Creative Ways Of Sharing Music Online

Hi everyone, I’d like to start a discussion on the following:

In the last 10 or so years we’ve all seen a sometimes desperate jumping on the ship of internet social networks and the evolution of web 2.0 interfaces for promoting and sharing music. Here is not the place to discuss the ins and outs nor rate these experiences. Many of us have well voiced opinions regarding sites like myspace and last.fm - let’s take a moment to look at what else people are doing that’s creative, odd or interesting in creating an alternative form of distribution of music.

What we’re interested in: Sites or methods that break the web2.0 or social network mold of distribution. If you have any post a link and describe what you’ve found or what you’re involved with. It also would be good to have some discussion on “what works and what doesn’t” and some brainstorming on creative methods of distribution that perhaps better suit the style and purpose of the music rather than ‘add to friends’.

I’ll start with a little oddy I’ve known about for years:

http://hmm.kosto.org/

Anonymous artist “hmm” release a series of ambient piece via a very very minimalist but cool website. Promoted only as a link on the scene news website ‘no-error’, this music and the style of presentation has remained with me as truly unforgettable. I’ve shared these songs with many friends over the years and we’ve all craved for more. I think the lack of information and contextualisation with this presentation actually successfully adds to the musical experience - it’s mysterious and slips past definition. To know any more would kill the magic. It’s a little like present day Burial - if we all knew who he was, then it just wouldn’t be that special anymore.

:walkman:

A friend of mine decided to go “underground” with a techno project he created, it was so underground he didn’t even release any tracks online, hehe… Guess it faltered right there. Been thinking about releasing stuff underground as well, but I’ve always loved the whole community thing, and I’m also working towards live performance so I’ve got a bit thinking to do before doing the site.

I’ve got some ideas, though. And I think I’ll be going this way myself some time soon. My “the khin” project is way too multi faceted as of today, and I want to focus strictly on my ambient / noise projects with a name to follow.

Simple promotion campaign I held once:

  • I printed CD’s with quite abstract design, no artist name.
  • Packaged them into airtight plastic
  • Placed them all around Tallinn (Capital of Estonia (Country in EU))
  • Made abstract videos showing the locations.
  • Put the videos online on a special site.
  • Bombarded anonymously related forums with the site url and weird backstory.
  • Enjoyed how people where tripping around Tallinn looking for the hidden packages and guessing the artist.
  • Frowned as some of the packages were sold by founders for quite some money. :P

The thing cost next to nothing to me, but was pretty enjoyable. :)

A friend of mine had the same idea, he still has to work it out though. :)

I was thinking of some sort of dedicated subscription list where members could download tracks for a limited amount of time, lets say online white labels…

I really like Suva’s approach. Guerilla-style tactics :lol:

Yeah, go ahead and try it out. Ask me for advice if you have problems as I have experience.

Also, make sure you don’t sign any contracts that forbid you to release the materials later like I did. :(

Similar to Suva’s idea, it would be cool to put your CD’s in geocache boxes for other people to discover :) In fact, my gf and I are going to try Geocaching soon, I guess now I know what I’m going to leave behind :)

I gave up on trying to promote music online. I now am content host all my tunes here. If people find them, yay, if they don’t i still make music and talk about it with my friends. Of course I paste a link here and there when I have a new tune, but I’m tired of being a whore. The whole “running a label into the ground” soured the experience for me. Promotion is a disgrace, the DIY vibe of the 90’s is dead, i still love and support experimental breakbeat music, but I’m a terrible business man. Trying to get people into what I do seems pointless now. I’m still going to do it, so do I need promotion to validate it? I’ve come to the conclusion: No, I don’t.

