#there’s just so much good art & analysis i want a repository for it all

[grendelsmilf]

every day I inch closer & closer to making an utena sideblog

#there’s just so much good art & analysis i want a repository for it all #thoughts? 👍🏼 or 👎🏼

[everyaccentthesame]

What is it to be a Dragon?

(This post contains some musings I’ve written to give me mental inspiration for a ‘Tyranny of Dragons’ campaign I plan to run. I wanted to get into the head of a Dragon, and understand what would be required to compel such a being.)

What is it to be a Dragon? To the two-legged smallfolk that cower in fear or desperately flee from the winged behemoths, terrors of the skies, dragons might as well be gods. Many have fallen to worship such beasts- Dragon cults, entire religions dedicated to one or more of these incredible creatures have sprung up across the ages. It has been remarked by many sages and observers, not least among the Dragonkind themselves, that should they so choose, Dragons could claim dominion of the lands, natural lords of the material plane. That they do not is something every mortal should be thankful for. Dragons make for terrible kings. Why they do not requires a deeper understanding of their nature.

 What is it to be a Dragon? Imagine, if you will, being entirely self-sufficient. On your own, through the strength of your talons and the terrifying assault of your breath, you can provide yourself with any food you need, relying on no-one. Your thick hide protects you from the elements. Your wings give you mastery of the air, no far-off land or ocean is barred to you. Spears break against your skin, armour melts, swords shatter, men die when you exhale. The natural world is yours, no mortal creature, barring your own kin, can match you, can claim mastery over you. Imagine all this power, all this freedom. Imagine it not being enough.

 What is it to be a Dragon? All Dragons hoard. Even the ones that the smallfolk mistake for being ‘good’. Some hoard wealth, great mountains of it. Some hoard knowledge, guarding grand repositories of it jealously. Some hoard history, hiding away ancient relics of great significance. Some hoard magic. Some hoard friends. Some hoard subjects. Some hoard slaves. How each Dragon hoards is unique. Some common trends appear based on the Dragon’s hue, but there is no clear rule. One might favour coins minted in a certain kingdom. One might like scholars trained in the art of combat. Another might favour the paintings of a certain artist and her apprentices. One thing is clear however- Dragons hoard what others create. They desire what beautiful things mortals create, because in truth, Dragons can only create one thing of any significance. Destruction.

 What is it to be a Dragon? All Dragons are alone. A Dragon is fiercely independent, and indeed, they can supply all their base needs on their own. But this has another consequence. Save for those rare incidences where a Dragon might cohabitate with a chosen mate, Dragons are intensely solitary creatures. There is good reason for this, unlike more fragile creatures, Dragons do not need the support of a community to survive. Indeed, the only real threat to an individual Dragon, are other Dragons. This is an oversimplification of course- many things can kill a Dragon, and many things have. But from a Dragons perspective, such creatures are usually easily avoided, lacking powerful Draconic wings, or if the Dragon misjudges the capability of a foe, easily fled from. When a Dragon does die to a mortal or monster, others of its kind view this as an aberration- that creature must have suffered from some flaw that they did not. Weakness, stupidity, slowness- the arrogant draconic minds dismiss any possibility that they might share these traits with the deceased. The only thing a Dragon fears are other Dragons.

 What is it to be a Dragon? By default, Dragons are Atheists, by the D&D definition of the word. They know that the Gods exist, they just don’t respect them. A Dragon has no need for prayer, or divine intervention. The Dragons don’t need the Gods, and usually the Gods can’t affect them, residing in planes far from the prime material, so the Dragons simply ignore them. This does, however leave us with a question: If the Dragons do not worship the divine, why are there gods of Dragonkind? Tiamat and Bahumut, alongside other, more obscure deities, claim to be gods of the draconic pantheon, yet few Dragons indeed worship them, and such Deities have turned to the mortal races as their emissaries and agents in the world. Dragons respect the strength of the Draconic gods, as they would the strength of another drake, but long ago abandoned them, when their Empire fell in a millennia long war. It is telling, perhaps, that the Dragons were the ones to abandon their gods, rather than the other way round.

 What is it to be a Dragon? Dragons are proud. They exult in their raw physical and magical power over others. A Dragon might destroy a townhouse with a beat of its wings because it wishes to demonstrate that it can. Another might incinerate a Forest because it enjoys the thermals that such an activity creates. A Dragon might dominate a town because it enjoys the terrified mewling of the subservient folk or save a town from a marauding group of monsters because it desires their applause and adulation. Many ‘benevolent’ Dragons, even metallics, act as they do not due to any moral compulsion, but because they enjoy the praise that is heaped upon them for their acts. Some Dragons even seek to gain worshippers, believing that it is only right that they, the most powerful and deserving of beings, receive treatment normally reserved only for gods.

 What is it to be a Dragon? Dragons possess within them the spark of the divine. Most never realize this, and never cultivate it, but under the right circumstances, these creatures can enter the ranks of the gods. Most famously in Toril, Tchazzar ascended to become a god-like entity, ruling over a city state and with designs upon a nation. Perhaps the draconic gods are just particularly powerful examples of their kind, and this, perhaps is why Dragons don’t worship them. A dragon does not seek to submit itself to another, it seeks to rule.

