Observations and Intent

💔 The music industry does not work for music makers or listeners;

🥀 The dominant structure of the internet encourages centralization, middlemen, monopolism, and global extraction;

🤑 Creation of music and art currently relies on either market exploitation or bureaucratic grant writing;

💰 Current models of sharing and consuming music force a monetary value onto someone’s creative expression;

🔒 The monetization of music forces an artist to choose between having their music shared and enjoyed or locking it behind a paywall (or advertising) in the hope of being able to sustain themselves from their music;

😭 The music industry exploits cultures, ethnicities, and individuals, commodifying art in the pursuit of profit;

⏭️ Current attempts to provide alternatives to the existing models have faltered, burning out volunteers when grant money ran out for paid employees;

💡 Those attempts have provided valuable insights into what is working, what is not, and created visions of alternative ways of sharing creativity;

🫠 The lines between musicians, artists, teachers, service workers, etc, blur as musicians and artists rely on other sources of income to make ends meet;

🌱 We are planting the seeds for a community that is not impacted by profit motives or dependent on grant funding;

🫱🏽‍🫲🏻 There are many contradictions at work and there are many dedicated individuals working on figuring this out. We want to invite those people into conversation;

✨ Creativity is integral to imagining new futures;

🔥 Enabling creativity in everyone is a utopian vision;

🌹 We intend to challenge all forms of domination and hierarchy, through building our own understandings of racism, sexism, ableism, genderism, classism, and all other ways that power is held over others, and how this relates to our creative and collective experiences;

👯 We want to have fun along the way;