NOT A MUSIC BLOG, NOT NOT A MUSIC BLOG
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First published in the Spring of '22 (tweaked for re-bumping up the blahg pile in the Spring of '23)--
If you are familiar with the evolution/devolution of the idea behind whatever it is I’ve been doing as some form of ‘HI54’ over the years, you might remember an earlier version of me doing-things-with-music-on-the-internet that went by the tagline “Not A Record Label, Not Not A Record Label” — for those unfamiliar, I originally started something called Hi-Five For Lo-Fi Records, which was basically a ‘pretend, for real’ record label website/blog for diy artists to ‘go it alone, together’, which, eventually, transitioned into me becoming more of a one-person internet radio / music blog thing —SO, it is kind of fitting to be finding myself back at a familiar place of wanting to describe what I do now / going forward as more of a “Not A Music Blog, Not Not A Music Blog” thing. How circular.
As my cartoon child Greg (no relation) always says:
“Ain’t that just the way”
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What even is a music blog?
The obvious answer would be that if you have an online presence that shares music quite often, especially if you do so on your own homemade clunky website, then you are probably considered some kind of “music blog” or “music blogger”. Or, at the very least, ‘sharing music online’ definitely meets the main criteria for pretty much anyone looking for ANYONE to send music to for review/consideration. And, I can personally confirm, there is an uncountable never-ending number of people out there looking for ANYWHERE to send news about new demos/singles/eps/lps to — whether it be artists & labels themselves, or whether it be PR people that get paid by artists & labels to do the contacting / reaching out / circling back on their behalf.
But what if hardly anybody even gives a sh*t about checking out what the “music blogger” actually shares (besides, and not even always, the people whose music they’ve shared)? What if the only real demand for a “music blog” is in the 100s/1000s of submissions they get sent every month? What if… what are we all even doing at a certain point here?
The answers to these questions lie somewhere in acknowledging the reality of just how toxic the whole music industry is + our society in general — where so many people get exploited, from every angle, so everybody kinda depends on the continued exploitation of others who we try not to think about as we struggle to keep treading water ourselves in the never-ending stream of content production/consumption that the algorithms demand for peak distraction. To the point where people stop realizing how often they look at other humans as either someone who they can use to help move themselves a little bit ahead in this rigged hierarchical game with finite spots of “success” and manufactured scarcity OR they view other humans as something they can’t use for personal gain so they’ve got no use or time or consideration for them (and everyone feels justified acting this selfish way, if they even notice when they’re devaluing someone else’s time/life or if someone else commits the faux pas of pointing their entitled actions out, because everybody feels like they’re also being taken advantage of by somebody else in the same ways… and everybody is correct in feeling this way because everybody actually is experiencing the same devaluation that they deflect onto others because we’ve organized our entire society around doing exactly that).
So it’s all self-promotion and pulling the ladder up behind ourselves if we ever even get an opportunity to become a slightly better paid/acknowledged part of an exploitive industry that we all know is just one connected piece to the overall bigger grift that filters all of our wealth & resources & labour & energy & life up to the top for the benefit of the same kind of manipulative hypocrites that this corrupted system has always benefited and will continue to do so as long as we all keep fantasizing about successful futures aboard the goddamn Death Star (and, I get it, it’s hard, especially when Death Star Enterprises is kinda the only ones who are ever hiring because they kinda own everything — and even when you think it’s somebody else who is hiring, if you dig a little deeper, it tends to turn out that the new boss is the same as the old boss, whether literally or just philosophically).
Which makes it weird for me to be sitting at this makeshift table, attempting to have this one-way conversation, when all I have is just my stupid little “music blog” in my briefcase. Especially because I’ve been racking my brain over here the last few months about whether it would be more “ethical” to switch all my #HI54MIXCDS operation from Spotify to Tidal, because Tidal pays artists a bit more per stream, but only if you pay Tidal $10 more a month, but also nobody really uses Tidal as far as ‘blog playlist listening’ goes, which is kind of the main reason I use streaming at a level that’s worth paying for in the first place, plus Tidal also has ZERO search/discovery capabilities for independent playlisters (Spring 2023 update: I’ve heard there have been some improvements to playlist discovery/sharing on Tidal), so my playlists would likely become EVEN LESS listened to then they already are on Spotify (and if no one listens to my blog playlists on Tidal, is the payout still better for artists? and if hardly anyone follows my Spotify playlists in the first place, why am I even thinking about what artists get paid if my playlists don’t even generate noticeable streams & we all agree that the current streaming model is majorly exploitive?).