 What is it to be a Dragon? Dragons do not share power. A Dragon is not content to exist in a subservient state. They seek to either be left alone, or to rule. When Draconic empires have existed, Dragons have competed for power and influence, acknowledging no-one among themselves as King or Queen. Unable to rule over each other without significant risk (a dragon that appears subservient is merely waiting for a moment to strike and claim its authority), Dragons that wish to rule, rule over humanoids.

 What is it to be a Dragon? Dragons are smart. Some act as if they are little more than beasts, it is true, but such creatures typically do so by choice, spurning what they view as the ‘pathetic trappings of civilisations’ and embracing their feral side- the barbarians of dragonkind. They are smart enough to recognize their shortcomings as a species- though they rarely reflect on how they can apply to this analysis to themselves. Instead they have developed ways of working with other members of species without risking conflict. Ancient games that simulate conflict, such as the Xorvintaal, allow dragons to use the lives of others in games of intrigue and open warfare to settle disputes, without coming into open conflict themselves.

 What is it to be a Dragon? Dragons have life-spans far longer than most humanoids, exceeding even that of the elves. The lives of most creatures appear short and inconsequential to them. When dealing with smallfolk Dragons tend to focus more on lineages or organisations than individuals, which become replaced so easily. It takes an exceptional humanoid to be remembered as an individual by a Dragon, much less respected. Dragons slumber for long-periods, guarding their hoards for many years as their bodies and abilities grow and develop, letting the rise and fall of nations and empires pass them by. A Dragon might not care for the individuals of a local township or city, but care deeply for the place itself, even if only for the entertainment and treasure it provides it. A Dragon may come to know a human family well, as it treats with successive generations of individuals, even if it fails to really distinguish the different family members from one another.

 What is it to be a Dragon? Dragons are vulnerable. Dragons are the arrogant lords of the world. They are beings of blistering power and fury. They cannot create, but they can influence the rise and fall of nations, they can compel others to craft great works in their names. Yet for every Dragon of legend, there seems to be a Dragon slayer. A Dragon might be mighty, might be arrogant, but they know these legends too. And they fear death. So, a smart Dragon avoids causing undue trouble, and ensures its subjects or neighbours, while kept fearful of it, do not feel unduly burdened by its presence. Similarly, they avoid provoking more powerful Dragons, and may even make displays of respect or subservience to them. There is no true hierarchy amongst Dragons, but they do respect strength, and theoretically a might Drake, godlike in power, or even a god brought to the mortal plane, could compel them to serve, if only through fear.

 It would take an exceptional humanoid to gain a Dragons respect. Think then, on what it would take for one to gain a Dragon’s service. Bribery, perhaps, could work, for a time. Magical compulsion is always an option, though risky- dragons have a ‘legendary resistance’ to spells such as Dominate Monster. Gaining a Dragon’s fear is perhaps the most difficult, and most reliable option then. Consider the Cult of the Dragon. Consider their leader. What could they have done to gain the allegiance of so many great drakes? What power could they wield? What wealth do they command? What promises have they made, and which can they keep?

 What sort of being could a Dragon fear? 

#tyranny of dragons #dragon #dragons #d&d #dnd #d&d5e #dnd5e #tiamat #the rise of tiamat #hoard of the dragon queen #everyaccentthesame

[hydrus]

Version 364

windows

zip

exe

os x

app

linux

tar.gz

source

tar.gz

I had a difficult week, but I got some nice work done. There is a new way to add complicated tag seaches, and repository processing is now a lot easier to work with.

complicated tag searching

Users in help->advanced mode will now see a new 'OR' button on their search pages' autocomplete dropdowns. Click this, and you will be able to paste a logically complicated pure-text query such as "( blue eyes and blonde hair ) or ( green eyes and red hair )", and it will automatically convert it to a tag query hydrus can understand! (It converts it to conjunctive normal form, or ANDs of ORs)

This code is thanks to user prkc, who wrote a really neat parser to do the conversion. The system even supports XOR! Complicated searches will produce similarly crazy hydrus search predicates--which may in some cases run a little slow--so give it a go and see how you like it. This is mostly a first prototype to see how it goes in the real world, and I am happy to revisit it based on feedback.

thoughts on current big tag work

I spent a bit of time thinking about tag management and inefficiencies this week, planning what I want to do in this big tag overhaul job. I also did some statistical analysis of the public tag repository to see how different tags are distributed.

not sure how well this will embed, I’ll post it in follow-up if it stays small

Of the nine million unique tags in the PTR, six million only apply to one file. These are mostly 'title:' tags and some misparsed garbage. These tags have long been a concern for me, and I feared they consumed a huge amount of space, but in truth (and of course, when you think about it), one-and-done tags are less than one percent of the actual file-tag mapping storage. They eat up a bunch of 'definition' space, but barely any 'content' space. About two thirds of total storage is taken up by good unnamespaced tags like 'hairband' or 'sitting' or 'twin braids'. Namespaced tags like 'series:' and 'character:' and newer sorts I have been tentatively approving siblings for, like 'clothing:', generally distribute a few percent each, perhaps 20 million each (out of a total 630 million or so). There are some non-descriptive tags I don't like much, like 'booru:' and 'filename:' tags, but there are no gigantic wastes of space in the PTR.

