A short post of a quick snippet, like a link
It’s loud, it’s noisy, it has guitar, is has bass, it has drums. And a fun video. All is good.
Unfortunately never wrote a Bands New To Me post about them (I started that series later), so can’t link to more from them (yet). Have to think about a series Bands I Discovered A While Ago series. And catch up on 2022.
A few days ago I was reading a Bloomberg Tech Newsletter with the title Meta, Twitter Subscription Plans Risk Turning Off Everyday Users. Twitter had its paid subscription for some time, since the Elon Musk take over that’s been accelerated. Meta (Facebook) is implementing a similar plan now. Both apparently driven by shrinking advertising revenue. So far, so understandable. What I’m wondering about is hidden in these two paragraphs:
Still, what I find most telling about these subscription offerings is that the platforms will soon prioritize content from paying users over others. It’s a reminder that social networks have evolved away from the original premise of being a place to see mostly posts from your “friends and family.” They are instead focusing on attracting a certain kind of person – the creator – who makes fun skits or videos or blog posts.
Professional creators seeking more eyeballs have historically had to pay for advertising. Now, there’s another way — and the content that rises to the top because it was made by subscribers may not actually be as entertaining or interesting.
Meta, Twitter Subscription Plans Risk Turning Off Everyday Users
Both Facebook and Twitter are already full with advertising (or as they call them, “sponsored posts”), often of very dubious quality. If to that the algorithms will add the posts of paying users, or as they call it, will prioritise that content, will that not make the timeline of the average non-paying user even more unappealing as the updates from their friends will almost disappear?
What are the chances of this turning off the average non-paying users? Which in turn would mean the paying users hoping to get more impressions not getting what they are hoping for as well as the advertisers not getting their ad views, further reducing advertising revenue for the social media companies.
Are they hoping to convert more non-paying users to paying users in order to improve their timeline? I doubt that, considering they have been conditioned to “free” for many years, even decades. So could this make average users to reduce their social media time? Which in turn could also turn off the above mentioned paying users as their prioritised posts are reaching fewer people? Making the social media companies losing even more revenue?
Will be interesting to see how this develops over the coming years I think.
Two years ago I mentioned The Big Moon in my Bands New To Me series. They are obviously not new to me any more, but I still love them just as much as when I discovered them, if not more. Their third album is about to be released and even though the topic of it isn’t something I can relate to I love the first single from it:
The Guardian has a great interview with them, a very interesting read I think (explaining why I can’t relate to the topic of Wide Eyes). The first two singles released from it (Trouble is the second one) make me look forward to the album release in October.
PS: if you were to ask me for my favourite artist for their videos, The Big Moon is most likely to at least be among the top 3, more likely the winner. It is mentioned in the interview, the video to Take A Piece I think is brilliant. But there are plenty other brilliant videos by them. Don’t know how they do it, but they just continue to deliver as far as I’m concerned.
Just a quick recommendation for those of you who like Indie music: Subscribe and listen to the BBC 6 Music’s Indie Forever podcast. Or if you’re up at that time listen to it live at 00:00 – 01:00 hours every Saturday very early “morning” (well, it’s the night from Friday to Saturday). I’m not, so I’m listening to the podcast.
That’s pretty much it. It’s a “BBC Sounds exclusive” from the looks of it, so I can’t embed an RSS feed or share it here, all I can tell you is to follow the link to the BBC 6 Music’s Indie Forever podcast and take it from there. I hope you’ll like it as well.
On the second day of the new year 2022 I managed to get out for a short photo walk around Aldermaston Wharf, returning as the rain arriving from the west set in. I didn’t see an awful lot, but managed to capture these two Robins in the mild New Year’s sunshine high up in a tree:
As usual, click on the pictures to view the larger version and visit the gallery. I hope you enjoy the pictures of the two Robins, if I remember correctly the most popular bird in the UK.