things are effectively free.

How do we break out of this?

Andrew (Television Executive)

@ajroach42@retro.social replied · last year

In terms of Why free was deemed the most important consideration in media, I think there's also a bit of blame to be placed on the software industry.

Many people would never be able to afford the sometimes tens of thousands of dollars worth of software that it took for them to participate in their field. Piracy was tacitly encouraged for teens and individuals to keep corporations paying tens of thousands of dollars.

On the flip side, the Free Software movement was in full swing.

This created a generation of computer users who were raised in a world where paying for things was the mark of a foolish loser. (Who registers winrar?)

Andrew (Television Executive)

@ajroach42@retro.social replied · last year

So what can we do about it?

Well, I dunno! I can tell you what I'm trying.

I don't have streaming subscriptions (well, sort of. My household has two or three, but they're not *mine*) but I have the budget that I had previously allocated towards streaming services and every month I spend it on independent media.

For every streaming service my household subscribes to, we also allocate at least that much money towards paying artists directly.

It's not a ton of money, a few dozen dollars. It buys a couple of digital albums, a game or two, whatever.

But it's cash going directly to artists.

If more folks would do this, it would be a net good.

Andrew (Television Executive)

@ajroach42@retro.social replied · last year

I'm working on some more Review and Curation style stuff. We've done a lot of that in our zine over the years, but I always felt bad telling people to buy things.

I'm not going to feel bad anymore.

The next issue of our zine (and therefore the next several blog posts on our blogs) will feature a bunch of articles that are explicitly endorsements of independent media with specific and detailed information about how and where and why to purchase it.

I'm going to put together a few pages on my website that are just curated collections of things that are being published online, along with information on how and where and why to send the creators money.

Andrew (Television Executive)

@ajroach42@retro.social replied · last year

And I'm going to start making tapes again.

Well, probably flash drives, but the sentiment is the same.

I release the things I make under clear "shareware" terms (cc-by-sa baby), but I'm going to start including a "nag screen" in everything. I'm going to bring "send me $10" back in to the mainstream kicking and screaming.

And, guess what, I'm going to start doing little shareware collections again too. I did it when I was 9 because I loved to share the things I was playing with other people. When I made money on it, that money went to get more things that I turned around and shared again.

I still love it. I'm still going to charge for them. I'll stick to things that were explicitly licensed for redistribution, I'm not going to lean in to piracy at this time (but if someone does, fuckin' great.)

Andrew (Television Executive)

@ajroach42@retro.social replied · last year

How can we re-build and re-strengthen the networks that Google, Facebook, Youtube and Amazon have stolen from us?

How can we reclaim the magic of tape traders, pirate radio, and zine culture in the modern era?

These are the same question! We just do it.

Let's trade tapes. Let's make zines. Let's focus on the human curatorial aspect of all of this. It's easy as fuck to set up an internet radio station, you don't need anyone's help or permission. You do need to get the word out that it exists, and that's harder (but that's where the zines and the tapes come in! That's where the Solidarity comes in. When you launch an internet radio station, let me add it to my soon to come repository of internet radio stations. DMOZ baby.)

And, hey, if the FCC doesn't have the funding to hunt down pirate radio stations, and ten thousand new ones pop up in the next four years, even if they do get the funding again some day to try and shut em down... Cultural sea change might just make that an impossible position.

Andrew (Television Executive)

@ajroach42@retro.social replied · last year

The fact that the modern world has robbed us of universal formats for sharing movies, music, and games is sad.

Okay,"universal" in a loose sense. They weren't actually Universal. But, if you wanted to share a movie with someone in 1995 you put it on a VHS tape, and in 2005 you burned it to a(n SV)CD-R or if you had money a DVD-R.

Everyone used to have a tape player, or an optical drive, or a floppy drive. Most folks could launch DOS and Windows apps, even the ones who primarily used mac or linux.

My wife's new car doesn't have a CD drive. My laptop doesn't have an optical drive. Most folks I know don't have a DVD player. I only know one person with a floppy drive.

The Internet is the new Universal format, but the Internet is also a panopticon surveillance machine in which someone could be watching you at all times even though they probably aren't right now.

So I'm going with flash drives + web pages. Stick it in to most blueray players or other media players, and it'll play. Stick it in to most cars, it'll play. Stick it in to your computer, and you get links to pay every artist involved should you choose to do so.

Andrew (Television Executive)

@ajroach42@retro.social replied · last year

So how can we re-build and re-strengthen the networks that Google, Facebook, Youtube and Amazon have stolen from us?

By embracing human connection, rejecting algorithmic curation, and taking the time to celebrate the things we love.

We re-build and re-strengthen those networks with intention.

Andrew (Television Executive)

@ajroach42@retro.social replied · last year

That leaves these discussion questions:

- How can you lift others up?

- How can your work be a pointer to the work of others?

- How can you (re?)integrate Shareware Principles into your life and work?

- If someone's work brings you joy, how can you support or encourage them?

And I could share my answers to them, but I think I already have. What I do will not be the same as what you do.

What will you do?

@magnetic_tape@infosec.exchange replied · last week

@ajroach42
This is a great thread thanks for writing it out, you nailed the topic.

Here's some pointers for getting further in this discussion :

Humans curated music discovery (a personal small (5-6 tracks) playlist every sunday) from @mailtape : https://mailta.pe #MailTape

Self-hosted bandcamp alternative: https://simonrepp.com/faircamp/ #faircamp from @freebliss

Sneakernet is still going strong in the 21st century, let's bring back LAN parties and bring USB keys and some cement #deaddrops : https://deaddrops.com/

FaircampEmailMuteNLnet FoundationCodebergLiberapayKo-fiMastodon

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