Preface

With the way everything is going, we have to keep up with the ever-shortening attention spans of people by adhering to a marketing schedule and plan while concurrently appearing as 'important' by potential fans to be taken seriously. This has led to a lot of burnout since even if we make something awesome that a handful of people love, we have to market ourselves with largely no reward.

This is just how it is — every artist is economically competing against each other to make money. Listening to music has always been sorta 'competitive' as well — you can only listen to so many artists before you hit your natural limit. And there are more artists than we know what to do with!

(we're not quite getting to the playlist yet, just hang on!)

music one oh one

Simply put, we are forced to treat music as an asset. Something with assigned worth you can own for yourself. As virtually everyone is trying to get others to listen to [X] thing, you need to find your ideal fan. That ideal person is someone who will love your music — not only that, this fan must have similar interests, age, cultural assumptions, personal characteristics, etc. This fan must LOVE your music. Once you find that ideal fan, you let them listen to your music. You allow them to. Then you suggest that person should listen to your music more, you create a relationship between you and the fan. Your social media fulfils that relationship — it now gives them happiness. They now love "you" so much they'll willingly hype up your stuff, buy your merch, see you at concerts.

And the best part? They tell their friends about you. Now it really gets better. You have people who are similar to this ideal fan now checking your stuff. They become hooked. Rinse, repeat. Congratulations! You now have a fanbase!

Except... there's a lot of things wrong about this. I can talk about them some other time. The glaring problem is it's unhealthy, unsustainable, and.... gosh, insincere asFFF. You've manipulated people to love you.

"LMAO yeah w/e when's new music"

explanation

As simple as I can tell you, the problem is you are being used. Notice I explicitly said "once you find that ideal fan, you let them listen to your music." There's a lot of implications but the most important is you never own your music. Because it's not YOUR music.

The relationship is always one-sided. You can stream my music on any streaming platform you pay for. You pay you own, right? I can take away all that whenever. The best part is you don't assume the worst of me. I show love, I repost my fans on my socials, I support important events, I'm aware of things and struggle! You know me. You trust me. Well I don't know you. You are someone who listens to my music. Fans rly like [X] song, well [X] song went through so much doubt, revisions, and I wrote down a little bit of my depressive thoughts so it sounds better.

We are self-aware miracles, we are buffed beyond anything reasonable. Yet, we are also basic. We must socialise by creating, building, and maintaining relationships. Doesn't apply equally bc we're individual yet we are social entities. We like things and if we REALLY like things, we focus on those things more.

You see me as significant. I don't! I have to distance myself from my fans but, in the process, I need to make them come back to me. This leads to a presence that looks, talks, feels and acts like me... but it isn't. You're drinking enough water, but you forget you need sodium, potassium, et cetera to be hydrated!

This is what the real problem is. I make my music available and advertise accessible ways to listen by communicating with you. You don't just think, you believe that you're listening to good music, supporting me and that's it. In reality, you are potentially selling your attention and time to support my life, making yourself poorer and affording me what I need: Money.

In other words: You are the product.

so what does this really mean? and when are you gonna link the playlist?

(hold on, i'm getting there!! heh)

It means that everyone in the socializing/Propyl/dialtone/whatever scene is sort of doing this. Granted, the scene we identify with is a lot better than other scenes but we tend to forget we're all at war with each other because them's te rules. You can argue you're not actually doing this and, while I think you're missing the point, I do understand. No one really is.

It doesn't change the fact that this scenario, I feel, does happen:

1. An artist is doing the content game.

2. A fan accepts this and becomes a fan.

3. That fan happens to be fans of other artists in the scene, and is in those respective artist communities.

4. That fan spreads this behaviour through small things like paying a lot for merch, posting receipts, and complaining about shipping. 

5. At some point, this dogma becomes normalised and no one is the wiser!

We all feed off of each other yet we've turned on friendly fire but inverse . People are rightfully angry that Spotify is attacking independent artists but do we, I dunno, unionise? "nah that's too hard. there's a union?" Do we at least band together to actively think of a mutual effort that effectively utilises resources? Do we actively communicate ways to support each other while aware of our authoritative power dynamics? Do we inform ourselves, constructively argue, remain open-minded and possibly shed long-held beliefs even tho it is painful?