This is a pleasant surprise, but also its own problem: in the back of my mind, I had hoped I might be able to cut the PTR neatly in half by eliminating wasteful/useless tags, but it turns out the vast majority of tags, in terms of sheer storage, are good. I had considered adding a complicated serverside Tag List approved-tag filter as many boorus have, but I do not think it is worth the trouble at this time.

Therefore, I will focus my upcoming work on improving clientside control of what you see, where you see it, and how you see it. If you do not want to see 'booru:' tags, I want to make it easy to hide them. If you want all the new 'bodypart:' tags to display as unnamespaced, I want it to be one quick rule to set that. I want it to be simple to move a hundred million tags from one place to another, and to share them with other users.

The separate question of dealing with running the PTR and my current bandwidth throttle is a different problem that I have yet to plan out. I may add an IPFS plugin for the hydrus server, or server mirroring tech, or there may be another solution. I am a developer most of all, not a natural server administrator, so my dream scenario here is probably to freeze the current PTR and make its snapshot easy to modify and migrate about so users can run their own tag repositories and it is out of my hands. This would also neatly remove my single point of failure. My preference is to focus my time on improving how the servers work and improve administration functionality, but I am still thinking about it.

better repo processing

After thinking about tags and workflows, I decided to just go nuts and rework tag repository processing to no longer be a big application-blocking job! Somehow, it seems to work!

So, rather than making the 'dialog' popup that blocks the program, repo processing now works in a normal bottom-right popup. It streams work to the database in packets and no longer locks anything for long. You can still browse your files and do everything else in the program, with the only significant caveat being some operations like autocomplete tag results fetching may be a bit juddery. The program will no longer lock up for long periods while doing this work, and the cancel button will always be available.

As a result, the 'process now' button under services->review services is now available for all users, not just advanced ones, and loses its big warning. Please feel free to try it out.

The basic workflow and feedback is the same. It will still work through update files and report current rows/s. For this initial version, in most situations it will be slower than before, but in others it will actually be faster. As before, it runs best if left to work in idle/shutdown mode, where it will be greedier and work harder. I still recommend users leave it to work in normal maintenance cycles, but manual catch-up, if desired, is now much more pleasant and easily cancelled.

This is a first version of a big change. The pre-process disk cache run is no longer called, and work and break and transactions timings have been altered. Users on fast SSDs with good CPUs should not notice any big differences, but those who PTR-sync on HDDs may have trouble (or at least be better able to see the ~300 rows/s trouble they have been having all along). Please let me know how you get on and what sort of rows/s you see. Does it accelerate over time? Does it make your browsing or video rendering juddery? I will write a more intelligent throttle in the coming weeks that will speed this processing up when there is CPU available.

This is an important step forward on the tag work and my new unified global maintenance pipeline. I'd love to have the similarly chunky 'analyze' and 'vacuum' commands work a bit more like this as well.

I have been chasing an ui-lockup bug recently that may have been tied to long-running tag repository processing while the client was idle and/or minimised. If you got this (on restoring your client, you'd see black except perhaps a bit of a garbled screenshot in one corner), please let me know if this week happens to fix it.

the rest

The 'this video has an audio track, but it is silent' code from last week had a flaw (such files were detected as having audio) that slipped through testing. I have fixed this and extended the test to recognise more types of silent file. Thank you for submitting test files here. If you discover any more video files that detect as having audio--or not--incorrectly with this new code, please submit them.

Also, an odd issue where thumbnails of files that underwent a file metadata regeneration would not display archive/tag/rating updates until they were reloaded is now fixed. This bug had been in for a long time, but the rush of new files into the file maintenance system from last week exposed it.

I extended and improved some of the recent 'don't do work while page is not shown or gui is minimised' stuff this week. Duplicate processing pages should be more careful about when they fetch new duplicate counts (speeding up session load for users with several dupe processing pages), and the animation issue from last week that froze media viewers' videos while the main gui was minimised should all be fixed.

I also gave the autocomplete fast-typing logic another pass. Some users were reporting that typing 'blue eyes' might instead add 'blue ey' and similar. I cleaned up the 'should I broadcast the current typed text or the currently selected result?' test and I think I have it working better now. If you are a very fast typer, please continue to let me know how this works for you.

Query texts for some booru downloaders that contain '&', such as 'panty_&_stocking', should now be fixed!

The pixiv login script no longer works and has been removed from the defaults. They added some sort of captcha. If you wish to log in to pixiv with hydrus, please use the Client API and Hydrus Companion to copy your web browser's cookies to hydrus:

https://gitgud.io/prkc/hydrus-companion

Logging in this way seems to work well for many situations, and will be the go-to recommendation for any site that has a login system more complicated than hydrus can currently deal with. I believe the Deviant Art login system may have gone/be going that way as well, so if you have had DA trouble, give Hydrus Companion a go.

full list

repo processing makeover:

repository processing is now no longer a monolithic atomic database job! it now loads update files at a 'higher' level and streams packets of work to the database without occupying it continuously! hence, repository processing no longer creates a 'modal' popup that blocks the client--you can keep browsing while it works, and it won't hang up the client!

