the consortium on radical methods of production and distribution of music
the consortium is a collective of independent artists, each of whom in their own way, is refusing the corpo methods of music creation and relationship building, while redefining these things on terms that are mutually beneficial to us (the artists) and to you (the listener). there are no hard and fast rules, because artists have to eat and consumers' habits die hard. but there are certainly principles and goals that we each strive for and we hope that our listeners are in for the ride.
- a refutation of the streaming model of music consumption is certainly one of these principles. in exchange for pennies that an artist might make annually, they send their listeners' data and their money to subsidize the exclusivity contracts for talking heads that push propaganda. or subsidize the cost of producing a.i. slop to feed their own algorithms and reduce payouts to actual artists.
- a refutation of a.i. usage is another of these principles. technology has always affected art and the way artists work. there is nothing wrong with tools. but every facet of the creation of art is rooted in a material reality. whereas the second-hand 808 democractized the creation of music for countless people across turtle island, a.i. is ultimately owned and controlled by the corporations and is stealing our water, our clean air, and energy that we cannot afford to use haphazardly given our current climate crisis.
- as much as possible, implementing free and open source software in place of corpo alternatives. to be clear, foss is not necessarily free of malignant influence. we have unfortunately too many grifters and too much corpo influence in the realm of foss for us to close our eyes and assume that open source is necessarily a good thing. with that said, open source is usually the first step in the right direction, as far as the technical side of things are concerned. also, at least some of us are fairly entrenched in that world and tend to know the good actors from the bad. if you ever think we're promoting bad actors, please reach out.
- often times, more importantly than what tools we use, is empowering ourselves to not depend on anyone/any organzation's tools. to various degrees, we maintain our own online presence and try our best to give you our music without feeding the algorithms that are constantly spying on us and trying to manipulate us.
with that said, i present to you the artists of the consortium:
