We've been here before. Quite a few times now. It is almost 15 years since I first published a post on this blog. I started with no grand plan, no blog title, no domain and no idea what the hell I was doing. So not much has changed, though I do have a title and domain, so that's something. It was actually a friend of friend that suggested I take up blogging, I think perhaps because they were tired of my flooding my Facebook with music talk, links and mixes.
In the time I've had this blog I've had big ideas and grand plans; spent time, effort and money and always ended up feeling like it does not reflect my thinking. I've learned a lot about the internet and even more about the people who populate it. I've encountered some really kind, warm, generous and caring people but many more who are none of these things. I've met people who love music in a similar way that I do and who love to explore the rich and diverse world of music and also share the delights they find, but I have encountered many more who operate in music circles for inflating their ego and for financial and status gains. I've gone through multiple redesigns, I've lost years of content to a hacking event, changed from being purely a blog for music I find and mixes I make to also using it as a platform to talk into the void about life experiences that are personal to me, and in 2022 posted a new 'mix' every week in an attempt to raise funds for a charity that was close to my heart.
The world is a different place, the internet has shifted beyond recognition, the music scene and the websites and publications that serve it are beyond my understanding, as is the scale and variety of ways that people consume music. Music blogging has been on life support for many years, yet I'm not ready to give up my little corner of the web. I like having my space and having the freedom to hit the reset button and change whatever I want, whenever I want, even if the internet now is mostly about a handful of websites controlled by unscrupulous billionaires and barely anybody will ever find this place as a result.
On the topic of changing whatever I want, I'm going to throw in something at this point. I deleted all my Facebook/Meta related accounts following the Cambridge Analytica scandal. I even put together a mix to highlight the issue and edited music and videos for the mix too. I've never been big on social media really, so it wasn't difficult to cut it all out and just focus on Twitter, which was never without it's own share of serious problems, but it at least felt a better source for music news, bands/artists/dj's would post info regularly and I could also get news on other interests in amongst it all. Since Musk has taken over, that site has become a bigger mess than I could have imagined. It's more toxic, there's more fake accounts and bots, the algorithms provide less of the content I'm looking for and the man at the top of the tree has the most bizarre cult following, celebrating their "free speech"; freedom to be racist, freedom to celebrate the evils one party carries out on another and vice versa, freedom to propagate false and damaging information, freedom to scam and harm other people.... all while paying for it and giving your data for free to boot. Anyway, the long story short is that I am not going to be bothering with Twitter so much from now, I'll keep my account for reading but don't think I'll post much, if ever. Very reluctantly, I've opened a Mixamorphosis page on Facebook, really as a way to keep up better with music artists and labels that interest me. I'm really not bothered if people follow my page or not. I'll share my mixes / some posts from time to time so I've got a footprint, but I'm not interested in pushing that... I gave up on the idea of chasing follower numbers many, many years ago.
As for here, I think I'm going to drip feed content and re-share my mixes, re-brand and re-share some of the ones I put together in 2022 for the charity effort and leave the personal blogging in the past. I thought it was cathartic at the time to have somewhere to share thoughts and feelings, but looking back I think it didn't do me any good and I've unpublished all my previous posts. For now, I'll just keep it minimal and linked to the music I post.
No comments
Post a Comment