🎸
usually at a concert you expect that the last performer is the headliner that folks are actually there to see, but in the indie/local music world that's often not the situation. since shows are booked on off nights during the week or like sunday nights, this means the earlier sets on a bill are the best attended and the bands with a bigger audience may be second or third to play on a bill of four or five acts. this is so folks can see them and end their nights earlier.
it always upsets me when some cool out of town band comes and plays a great show but then all their fans dip leaving the smaller local acts to play to a nearly empty room at the end of the night. sometimes the earlier bands themselves leave too, which is even worse as it's pretty disrespectful for the acts you're sharing a bill with.
in the music world there can sometimes be this toxic narrative of "we all had to play for empty rooms at one point, it's part of the business," but that doesn't have to be the case! stay for the last set and see that local band of awkward 19 year olds, you never know where they'll end up going and how big of an impact early validation can have. to apply this idea broadly, if you ever have the chance to extend a courtesy to others that you wish would have been extended to you in the past, go out of your way to do that for them.
Apr 16, 2024
Related Recs
local music scenes often suck because everyones trying to sell you something. A band is trying to get tiktok famous, a promoter is trying to make money, clout has poisoned the well that art drinks from.
Just find a spot, ask friends to bring amps and drums, tell everyone to get there at 7 and listen to your buddies play music. literally anyone can do it. it can be alot to manage and be responsible for but its worth it
May 14, 2025
⚜️
Life gets exponentially better when you become entrenched in your city’s local music scene. Obviously, I’m absolutely spoiled that for me that’s Montreal, which I unbiased truly believe has one of the best independent scenes in North America. But, you save money when some of your fave bands play for $10-$20. Through COVID, and sadly too long after, I was just doing my radio show in this loner little bubble, not connecting with the people whose music I was playing, feeling super creatively stifled. But, since pushing myself out of the house, I’ve felt like part of actual community. Like you can go to a show alone and I promise someone will talk to you and you can make a friend!! Also, getting to turn your friends onto small acts is so fun. Anyways, stan HAWA B.
Feb 9, 2024
🎤
i can’t imagine not going to a show every week to see music. if i wasn’t standing in someone’s backyard watching a local DIY band or going to a bar to see a small touring act, i would be rotting at home. i love supporting live music (especially when the live music is my friends!!)
Dec 2, 2024
Top Recs from @royallmonarch
Jun 2, 2025
đź“´
I consume a lot of music regularly, and a huge part of keeping a fresh diet of new listens going is having enough sources of recommendations that aren’t an algorithm that either 1) reinforces your existing listening patterns, keeping you stagnant in your tastes, or 2) platforms whoever paid enough to push their product to the top, serving you something that may not inherently be of inferior quality, but may not align with your tastes, may not be exciting beyond just being a new release, and realigns your current listening habits to be more in line with what the average user on the platform is also listening to — which socially might have benefits but which creates a homogeneity of consumption that can become bland since you’re listening to something really just because it’s the next product on the assembly line to have its public moment and not because anything about the music actually captured your attention. the current landscape of streaming is designed to keep you at an all you can eat buffet where you take what’s served to you, and as a result a lot of us have forgotten how to look at a menu and order.
so what does taking a more active role in your own music curation look like? for me, it’s meant not using streaming as a primary listening platform. I mostly use my local Apple Music library on my phone that I curate with the vestigial iTunes Library framework that’s still a part of Apple Music on my laptop. probably going to find an alternative soon since apple seems to be cutting integration progressively. I like this method because it forces me to choose what to sync to the limited storage space I have, forcing me to take inventory of what I actually listen to and what I can offload. the files I get are mostly from Bandcamp or Soulseek depending on whether it’s available for purchase or entirely unavailable online (as is the case for a lot of electronic music that was on vinyl only, which is where soulseek comes in clutch). I also have freedom here to change the ID3 tags to better sort and organize, rate, change track info, and track my own listening data.
Bandcamp and other music purchasing platforms are great because 1) it reshapes my relationship to music away from consumerism and back towards curation. I have to pay actual money for this thing now if I want to use it, so i’m forced to consider its value (usually i’ll stream a release first to gauge my interest). 2) having to spend money helps me to course out my meals so to speak, as i’ll buy a few releases i’ve accumulated in my cart over the month and cash out on Bandcamp Friday when 100% of my money is actually getting to the artist (TOMORROW IS BANDCAMP FRIDAY BTW!!!), and between purchases I can actually chew and savor and digest my last orders, they don’t get swept up in the deluge of new releases. my plate is full until i’m done and then I order more. also for the times of the year like now when new music isn’t coming out as regularly I take time to find older music that I would normally overlook while keeping up with new drops. currently very into early 80s/late 70s music with early digital production, kinda stuff that would evolve into synthpop and dance music.
so how do you know what to order? for me, I’m getting recs through trusted curation platforms. whether it’s bandcamp daily, y’all lovely folks here on PI.FYI, friends, or most importantly musicians who I follow on socials that share their tastes through posts, stories, playlists on steaming, interviews, etc. I like this last one especially because it’s kind of like a musical game of telephone. if I like an artist and they share their interests and influences it’s like every layer in this process is stretching my palate further from the sound that I was originally interested in and into a new territory that has some shared DNA but would never have been recommended to me by an algo because there’s no shared category or label between them, only the musical influence and interpretation of it made by the artist. as an example, I was a huge Skrillex stan, he signed KOAN Sound to his label, they collab with Asa who collabs with Sorrow, Sorrow takes huge influence from Burial, Burial makes some ambient adjacent stuff and takes huge influence from 90s rave music and drum and bass and 2000s rnb, now i’m listening to Brandy - All in Me, William Basinski, Aphex Twin, none on whom would get recommended by Spotify to me from Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites.
LAST thing i’ll say — because in yappin about this i’m realizing how actually passionate about this subject I am: MAKE LISTS! playlists are cool, but they can flatten your music into vague categories of “vibes” and “aesthetics” and encourage picking one-off songs from artists that you never form an active audience relationship with. I make a practice of making my own year end lists of top 25 albums (plus some honorable recs and top individual songs) and keeping them in a notes doc that I regularly update and rearrange over the course of the year. this forces me to consider the actual relationship i’m forming with what i’ve ordered for myself. did I like it in the moment but it didn’t have staying power? is it slowly growing on me? it also encourages taking albums as a whole. maybe I liked one or two tracks a lot but the rest wasn't resonating. that’s ok! maybe I rank it lower but now i’ve actually taken time to consider it, it’s in my library, and maybe (quite a few cases for me) something I ranked like bottom 5 albums becomes a retroactive favorite from that year as my tastes evolve. also 25 albums to take with me from each year is really more than you'd think, i struggle sometimes to even find 25 that I formed a true connection with. I think the biggest thing the itunes era ruined that led into now is the single-ification of music, the ability to separate the hits from the deep cuts. albums are meant to be taken as a whole, and then once you've really sat with the whole you can find what actually stuck. even then I like to keep the whole around because soooo often i’ll write off a track that yeeeears later I come to love. trust the artist, they made it like they did for a reason.
aaannyyyywayy TLDR: get recs organically, be more active in deciding your listening patterns, fr*cken pay artists yall, trust the artist embrace the album, really consider what you consume
Feb 29, 2024
Jun 4, 2025