Spin the wheel on the donkey/spin again

Hey, you can update blog posts. Let’s meta this.

Reading the tea leaves – the walls and floors are tearing, collapsing – I’ve been here before many many times in forty+ years. It was cassettes and postage, it was websites and CD burns, it was BandCamp and downloads … now it’s Spotify streams … but the crackling and scratching is even louder. The centre cannot hold.

This is essentially true. BandCamp is based around the memory of record shops, which are a pimple on the bum of the Industry. But is that my problem? I can just keep that audience while moving into new realms. Spotify is MixTapes or Radio depending on how active the listener might be. Either way they are just listening to a broadcast like they always did. Do I need to change this?

When you are most comfortable the termites are gnawing. The grinding sound is near to the surface. I cannot sit on BandCamp and hope that change will stay away. BandCamp is dead meat, no life. Downloaded albums are mortally wounded and streams can’t be that far behind. I’m looking around…

There’s nothing wrong with looking around. But let’s take the time to find and grow a new stream without nuking the planet from orbit. I’m trying to find one hub that does everything and that doesn’t exist. It’s really a question of linking and branding.

Listen to how the children cry – none can stream on Spotify. They desperately make their music even more generic / categorised / safe. WRONG. I thought about talking with them but have thought again – put on your own oxygen mask before you can save any children. The only way is forward. It will be unpopular – particularly as I have been wrong often and have often made messes when trying to create new things. Like Nilamox.

People like rare. They like old. They like odd/misshapen. They want exclusives. They want personal. Bespoke. STAFF ONLY. Luxury Class. Lightning Lane. How can I sell rare vintage alongside the latest thing? How can I sell very expensive and very cheap? How can I break through the old categories so that listeners can never really be sure of what will come next? How can I really be multimedia? And build community? And be more true to the spirit that launched this thing?

When I wrote down every creative idea it forms a list that could mostly be handled by BandCamp apart from visuals (videos, games etc.) and sculptural works. There are sites that handle these things. Another theme is community donations but I would prefer that there be a prize for every donation.

It comes down to trust. That I will deliver something worthwhile. That no matter how oddball it might be – it will be cute as a button. That the very old and very new will be very worth while. And if you have a dollar, you will get something. And if you have 1000 dollars you will get something else.

That’s a policy that should be there no matter what.

There are platforms for this and I have been asking for experiences that other people have had in providing their own stuff. Patreon is very much into episodic material – podcasts for example. Chapters and deadlines… no that’s not quite right because I don’t know if the deadlines are more important than the work. Then there’s BuyMeACoffee which is just a little blunt – I want to have a salon not a teacup. So next is Ko-Fi which is better because I think they are not dead sure of what they are doing. I am not sure either so we have more in common. Let’s run this shit into the ground together. They are in the UK. That could be a good thing.

What’s going to happen? Ideally I would slowly pull down music from BandCamp and make it part of a wider mix. I could sell odd bits of vinyl – I have a room of it. We could start making Blubberknife again. We could sell tickets to the computer games and videos. Or I don’t know.

Instead I made contact with some of my partners and talked about what we are doing and how that could be clarified. I don’t need to press vinyl. It’s far too expensive to send from Australia. I can also find partners who can make toys. For my part I must improve the way the videos are provided.

But I do know that stability causes cancer. Jump. Take a risk.