this new system runs on some different timings. in this first version, it will have lower rows/s in some situations and higher in others. please send me feedback if your processing is running significantly slower than before and I will tweak how this new routine decides to work and take breaks

multiple repos can now sync at once, ha ha

shutdown repository processing now states the name of the service being processed and x/y update process in the exit splash screen

the process that runs after repository processing that re-syncs all the open thumbnails' tags now works regardless of the number of thumbnails open and works asynchronously, streaming new tag managers in a way that will not block the main thread

'process now' button on review services is now available to all users and has a reworded warning text

the 1 hour limit on a repo processing job is now gone

pre-processing disk cache population is tentatively gone--let's see how it goes

the 10s db transaction time is raised to 30s. this speed some things up, including the new repo processing, but if a crash occurs, hydrus may now lose up to 30s of changes before the crash

.

the rest:

users in advanced mode now have a 'OR' button on their serch autocomplete input dropdown panels. this button opens a new panel that plugs into prkc's neat raw-text -> CNF parser, which allows you to enter raw-text searches such as '( blue eyes and blonde hair ) or ( green eyes and red hair )' into hydrus

fixed the silent audio track detection code, which was handling a data type incorrectly

improved the silent audio track detection code to handle another type of silence, thank you to the users who submitted examples--please send more false positives if you find them

fixed an issue where thumbnails that underwent a file metadata regeneration were not appearing to receive content updates (such as archive, or new tags/ratings) until a subsequent reload showed they had happened silently. this is a long-time bug, but the big whack of files added to the files maintenance system last week revealed it

the 'pause ui update cycles while main gui is minimised' change from last week now works on a per-frame basis. if the main gui is minimised, media viewers that are up will still run videos and so on, and vice versa

a few more ui events (e.g. statusbar & menubar updates) no longer occur while the client is minimised

duplicate processing pages will now only initialise and refresh their maintenance and dupe count numbers while they are the current page. this should speed up session load for heavy users and those with multiple duplicate pages open

gave the new autocomplete 'should broadcast the current text' tests another pass--it should be more reliable now broadcasting 'blue eyes' in the up-to-200ms window where the stub/full results for, say, 'blue ey' are still in

fixed an accidental logical error that meant 'character:'-style autocomplete queries could do a search and give some odd results, rather than just 'character:*anything*'. a similar check is added to the 'write' autocomplete

fixed an issue with autocomplete not clearing its list properly, defaulting back to the last cached results, when it wants to fetch system preds but cannot due to a busy db

fixed GET-argument gallery searches for search texts that include '&', '=', '/', or '?' (think 'panty_&_stocking_with_garterbelt')

removed the pixiv login script from the defaults--apparently they have added a captcha, so using Hydrus Companion with the Client API is now your best bet

the client's petition processing page will now prefer to fetch the same petition type as the last completed job, rather than always going for the top type with non-zero count

the client's petition processing page now has options to sort parent or sibling petitions by the left side or right--and it preserves check status!

the client's petition processing page now sorts tags by namespace first, then subtag

the client now starts, restarts, and stops port-hosted services using the same new technique as the server, increasing reliability and waiting more correctly for previous services to stop and so on

the client now explicitly commands its services to shut down on application close. a rare issue could sometimes leave the process alive because of a client api still hanging on to an old connection and having trouble with the shut-down db

the file maintenance manager will no longer spam to log during shutdown maintenance

sketched out first skeleton of the new unified global maintenance manager

improved some post-boot-error shutdown handling that was also doing tiny late errors on server 'stop' command

added endchan bunker links to contact pages and github readme

updated to ffmpeg 4.2 on windows

next week

Next week is a 'small jobs' week, and I have a ton to catch up on. I want to do some more Client API stuff and just hammer out a whole bunch of small things. I'll also tweak the new repository processing as needed and start work on better local tag management, maybe exploring how best to add multiple local tag services.

#release

[ulyssessklein]

Why DIY musicians need a marketing plan (and how to create one)

“Music Marketing Plan” — It all sounds so boring and corporate, right?

Yet every DIY musician has a story about being overwhelmed, frustrated, and deflated when promoting their music. As a musician friend once said, it feels like “drowning.”

If this describes you, you can benefit a great deal from a music marketing plan.

A well-defined marketing plan brings order to your music promotion activities. You don’t scratch your head wondering what to do next, nor do you chase the latest shiny channel dangling before you.

Instead, you have an organized and structured process to get your music out there.

I’ll make a stronger case for creating a music marketing plan below. And along the way, I’ll also show you how to create one from scratch.

Why You Need a Marketing Plan

What do musicians mean when they say they want to “market” their music?

Do they mean they want to promote it on the radio? Get more plays on SoundCloud? Build up a loyal following of email subscribers?

All of the above, of course.

The problem is that each of these end results – radio plays, social media followers, etc. – describes a completely different marketing skill.

To get into radio, you need strong PR skills. To get email subscribers, you need to attract and capture reader interest. And to get Instagram followers, you need social media skills.

This is the first mistake DIY musicians make: they think of “marketing” as a single broad endeavor.

Rather, marketing is a complex web of interrelated fields. It includes everything from a $15 article to a $15M Superbowl commercial.

This is the reason why so many DIY musicians feel unmoored when they try to market themselves without a plan. Unless you know exactly what you’re doing, it’s easy to try far too many things at the same time and get no real results.

A marketing plan grounds you. Over time, it becomes the central repository of your marketing knowledge. It shows you what to do, when to do it, and most importantly, why you must do it.

