The collectibles contain this text as pdf or markdown file, but it fit here in the long description, this means it's not longer only another format.

A Twist

Reflecting on past decisions or indecisions i came to the conclusion to finally take some next steps. Proceeding with some consolidation to make the necessary room, that is time, for some fresh start. New music.

I e.g. spent last year non-negligible time thinking about and investigating possibilities for IRL events. Small concerts sort-of or submitting to small festivals. In the end i found it to be a non-starter. While a hen and egg problem and maybe the only way to get regional fans, this seems either risky, expensive or not feasible. Location for events are scarce and the smaller the higher the pressure to sell tickets. Obviously "an empty room" can't be described as useful promotion. It's a loss, waste of resources. I acknowledge that i think many are willing to go this path. Some (public) art funding pools seem to help quite some artist and also locations to have concerts. But as so often a lot remains unknown and it sometimes also seems intentional hidden, how things work, what the costs are, the profit or no-loss calculation of any music or art event. It's not a secret, professional booking agencies exist. They take a cut. And all locations for event will try to fill their open slots with events which more likely are sold-out or very likely don't result in a loss. This means on one hand it's simple. There exist 2 unknowns, total costs, number of visitors for ticket price X. With some effort one will know about the 1st. But both will again depend on promo for an event. One will again more easily know about the costs, but only afterwards about the result. Trial and error? That's what i mean with risky above. Expensive is less an issue if it's not a loss obviously. I fully understand, that anyone who books artists for a location will prefer "safe bets". Established bands e.g. with a proven history of sold-out concerts or several concerts with maybe 100s of paying visitors. Pay2play? One can also easily understand, that no one will want to take such risk for any artist. I have no knowledge here if offers to play for free are common and if many artists will accept it, because it's the only solution to get to said proven history. No one knows, that it was a loss later, isn't it?

Pre-planning is rather months than weeks. The main problem though which i have no solution for is the promotion for any IRL event. Sure with a high enough budget, this is easy. There are known advertising channels. For a small event this is a non-starter, not even close to make sense. Some are good at social media promo or have reach there, it might work for those. I see that mainly as another area for consolidation. Insta especially i consider only as a good information channel for potentially interesting ads. Unless one is interested in posts of celebrities, which often could be also ads. It's probably fun for some or it's their "job" as an influencer. Simply a choice.

Anyway, while a vision for an IRL event remains, it doesn't seem worth the time effort for now. Even though any loss can be seen as the necessary price to learn from failure. The thing is, even if it's not said empty room. Let's assume half-empty, a small venue with about 100 visitor capacity. It might be great fun, but are 50 visitors worth it? Also understandably i read some bands refuse to do any pay2play. But if enough will do it or risk the door-deal this is more a refusal of reality than a good principle.

On a small scale i also did some experiments with promo, ads last year. This is why i know that this is very expensive. Small scale means = no one sees it. Mostly waste. Rather illusions of "views" with few "clicks". Well i scroll past most ads also, therefore not unexpected lol.

Sure that all probably sounds theoretical.

The title here is: a twist. For this label or my use of metalabel i considered, that the current platform is very well suited for text or pdf distributions. Less so for plain music. I'm not sure if this is true, but there is some talk about substack being "the" current new "in" platform. Newletters being popular. Neither newsletters nor blogs are new, far from it. A platform to monetize subscriptions might be the point here. But it seems to have a high fee. This seems strange. So there is no subscription here planned. If one can call it a newsletter i don't know either. No daily posts, not weekly. Not regular whatsoever, but when i want to share some well thoughts or ideally knowledge.

Thanks for reading.