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Synerdata.Net Radio
Joined: 04/01/04
Location: Canada
Posts: 102
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The Artist Community Experience - (1999-2010)
Tuesday, May 11, 2010 at 10:04 PM
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[ARTICLE]
Title: The Artist Community Experience - (1999-2010)
I am just sitting here tonight listening to the latest harvest of new releases in electronica and things with the others in this radio show's live audience, and I am just being given to think about the artist community experience that I have had for the past 11 orbits as I casually attend to tonight's live show...
I mean, it has been a PHENOMENAL community experience over the past decade, and it continues, and continues evolving with the changing conditions on "the former internet".
In 1998, I had produced a new album, and in early 1999, like seemingly every other independent artist with internet access, I signed into the original former pre-IPO mp3com, and became one of the many electronica music artists in that vast music promotional community, and I remember fondly all the systems mp3com availed to access the huge traffic on the site, so that even the most obscure artists with a little work could extend to wide exposure, well worth the in-house efforts.
That was before the RIAA declared war on the community and it's new infrastructure and mass media coverage and the public's easy access to discover all the real artists love made, which war has continued relentlessly in the wake of mp3com's anti-competitive destruction, and removing from mass public awareness the knowledge of any one place the public can go to find a vast majority of modern, actively releasing free artists.
But even back in 1999, in the hey-day of mp3com, it was -still- hard to promote and arrive at more than a couple of hundred downloads or listens each day, because one was still confined to the traffic which went to the site (mostly other artists who are music fans too), and so while the artists certainly got to know one another, and variously became famous within the vast artist community, by virtue of their work and skills, there was still a disconnect, with the general public, that the masses were simply not hearing the 21st century's best new artists, and mp3com needed to make some deals to be on mass media radio, and they started in that direction, but never created the syndicated show the community needed, to complete the circuit as a complete industry system.
I am a former FM Radio producer and announcer, and so this was painfully obvious to me, and when mp3com introduced "station" playlists, I proceeded to produce my radio show there, announcing and all, and Synerdata Radio was a very popular station there, but it was still serving the in-house artist community, and I saw it was critical for the community to deploy the new shoutcast streaming technology in producing a community station, or stations, so that the general public can hear the music and find the artists and link to them to buy their CD's and download their music to lift them in the very competitive charts.
I was given to develop a concerted business plan to develop the community service that I and the other artists needed, right around when this site was also being developed as an improvement upon mp3com's respectably altruistic promotional systems, and after some preparation, Synerdata Radio went on the air with a live stream from my studios here, and has been on the air ever since...
(Next Part: The Number One Electronica Station)
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Synerdata.Net Radio
Joined: 04/01/04
Location: Canada
Posts: 102
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The Artist Community Experience - (1999-2010)
Tuesday, May 11, 2010 at 11:04 PM
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The Number One Electronica Station
Synerdata Radio went to a live stream in February of 2002, and immediately filled up all the station server capacity that the listeners could donate, and so in 2002, the station was serving packed to capacity audiences around the clock, and was at number one in electronica in the shoutcast.com charts, ensuring that all artists featured on the station were being heard by millions of new music fans, who were then going directly to their promoted URL's to download their tracks, and to buy their CD's, and we helped sell many, many CD's, and a spot on Synerdata Radio could result in a hard working serious artist at mp3com rising out of relative obscurity into the tops of the mp3com charts, and we were lifting all the best, and artists were being signed by the competing recording industry in their rising up.
Conditions on the network were much different then, for the station was being lifted up by the artists featured upon it, in it's audience, and that in turn lifted the station up to the tops of charts at shoutcast.com, ensuring the artists were being heard on the number one station, which again reflected very well upon all, and increased the traffic for all, and by working together, and listening to the show together, we all shared in the high traffic levels the station brought to our artist pages, and the system worked. Back then, just the traffic that the mp3com site had was enough to lift the station to be seen by the public, and the artist's listening just made sure it was at the tops of the charts, while I religiously harvested, reviewing everything new by everyone, and presenting everything playable, in the most all inclusive system I could design, so anyone can be on the station easily, and use it for their promotional needs, and thus to be heard by the general public, outside of the otherwise closed and isolated internal artist community of mutual music fans.