For anyone whose day job is not in marketing, this can have a transformative impact on your results.

Not Just About Tactics

Perhaps because of its utilitarian name, it is easy to dismiss a marketing plan as just a collection of tactics and actionable tips.

But the process to create this plan often requires deep introspection. A good marketing plan springs from a strong marketing strategy. And as you set about building your strategy, you’ll develop a far better understanding of your audience, your music, and even yourself.

Consider a basic question asked in every marketing plan: How should you allocate your marketing resources (i.e. your ‘marketing mix’)?

To answer this question, you would first need to understand:

The channel you’re most comfortable or skilled in – social, video, content, etc.

Your budget and how serious you are about your marketing.

Your audience and where it hangs out.

What kind of channel is best suited to your kind of music.

Similarly, a “brand strategy” is a part of any marketing plan. To create this brand strategy, you would first need to introspect on your own beliefs, goals — long-term and short-term — and values.

This is one of the most understated benefits of creating a DIY music marketing plan. The introspection can reveal new insight into who you are and what matters to you.

This brings us to the big question: How do you go about creating a music marketing plan?

I’ll share some answers below.

Creating a Music Marketing Plan

A marketing plan is simply a document that outlines an organization’s (or in your case, an individual’s) marketing tactics for the coming year.

This document can be as broad or as shallow as necessary. A small computer repair outfit might have a one-page marketing plan. Coca-Cola’s might run into hundreds of pages.

If you Google around for a marketing plan template, you might see that most plans have sections like these:

As a musician, you don’t need to follow this template. You’re not trying to impress colleagues or get approval from your boss, after all. Your purpose is to simply define your strategy and document your marketing approach.

Essentially, your marketing plan needs to answer four questions:

Who is your target audience?

What are your marketing goals?

Where will you market your music?

How will you market yourself?

In addition, it is crucial that you also have a strategy document. This can be a long subjective essay, a PowerPoint presentation, a video – it’s all up to you. The goal of this document is to help you understand your own goals, motivations, and approach.

So keeping this mind, let’s look at the process you should follow to create a basic music marketing plan.

  Start With Introspection

All great marketing plans are founded on a deep understanding of the product (music), the business (you), and the target market (listeners).

You might call this “strategy”; I just call it introspection.

Your goal in this step is to figure out who you are as a musician. You want to go deep and understand your motivations for pursuing music. The marketing plan for someone who wants to headline Tomorrowland will be very different from someone who just wants to play their local cafe’s indie night.

There is no fixed blueprint for this step. Rather, I recommend asking yourself open-ended questions and writing down the answers in long-form.

Here are some questions you can ask yourself:

What kind of music do you like to make? Why?

If you could take the place of any musician in the world right now, who would it be? Why?

Where does your music career currently stand? Where do you see yourself in five years?

What kind of listeners do you hope to attract?

What is your ideal venue to play music in? A stadium, a small bar, or a mid-sized venue?

Beyond music, which musician’s brand do you identify with?

People often jump into making music without truly understanding what kind of musician they want to be. Questions like these will help you turn your vague ideas into a concrete plan.

I encourage you to answer them even if you don’t need a fixed marketing strategy.

  Nail Down Your “Visual Brand”

Like it or not, but all music has a visual identity. How people receive you depends as much on this identity as it does on your music, themes, and lyrics.

I like to call this your “visual brand”, i.e. how you visually represent yourself. From the font you use to write your name in to the colors you use in your album art, everything contributes to this visual brand.

Part of this visual brand is dictated by your genre. A pop act uses a distinctively different set of visuals than a metal act.

For instance, the DIY Musician Blog’s editor, Chris Robley, has an aesthetic that aligns with his work as a singer-songwriter.

Compare this against Gucci Mane who has a clearly edgier visual aesthetic, keeping in line with his genre (hip-hop).

Before you start formally creating your marketing plan, take some time to audit out your visual brand. This should be inspired by the introspection you did earlier. The most compelling brand is one that is honest and authentic.

Here are a few things you can do to understand your visual brand:

List your favorite artists and borrowing inspiration from their website, social media presence, album art, and videos

Identify colors, iconography, videos, and images that align with your music

Borrow inspiration from non-music sources such as movies, brands, architecture, and even design portfolios

Follow the auditing process used by professional design agencies to audit digital brands. Then curate everything in a Pinterest board. Refer to this whenever you’re producing any sort of collateral – website, album art, social media images – to promote your music.

  Zero-Down on Your Objective

So many music marketing campaigns fall apart because musicians have no idea what they’re trying to actually achieve. They’ll usually resort to vague goals such as “become famous”. This might sound nice, but it gives you neither direction, nor any way to measure your performance.

What you need are a set of SMART goals, i.e. goals that are:

Specific – You should be able to articulate the goal clearly. “Play a huge venue” isn’t specific; “Play Tomorrowland” is.

Measurable – You should be able to measure your performance. For instance, “become more popular” isn’t measurable, but “get more Instagram followers” is.

Attainable – While I’m all for ambition, your goals should be realistic. If you started producing music six months ago, “headline Tomorrowland in one year” isn’t attainable.

Relevant – Pick a goal that is relevant to what you want to achieve. If you want to get more fans, you want more followers on Instagram and SoundCloud, not LinkedIn connections.