Also, the Tidal app doesn’t even work on my old iPhone 6 because planned obsolescence has started to come for it. And, as someone who grew up pre-SmartPhone in the 1990s… the current phones are already way better than anything we could have imagined 25 years ago, so let’s just leave them alone for awhile & learn how to use them smarter and maybe focus more of our collective tech obsession towards solving all these systemic issues for a minute first, eh?
So… maybe I should just ditch streaming altogether and focus more on Bandcamp & music I don’t rent from grifters, which I kind of already do by making available-on-Bandcamp lists for the tracks that get featured in my Spotify playlists & making quite a lot of Mixcloud mixes with mp3s & still using iTunes on my ol’ ‘09 iMac at home & buying CDs/Tapes (even if mostly at thrift stores because I basically don’t earn any money doing any of this stuff & shipping costs are pretty crazy for Canadians). Plus, I do always try to steer people towards the conversation that “streaming is a better discovery alternative than what FM radio used to offer before the internet, but we still need to actually support the artists themselves + it’s actually never been easier to support people who make things that you like directly” (because a lot of this stuff comes down to us making collective individual actions).
Unless of course you factor in the always rising cost of living and all the work/labour that soooo many people already are doing that doesn’t pay enough to meet those rising living costs so everyone is always looking for ways that they can save money and… oh wait, never mind, because now I see that indie darlings Bandcamp have just been bought by the makers of online video game Fortnite, who happen to be almost 50% owned by a bigger-than-Facebook mega-corp called Tencent, who also happen to own 9% of Spotify and… I’m just going to put my stupid little “music blog” back into my briefcase and show myself out.
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Working on a ‘Music Blog’ exit strategy
Back near the end of January 2022, I put all my music blog submissions on pause, with the main intention being to look at whether to move all my Spotify playlists over to Tidal, which quickly became more about “is there even a point to keep doing playlists that people are more interested in being ‘considered for’ than people are interested in ‘listening to / sharing’?”, which then had me re-overthinking the whole weird existence of continuing to have a “music blog” as an old millennial with no real career path (ie. consistent ways to make food & rent each month), who still has to try and get by in the same late stage capitalism ecological pandemic collapse anxiety factory as everyone else — AND — before I knew it, February ‘22 turned into March ‘22 (and now you’re reading this in whatever month/year it is now) and all I’d really figured out was that I need to keep my music submissions on pause even longer so I can keep the newly freed up headspace available to do even more figuring.
Well, I guess the one thing that is already figured out is that Tidal kinda sucks to use for the purposes of being a blog that shares playlists with others (mostly functionality-wise)… so I won’t be extending my 90-day trial (but I’ll leave all the HI54 playlists that I set up while trial-ing in the Spring of ‘22 for those that do use Tidal & know how to find them all through this link).
I also don’t love that Tidal only does the interesting ‘pay who you play’ model if you are paying $20 a month — AND — I also don’t subscribe to the idea that the people that own Tidal or Apple or Etc™ are not the same type of rich a**holes that own Spotify & Et Cetera® (or that stuff like the whole ‘Joe Rogan controversy’ is not just another endless example of how exploited wealth gets handed out at the top to whoever the people at the top want in the name of making more money/power, but everybody only latches on to the popular hot take example we all agree/disagree to shame/support for 48hrs and everyone gets so caught up in the self-righteousness of it all that hardly anybody stops to notice how dumb it all is when something like Neil Young tweeting un-ironically about ‘go listen to my music on Amazon instead’ happens and then everybody just moves on to shouting about the next finger-pointing topic du jour without ever doing/changing anything much at all.
