Mastodon and the Fediverse for musicians

icaria36

icaria36

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Grinning Face with Asterism Eyes by nclm - CC-BY
Grinning Face with Asterism Eyes by nclm - CC-BY (asterism what?)

You publish your music on a fair platform and you wish to consequently join a fair social network too. Very good! Here is some advice.

What is the Fediverse? It's a federation of independent social networks, the most popular of which is Mastodon (mistressfully explained by JenJen in a 4 minute video).

Create an account

To create an account you need to choose an instance. Technically it's like choosing an email provider. You can change instances later on, usually keeping your followers/follows but not your posts, but it's a bit of a hassle.

Important! The average Fediverse instance is maintained by generous people pretty much like you, paying the hosting from their pockets, volunteering hours for administration and moderation... Be nice to them!

Choosing an instance is a bit like choosing a place to live. Some instances are very big and life there might feel anonymous not even knowing your neighbors. Instances have a local timeline with the posts of the users in that instance, which is a very important source of interesting people and topics to follow. And vice versa, your posts are more likely to receive an audience if you start in a like-minded instance. Many instances are smaller and looking for a specific audience. You probably want to start in an instance focused on musicians or any other factors interesting to you: identity, location, language, hobby...

Here is a list of music-related instances:

First steps

For a general quick start guide, check Fedi.Tips.

Spoiler: the basic use is pretty similar to the big corporate networks, except that there is no algorithm trying to hook you with infinite scrolling, and no algorithm that will pick your posts and place them in the screens of people that didn't ask for them. Again, it's like living in a new place: you need to put some effort getting to know people and places, and (if you want) letting people know about you and your music.

Profile

You fill your profile pretty much like in other places. The Fediverse loves humans, so you can just be yourself and not some kind of "brand" or "content producer". Describe yourself and your music project as you would to a friend of a friend. Link to your music in fair platforms, to your website, to communities you are part of... Don't use AI images unless you really know what you are doing and your instance allows it.

First posts

A post introducing yourself is a good start. Add hashtags like #introduction and #NewHere. Pin this intro post while you are new.

A post with your last music release complements your intro and is in fact a main reason for you to be here, right? Add the album cover (and add always ALT text to your images, thinking of blind people and screen-readers). Pin this post too.

From here... it's up to you. You don't HAVE to post. No algorithm or peer-pressure is forcing you to. In fact, usually it is good that you start reading and following before you start posting regularly. Just like usually it is good to listen to people before starting to talk.

Some musicians post about their process. You can upload sound snippets, pictures of your beloved instruments and tools, screenshots of your DAW... You can comment on music you are listening to, recommend other musicians in the Fediverse, talk about an upcoming gig, a concert you went...

A very good way to add more posts to your timeline is to boost (reshare) posts from other people that you found specially interesting. In the Fediverse, the algorithm is you, us, all of us.

Hashtags

Apart from your local timeline and the boosts from people to follow, a very good way to discover interesting people and posts are hashtags. Using hashtags in your posts is also a good way to arrive to more people with common interests. You can follow hashtags you are interested in, and your messages can arrive to other people following the hashtags you use. Just don't overuse hashtags in your posts, unless you really know what you are doing. It won't look good on you, and people might start muting you.

Some hashtags interesting for musicians:

  • #CCMusic
  • #FairTradeMusicFriday
  • #FediMusic
  • #LinuxAudio
  • #Musician
  • #MusicProduction
  • #Musodon
  • #MyMusic
  • #NewMusic

You can also try with music genres i.e. #ElectronicMusic, #IndustrialMusic...

Meet musicians

There are some meeting points for musicians in and around the Fediverse:

... and we are trying to contribute our little bit with Electre Selecte, new social electronic music handpicked for you.

Dear musician, hopefully this is useful. What do you miss? What should we add or improve? Suggestions welcome! Just comment below or mention @selecteh@f.selecteh.org in a toot.