Time-based – There should be a time component to every goal, otherwise you can easily lose your way.

Work backward from your broad, vague goals to arrive at your SMART goals.

For example, if you want to “become famous”, ask: What does being famous look like to you? More Instagram followers? Press mentions?

Use this to guide your objectives. If being famous means more Instagram followers, you could have a smart goal as follows:

Attract 100,000 Instagram followers in the next 12 months

Ideally, any marketing plan should have at least 3 or more goals. You don’t want too many – it will just be a distraction.

You’ll find that SMART goals are much more motivating than vague ones regardless of what you’re doing – promoting your music, studying for an exam, or starting a business.

Analyze Where You Currently Stand

Once you’ve zeroed down on your objectives, it is time to take stock of the current situation. Where do you presently stand? What skills do you have? What do you need to acquire?

In business marketing plans, this part would be labeled a “SWOT Analysis” (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats), but we don’t need to be so formal.

Instead of using the SWOT framework, do the following:

List your current following across all social channels – Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, etc.

List your website traffic, email subscribers, and any other traffic, followers, or readers you might have

List all your current marketing assets – websites, social accounts, brand assets (logo, album art, etc.)

Identify your core marketing skills. What are you good at – creating content, managing social media, making videos?

Identify marketing skills you need. Can you develop them? If yes, what are the time and dollar costs involved?

Identify skills you need to outsource. List any relevant connections or knowledge you might have for this

Identify social media accounts and publications you want to target. Where do you currently stand in these relationships? Maybe you want to get your song featured in EarMilk or get a tweet from an industry influencer.

Once you’ve taken stock of your current situation, take a look at your goals again. Ask: What skills/resources do I need to acquire to meet my goals?

Filling this gap between what you have and what you need should be the basis of your marketing approach.

Figure Out Your Audience

Strange as it may sound, the audience isn’t nearly as important in a music marketing plan. You’re not really selling anything (at least not in terms of money). And you already have a built-in audience for virtually every genre of music.

So where a conventional marketing plan would have detailed demographic and psychographic information, you only need to figure out the following:

Where does your target audience hang out?

What other artists do they like listening to?

What is their preferred mode of listening to music?

The answers to these questions aren’t always clear, of course. Some genres have well-established communities (such as metal). For others – especially mainstream pop acts – the audience is often fragmented.

The ideal way to go about this is to interview some hardcore genre fans. Ask them what publications do they like to read, what forums they frequent, and where they discover new music.

If that’s not possible, turn to Google. Search for queries such as:

[your genre] + forum

[your genre] + blog

[your genre] + fan page

[related artist] + fan page

Use this to build up your list of target communities and their editors/founders. Any marketing you do should be based on answers to this list.

For instance, if your audience discovers new music mostly through a few industry blogs, building relationships with the editors at these blogs should be a top priority. You can even take advantage of pre-made lists such as my list of the 101 music blogs to speed up the process.

Besides distribution, genre-focused communities are also a great way to develop a deeper understanding of your audience. Dig through each community to figure out what kind of acts they like to feature. What other topics do they cover besides music?

You can plug each blog into Buzzsumo to see the most shared content on it. This will help you understand what topics, ideas, and content your target audience is most interested in.

Bring it All Together

You’ve done a lot of homework so far.

Now it’s time to bring it all together in a comprehensive plan.

Again, don’t go by examples of marketing plans you find online. Most of them are focused on businesses and have no relevance to a musician promoting her music.

Instead, refer to your strategy document and specify the following:

Objective, i.e. your exact goals and how you’ll measure them

Audience, i.e. a brief overview of your genre, audience, and target communities where they hang out

Current situation, i.e. what you currently have (skills, audience, resources) and what you need to acquire

Action plan, i.e. a list of tactics you will use to bridge the gap between what you have and what you need in order to meet your goals.

For instance, if your goal is to grow your Instagram following, and you have strong social media marketing skills, your “action plan” might be to launch an Instagram influencer campaign.

You can expand this plan further by including information about finances, other musicians, and your brand. But for the most part, a knowledge of the target audience, your strengths/weaknesses, and your own music is enough to create a compelling music marketing plan.

Do this and you’ll find that music marketing isn’t quite as confusing anymore.

The post Why DIY musicians need a marketing plan (and how to create one) appeared first on DIY Musician Blog.

[awesomeblockchain]

Every Monday morning, artnet News brings you The Gray Market. The column decodes important stories from the previous week-and offers unparalleled insight into the inner workings of the art industry in the process.

This week, dissecting one subject to put an entire system in view...

Maecenas logo. Image courtesy of Maecenas.

EXECUTION STYLE

On Wednesday, art investment startup Maecenas opened online registration to participate in an event it is billing as -the world's first ever blockchain-based auction of fine art." But in my opinion, slicing into the details lays bare a number of deficiencies that also apply to much of the overheated art and blockchain space. (If you're not familiar with that space yet, check out my primer from earlier this year.)

Presented in partnership with Dadiani Syndicate, which brands itself as the first British gallery to accept cryptocurrency payments, the Maecenas auction in question will feature only one work: Andy Warhol's 14 Small Electric Chairs (1980). The painting will be divided into fractional shares collectively amounting to as much as a 49 percent ownership stake. These minority shares will be distributed to winning bidders paying in Bitcoin, Ether, or Maecenas's own cryptocurrency, the ART token. Sale and subsequent Wall Street-style trading of these shares will be tracked on a blockchain, allegedly creating what Maecenas calls a -transparent marketplace."