So, when I factor in the fact that hardly anybody really listens to my playlists on Spotify in the first place (but s/o to all those who do), throw in the reality that it doesn’t seem most artists I follow are all that vocal about pushing listeners elsewhere at the moment, the whole notion that it’s still the “right thing to do” to move everything I do on Spotify over to Tidal just feels like the kind of change I can’t put any real feeling behind (it just feels too symbolic & futile of a gesture, and I already get more than enough symbolic change in my life by just living in modern North America). Because, if we’re talking about what is truly best for artists, you don’t give Tidal $20 to pay some artists slightly more with 10 of your dollars every month, instead you’d just take that $20 (or the extra $10 Tidal requires on top of the usual-payout-model price of $9.99 that most Corporate Streamers™ charge to access ALL MUSIC EVER) and you’d spend that money directly over on an artist’s or label’s Bandcamp or website every month (or in other direct ways that you can show support, especially if you live somewhere that gets live music coming to your town).
But then with Bandcamp announcing that they’re now owned by a company that is partially owned by a company that owns a part of Spotify, after the initial “ain’t that just the way” slap to the gut, I kinda had the realization that figuring out what I should do with MY actions, especially in regards to what my personal relationship with music would be if I wasn’t also running a “music blog”, it becomes a whole lot easier to manage/figure out if I start thinking of myself as ‘a guy who has a personal website that sometimes shares music’ instead of as ‘I am a music blog that participates in the music industry’. Because, I’ve checked my bank balance over the years of running what appears to be a “music blog”, and, if I do a realistic tally of time spent and work done and financial compensation received, it would be delusional for me to consider that I am a part of the music industry in any way that makes sense to continue in the same unbalanced give/take capacity that is the life of a one-person “music blog”.
And I’m (mostly) okay with that.
To be fair, for the most part, I have not been all that delusional about the reality of me being a “music blogger” or my position on the outside of the parts of the music industry that earn an income (in fact, I’ve enjoyed writing/thinking about the absurdity of it all + it makes for good stories when you talk to people in the real world with real jobs about things like how some people called you a ‘cancer on the industry’ because you were sometimes earning 50¢ performing a task that the person paying the 50¢ had asked you to do, even though there also is a free option they could have used instead + other fun “wait… but that doesn’t make any sense!” music blog vs real world stuff).
I’ve really only carried on for all these years because I actually like a lot of the stuff that I do + I’ve long since (mostly) got over needing outside recognition to appreciate the work I do for what I get out of it (for example, I think putting together a good mix tape is a similar creative experience to sitting down to paint a picture or write a story or etc + I genuinely think more people should have their own places off of social media to work out what their actual ideas/interests are, regardless of whether they can/want to focus energy on trying to monetize that personal experience, and I’m glad that I have my own place for that with this blog).
When I go to the HI54 home page, I can scroll & scroll and think, “yeah, if I wasn’t me, I would like this blog” — and, in a way, that’s all that I can really expect from me (ie. Would ‘another version of me’ like it? Yes? Great! Because everybody else’s opinion is going to be a toss-up as per usual, if they even have time for considering it, which they probably won’t, which is understandable because I hardly have time for anybody else’s stuff too — SO, at least I’ve succeeded at doing the only thing I can control… and that is that both I & me like what we/me did enough to hashtag send tweet once again. Success.).
I also look around at our neoliberal colonial/imperial capitalist gong show of a society loudly & knowingly barrelling directly towards a climate change over-consumption cliff on stolen land & exploited resources, all for the boot-licking sake of a bunch of obnoxiously wealthy narcissists, and I can’t help but find myself thinking:
“Yeah… I think I’m gonna just continue to work on my own little projects & ideas & life & experience & things I can control as much as I can while still staying (mostly) alive/content over here, especially instead of dedicating any extra effort/time than I need towards trying to be a more ‘successful’ participant in someone else’s late stage capitalism American pipe Dream long con ‘in the meantime’ — call me crazy, but ‘working on my own stuff, regardless’ feels less & less delusional every year I do it, especially instead of…”
*gestures at everything else going on*
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Besides, I think there’s real value in having one’s own projects/ideas to work on and I believe that the work we do in that mindset still counts even if capitalism/consumerism doesn’t acknowledge it. And, at the same time, I also realize the reality of needing to survive and how little time/energy there is available in a 24hr day to get anything else done, especially if the things you spend a lot of time on don’t “earn” you anything from anyone else that you can use towards meeting your basic needs (basic needs that we have unfortunately still not organized our society around providing efficiently for everyone, even though we have the capabilities to do so, because “economy?”, I guess). It’s one of the many paradoxes of being alive in our current timeline, ‘everything else’ being the other paradoxes.