Like most artists, I have not been a wealthy one, and so I was limited in the degree to which I could throw money at the station to grow it competitively, for it was not a profit based project, but rather an artist community service, to ensure we all have something which we critically need, to be heard by more than just our fellow artists at any given community site, and so in it's early days, I was simply not able to expand it fast enough to keep up with the audience capacity required, and not many other artists showed much interest in taking a greater roll in the station than just producing some promotional tracks for it's ongoing electronica theme(s), and so the station has remained of a small capacity of (usually) under 50 concurrent listeners at any given time, and it came to a cruising altitude of circa 20 listeners in the audience at any given time, from 2002 through 2006, which while a small audience, was certainly much larger than no audience for the artists.
In late 2003, right when the station was nominated at ElectronicScene.com for best internet radio station (but it lost to another), mp3com was shut down and destroyed, marking the end of an era, and signaling the start in the next phase in Bronfman's war on independent artists, that of covertly shutting down all large independent artists sites by any means possible.
This station searched for a new site to base it's harvesting and community promotion and service out of, and while ElectronicScene.com was selected, it still did not have a big enough artist database, and so the station went with many original mp3com artists to the new site built by C|net, called music.download.com, which was an opportunity to help build a new community site, with high traffic levels, and to get it all right this time...
Music.Download.com opened in early 2004, and from 2004 until late 2008, it was rocking and was a pain in the ass of the record cartels, who had an industry partner relationship agreement with C|net, to advantage them over their competition (independent artists), and so that site was slowly re-engineered to bury the artists and to place those of the competition prominently on their site, but until the forums were shut down to prevent artists from promoting their work, that community was rocking, and friendly, and this station continued to serve the community, and to provide valuable promotion to all.
In late 2008, music.download.com was shuttered without even a warning to the artists, and was simply gone. I naturally moved the station's community page from there to it's old ElectronicScene.com account, which I fixed up to base the station at ArtistServer.com up now, the most altruistic and well managed of the remaining original community sites, which still has forums, and an altruistic search and promotional system in place for all.
I have to admit, the station has suffered from a little neglect in recent years, where I have been distracted by some serious issues in my federal public service work here in Canada, at the same time as music.download.com being shut down, and so it has happened that this once prominent station, and famous ongoing radio show, in being separated from a large supportive community, has dropped into obscurity in the shoutcast.com charts, and up now, it is just being supported by about 200 occasional regular listeners from over the years, which is to say, mere handfuls of listeners at any given time, and not even enough to break back into the top 20 electronica stations worldwide.
This is what has inspired me to write this article, as I sit with a few other station and independent artist music fans, in just reflecting upon my phenomenal community service experience over this past decade, as one of the artists, myself...
For me, as an artist, it has been an amazing experience to have round the clock audiences for a decade, and my own art has seen my music production neglected, and displaced by the more immediate and ongoing art of harvesting and mixing everyone into great radio shows, which is just as difficult and as artistically involved as producing music is, such that it pretty much took over my commonplace life here. As a writer, the station was something I could run while doing my regular daily work, for which I wrote live production software for the station, so I could announce from my scroll processor directly on the air.
While Synerdata.Net Radio is now based in the ArtistServer.com community, it still harvests from many community sites, into which the artists have been scattered by the consecutive anti-competitive assaults upon high traffic sites which promote the competition of the big labels and media conglomerates, and so the station remains loyal to the wider global community of independent artists, even though they are now so widely scattered to obscure them from being exposed to the masses, we continue to follow them, and their hard work...
(Next Part: Into The Future)
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Synerdata.Net Radio
Joined: 04/01/04
Location: Canada
Posts: 102
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The Artist Community Experience - (1999-2010)
Wednesday, May 12, 2010 at 12:34 AM
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Into The Future
I think back now, to when I was just another of the artists at the original mp3com, back when it was new to all artists to be able to promote and be heard by the public without having to be "signed", and to thinking about how the community desperately needed a publicly visible global radio station outside of the communities it serves to expose the public to the wealth of the 21st century's finest artists...
From my self-appointed and self-established position of purveyor of The SOUND of the times in the vast global independent electronic music community of communities, I have had the honor of remotely collaborating with many of the finest artists on an ongoing basis, as they have variously endeavored to use the station and show as a vehicle for their constant promotion, and as I have reliably worked with all who opt-in to take part, to mix their music as indicated by them according to the station's established system of mixing, these have all worked in concert as I have orchestrated and conducted together over 83 mind-blowing programs of the newest music being made by the best artists.
This, in it's self, has admittedly been something of a labor of love, that I myself wish to hear everyone, while I am writing, and that I produce the show as much for myself as for all the artists featured, and for all the lucky public who have the good fortune of discovering this radio station, which is like no other in the solar system, which connects them directly to the artists, and their music, as these are listening.