To Maecenas and Dadiani's credit, would-be bidders can only participate in the auction after submitting some basic -Know Your Client" and -Anti-Money Laundering" details, including proof of identity and current residence. In theory, this requirement at least prevents the auction from being converted into a washing machine for dirty cash-a legitimate possibility that dogs many crypto-ventures seeking an air of legitimacy and wider adoption.

But what about Maecenas's stated mission to -democratize access to fine art" via the Warhol auction and others like it? Does the blockchain element deliver the revolutionary promises central to the startup? And what do the answers tell us about the many other art/blockchain ventures swarming the industry like fruit flies to a poorly maintained winery?

Infographic on registration for Maecenas's first-ever blockchain-based art auction. Image courtesy of Maecenas.

THE PROPOSITION

In its white paper, Maecenas identifies the -fundamental issues of art investment" as -lack of transparency, lack of liquidity, and most importantly the fact that trust is centralized" with traditional entities like auction houses and galleries. (For the uninitiated, the masterminds behind every crypto-venture, including Bitcoin, write a white paper to detail their product, their goal, and how the former achieves the latter.)

By this logic, Maecenas magic-wands the industry by dividing artworks like 14 Small Electric Chairs into tradeable shares, then facilitating and tracking their movements via blockchain technology.

It's an appealing idea if you want to invest in art but can't afford a collection, right? Allow more people to buy in by lowering the cost of entry, and place the responsibility for monitoring the marketplace into the hands of infallible, incorruptible software rather than fallible, corruptible human experts.

However, in my opinion, this pitch represents a dramatic misunderstanding of blockchain-one that helps propagate myths about the technology that are driving the gold rush of misguided crypto-art startups.

REALITY CHECK

When people like me try to define the concept of a blockchain to the uninitiated, we almost inevitably fall back on some variant of the phrase -decentralized digital ledger." Once you explain that -decentralized" means -jointly maintained by different computers in different locations with different owners," this definition usually helps.

Why? Because a ledger, or an ongoing list of transactions, is a pretty relatable idea. People might picture an Excel spreadsheet tracking expenses or an itemized receipt from a grocery store. Simple, right?

The problem is that these images are somewhat misleading. It's true that a well-written blockchain tracks all the details of whatever transactional history it's recording. But it's false that the info is easy to read if you're just a skeptical customer without some hardcore software literacy.

A crucial point often lost in the analysis of many blockchain art ventures, and many blockchain ventures, period, is this: There is nothing inherently transparent about blockchains. Not all of their data is publicly viewable by default. The creator has some power to choose what to make visible, and who to make it visible to.

Although I didn't find the mechanism detailed in Maecenas's white paper, let's just assume that their blockchains will all provide maximum data visibility to investors. Otherwise, all the company's rhetoric about -democratizing access" and using an -open blockchain platform" would be nothing but chemtrails.

The larger, more important issue is that even an accessible blockchain is hard to review. It's not as if every one of them automatically generates a link to an easily readable table of transactions like the old school examples I mentioned above. The only way to check for accuracy is to do an independent audit of the blockchain at the level of code.

To give you a sense of what that task requires, take a look at the below excerpt from crypto-skeptic Kai Stinchcombe's essential essay -Blockchain Technology Is Not Only Crappy Technology But a Bad Vision of the Future." Here, he's talking about the alleged revolutionary potential of using blockchains to create truly free and fair elections in developing countries.

-Keep your voting records in a tamper-proof repository not owned by anyone" sounds right - yet is your Afghan villager going to download the blockchain from a broadcast node and decrypt the Merkle root from his Linux command line to independently verify that his vote has been counted?

If your response to the above was -WTF does any of that mean?" that's the point! Even a sharp citizen will be almost powerless on their own in this realm without a pretty rigorous coding background. Unless we're all intent on turning ourselves into characters from Mr. Robot, this is kind of a problem.

So what is the average person likely to do in a blockchain ecosystem instead? As Stinchcombe writes, probably something like -rely on the mobile app of a trusted third party - like the nonprofit or open-source consortium administering the election or providing the software."

In other words, any non-hacker buying into blockchain is just choosing to trust software rather than a person or traditional institution. But since software doesn't magically write itself, -trusting in the software" on some level means -trusting in the people writing the software." And unless you subscribe to some fringe Silicon Valley cosmology in which programmers are numbered among the saints, there is no reason to believe that people writing software are inherently more trustworthy than people working at auction houses or galleries. And that matters whether you're investing in fractional shares or hoping for bulletproof provenance verification.

THE TRUST PROBLEM

This leads us back to Maecenas's Warhol offer. In order to feel good about bidding in a crypto-denominated, smart-contract-activated, blockchain-tracked auction, you first have to trust that:

The artwork is authentic.

The owner is the true owner.

There are no other liens or ownership stakes against it behind the scenes.

The software has been written fairly and securely (again, unless you're willing and able to audit it yourself), and...

The certificate verifying your fractional shares in the painting is enforceable off the blockchain (meaning IRL).