And the challenge with having something that publicly walks & talks like a “music blog” specifically is that, even though hardly anybody is interested in the output you work diligently away in obscurity to create/share (and even though you’ve made peace with that daily/weekly “failure” of continuing to publicly share low interaction “content” into the void), there is somehow a never-ending demand for your continued input on more & more music/artists to be considered for your future ignored output.
Which somehow makes you a “gatekeeper” to some, even though the only thing behind my gate is a dumb little blog that, in the grand scheme of things, not that many people visit (and I think it is perfectly understandable that I get to pick what stuff goes on my own blog’s shelves, which, I guess, does make me some kind of ‘Keeper of the Blahg’ — but that’s about as prestigious of a position as the title sounds, and it’s a made-up position entirely created in the minds of all the people looking for gates to knock on and then immediately feeling like they’re being “kept” from something when nobody answers the door and/or let’s them in). I’ve also been chastised for not being popular enough in the first place to even be out on the internets daring to trick all these naive artists into sending me their music against their will (despite me actively limiting what days/ways people could even send me music submissions). Talk about a real “you lose some, you lose some” situation a lot of the times.
And, of course, there’s a humour in it all if you don’t burn out before things start getting funny enough to see the humour in it, BUT, at a certain point, there has got to be a better way for us all to work on what we’re drawn to work on (ie. to create & communicate & connect) in ways that can intersect with each other in ways that don’t just fall back on everybody competing against each other for the same few limited spots of “success” that these exploitive systems have prepped for the next content creator to get consumed by.
We’ve got to want better than continuing to want to succeed in that world.
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And if you really want to twist your head around with what Terence McKenna is getting at with the above quote/rant, you also have to recognize your own desire in becoming one of those “icons” that gets put out on a pedestal and used as bait for the less fortunate to aspire impossibly towards.
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I shared a redacted ‘HI54 Plan’ on Instagram earlier in the year of 2022, so, with the rest of this post, I mostly just want to un-redact some of the thoughts I scribbled down in my notebook in regards to what I’m thinking in regards to all my blog playlists & future music submissions. And I’m going to try to not go off on too many (more) tangents in this post, as I’m sure we’re all about past that point of “how much longer is this post?”.
Even though there’s still plenty of tangents I know I’m going to be tempted to go off on, and I probably will, because I can’t help myself sometimes — BUT — I mostly just want to communicate the plan for the next little while only, as a part of the overall plan for transitioning into a ‘Not a Music Blog, Not Not a Music Blog’ existence involves figuring out things that can’t be figured out until enough freed up time & headspace has been applied to them. Because some (k)nots take a bit more patience & concentration to work out (also, I am the only employee here at HI54 Headquarters, so I have to do all the different job titles that each change requires, so that adds onto the timeline & is probably why I never completely finish anything around here before having to make another major change that requires small website changes EVERYWHERE).
The ‘not a music blog’ part
This part mainly comes down to me realizing that I need to continue to NOT take any more new music submissions.
There is a chance that I bring back some kind of way for people to directly send me music submissions further down the road for consideration, BUT, in general, if I am going to just be a guy who happens to share music online, on my own schedule, in a way that isn’t so imbalanced with the rest of real life responsibilities, I don’t think I can also be taking on the never-ending job of dealing with 100s/1000s of music submissions every week/month, for forever. That’s the kind of work that only makes sense for somebody earning an actual income within the music industry to take on. And, as we’ve discussed, that is not me (nor is it A LOT of other people, which is also part of the underlying point).