Nah, just retweeting should work.

Basically we're stupid and you did this to yourself.

Ok, fuck you.

Onto playlisting!

Playlisting is our answer to this conundrum while remaining as ethical as we can be, powered by mutual benefit rather than capitalist benefit. It's simple: We like music, we share music from our scene, and we properly credit the artists and those who featured. We bet on the fact that people will listen, repost and maybe check our stuff out. Mutual benefit!

Is it perfect? No. Is it ethical? Well, it's better than overworking ourselves and constantly releasing music that should've stayed in the bin. (ok fair)

We still have a ways to go to perfect this approach since, really, our Numbers™ aren't getting any better. We are losing money, we are trying to survive and so is everyone else. (will touch on this later). I also would love to talk about ways we are trying to stay ethical in today's world, but that's for another time.

So anyway, here's the playlist! It's called "new electronica" and you can click this long unnecessary grammatically questionable sentence meant to give you enough screen real-estate to reliably click on this link to check out the playlist.

Here's the cover art: [REMOVED COVER ART BC IT FUCKED WITH THE THING]

Here's the tracklist if you wanna pick and choose:

1. "3WW" by alt-J

2. "Deadcrush" by alt-J

3. "growing pains" by Wonder XO

4. "scarecrow" by Wonder XO

5. "the abscission song" by Wonder XO

6. "Bye Storm" by Injury Reserve

7. "Double Trio" by By Storm

8. "Gonna Be Good (Live Edit)" by Madeon

9. "bleith" by thatcherblackwood

10. "VI Scose Poise" by Autechre

11. "Pen Expers" by Autechre

12. "Parhelic Triangle" by Autechre

13. "Bine" by Autechre

14. "LCC" by Autechre

15. "Gantz Graf" by Autechre

16. "Drunxpla" by Xanopticon

17. "Breaking Points" by Equinox7

18. "Crawl Space" (ft. 2 0 2 1) by TURQUOISEDEATH

19. "Dive" (ft. Asian Glow & Parannou) by TURQUOISEDEATH

20. "Guessabelle" by TURQUOISEDEATH

21. "Starfields" by TURQUOISEDEATH

22. "River Like Spine" by Jefre Cantu-Ledesma

23. "Krumville" by Oneohtrix Point Never

24. "In Sharky Water" by Disco Inferno

25. "New Clothes For The New World" by Disco Inferno

26. "Starbound: All Burnt Out & Nowhere To Go" by Disco Inferno

27. "A Crash At Every Speed" by Disco Inferno

28. "Next Year" by Disco Inferno

29. "poison ivy (nothing to me)" by nishith w/ quedronol

30. "more more" by nolaine

31. "pinwheel theory" by nolaine

32. "Duhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh" by underscores

33. "Horror movie soundtrack" by underscores

34. "Uncanny long arms" by underscores with Jane Remover

35. "lie2.me 167bpm" by es.cher

36. "Strawberry Creek Park" by Ell Maki

37. "Cage Girl / Camgirl" by Jane Remover

38. "Always Have Always Will" by Jane Remover

39. "excellence syndrome" by eris mirror

40. "KITE" by corefish

41. "4, 5, TETHER!" by corefish

42. "VAGRANT" by corefish

43. "instigate" by oldcollin

44. "way to go" by oldcollin

45. "A LA CARTE" by Quadeca with brakence

One last thing

The payment processor Comradery uses is not up yet, but when it does go up... I ask that you consider donating to us monthly. It's donate what you want. You won't get charged sales tax, and all of it (minus 2.5%) will end up going to us.

All this info will be public knowledge. Paywalling is evil. We will never do exclusive shit. We will never set up tiers. We just wanna empower those with knowledge and, at your own discretion, you can decide if you want to support us in that way. Never support us if you don't feel like it, or we do something abhorrent in the future, or even in the past. Always support us whenever you feel like it.

Have a good day.

🤟🏼💖 Kaylon