What an experience it has been, to hear everything that all the free artists have been singing about, all their fears, and joy's, and worries, and accomplishments, and beliefs, and hopes, and conflicts, and loves, and gripes, as we have transited the course of an unprecedented covert global war upon all the nations of the earth together...
And while the masses have become drunk upon the televalium of the times, that global propaganda system that the IRAA/MPAA partnered with the US Military to mutate into, by which their artists tell the public what the people think and feel up in these times, as though true, we who have been listening to all the real artists love has made, and gifted to be it's angels, have heard the truth on Synerdata Radio, and we all know what the public really thinks, because we listen to all the real artists, who sing from the heart, not from Uncle Sam's pocketbook, and the truth is so different from what the mass media has been feeding the public, that the masses would hardly be able to believe it, when their ears are opened.
Indeed, it has been a wonderful experience, to be this light of the world here, to be lifting up the artists, from least to greatest, and connecting their fans directly to them via their included artist url's, and to sit here around the clock each day and night, exposing the public to music that they might never otherwise have heard by the world's most real and serious hard working artists, buried deep within the haystacks of scattered remaining artist community sites... in fact, it became my life, to ensure the continuity of this work.
In 2010, this station is still reeling from the suddenly loss of music.download.com, and our former prominent top 10 positions in the shoutcast.com electronica charts, for which we require at least 10 more regular listeners to return into, and so it has dropped into an obscurity like I have never seen before in all these years, and where low in the charts at shoutcast.com, it is now just cruising on those loyal fans who have the station bookmarked, who know that it is a treasure chest, disguised as a common radio station, hidden by it's lack of artist community support, and/or interest, since the loss of music.download.com.
Perhaps now you can see the direction I am taking this article in, as a fellow artist, and long-time community member, and shock-jock, who built this global stage for community service, and fair and free and easy to access gratuitous promotion, in my descriptions of the changing network conditions, which have made it even as hard for all the other artists to gain high traffic exposure we all once enjoyed in the hayday of public interest in big independent artist community sites... When it get's right down to it, the one thing all artists need, equally, is for their music to be heard, because if no one is listening to it, the artist is just playing with himself, and all his or her hard work is sorely unappreciated, and buried by our lack of systematic support for one another and mutual promotional effort.
It's another night on the air here at Synerdata.Net Radio, my favorite time to do my live show, and I am delighted to have another hot new release by Sunburn in Cyprus, which Ulli just sent us, and I am just being given to reflect upon this past decade of hearing, and harvesting, and mixing, and presenting this cross section of all the newest releases, which continues, and I am thinking about the upgrades we have made this year for continuity, and I am thinking about this new phenomena of having fallen into obscurity since the shut-down of music.download.com, and the closing of the GarageBand.com artist forums, such that I have been finding myself producing the show each night for mere handfuls of listeners, rather than the large groups which not long ago, packed the station around the clock.
I am continuing, for it's an up and down business, and it would be up again, in the future, but I wished to share something of the true story of my community service experience with everyone, for my altruism has been sincere, as an artist, and so much work has gone into this station, and ongoing radio show, which is as much produced by the artists, as by myself, and which keeps their finest work ongoingly heard by new fans as the years pass.
What have I gotten out of all this? Well, the bottom line is that as an artist, I can get on the air, which as a lesser artist, would never otherwise have been possible, and as a radio producer, I got to produce my radio show without management freaking out about what the artists are truly producing up now, which I delight in ensuring is heard, and I love finding, and then lifting up great new hardworking artists, and I like hearing everything by everyone, and having all the best electronica of the 21st century in the vast hand-picked independent music archives here, all of which, has been worth all the work it takes to keep it all going... I like having a public service I can run while I am doing my writing as a writer... but there has never been any money in it, for me, and at the end of each day, I have that I know that I have introduced the public to more of the best artists, and I have ensured that their music is being appreciated, and that they are getting mileage and traffic out of their otherwise free promotional tracks, and the live audiences here have also been good company for me while I otherwise work throughout each day and night, while I stream out the sound of our futuristic, 21st century lifestyles.
In this thread, I am interested in reading essays, or verbose articles, by other artists, describing their artist community experience since 1999, or since they first started publicly taking part in the production and presentation of their modern art, if anyone feels they have an experience worth sharing.