And maybe there’s some “music blogs” out there that are able to keep making music submissions work for them (like most things, everybody’s situation is unique to their always-changing situation), but I think until the other side of the music submissions truly start only sending their music to sites/humans who do stuff they actually follow & support & value (instead of EVERYONE just sending EVERYTHING to ANYONE… while also only ever sharing or signal boosting stuff that has to do with their own stuff, while also always pining over the bigger coverage they didn’t get while ignoring the ‘not big enough to brag about’ sites that exist on a known non-monetary effort/interest, not to mention a focus away from ever addressing the overall late stage capitalism of it all), the only guaranteed outcome is eventual burnout & disappointment for pretty much all involved (except for maybe the few usual suspects at the top + those who earn the limited positions of temporary “success” that everybody else in the industry will continue to compete over, making everyone a replaceable mark for continued exploitation).
And the thing with having a “music blog” (or being considered a “music blogger”) is that, for some reason, it seems that a lot of people kinda all seem to agree that this is the one field of work where it is still totally fine & cool to tell someone “you should be doing this for the love of it or not doing it at all!” when they realize that you realize that they are literally asking you to do something for them, for free (again).
Especially with the emergence of music submission sites like Submithub giving some sense of control & perspective to those on the receiving end of all these submissions, and ESPECIALLY since I’ve done the controversial thing of writing blog posts to point out how Submithub, while not perfect, actually brings some rationality & functionality to the irrational & inefficient world of actual work that is music promotion, the uptick in the previously not spoken-out-loud-as-much thought that ‘music bloggers/curators are greedy talentless leeches’ has definitely been a lot louder over these last few years (just search “submithub” on Twitter for some examples). But I’m not here to re-hash Submithub arguments in a post where I am saying I’m going to STOP taking music submissions (which means I will also be going ‘inactive’ on Submithub).
In fact, a few months back, I tried to post something positive on Instagram about the good side of connecting with artists thru the music submission process on Submithub, and my attempt at positivity was cut off by an artist jumping into the comments to tell me that my post was just ‘a cope’ to get over my guilty involvement with such an impure site like Submithub. And we exchanged differing opinions until they stopped coming back, and… I’ve found myself returning to the gist of that interaction and what I kept trying to get across to them, which is really what I often try to get across to everyone, including myself, about almost everything, because I’ve found the concept quite helpful for navigating life less anxiously — so here is a paraphrase of it (which is all just ripped off Buddhist wisdom, like most good life advice):
“You literally can only control your own actions (at best, you can influence other’s actions) — so try to spend way less time pointing out & worrying about what everyone else is doing wrong, according to what you think is right, and just start internally pointing out & worrying about whether your actions and intentions are right, according to what you know is wrong, and then when you see how much work you have to do with just keeping your own actions/reactions in check, you can start adjusting your expectations/judgements of everyone else, including for yourself, empathetically & accordingly (aka: just try to make sure that you’re not going around being a different version of the same selfish ignorant a**hole you wish other people would stop being).”
And when applied to the music submission process and it’s affect on my life, I have come to realize that the only thing I really have control over in this situation is whether I choose to accept music submissions or not. Because, you can try to explain things up front to set realistic expectations, and it can help if/when people read it, BUT, for the most part, you’re always going to be just another ‘throwing darts at the wall’ BCC contact for almost anyone who finds out how to contact you.
I’ve even tried limiting the ways in which people can send me music submissions, and even the days in which people can send me stuff, BUT, after still managing to hit 1000 submissions in the month of November 2021 after dropping from only accepting submissions every other Sunday to Wednesday (which I had been doing for over 2 years) to down to only being open for submissions on one (1) day a week (Mondays), and given what we already know about my audience size waiting on the other end for the output of all this input I receive, and just with the whole state of exploitation in the music industry and society at large, I think we can all agree that it’s illogical at best for me to carry on inviting this work load in.
