(Or, the struggle through the ages. Or, old man still yelling at cloud.)
Releasing music in 2000:
Welcome to Discmakers. Here's a box of 1,000 CDs. 850 of them will still be in your closet five years from now.
Releasing music in 2012:
Welcome to Bandcamp. Here are 200 download codes. 196 of them will remain unredeemed twelve months from now.
Releasing music in 2024:
Welcome to DistroKid. Here are thirty streaming platforms, twenty of which you've never heard of, plus our curated playlist application form which costs extra but, trust us, is totally worth it. Psst...here's a bot streamer. Technically fraud, but it'll be our little secret. (Remember SoundScan?). By the way, you're doing social media wrong. We feel we should tell you in every third sponsored ad in your Insta feed. What are you, a boomer? And everyone's in reels now, not posts. Post them daily at 9am, noon, or 5. The game favors those who grind. While we got you trapped on your phone, here's a reel of a 3-year old piano prodigy in Japan to make you feel good. He's probably better than you'll ever be. And here's another reel of a producer in a studio much nicer than yours wrapping their third song this week. (How many have you wrapped this month?) Here's a final one for good measure - get this, some guy made the New York Times because he wrote a song about sitting and it went viral. Feel inspired yet? You probably need a video to stand out from the 100,000 other songs dropping on the same day as yours. Here's Croppr, Slidr and seventeen other ways to edit your footage*. Need a remix? Try Soundly, Beatly and Squēk. Mastering? Say no more. Mastering used to be an arcane art for people with god-tier ears, but now you can have Greg-Calbi-in-a-box with a monthly paid membership to MSTr (our AI-powered mastering-as-a-service (MaaS) platform that integrates directly with Soundly (professional subscription required), Beatly (freemium account ok), but unfortunately does not play well with Squēk.)
Calbi-dongle required for activation.
*Sora text-to-video was released at the time of this writing, so now you don't even need footage.
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What I’m reading: The World Without Us
What I'm listening to: The Jesus and Mary Chain - Girl 71
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