This station is here for the community, and it's really wide-open for artist application and use, collaboration projects, promotions, artist mixes (podcasts), almost anything, and has never shied away from controversial programming, and universal free speech and inclusion of non-secular music (unlike most other stations), and there is room for everyone producing great new electronic music to be on it, and to listen in, to help lift their music up in the charts, and to promote it, to once again, in the future, ensure they are heard on the number one electronica station, and subject to the new traffic all our artist sites are needing.
You are performers!
Don't be shy now...
Let's Rock!
-Gordon Stark
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Sonic Wallpaper
Joined: 05/22/01
Location: San Diego, CA
Posts: 1266
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RE: The Artist Community Experience - (1999-2010)
Wednesday, May 12, 2010 at 11:01 AM
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Hi Gordon - I can help you promote the station on ArtistServer.com by offering you free ad space. The locations of these ad images should expose the majority of our site visitors to your station. Sorry the ad sizes are not 'standard' - the sizes are based on the space available. Just email or msg me with the ads once your are done creating the images and include the link you wish for me to use. Please use JPG or PNG format (no transparency on if you use PNG).
The following spots should provide you with approx 8,000 page views per month - a thank you for supporting indie artists and ArtistServer.com all these years 
Stations page - top right, just above "Most Active Stations"
Page: http://www.artistserver.com/stations/index.cfm
Banner Ad Size: 285x90
Main Music page - middle column, just below the google ad and above the listing of playlists
Page: http://www.artistserver.com/music.cfm
Banner Ad Size: 258x90
Main Charts pages - top right, just above the google ads
Page: http://www.artistserver.com/charts.cfm
Banner Ad Size: 170x100
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Synerdata.Net Radio
Joined: 04/01/04
Location: Canada
Posts: 102
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The Artist Community Experience - (1999-2010)
Wednesday, May 12, 2010 at 6:35 PM
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Wonderful things happen when we all work together to promote one another!
Thank you so much Gideon, for your contribution is exactly what this station needs at this time to return to it's normal top ten electronica station's position in the shoutcast.com charts, which in turn reflects new music fans back to the artist pages at ArtistServer.com, so that everyone benefits!
In order to make it easier for the artist community to directly access station airtime, I would be proceeding to establish a collaboration project at ArtistServer.com in the time ahead, wherein any artists may produce their own playlist, or podcast with their own announcing, and then the station would feature "Artist Sets" produced entirely by individual artists as seems good to them, to best mix their own music with their favorite other artists for external public airplay, and to maximize promotional benefit and control of programming in the artist's hands, which format has worked very well on this station in the past...
Here's looking to the future!
Cheers!
-Gordon
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Second Thought
Joined: 05/05/02
Location: Oh God knows.
Posts: 188
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RE: The Artist Community Experience - (1999-2010)
Friday, May 14, 2010 at 1:50 PM
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Gordon,
Fascinating reading as ever. It's lovely to read such thoughts from someone who's been around on the scene for so long - most of the old crew seem to have given up or moved up into bigger 'success'.
I've been following some mp3.com artists since 2000 - I remember Cell and Creature and people back in the day, joined up here in 2002 if memory serves correctly with a couple of fairly poor tracks that I'd been putting on CDs for mates. I started making some better tunes and people here started digging them and I joined in with the then-very-active forums properly, it was prosperous and fun! If an artist had an album out I'd always pick up a copy, and several people bought my first album when it came out in 2004. There was definitely a feeling of musicians caring about each other's work, which was marvellous. I haven't been a part of anything since, really. I disappeared from these parts for a few years while I went through a thoroughly depressing four year writer's block in which I pretty much gave up on Second Thought. Upon returning it turned out it was nowhere near as lively as it used to be - but there are still a few of us remaining and I'm staying loyal to the place which made me proud to be making music. I've attempted to join other communities and forums but it's never the same.
There are people I still stay in touch with from around here - John of 4m33s is releasing my next album on his AmbientLive, I chat to Themis once in a while, and Tim (Full-Source/Off Land) remain in collaboration as we have done since 2001 now. I occasionally stumble across Christopher "Creature367" Sisk on various websites, I don't think I've ever thanked him for introducing me to this place.
Drug use for children has for many an education and with obvious alarm to both parents on the increase almost yearly.
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Second Thought
Joined: 05/05/02
Location: Oh God knows.
