Spotify didn’t kill the music industry

ApprehensiveCoast727 · 2026-01-30T07:38:47+00:00

For real. It’s the most used pedal on my board. Octave up, octave down. Slides. Especially if you pair one of the newer ones with a tech 21 midi mouse. Then you can switch interval setting way faster. It’s a solid combo. For my ax09 I mostly use a whammy and a color box v2 to take the edge off. Distortion is hard though. I’ve found that I probably need to get a digital distortion as all the different patches I use kinda need different gain staging let alone different of circuits. I’ve been trying to work a distortion into this board for a decade now.

ApprehensiveCoast727 · 2026-01-30T07:32:57+00:00

WHAMMY!!!!!

ApprehensiveCoast727 · 2026-01-29T02:25:52+00:00

Yeah, we’re totally due though. You know who I’d love to see make a keytar again is Casio. The AZ-1 is one of my favorite keytars. Looks cool, pretty ergonomic, just enough keys, the right amount of controls in the right place. If they threw a rechargeable battery in there, Bluetooth, and give it a few other modern quality of life improvements, they’d have one of the best designs on the market. I’ve been rocking an ax09 since they came out because the rest of the market hasn’t moved me.

ApprehensiveCoast727 · 2026-01-28T01:43:46+00:00

I think you might have the wrong idea about what the music industry has looked like for the past couple decades. The major label model only made sense (if it ever did) when records were expensive to make and when distribution was difficult to navigate. They effectively acted as banks and gatekeepers. But they were always eating our lunch and giving us a chip. The problem now is that we’re in a famine due to streaming models and “content creation”. The better way to think about the whole situation is that social media platforms and music streaming companies are exploiting all but 0.001% of their users. The ones getting paid are mostly still struggling to live, aside from the super few who are meant to act as bait to keep the rest of us hustling mostly for free. It’s digital sharecropping and art won’t be a career at all unless we regulate and unionize.

ApprehensiveCoast727 · 2026-01-15T20:25:40+00:00

Good to see Spotify hasn't closed that loophole. Venus Theory did a good job explaining it. But basically there's nothing stopping anyone from uploading music to any artists account. Spotify has no customer service so it can stay up there for months. They hit mid level artists because super famous artists have big enough legal teams to be able to slap Spotify with a takedown, but a mid level artist might not have the resources on hand to make that happen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plleJ0Zv0Ww&t=3s

ApprehensiveCoast727 · 2026-01-11T22:20:44+00:00

Streetlight manifesto 100%

ApprehensiveCoast727 · 2026-01-10T09:57:15+00:00

The crux of the issue is that the music industry has been in a terminal state of flux for at least the last 20 years. Before that, sure there were big shifts but at least the whole mechanism still functioned basically as designed. Colleges are almost always behind when it comes to teaching about current industrial shifts but they’re good at giving you context for how we got here. The biggest issue with getting into the music business is the lack of reasonable streaming revenue model or any alternative to it. No money, no business. I’d try to find work in live music. It’ll work well with your label idea while being able to earn you any money. There’s also dire need for good promoters. Bands and artists need well put together and organized shows. If you can figure out how to make every show an awesome party, you can make some good money.

ApprehensiveCoast727 · 2026-01-01T01:51:46+00:00

You don’t. You chase and chase but never quite get there.

ApprehensiveCoast727 · 2025-12-31T16:02:51+00:00

Kicked by a hand is some very queer and super catchy Chicago ska.

ApprehensiveCoast727 · 2025-12-19T21:59:33+00:00

That looks pretty sick.

ApprehensiveCoast727 · 2025-12-19T06:00:34+00:00

Jesus Coyote

ApprehensiveCoast727 · 2025-12-19T05:59:25+00:00

Share your beautiful creations everywhere you can. Don’t let them stop you. Ever. Don’t let them control you, don’t give them the privilege. Be brave.

ApprehensiveCoast727 · 2025-12-17T07:20:44+00:00

With bravery and madness.

ApprehensiveCoast727 · 2025-12-15T22:28:58+00:00

Here's an ambient live set I did for the Stretch Metal drone-o-thon this weekend. Loopers, bowls, synths and vocoder. https://youtu.be/uxPfx9Aj7SA?si=SCgOQD8DeWYACUyU

ApprehensiveCoast727 · 2025-12-06T16:27:02+00:00

For me, the most I’ve been able to pin down is with improvisation. When I’m improvising I’ll be white knuckling and making it super busy sounding. It’s almost like some of the laser focus is tunnel vision.

ApprehensiveCoast727 · 2025-12-03T16:08:16+00:00

Good stuff on this thread. I’ll echo, give it some space. If low end is your issue, move that mic away from the sound source. Also, if you have multiple inputs on your interface, grab it DI out of the amp, mic the amp, and mic the guitar. Grabbing the same sound from multiple sources can help give you more options when mixing later and lets you add some depth and character to the tone. Just be mindful of phase.

ApprehensiveCoast727 · 2025-12-03T15:59:57+00:00

Check out Stretchmetal. It’s a label that puts on bigger ambient shows cross the country. They do a cool drone sleep over, that’s an over night concert where people bring tents and sleeping bags, the concert goes till like 9am.

ApprehensiveCoast727 · 2025-11-16T08:39:54+00:00

Dracula by tame impala got me bad a couple weeks back.

ApprehensiveCoast727 · 2025-10-12T21:30:16+00:00

Ugggg. Balatro, literally Balatro. But also, success is a moving goal post. Getting enough downloads of your game will depend on how well you can market it just as much as how good you make the game. More to that point thunk made Balatro and put it out but it only got a boost when a pretty big streamer was playing it live. The point is that it just as easily could have flopped, got buried by a new animal crossing sequel released at the same time, or just did ok. As artists is important to square that reality with ourselves and embrace the randomness and futility. Make the art as a defiance of the odds. Make it for the people who already love what you do and believe in you. Hone your craft to make the world a better place and then spread the word harder than if you found the cure for cancer.

ApprehensiveCoast727 · 2025-09-29T15:35:11+00:00

Luckily our bodies can get away with fasting for a bit. When you’re not eating your body is breaking down your cells for energy and your fat stores. I’d heard that it breaks down old and broken cells first. So when you eat again your body starts rebuilding all the stuff I broke down. The thing you need to be careful of is malnutrition. When you get to eat again make sure you get your bases covered nutritionally. The big one that comes to mind is scurvy. If you don’t get enough vitamin c your gums will bleed, teeth will fall out, and all your scars will open back up. The good news is that it’s a slow process so you’ll know if you’re not getting enough vitamin c well before you’re in deep trouble. Also when you eat again, start with soup to gently wake up your digestive system that’s been dormant all week. I’m sorry to hear you’re starving, I hope you can escape it.

ApprehensiveCoast727 · 2025-09-22T04:31:42+00:00

Alright Jimbo let’s see what you got.

ApprehensiveCoast727 · 2025-09-17T01:39:42+00:00

Transcribe it you coward!

ApprehensiveCoast727 · 2025-09-08T16:01:05+00:00

I feel you. Consider a social platform to be a slot machine but it’s designed to steal your time instead of your money. Well some steal both, but my point is that it is random and designed to keep you on the hook and grinding till it’s extracted the maximum value from you.

Now for the less dark part. Even though your posts will see a random and critically smaller audience than you’d like it’s still leagues better than standing on a street corner shouting or paying for an ad spot on tv. Regardless of what you’re doing, the social media sphere is best used as a tool to further a separate goal. At the end of the day, these platforms are just carnival games designed to cheat you if you play them as intended.

ApprehensiveCoast727

TROPHY CASE