Original, talented, active, content-creating musicians are joining Steemit at a great rate. I am a new one, and I see new peers in introduceyourself every day who are original musicians. This excites me, and I am really pumped to see how this community is going to grow over the next months.
As musicians, we typically post our content to #music as it is the most widely-accepted tag for our genre. It is there we get the greatest exposure.
Okay, so what's the issue?
Today, as I was browsing through the Hot and Trending posts, I noticed that the feed was seemingly clogged at that particular time with videos that did not contain original content.
Essentially YouTube shares equating to sharing a random music video you like onto Facebook. However, the content was not original to the share, and does not promote artist and creator-centers for us to share with each other.
In a sea of single-video shares which do not contain original content, our posts are getting buried by spammy yet gray-area-in-a-rules-free-online-society. The original content we came here to share and make and do and be is getting buried under someone's playlist. At one point today, there was only one original music post listed on the front page of #music.
If we are coming here to create and share those creations with others, we need an area where our art will not get pushed to the bottom. That's not why we came here. We came here to see and share and do in a community with other makers and creators who enjoy doing the same things.
Okay, so what's the solution?
I jumped into steemitabuse-classic chat this afternoon and brought the subject up to, and subsequently had a quick discussion with @patrice about proposing a new tag. Apparently, this idea had been mentioned at some point but no change had been made. I really think it is time we make that change.
We need something that distinguishes the MAKERS from simply SHARERS.
From the conversation we had, it was relayed that the music tag was pushed before all the original artists had jumped on board, and perhaps some of that copy/paste situation was already in place when we got here. It IS music, and there are no rules.
My suggestion is that we move our original music to #originalmusic.
We need our own space to be heard.
Who's with me, original musicians? What do YOU think?
Regardless of genre, if you're making original music, we move our primaries to #originalmusic so when we hit that Hot and Trending button, we are actually looking at, listening to, and discovering our community, which is so rich with diverse talent and skill. I can go to YouTube to see random MTV playlists. I'm here to see YOU, and you have welcomed me so much that I feel you're here to see ME, too. I want it to be easier for us to connect with each other.
I am going to start using the #originalmusic tag on my original tunes, and I greatly encourage all original musicians to jump on board with it, resteem, join in the discussion and tag a musician friend.
I love da news ya be spewin' my way
@tupacisback If you're bringing originalmusic, I hope to see you using the tag in your original music!
This is a great idea. I've ranted several times on the podcast and in general discussions of my distaste of what really amounts to profiting off of the work of others, something that's generally considered illegal in many places, but it's hard to stop a constant deluge of that kind of posting, especially wherever money is involved and no automatic copyright protections is in place. Not to say we should have something as horrid as the youtube copyright protection system, but I do support this tag! Time to sort the wheat from the chaff so to speak!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=67BvLxBtVV0
Hi @jessamynorchard,
I have created an initiative/curation pool to help combat this issue and to provide proper rewards for original content creators. You may have heard of @thirstyrecords.
This initiative has only been running for a few weeks but we're quickly picking up steem. Our goal is to eventually create a better looking music page where original content gets rewarded the most. As much as we like people sharing music or creating covers, it's not fair for musicians who put in the work to be rewarded less than those who do part of the work.
If you would like, you can help us moderate the #music page by curating original music when you see it and post it on the #thirsty-music-promotion chat channel. The more of us that help this initiative the better the rewards will become in the future. Feel free to come and discuss any ideas you think may help.
You can also use the #thirsty tag to post your original content.
P.s: @thirstyrecords is already sharing original studio quality releases here on Steemit. If you're readint his and want to here some profesisonal sounding productions from authors here on Steemit then go check out the page. You wont be disappointed.
@senseiteekay I'm excited about speaking with you further. Love and admire what I see happening @thirstyrecords and to help curate by sharing would be super fun.
I hope you can also encourage your audience to use originalmusic as a secondary or subsequent tag, so we increase the quality of curations everywhere. There's no reason this venue of Steemit shouldn't be the place for the future of indie music.
Thanks for your reply. I've since noticed that you're in the thirsty music chat channel, which is awesome. The more the merrier.
We have previously asked people to use that tag, along with a couple others. We will remind our audience in our next announcement that the tag is still active.
Our main problem, that we have found so far, is that musicians aren't formatting their posts as well as yours above. There's been a few original music posts that have been skipped by unnoticed. We have tried reiterating the importance of formatting posts but it's still taking time to resonate.
It would be nice to create a circle of musicians who're on the same page and who can help each other create a better music spot here on Steemit, for all genres of artist to feel comfortable living within.
Upvoted, this is a truly great Idea. I will definitely participate and create some music in #originalmusic.
@ballinconscious Awesome! We have had a nice response since this article was published, but obviously we need more content under the tag to start growing its true curation, and of course that is where you and other Steemian artists come into play. So stoked to share and participate in the community at #originalmusic with you.
Great idea. I will support. :)
Original musician here...I'm in!
Awesome! I look forward to seeing our original music in one place. I hope it takes off! Thanks for the Resteem as well!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=I0J3qWyvsaE
You've got my vote. I'll be posting future material under the #originalmusic tag.
Outstanding. I look forward to creating and sharing with you there.
Fantastic idea Jessamy! 100% in agreement. I too was scanning the music tag and was surprised to see a bunch of YouTube shares. That's cool, but original music is a much needed category on Steemit. I'm with you on this one, all the way. Upvoted and resteeming.
@luzcypher Fantastic, awesome, and excellent! Any promoting of it (as secondary and/or subsequent tags) you'd be willing to do within the Steemian OpenMic Posts would be great, as well! I like the concept of being able to filter to the original music and get to the meat of why so many of us are here. Thank you again for all you do for the music community, as well!
I feel the same way. I believe we can cross promote for sure and draw all the original music to your tag. This will make it a lot easier to find on Steemit and we can invite them to play Open MIc if they want and visa versa. Yea! So glad you're part of Steemit! Let me know when the tag is live and I'll start letting people know.
Thanks, I never thought about this. I was only thinking of already existing tags like music, video, life. etc.
@escapethink If we join together under some common quality tags, I think the curation quality will increase and we all can finally see what we are looking for. :)
Great idea. There is a lot of that going on with the visuals arts as well. suppose we could be going with #originalart
I can see this having implications on a lot of creator communities here on a Steemit. As @quantumanomaly said "separating the wheat from the chaff, so to say" :)