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A chart of the last year of music submissions (again, up until November ‘21 I was only open for music submissions about ‘8 days a month’ and then November ‘21 I was only open on Mondays (and Dec ‘21 + Jan ‘22 I basically had my queue closed for Xmas / Yearly Wrap-up Season).
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So, after processing over 45,000 music submissions thru Submithub since February 2018 (25k of those being the FREE ones), and with the rest of society seeming to be heading back to ‘return to normal / get back to work’ mode (regardless of whether that gels with what I was hoping this GLOBAL pandemic would teach us), I think it’s time for me to exercise my ability to control the only thing I can control in this weird “hey… got a minute to listen to a new song?” relationship and just flip the music submission switch entirely to ‘OFF’.
Because, if people can’t send me music submissions anymore — well, obviously people will never stop emailing/dm-ing music as long as the site exists & mailing lists are a thing & I keep my same email address that sites like The Indie Bible include in the mailing lists they sell as “music promo bundles”… but I can just continue to send those people a copy/paste canned response saying that I no longer accept music submissions & link them to this long-ass blog post explainer and then file those submissions away as ‘dealt with’ — but by officially not accepting any music submissions anymore, I think that pretty much officially makes me NOT a “music blog”.
From now on, I am just a guy who sometimes shares music on his blahg (no relation to “music blog”), music that I discover on my own time & in my own ways (which was always the contradiction I’d be accused of not staying true to by the very people directly sending me music and interrupting the purity of that idealized music discovery process they’ve made impossible to stick to by reaching out & circling back), which should start making the input demand feel way more inline with what the output demand is.
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Besides, I never was a “music blogger” that wrote about the whys & hows behind the songs/albums that caught my ear, I mostly just share mix tapes & mix cds with zero quotable praise for press clippings (which also explains why most people are not jazzed enough with the kind of ‘coverage’ I provide to spam their followers with the big news, even if most were usually pleased with & appreciated how their song was shared — and that is all fine and normal and enough, especially once I get things better balanced on my end). When I actually do sit down & try to write something I’d like to get out of my head (and when I have time to edit it & re-write it enough until I hate it enough to finally just post it), it’s often about something un-music-review-related like ‘Buddhism v Capitalism’ or ‘How To Hack a Sega Mini’ or ‘This Post You Are Reading Now’. I am also going to be helping out with a community garden project where I live again + other non “music blog” ambitions & tasks that a never-cleared-music-submission queue does little favours for following thru on.
So, permanently freeing up some previously overloaded headspace to focus on more engaging work than continuing to attempt to deal with the never-ending repetitive micro-task ask of “do you like this song enough to share it in a playlist that hardly anyone will listen to OR would you like to inform this person that you did not connect with their song enough to share it in a playlist that hardly anyone will listen to?”, which often leads to me rejecting like 90% of the people that send me their musical art project, which isn’t a great feeling tbh, even if I try to not be too precious about being honest about my subjective feelings/opinions that someone else asked me for, it’s still a weird form of accumulative emotional labour to be taking on so consistently and for such fleeting results — which is something that feels necessary to finally put a kibosh on indefinitely.
TL;DR: I’m not doing music submissions anymore, at the moment (genuine “sorry!” to those that genuinely appreciated me doing that ‘part of the job’ over the years of “music blogging”, but I hope you’ll also understand the reasoning for me deciding it’s time to get rid of that part of “the job”).
The ‘not NOT a music blog’ part
Look, just because not that many people actually care about the output of this little blog that shares music, especially on a level that makes sense to keep spending time/energy processing new music submissions for consideration to be included in that output, that doesn’t mean that I care enough that other people don’t care enough to actually completely stop doing some version of the stuff that I enjoy doing. Otherwise I would have stopped ages ago. Seriously… this ‘HI54 thing’ literally has never made financial / logical sense, music submissions coming by the boatload or not.