Back in 1997 I had MP3s on the web for PFD. That cumulated in a lot of dotcom (web 1.0?) hype because we were one of the first people to do this. Now, it’s a bunch of people struggling to do glamour photos, presskits, and myspace pages. Let me cut and paste a text from my own, possibly psychotic, youth. This was a text file attached to the PFD directory on mazzive injection tracked worx - 1997 which some others here might have been on, too:

It is our sincere belief that tangible formats of music will be eradicated through a united tracker front. The commodification of music for profit will be eliminated and the distribution of sound will be that of zero capital gain. This will weed out those arrogant enough to use the privileged title of techno musician as a job and force a revolutionary praxis by keeping only those dedicated to a love of music producing. This will inherently make techno music more socially relevant and will frustrate the artist mindset to take action against a capitalist system that no longer feeds him to think out of his or her ass.

I’m older, and more mellow now, but minus the rhetoric I strongly believe this is what is happening. Recessions and oil shortages in the next 50 years should bring about a Mad Max society of trackers soon enough!

Dunno about capitalism, but I really would love if I could live from working with music. So I wouldn’t have to work on some other stuff, that rips away my time and soul.

http://www.inspiracy.com/black/abolition/a…tionofwork.html

Anyone familiar with Dimlight Alley Crew?
http://www.dimlight.net/projects.html

check out the 4 music discs they released. I’m sure others have done
comparable ways of presenting their work, but still, it’s worth a mention.

Thanks for that link Conner, had me reading for hours. It certainly was eye opener, and not much does that for me these days. I think wholesale there’s too much misery that’s gladly accepted as needed and normal for anything like this to get off the ground. Too bad, it seems like such a better way than what we’ve got now, the ‘grind as life’.

Back on topic, or further to the point, this thread relates to previous discussion how art (“play” if you like) does not equate to commercialism. Me too with getting older and mellowing out with the ‘aims’ of doing music - gotta be doing it for the fun of the art and the craft.

Hence some brainstorming is needed about curly, curious, and interesting ways to present ‘art’ on the web (i.e. non physical objects). I like the idea of taking the ego out of the project a bit: just put the stuff out there. I’ve got a web project on the boil for the material Alex Strain and I are working on: simple one page website, dark and minimal somehow, just with a progressive list of tunes and a RSS feed. The rest works on word of mouth, if the art is worthy ;)

Distribution to whom ?

The casual listener
The collector cough
The spoiled generation
The devoted fan
The lost in search for something
The scientist who lied
The unmotivated
The politician who’s a closet ambient/drillcore/‘insert badass genre’ listener
The satanist who longs for a church girl
The fighter who needs music to pump him/her up for a fight
The troubled youth
The I want to get away from it all but I need soundwaves to soothe me
The PAWG’s that need booty music
The caveman who just woke up
The old
The dead
The ‘insert whatever shade human’

I apologize if that looked like aggressive. I was aiming for a good laugh. Humans are habitual. In terms of digital distribution, internet habit and psychology is a good start. Exchange of money and goods on digital downloads is dying if it isn’t in the stages of rigor mortis. Some artists are moving on, some aren’t.

If you want money for your music, the balancing act must be employed to satisfy you and your lifelong devoted fan who’s willing to buy almost whatever you put out, unless your completely whoring music to people who have no clue and plan to stay that way.

If you don’t want money for your music, just put it out there for the searcher to find.

I’m going to skip on laws and rights, because its dying too if it isn’t in the stages of rigor mortis. Just kidding, a lawyer is better suited to answer this conundrum.

By the way, for those of you who don’t know yet, Burial recently and humbly revealed himself:

http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseact…logID=421408328

A MadMax society, a week long festivity for some people

http://www.mccullagh.org/photo/1ds-10/deat…erdome-fighting

Edit: The MadMax society I imagined never looked that much fun

Some food for thought regarding Avant Pop:

Link here:
http://www.altx.com/manifestos/avant.pop.manifesto.html

A little link from dc and the dancenode crew:

http://dancenode.com/news/310/Amazon-Launc…On-Demand-Store

Can it get any crazier? Sure! Bring it on!

I did the same. In fact, own webpages are the predesessors of this ugly myspace-things :)

How do you tell someone that they missed the entire point of the free global Internet?