fluffy

@bsky.sockpuppet.band

Quick note re: elasticStage

You might recall that I was pretty positive about elasticStage since they allow small musicians to do one-off or small-run vinyl record production and their quality was pretty good given the price. But there’s a few reasons I cannot currently recommend them and have taken my various links and reviews down: * Even though they have difficulty keeping up with the manufacturing demand for actual musicians, they’ve gone into supporting AI musicians, and are (as far as I can tell) the manufacturing partner behind Suno Vinyl * They have had a huge uptick in quality assurance problems and miscuts; I’ve had to get some of my personal copies recut and the process for getting them replaced was pretty difficult, and I cannot in any good conscience require that listeners have to deal with them in case things go south * They’re heavily leaning into Boy George and his awful, culturally-appropriative, anti-Palestinian AI slop “music” and I cannot in any good conscience support any company who would make that decision Other folks might be willing to still work with this company but I personally am not. If there are other short-run vinyl manufacturers who have a better track record and a reasonable price, I’d welcome suggestions. (I already know about Kunaki. They’re a bit expensive and their reviews for vinyl are pretty bad, unfortunately.) Of course also the way they manage payments means there’s no way for me to withdraw my meager earnings from them, either, but what else is new with these indie-exploiting music companies…

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Freak Flag

**Ace:** Shorthand for “asexual;” someone who doesn’t feel sexual attraction to others. They may or may not have a libido, and they may or may not be willing to engage in sexual practices with others. Some asexuals do form romantic attachments, or have limited circumstances in which they can feel sexual attraction as well (although typically not to a specific person). Just like any other orientation, there is a lot of variety in what they are interested in and comfortable doing. **Bondage:** An erotic, parasexual practice involving the complete domination/subjugation of one partner by another; the dominant party enjoys the feeling of control, and the submissive enjoys not having any control. Often involves being (safely) tied up and tortured in various ways. Consent, safe words, and communication both beforehand and after are key. **Bottom:** Someone who typically takes a submissive position during sexual activities. **Breakfast:** A meal enjoyed after a good night’s sleep. In the US, stereotypically involves bacon or sausage, eggs, and pancakes. **Consent:** Ensuring that all participants in an activity want to be a participant in it. This is not limited to specific physical things, but also, for example, being part of a discussion or being made to see imagery of it. There is also a concept of “statutory consent” in that living beings (people, pets, etc.) who do not have the faculties necessary to make an informed decision as to their participation are de facto unable to consent. This can be due to them being e.g. asleep, under the influence of medication, mentally-impaired, limited in personal experience (often measured by age), and so on. **Content warning:** A warning about something that others might not want to see (such as erotic or disturbing visuals or descriptions/discussion thereof) for whatever reason. Usually combined with some mechanism of hiding the content from those who don’t actually want to see it or making it visibly distinct enough to skip. **Coupling:** Mutual masturbation; two or more people using a device or (more often) their hands to bring each other to orgasm rather than direct penetration. **Dungeon:** A place where bondage and domination play can take place. Usually just someone’s specially-equipped bedroom. **Fencing:** A sport in which two or more people knock their swords against each other. May or may not be a euphemism. **Furry:** Someone who is part of the furry fandom; there is a stereotype that this is all about sex while wearing animal costumes but there is actually a wide variety of ways in which people participate. The furry fandom is a predominantly-queer space filled with people who have had to throw away and rebuild their identities as part of their acts of rebellious self-discovery, and much of that identity revolves around what could be, rather than what is. **Horny:** Someone who is in need of sexual release. **Humiliation:** Some people find their intimate practices to be very personal, and would be very embarrassing if it became widely-known. Some people find the perceived embarrassment itself incredibly gratifying. **Itch:** A physical sensation of needing to be scratched or rubbed; also used metaphorically as a general urge. **Kinky:** Someone who is very much into exploring different forms of physical intimacy, often involving props, body modification, and exploring different positions. **Lad:** Someone identifying as male and generally perceived as being fairly young. **Leather:** A material derived from the skin of an animal, usually cow, which is often associated with articles of clothing used during BDSM. As it’s animal-derived, some folks prefer to use artificial/simulated versions of it. **Legal:** Above the age of consent, and able to give consent. **Mother:** Literally, the person who gestated and/or raised someone. Figuratively, someone who takes a figurehead role within a group, possibly in the form of domination play but also possibly in the form of keeping a social circle together or establishing the rules and mores of a close-knit, found-family community. **Murr:** A thing that furries stereotypically say while aroused. Often written “mrr.” **Normie:** Someone who is “vanilla,” i.e. only into very mainstream ideas of sex, sexuality, and partnership. i.e. anyone who actually needs to read this glossary. **Peg:** Wearing a prosthetic phallus and using it to anally penetrate someone, typically male-identified. **Rubber:** Both a euphemism for a prophylactic (which is usually made of some form of latex or similar material), and a material often used to cover various body parts in a form-fitting way. Some people very deeply appreciate that aesthetic, especially appreciating the smooth, shiny texture. **Safeword:** A phrase used before initiating an activity where words such as “stop” or “ouch” are ambiguous, due to possibly being part of a roleplayed scenario or being part of the erotic nature of the activity. This is agreed upon by all partners beforehand so that if someone is feeling uncomfortable or needs to cease the activity, all who hear it will immediately know to stop. Ideally it is a word which will not normally come up during the activity, such as “lemon” or “asparagus,” although in the case of erotic chef roleplay those particular choices would obviously not be suitable. **Shiny:** Highly reflective of light. **Social:** Shorthand for social media; Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, that sort of thing. More broadly, Internet sites where everyone you know can see a thing and where it remains accessible in relative perpetuity. **Strap-on:** A prosthetic phallus, usually held in place by a belt around the wearer’s waist. **Switch:** Someone who alternates between being a top and a bottom. **Top:** Someone who typically takes a dominant position during sexual activities. **Trans:** Identifying with a gender other than what they were assigned at birth. An adjective, which typically modifies a further specification of what their identity is, rather than their external assignment; for example, “trans girl” typically refers to someone who was born with a penis but identifies as female or feminine. **Yuck:** A thing you’re not supposed to say about someone else’s “yum” (a thing they particularly enjoy), although there are certain things that most would agree absolutely are a “yuck,” such as real-life incest, bestiality, pedophilia, or other such situations where consent cannot be established. Fantasy versions of those, however, are subject to the participants’ taste.

