You raise a good point, and the answer is... I don’t think we really have a suitable alternative at the moment! Haha! Apologies if that’s a bit of a cop-out answer.
The idea of social media works well for artists, in theory. There’s the concept of “enshittification” which started being passed around during the Twitter acquisition.
You raise a good point, and the answer is... I don’t think we really have a suitable alternative at the moment! Haha! Apologies if that’s a bit of a cop-out answer.
The idea of social media works well for artists, in theory. There’s the concept of “enshittification” which started being passed around during the Twitter acquisition.
“HERE IS HOW platforms die: First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.” - Cory Doctorow, Wired magazine.
The issue is, platforms that were once heralded as a way to spread your work, are now a shadow of their former selves and no longer work for your best interests. You could say this is sadly inevitably, i’d imagine it costs a lot of money to run hosting these platforms.
There are open source and/or decentralised alternatives to the main social media platforms. The issue is that these platforms inherently are more complex to understand and use, and the user base is so much smaller compared to the big sites that you can end up just talking to yourself. For example, I’ve had a look at Mastodon as an alternative to Twitter, once you have found the right instance (or just the official one), you have to hand craft your feed with no recommendation algorithm. I haven’t found any meaningful discussion of music and the topics I like yet. These sites may also struggle to expand to a large audience because of the operating costs and
There’s always self-hosting, making your own website. The downsides are the monetary cost of hosting and the expertise needed to manage the site. Not to mention discoverability.
Substack could be a solution going into the future. It’s not without its issues though - the top writers are mostly those who have formed a career beforehand and some are even paid a “salary” by substack to use and promote the platform. This kind of gives a false impression to creators starting out. Issues may arise when substack tries to expand, again going back to the enshittification concept.
There’s always the “wait until the next big thing comes around” method, but at the moment the potential contenders seem to be skipping the “good phase” anyway, eg. Meta-owned Threads or Metaverse projects. TikTok could be a consideration but it isn’t for everyone because short form video isn’t to everyone’s taste (and may not suit some art forms as well as others)
You raise a good point, and the answer is... I don’t think we really have a suitable alternative at the moment! Haha! Apologies if that’s a bit of a cop-out answer.
The idea of social media works well for artists, in theory. There’s the concept of “enshittification” which started being passed around during the Twitter acquisition.
“HERE IS HOW platforms die: First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.” - Cory Doctorow, Wired magazine.
The issue is, platforms that were once heralded as a way to spread your work, are now a shadow of their former selves and no longer work for your best interests. You could say this is sadly inevitably, i’d imagine it costs a lot of money to run hosting these platforms.
Here is an interesting post I found from a well established and long running academia blog, which I think captures my thoughts on this topic perfectly: https://thesiswhisperer.com/2023/07/10/academicenshittification/
There are open source and/or decentralised alternatives to the main social media platforms. The issue is that these platforms inherently are more complex to understand and use, and the user base is so much smaller compared to the big sites that you can end up just talking to yourself. For example, I’ve had a look at Mastodon as an alternative to Twitter, once you have found the right instance (or just the official one), you have to hand craft your feed with no recommendation algorithm. I haven’t found any meaningful discussion of music and the topics I like yet. These sites may also struggle to expand to a large audience because of the operating costs and
There’s always self-hosting, making your own website. The downsides are the monetary cost of hosting and the expertise needed to manage the site. Not to mention discoverability.
Substack could be a solution going into the future. It’s not without its issues though - the top writers are mostly those who have formed a career beforehand and some are even paid a “salary” by substack to use and promote the platform. This kind of gives a false impression to creators starting out. Issues may arise when substack tries to expand, again going back to the enshittification concept.
There’s always the “wait until the next big thing comes around” method, but at the moment the potential contenders seem to be skipping the “good phase” anyway, eg. Meta-owned Threads or Metaverse projects. TikTok could be a consideration but it isn’t for everyone because short form video isn’t to everyone’s taste (and may not suit some art forms as well as others)