Posts: 188
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RE: The Artist Community Experience - (1999-2010)
Friday, May 14, 2010 at 1:53 PM
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Also, I recently found my 'Ambiexperimental Mix' I created for Endlessmix.com many moons ago. There was a lovely site! I used to love streaming from there. I would often broadcast on Shoutcast too, and occasionally listen. I have so much music these days I rarely find time to look for anything to stream, but I'm going to check out Synerdata at some point when I'm not trawling through hours of stuff I've not yet listened to.
Drug use for children has for many an education and with obvious alarm to both parents on the increase almost yearly.
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Synerdata.Net Radio
Joined: 04/01/04
Location: Canada
Posts: 102
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The Artist Community Experience - (1999-2010)
Friday, May 14, 2010 at 4:13 PM
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Ross,
Thank you so much for sharing your own reflections with us on your own experience of Artist Community over the years! Indeed, many artists moved on to other things, the latest to disappear was Bitstream Dream, and it makes me sad when an artist shuts down his project, as such...
Creature and Cell !!! Cell from Toronto is mind-blowing, and I am so glad I got all his tracks archived in the last two weeks of mp3com, when I tried to download everything by everyone in electronica, and got 3/4 of the way through before it closed. It's because I was doing that that I lost the contest here at ArtistServer for best net station, as in the judging weeks I was downloading instead of doing live shows.
You mention a really important point, and that was how much the artists were caring about one another's work, and mutually promoting, and collaborating and working together as a community, which has great strength in it's numbers when we all support one another, which came out of the mp3com community discussions and mp3com community leadership and building, which so many artists all embraced together in the early days, where up now, like you observed, so many of those artists have drifted off, and up now, so many new artists do not have the same community understanding of what we can do for one another to rise up together as a community by mutual promotion and support... That in these independent artist communities, as mp3com once observed, fellow artists are each other's biggest fans, and know each other, and who are the most skilled, and talented and so on, and so who better to select those from among ourselves who deserve to be lifted up together by all, to show the public we compose in a treasure chest of great artists and great artwork, that the others may all share in such coverage the finest draw to a site, once we all lift them together.
Indeed, it is always nice to see the longtime artists is still going at it, even after breaks and the like, like fingertwister, who recently re-appeared that we might applaud for a new song by Daniel, which he is hopefully working on ; )... It always gives me a warm feeling when old-timers, so to speak, are still moving ahead with their art, because they are true artists, and it's wonderful to hear how everyone improves their work over many years.
Perhaps if enough old-timers still remember how we all used to support one another and exemplify this up now, as in the past, many of the new artists might understand what we are talking about and observing here, and then delight to join in the community spirit, and the art of supporting, rather than isolating one another.
It is important to everyone who takes their art seriously and works hard upon it, for their listeners, to know their work is appreciated, and that quality is recognized, where for so many, the listening pleasure of others is their only reward for their contributions to the global body of the modern art of our times, where their art is no less true human culture than anyone else's art, and where fame and fortune are wholly unimportant to the contributions these artists are making to the art of mankind, so it is important to recognize one another's great works, and to express such appreciation, and together, to lift these, that the outside world might see them, and come looking for the other treasures in the chest, of which there are so very many.
My oldest track by you is from when Atman did his remix project here at artistserver, (electronicscene), in 2003: All Is One!
Thanks again for sharing your own reflections of the artist community experience over the years with us... I agree, things are not as lively up now, but this seems to be the status-quo across all independent artist community sites up now, and may have something to do with the mutual novelty of being able to be in an artist community wearing off, as the experience becomes an old one for so many (as in, been there, done that), as much as the revelation that publishing one's music does not mean one is going to be 'signed' even if one is the finest quality music producer... But, I have this unexplainable feeling that things would yet again be 'lively' in the community, in the future.
I have recently noticed that the Planet Bliss website has gone down, and so I have been concerned that Johnathan might be shutting down his project, which would be so sad, for he has just started singing in his songs, and they are his best work, ever, and I have been so very looking forward to new vocal tracks by Johnathan, another classic artist of the early 21st century. I sure hope he only forgot to renew his domain, or something.
Cheers!
Gordon.
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Synerdata.Net Radio
Joined: 04/01/04
Location: Canada
Posts: 102
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The Artist Community Experience - (1999-2010)
Friday, May 14, 2010 at 5:09 PM
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Have a listen to this old, former mp3com track, by SSTOWE, from Tulsa, called: Community.
In this track, S Stowe is singing about the very spirit of community which was prevalent in
the first years of this century in the artist community, even as we are reflecting upon it...
sstowe_(Tulsa)_-_Community.mp3
Inspiration!
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