About that last part: Maecenas's legal and compliance regime is not outlined in its white paper, either. Instead, you get a grand total of six sentences and one confusing diagram on page 10 that I would argue collectively amount to -just trust us, OK?"

In fact, despite the overtures made to -decentralized networks of trust" and the exclusionary inefficiencies of the traditional art industry, reliance on established art-world and business-world institutions runs rampant through Maecenas's pitch.

Their home page states that -Artworks remain in custody of trusted institutions, vetted collectors, and galleries." (The particulars of this vetting process are not detailed.) Similarly, both nearby and within the diagram I just mentioned, you'll find references to Maecenas's involvement with -art finance experts, law firms, and investment professionals," as well as unidentified -art experts" who verify every artwork's authenticity.

And as the diagram makes clear, guess who's standing at the (ahem) center of all these different traditional experts? Maecenas! Kind of odd for a business using decentralization as a pillar of its mission, no?

This points us toward something that needs to be said more broadly about blockchain ventures and their promises of decentralized disruption of the art market.

Mockup of the Maecenas trading platform. Image courtesy of Maecenas.

THE -PLATFORM" PROBLEM

Maecenas defines itself as a -platform," a word as pervasive in art/blockchain pitches as sad animals in budget petting zoos. Why is this a practical problem rather than a verbal annoyance? Because -platform" is a synonym for -middleman," and middlemen are inherently contradictory to any sincere effort to decentralize anything-at least, if they're charging a fee for their presence at the crossroads.

Maecenas is a perfect example of this. Their white paper states that they charge the consignor of any artwork a six percent listing fee and successful bidders on fractional shares a two percent transaction fee. (Fractional owners are allowed to sell their shares commission-free.)

Unless you've recently been slammed in the head with a frying pan, I can't really give you a pass for preaching the virtues of decentralization while simultaneously pitching yourself as a -platform" for transactions that takes a 2 percent to 6 percent cut. It's internally inconsistent. It's like saying, -I love nature, but I'm not wild about plants."

This brings us to another sirens-blaring, red-alert point about the big picture: Blockchain is a decentralized technology that can still be put toward centralized uses. It's no different than the argument you'll hear made about wedding rings by men living in the cesspool that is the pick-up artist -community": Wearing one can be just as useful for attracting extramarital action as for signaling that you're off limits.

In tech itself, there is no better example of this reality than the web itself. A technology developed to facilitate the free and fair exchange of knowledge without exposure to filters, discrimination, or tracking has today been transformed by various -platforms" into the most aggressive and extensive advertising, monetization, and mass surveillance apparatus in human history.

Say it with me: Technology is agnostic. Its effects depend on the people using it.

Which begs the question: What do the people behind Maecenas and the Warhol auction actually want?

The American artist and filmmaker Andy Warhol with his paintings(1928 - 1987), December 15, 1980. (Photo by Susan Greenwood / Liaison Agency)

WILL THE REAL MAECENAS PLEASE STAND UP?

Maecenas's press releases and white paper alternate between two stated goals. One is to democratize access to fine art. The other is to democratize access to fine-art investment. Yet these are wildly different objectives, and the -platform" looks much more tailored to one than the other.

This is apparent even in Maecenas's name. Early in the white paper, they explain their choice of moniker as follows:

We are named after-and inspired by-an early patron of the arts. Gaius Maecenas helped democratize art in Ancient Rome by financing poor poets. We want to be the modern version of Maecenas... ensuring that fine art is available to everyone and not just the ultra-wealthy.

So how does this gel with auctioning off fractional shares in a select group of artworks that, according to the white paper, -will be kept in purpose-built safe art storage facilities" at freeports?

The answer is that -Maecenas, in its effort to democratize access to fine art, will allow investors and their nominated guests to arrange visits to appreciate the artworks" if they're ready to travel somewhere like Singapore, Luxembourg, Geneva, or New York.

Invoking Maecenas, the Roman arts benefactor, would make sense if Maecenas, the -platform," was actually, say, a crowdfunding venture that funneled money to working artists experiencing extreme financial hardship. Or, alternatively, if the historical Maecenas's arts -patronage" had consisted of building a private library of poems where the rights to individual lines or stanzas could be traded in the square, but only read by investors also willing to make an in-person journey to the archive.

But neither of those is true, so the name is ridiculous. To me, it misses the point almost as badly as if someone built a -platform" to invest in the worldwide expansion of British commerce and called it Gandhi.

SUMMING UP

I have a lot of other, smaller questions about both the Warhol auction and Maecenas more broadly. But the key point is that I don't see how blockchain technology actually solves the issues they want it to. For instance, other startups elsewhere in the world have managed to market fractional shares without blockchains. And if the goal is to make art investing more like investing in the traditional financial markets, well, it's not as if the likes of E-Trade, Schwab, or Robinhood needed decentralized technology to thrive.

Instead, Maecenas looks to me like a standard-bearer for so many of the art/blockchain ventures bombarding the industry: a monetization strategy with little genuine interest in art or artists, and no real solutions to the problems it's pursuing. I don't think they're evil, just misguided. But if we want this technology to make any significant changes in a troubled ecosystem, we have to keep asking hard questions about its true limitations and potential.

That's all for this week. 'Til next time, say what you mean, and mean what you say.

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