Category: TechnologyCategory: Technology

Apparently this is a regular occurrence in the music streaming space:

i got an email from one of my music distributors (for another project, not fog chaser) essentially accusing me of seeking out artificial streams. they then threaten to delete my account and take down all of my music (which is years of my work)

Whether you’re someone building buzz on social media and waking up to your account being suspended, to stories like this, someone else is in control. Someone else has the keys to the kingdom, and if they deem you’ve done something wrong, you’re done.

These tech bros made a game that we feel we all have to play, and that if we don’t then “we’re nothing without them,” which is a common line we hear in abusive and toxic relationships.

If you don’t put all your music into their music platform, then no one will discover you, and you’ll end up broke and alone.

BUT… even if you do put all your music on those services, you’ll still probably be broke, right? Sure, there’s opportunities to be “discovered,” but you’re still competing with the 100,000 other songs that are being uploaded everyday, too.

Maybe the computer in War Games was right, “the only winning move is not to play.”

According to YouTube CEO Neal Mohan at this years Cannes Lions International Festival, “YouTube Shorts is now averaging 200 billion daily views.”

On one hand, that 200 billion daily views is temping because we could start posting videos there and maybe get seen by some of those people.

On the other, we could skip it entirely and focus on the people already in our creative orbit. The people who read our posts and subscribe to our newsletter and listen to our music. Instead of chasing more, what happens when we chase impact and richness with the people right there in front of us?

You can get all of my latest posts by adding the RSS feed to your RSS feed reader (like NetNewsWire).

I love sending email newsletters of course, but as Seth Godin says, our newsletters “often gets filtered by our evil tech overlords.”

Recently, Joi Katskee missed a friend’s show. She asked about it afterwards, and they said they posted about it on Instagram, which we all know your social media followers miss almost everything you post.

She followed up with success story of her own art installation, and shared about the win on a recent Escape Pod Zoom call:

“I texted probably 15 people about the show rather than posting on Instagram, and maybe over half of them showed up. They were like, Yeah, I’ll be there. Thank you for the invite.”

Posting to the most amount of people always feels like the right move. But if no one sees it, what good does that do? Does it just let you off the hook?

(more…)

Meta is gonna do what Meta is gonna do, adding advertisements to WhatsApp: “ads built with privacy in mind.” Apparently it’s only in the Updates Tab, but as John Gruber says, “does anyone believe they’re not going to put ads in the other tabs sooner or later?”

Good discussion ensues on HackerNews about how folks have moved away from WhatsApp:

“I moved my family over to Signal years ago. Anyone new who wants to message me, I simply say “I’m on Signal” and if it’s important enough, they go and install it.”

Read the full thread here.