As I’ve said before, I’ve already made peace with the fact that I have no control over how the things I do are received by others (if received at all, which they often aren’t because… THERE’S A LOT GOING ON OUT THERE & EVERYBODY ELSE IS BUSY DOING THEIR LIFE TOO). I just try to concentrate on making sure that I am still getting what I get out of working on a mix tape or mix cd or blog post to the point of feeling it is ‘as good as I have time to get it’ for sharing online for ANYONE or NO ONE to also maybe get something out of it, or not (and it’s nice when a connection/appreciation happens, but you gotta learn to move on when it does and/or doesn’t and keep going either way if you feel drawn to keep going — because it’ll usually “doesn’t” more than it “does”, and most times you won’t even know one way or the other because… THERE’S A LOT GOING ON OUT THERE & EVERYBODY ELSE IS BUSY DOING THEIR LIFE TOO).
And, as I’ve also also said before, I was the kind of person that used to make people mix tapes & mix cds just for an excuse to make a mix tape & a mix cd (and, sure, maybe I’d pass it off as a legitimately thoughtful gift too, because I’m all about that ‘2 birds, 1 stoner’ lifestyle… but I only think of it as a good gift idea in the first place because there’s something in the process of making a mix that I really enjoy + I think listening to a good mix is a legitimate gift, even if what makes it “good” is subjective to everyone). So, continuing to run HI54.BLOG in a way that will kinda look/feel like it’s NOT ‘Not A Music Blog’ is probably going to be unavoidable.
Apologies in advance for any confusion.
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For example, I’m going to keep doing my Mixcloud mixes, AT LEAST until I finish making a HI54 Yearbook Mix for EVERY year that I’ve been alive (and I’ve only done 30 years & counting so far and I am also an old), but I am also taking some time away from having a consistent ‘new episode’ posting schedule while I try to figure out what the next iteration of ‘MTR= Mix Tape Radio on Moun.Town/Radio’ is going to realistically/sustainably be going forward.
Also, I started a project called The Provincial Playlists, where I put together 95-tracks-from-95-artists playlist for each of the “official” provinces of Canada (“official” in quotations because of our countries whole stolen land / genocide foundation, eh) and I quite enjoyed how that project was turning out, even as just a musical research/discovery project for the giant land mass that I was born on, and since I’ve only done 5 provinces so far, I want to see that idea through (Spring 2023 Update: all 10 provinces have had a digital mix cd run-thru now). And maybe there’s a couple other playlist-related ideas that I might try to get around to finally getting around to now that I’ve shut down the weekly submissions factory line (for example, an idea hinted at during the most recent 5/4 Day holidaze called ‘mutually beneficial employment’).
I also plan on continuing to update my weekly YOUR WEEKLY 9(to)5 EH playlist + my monthly updated 420 ALL DAY playlist, even if just as a way to slowly process what parts of the “music blog” days makes sense to keep going into the “Not A Music Blog, Not Not A Music Blog” days. I also am not entirely ready to disappear the MOUN.TOWN/FM idea that I’ve been trying to play around with in the small mountain town that I’ve been running the HI54LOFI offices from for the last half-decade with officemate 95EH.
Which also means I’m going to keep using Spotify, for now.
On the whole, I feel like Bandcamp being bought by Fortnite was the universe having a laugh at me for even trying to approach my “music blog” existentialisms from some kind of ethical or logical standpoint (and I see you universe, well played). But, the reality is, despite us all agreeing that Spotify is another shitty exploitative company, Tidal is not really a solution to that problem, and Tidal is definitely not a good solution for how I’ve been using streaming as a “music blog”. And since I am NOT a music blog anymore, I feel I’m also working on an exit strategy from Corporate Streaming™ in general.
But, since I’ve spent a lot of time working within the Spotify desktop app and have come up with quite the convoluted sorting/organizing playlist system, I feel it’s best in the long-run if I don’t be too impulsive about aborting everything to do with Spotify/streaming ASAP just so my $9.99 a month stops immediately going to one shady streaming company (that, again, a lot of artists say they still NEED for booking shows & at least some income & etc). Especially considering the $100 a month I’ll still be giving to a shady internet company (ie. my conglomerate internet provider) + basically et cetera for almost all the money I earn that I’m unable to hold on to and prevent from making it’s way back to a network of interconnected shady billionaire companies.
