2018
#It doesn't take listening to the whole of "Wolves" to realise that we, independent musicians, are like the farmers' market. Long term, we'll remain as a token, a nod to tradition, a sort of travelling fair, in the hope we make it around till the public starts inquiring into healthy soul-food.
But right now it sure is impossible to carve a notch in the optimised, team-produced, mass-market, conveyor belt product, that is stream-piped directly into your room, especially without being swallowed by the industry for the purpose of being an ingredient to yet more product.
It's also ironic that if you're reading this, you're likely an exception to the mass listener.
But we're all turning into the mass listener, taste quietly shaped behind the scenes, and fully profiled with the aim to support a next product opportunity.
Romantically speaking, there might be a billion genres in a few years. But it could be that we've all started liking most of what comes out. Or it could be that little else comes out, and time is too expensive to go seek it out.
I think about the producers. Like Uber's drivers, whose routes are recorded, every move of a producer, ends up recorded in a DAW, the project owned by someone else. Some ready to be swapped for an algorithm.
Let 2018 be nothing like this. But I feel we, artists and audience, need to do something. Me, I'm trying to get into the habit of recording sooner, sketching more loosely, trying to make more time-slots to practice my art, make more of it public, often unpolished, but with more of myself in it, still raw.
Healthier.
I think, once I'm ready, I might launch a Bandcamp sub.
ps I loved reading your mails in 2017. As always around the year's edges, I contemplate leaving the social networking space for good. I realise abandoning a Facebook group is clearly self-harm (I have no FB profile), but Twitter and Instagram are both in the "very likely" list.