🔵 We need subcultures and scenes back - both online and off

Why small communities could be the key to breaking future scenes and talent

This week I was taking part in an online chat with BIMM students over in Berlin. A question came up regarding how artists can market themselves and generally grow awareness if they are reluctant to use social media. It is a question I’ve come across a couple of times now in other sessions working with emerging artists and producers.

Really though this point highlights something quite important: we are now at a point where everyone’s starting point when it comes to marketing themselves is, naturally, the internet, and their own social media presence by extension.

What I think that reveals, however, is also how isolated artists have often become. There is a pervading sense that the only path to reaching audiences is via the internet, and often via your own personal/professional accounts as an artist.

If we look at where the internet is headed (for now anyway), the future does look somewhat bleak. AI and bots are generally taking over things such that search engines are no longer pointing you to answers on websites, but instead just dishing up the answers directly, having scraped all the knowledge from the websites that are out there. Equally, social media is becoming more algorithmic, showing you posts the platforms feel might be interesting, and not limiting that to purely the people you follow. Alongside that, we also have AI slop threatening to overwhelm everything, with all manner of weird, surreal and oftentimes disturbing content flooding feeds.

This feels bleak, if you feel the internet of, say, 2022, was something we should treasure and hold on to. I would argue that is not the case. In fact I would go as far as to say we’re now at a point where the internet will, in general, become less useful and generally more inefficient. Public data itself will soon disappear, because either AI will render all such models pointless (on the basis it will scrape knowledge and remove any purpose for the existence of the sites themselves), or because those running websites will find means to lock AI and the public out of those sites, creating many private sub-internet structures.

So far, so bleak… but I do feel there are upsides here, and one of them is that this might place even more focus back on to non-internet means of entertainment, and re-emphasise that need for human interaction.

That, in turn, brings me back around to the topic of today’s Network Notes. It occurred to me, whilst reflecting on this question about marketing oneself as an artist, that in fact most of the biggest movements in music were just that: movements, collectives, communities, subcultures - call them what you will.

Indeed, when we talk about music, we tend to refer to things by genre, and those genres existed because of movements in which many people coalesced around the same passions and interests. Punk, rave, grunge, dubstep, grime… the list is long. But all began with some kind of central nucleus, which grew and in time took over the world: NYC and London for punk... London for the ‘88/89 Summer of Love... Seattle for Grunge... The DMZ nights here in London for dubstep…. and so on.

So my message to the aspiring artist at BIMM was this: maybe it is time to seek out like minds, and look not to the world at large via the internet, but instead to your own back yard, there in Berlin. Build that groundswell of interest, knowing that journalists, writers, influencers (*wince*) and their ilk will all take more interest in a collective happening than an individual doing their own thing.

Create a night or an event that has pull, and reward those attending by giving them something to believe in and inherently attribute value to. How? That’s up to you, but start by asking what you can do that genuinely feels valuable. So not a free digital download… maybe something that requires some upfront investment. Give those to people and they recognise that value, and appreciate it, and remember that.

At times, it feels like we have all accepted that the path to fame or success lies with building a social media profile of your own, and addressing the entire world with your posts.

Maybe it is time we move back to looking more locally, and working out what scenes we can build among like minds in our own towns and cities.

Of course, these things can build online, and I’m old enough to remember the forums of old where I hung out with various people, some of whom are now globally-known artists, authors, DJs, graf artists and more. However the point is that back then, we all used these private communities because had shared passions and tastes. It was never about the world at large on the internet: it was about our own little corner of it, that we made our safe space for like minds to chat music and culture, knowing they were among like minds and peers.

Perhaps it isn’t all offline, but I still feel that the entire “IRL” space has become somehow forgotten, especially in that context of building a groundswell of interest. Build local scenes and encourage evangelism from the community. The old “each one teach one” adage holds up: get everyone working to spread word and soon you have built something formidable.

I still maintain that passion for music has never died. It might look like it sometimes, but it has always endured and often just needs the right circumstances to connect the dots and generally light the touchpaper on something incredible.

Perhaps it is time to return to that kind of logic now, and stop assuming that all problems are solved by engaging with the latest trendy tech platform.

Have a great evening,

D.

🎶 Listening to “Sacred Conversations” by Kutmah. Take this as whatever comment you like on the lack of coverage for music at the mo, but I am discovering most new releases now by combing the new releases section (split out by genre, usefully) on Qobuz. That’s where I learned about the new Kutmah album, on Ireland’s amazing All Cities label that has dropped many a classic before now. This is a fine release though, well worth checking out.

📺 Watching “Big Bear Bald Eagle Live Nest” live feed on YouTube. If you fancy a tune-out, super chill watch, then this live feed from a Bald Eagle nest is quite something to take in. Far more compelling a watch than you’d think!

🤖 Playing with Google Gemini Gems. Gems are Google’s Gemini equivalent to custom GPTs; basically trainable AI apps you can set up for specific tasks. As a business we are having to make our choices now about which AI platforms to pay for, and as a company running on Google Workspace, Gemini warrants more time and investment for obvious reasons. Notion AI is also proving incredibly useful though, on the basis it can integrate not just with your Notion databases, but also Slack, Google Drive and more, making it a wonderful “answers anything” front-end for staff.

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Notes & followups in dispatches:

• I am also looking for a professional podcast studio (or radio station) to record a new show with my buddy Wrongtom. It needs to be either around Soho, or around Liverpool St/Shoreditch if possible. We just need the usual setup: mics and means to play music. Recommendations welcome! Thank you!

• If you missed the radio show I did with Wrongtom last week, you can listen back on-demand over on Mixcloud. Now obviously I’d recommend taking a listen, but based on feedback, this one seems to have gone down really well. Tom starts his own solo show on Soho Radio soon too. More on that in a bit!

• I’m still posting over on Bluesky too, so if you want hot takes on stories as they break etc, follow me over there. 🦋

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