One of my instrumentals has 6,029 Shazams and under 2,000 plays. That means 6,000 people heard it somewhere, didn't know what it was, and searched for it. I didn't put it there. It just traveled.
https://alvalanker.bandcamp.com/track/digital-siege
#IndustrialMusic #Experimental #IndependentMusic #Alvalanker
Facebook's organic reach for business pages: 0.07% of followers per post. Instagram: similar. TikTok: volatile and declining. The strategy the music industry sold independent artists for a decade - build a social media following, go viral, grow your audience - was, at best, a lottery. At worst, it was a decade-long transfer of value from artists to platforms, enforced by the funding bodies that were supposed to support the sector. And it's no longer working for any of us.
67% of musicians report heightened anxiety linked to maintaining a social media presence. Gen Z is retreating from platforms they built their social lives on. Oxford named "brain rot" its 2024 Word of the Year. Social media is being recognised as the bunch of BS that it is.
The reckoning is here. But what comes after social media could be beautiful. What if it means genuine community engagement, direct artist-to-fan relationships, live music, independent radio, channels the artist owns. Not just a 'return to the before times', but a new economy - a caring economy - a well-being economy. Wouldn't that be just incredible?
Bandcamp has paid artists over a billion dollars in direct revenue. The model works. It just doesn't make a platform billionaire. And The Pack's OK with that.
New blog on what went wrong with the social media era of arts marketing, and what the artists who kept building real relationships in real places already knew.
#IndependentMusic #ArtsMarketing #SocialMedia #MusicIndustry #ArtistWellbeing #ThePackMusic #CommunityEngagement #MusicEconomy #ArtsPolicy
The arts - particularly independent music - must look toward alternative means of connecting with audiences and fostering genuine community engagement. Because let's be honest, if your career depends on whether TikTok's algorithm likes you this week, you're not building a career - you're gambling wi
Bandcamp Friday is here again... kinda sucks that the timing also lines up with the no shopping for May Day thing, but at least one middleman gets cut out of the deal today. :)
#ElectronicMusic #BandcampFriday #FairTradeMusicFriday #IndependentMusic
Do you like #TTRPG s and/or #independentmusic?
I’m an independent classically-trained composer making music for TTRPGs, and my main project is a large-scale #gothic #Soundtrack for the #DnD adventure #CurseOfStrahd.
The soundtrack for Chapter 2: The Lands of Barovia is in progress, so you can pick it up as an early release at a discount today, receiving new tracks when they release, *and* supporting an independent musician on #BandcampFriday!
26 track album
My new album isnt out for another month so I have nothing new for #bandcampFriday
However, I have two beautifully melancholic acoustic singer/songwriter albums waiting for you, a comfy sofa, your favourite drink and some soft lighting.
https://mtp-music.bandcamp.com/
a box of tissues is optional
Singer/songwriter from South Wales, UK. Entirely self written, self recorded, self produced and self published, meaning an entirely 100% authentic musical vision of a single person. No AI, no pitch correction, no auto-tune. Just 36 years of song writing, live playing and 50+ years of life experience condensed into raw, emotional diary entries in song form.
A retro-pop band called The Velvet Sundown accumulated a million monthly listeners on Spotify earlier this year. The music was catchy. The backstory was detailed. The photographs had that quality of images that reward close inspection by generating new questions.
Everything about the project was generated by artificial intelligence. The songs, the images, the biography, the entire artist identity that listeners had been following and adding to playlists. And it worked. People were fooled. That's the significant thing.
The Pack's position - human creation, human curation - is not (only) a statement about the ethics of AI as a technology. It is a governance decision about what kind of content the platform is designed to support, and whose interests it was built to serve.
An AI disclosure label doesn't resolve the structural question of whether synthetic content should compete in the same royalty pool as music made by human beings. But it is a start, and transparency and flexibility is always better than the alternative.
New blog on AI disclosure, The Velvet Sundown, and why the label on the label matters even for platforms that already say no.
#AIMusic #AITransparency #HumanCuration #IndependentMusic #MusicIndustry #ThePackMusic #ArtificialIntelligence #MusicEthics
When a retro-pop band called The Velvet Sundown racked up a million monthly listeners on Spotify earlier this year with catchy hooks and nostalgic sound, music fans were captivated. There was just one problem: the band wasn't real - every song, image, and backstory had been generated using AI. Th
Alvalanker is the moniker that multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, and songwriter Daniel Simoes records under. His music tends to be stylistically fluid within rock parameters: Some of his pieces have a harder edge that drifts towards metal, others come with some prog flair mixed with atmospheric sounds, while others have a more familiar alt-rock structure. Quite a few of his tracks are instrumental, some of which show signs of video game music influences as well. His production has that relatively unpolished, raw texture that is characteristic of a DIY vibe that permeates his work.
A journalist wrote an in-depth piece about my path from touring as guitarist with En Esch and Mona Mur (KMFDM / Slick Idiot) to building an independent label and releasing 7 albums on my own terms. Personal, honest, worth a read if you're into the independent music world or the industrial/electronic scene.
https://charnightstar.substack.com/p/nightstar-exclusive-interview-with
@propaganda_site
#IndependentMusic #Industrial #IndustrialMusic #KMFDM #Experimental #NewMusic #IndieArtist #Music
Alvalanker
@packmusic
Audiartist
Fugue State Audio
The Arcane Composer
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MTP