Also, there’s a chance that what we lost in a feeling of “independent-ness” with Bandcamp’s acquisition, we might gain in a better mainstream alternative than what the Corporate Streamers™ currently offer (and I remain hopeful that some more collective / community minded music services will start filling the diy void left by what Bandcamp used to offer, I just know I’m not smart enough to build any of it, I can only help by using/sharing).
But, as bummed as I may be about losing the hope that Bandcamp could be this community-minded “utopia” that couldn’t be traced back to Death Star shareholders (and even previous Bandcamp didn’t meet that fantasy), at the moment, nothing has actually changed about the things that made Bandcamp the best option for supporting artists before the surprise Epic news knocked the wind out of everyone’s anti-establishment sails (ie. Bandcamp still takes the same fair cut as before and is still doing Bandcamp Fridays and they still let artists make their art available for easy online purchase at prices the artist set themselves, and until that changes, or someone offers something more artist friendly that we can rally behind, we’re sort of in a ‘wait and see’ holding pattern).
So, since I mainly use Spotify playlists as a way to share really big (and subjectively really quite nice) mix cds as an alternative to turning on the radio (or some algorithm’d playlist), with which you can usually find blog posts with embeds/links to the tracks that are available to purchase from the artists directly on their Bandcamp pages, I don’t really feel like now is the time to rush to change anything much of what I was doing (also, who knows what’s coming with new Bandcamp features, especially with shareable playlists, now that they have more money/power behind them… although ‘union busting by the Spring of 2023’ was not the story development I was hoping for).
Of course, me NOT accepting new music submissions anymore will mean that I will be updating & sharing the majority of my Spotify playlists way less frequently, but that also lines up better with the fact that people very infrequently listen/follow most of those playlists anyways. I also have a bit of a ‘new music discovery’ system (which also includes “old” music discovery) setup on Spotify, not to mention some other musical exploration methods, so even though people won’t be able to directly get a track of theirs into my headphones for possible inclusion into any of the mixes I share going forward as they could with a music submission, that doesn’t mean that I still won’t come across people’s music and share in whatever ways that I might be sharing music in the future anyways (for example, I’d love to see more people using/supporting what Resonate is trying to build, as I’d like to do a monthly mix on there… but it’s also pretty slim pickings as far as artists that even I recognize from my years of successfully running an unsuccessful music blog).
And it’s not that there isn’t also a lot of good stuff & connections that have come out of me participating in the music submission process over the years. It really hasn’t been as bad as it can sound when I highlight the aggressively negative stuff (for the most part, people are more neutral towards music blogs than any one extreme of ‘hating’ or ‘loving’). I’ve made some real connections and had some genuine exchanges with all kinds of good humans because of being a “music blog” that accepted music submissions. I regret nothing & I hope to continue to be able to make positive connections.
Unfortunately, there’s just not a way to only get the small amount of people who actually f*ck with your blog to send you music submissions (probably because people don’t really ‘f*ck with blogs’ anymore, which is probably the biggest problem as far as having a blog is concerned), which makes it impossible to not have ‘dealing with music submissions’ become this never ending chain of recurring tasks/asks that just doesn’t make sense to keep taking on, especially within the context of the reality of the world we all know we all have to try and get by in somehow. And, from my experience, it’s kind of hard to get by as a one-person “music blog” and/or “music blogger”… if not actually designed to be literally impossible to get by as an independent one (like the way a lot of things have been designed for us to participate in & ‘get by’ as).
But what about getting by as a ‘Not A Music Blog, Not Not A Music Blog’ guy who just so happens to have an online presence that shares music he likes quite often (but who is totally NOT a “music blog” because he no longer accepts music submissions and instead spends that time doing other work)?
Is that something that can get by?
In this economy?!
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I guess we shall see :)
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PS- if you’ve found yourself wondering, “well how does a blog even earn money?” the answer to that is probably something I need to spend a bit more time trying to figure out — but, for now, there is this ‘SUPPORT THE SITE’ page that you can check out in secret if you fancy.
