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Alright guys, I'm trying to address the problems I see with the Furry music scene. I have big plans. I'm gonna need a lot of help. But here's the problems I currently see. A thread.
There's a payoff at the end, so skip to that if you want a TL; DR
There's a payoff at the end, so skip to that if you want a TL; DR
I've been in like 7 different big furry musicians chatrooms. There's 2 types of them. The first one is the Huge Umbrella chatrooms. The wild west of genres and skill levels, gear discussions and theoretical analysis, feedback and off topic discussions. You know this type of chat
It's too big of a scope. Nothing productive ever gets done, no connections are ever made, 80% of it's members never talk, and the 20% of the ones that do, frankly, are /insufferable/. There's a lack of moderation, a lack of focus, and it's a place to hang out when you're bored.
The other type is the extremely niche chatroom. This one is better for building connections to like-minded musicians, but it's catch-22 is a pigeonhole of genre. You may make some friends and fans with the 9 people in that chatroom, but then that's it. Nowhere to go from there.
This brings up the next issue of vetting and validation. On Microdile's post, it was brought up that 'most' musicians in the fandom make generic EDM. Here's the truth though: ACTUALLY THAT IS THE TRUTH. Keep reading before you get mad at me.
Most artists in the fandom have very little skill, as well. You just don't know their names, because creative industries are competitive. Art isn't a competition, but it's absolutely competitive. Quality artists get business, all the rest need to improve before the payoff.
So that brings me to the next point: Consumability. Music faces a challenge that art doesn't, and the challenge is that there's no immediate gratification. @remygryph made a post yesterday boosting musicians, it has HUNDREDS of submissions. How many of you listened through em?
You reading this right now simply didn't. I don't blame you at all. When someone makes an "Artists drop your stuff here", you scroll through the posts, see quality art and go "dang my fish brain thought this wolf was drawn well after looking at it for 2 secs, liked and followed"
You can't do that with music. I work IT, and it taught me this: No matter how easy something is, it's too hard. When I tell someone it takes 2 clicks to send an email, they ask why it isn't 1 click. And I get it. Art is easy to consume because you DON'T NEED TO CLICK. YOU SCROLL.
To play my new EP takes 2 clicks too many. You click on the bandcamp link, and then you click play. No one has time for that. When you're just lookin' to listen to music you haven't heard before, what do you do? I'll speculate, but I'd love some actual data on this. Drop a reply
I think that you go on Spotify and press the "Discover weekly" button. 2 clicks, and you're set for hours and hours. One scroll on twitter or FA and you consume so much art. And what do you do when something sticks out to you enough? You click that thumbs up/like button. 1 click.
And here's the thing, I can go on about click-counts and all that, but that fishbrain part of us is where the separation lies. We filter out all this passive information like unpolished art and generic music, but when something lights our brains up, we want to remember it.
But there's currently NO WAY to passively absorb furry music! You HAVE to actively read a message on the screen, click the button to listen, and then go back to twitter and continue your mindless scrolling (Or I guess work or draw or whatever).
And this all ties into the vetting of quality that's completely missing. For an artist, you post a picture, if it's good, the likes and retweets it gets feeds into the twitter algorithm, it's shared in telegram channels by consumers, it's crossposted places.
95% of the furry artists you know by name, you've never talked to, you've never met, and you didn't even see their post from their page. You saw it from a retweet, a crosspost, a friend, etc. Musicians currently don't have that luxury.
So of /course/ all the furry music you hear is subpar! You hear it directly from the composer, who thinks it's God's gift to the world! So when you see them post it, you think "of course /they/ think this is good, but I have nothing else to go off of".
So you'll see posts by JingleHusky492 and SparkleSnout88 with their respective EPs, you don't know that one was recorded underwater with a banjo he found yesterday, and the other was done with professional equipment from a college-educated composer. So you listen to neither
Musicians in the fandom don't have a platform to passively display their music. They rely on you, the listener, to actively read their post, click on their links, and interrupt their own flow in support of you. This is the huge, overarching issue
This issue causes all the rest. Musicians with little skill get the same amount of non-traction that very skilled musicians get. You, the listener, are presented with a billion options and have to rely on good faith to know which ones will actually be enjoyable.
Musicians then deal with giant chatrooms with 0 focus in the attempt to network with other good musicians to hopefully combine their extremely small audiences together into a less-extremely-small-but-still-super-small collective. And they fail because of the lack of focus.
Twitter isn't for us to get noticed. We can use it for updates, for dumping our albums, and for communicating with fans. But we can't get new listeners. Here's the long-term solution that will take a lot of work, that I'm willing to put in, but I'll need help with.
TL; DR
We need a Fandom Streaming Service. And a competitive one. Open a program or website, click on "Top %genre% Tracks this Week" or "New %genre% Releases" or "All %genre% Radio" button. Thumbs up the tracks that stick out to you, Thumbs down the ones that suck.
We need a Fandom Streaming Service. And a competitive one. Open a program or website, click on "Top %genre% Tracks this Week" or "New %genre% Releases" or "All %genre% Radio" button. Thumbs up the tracks that stick out to you, Thumbs down the ones that suck.
It's all metrics then. Amazing songs show up on the front page, put in to top 40s in furry music sections, etc etc etc. I would love to build a dedicated website for this, would love a programmer or two help with with the APIs from spotify/bandcamp/etc.
But what you can do RIGHT NOW is join my MUSIC DISCORD SERVER. Here's my idea: THIS IS A SERVER FOR EVERYONE. Musicians and music consumers! It's segmented by genre. It will have 24/7 radio stations playing exclusively furry music. Eventually. https://discord.gg/GF8jKu4