sockpuppet.band

Symphonic followup

Over on Reddit, someone asked about TooLost, and I mentioned that I used to use them and to avoid them like the plague and I said that I’ve been using Symphonic. They had some followup questions for me and I felt that my answer was detailed enough that I should also post it as a blog post here for future reference. This is sort of a followup to my previous review about them; nothing has really changed but I’ve had more encounters with their support side of things that I have a more detailed picture on what it’s like to work with them day-to-day. Note: I may earn a commission on affiliated product links in this article. Anyway, here is my comment, verbatim: > I’ve been with Symphonic since March of this year, and I currently have 19 releases managed by them (and one release each on Soundrop and CDBaby). > > I’ve had plenty of support tickets with Symphonic and they usually get back to me quickly, although often the response is clearly AI-written. When that’s been insufficient I’ve been able to escalate to an actual human, though, and the answer I get is honest and straightforward, like either “thanks for the feedback” or “that’s on the roadmap” or “that’s not something we want to support” or the like. > > My big complaint with Symphonic is that their metadata interface is very annoying to work with, and requires a lot of scrolling and clicking to set things like genres and individual credits. They don’t have any way of just setting the same credits for all songs on an album, and the genre selector is super annoying. I’ve given them some feedback on how it can be improved but I think it’ll be a while before any changes happen there. > > I’ve also had them reject releases based on genre or title-related things (for example, they would not accept my release’s original title of “Lo-Fi Beats to Grind Coffee To” because apparently “lo-fi” and “beats” are both blacklisted due to AI slop) but they’ve been straightforward in communicating about issues like that. > > They’re also a lot more strict about the cover art text requirements and, in particular, detecting text that isn’t in the release or artist name. > > I’m not thrilled with their reliance on AI for customer support, and reading between the lines a bit I suspect they also use AI for developing the site itself. They’ve also raised prices and tried to justify it based on providing AI marketing tools that nobody actually wants, but I think that’s just misplaced marketing efforts to try to justify them not operating at a loss. > > My main complaint is just that the UI/UX on the uploader and tagger _really_ sucks to use with my particular set of physical disabilities and I can’t imagine it being a good experience even for people who don’t have chronic pain issues, and I wish they’d provide some sort of API-level access so that I can just script my uploads with the metadata I already have on my own end. But I can also see why they wouldn’t want to do that, since it’d make it way too easy for people to automate AI slop uploads, which they are firmly against, at least for the music and art. > > They have a more detailed explanation of their stance regarding AI. I would say that as far as mainstream distributors go, Symphonic is the least-bad of a lot of bad choices. If I had my choices I’d not be on major streaming at all, but that’s where people want to listen to me. Hopefully Fairplayer and other distributed/indie streaming options take better hold. (I’m certainly trying to do my part to make it happen!) But anyway, in the meantime, if you do want distribution on the major DSPs, Symphonic has been pretty okay for me.

sockpuppet.band

Bandcamp alternatives

Just when I was starting to think that Songtradr’s acquisition of Bandcamp was turning out to not be the big problem everyone predicted, they’ve gone and shaken everything back up by laying off the remaining Bandcamp engineering team. This, uh, is not a good sign. So, anyway, while I’m not planning on dropping Bandcamp entirely just yet (and will still be uploading my new releases there for the foreseeable future), here’s some of the other places I sell my music. ### Mirlo Mirlo has been around for a while, but they made some pretty great strides when the original issues with Bandcamp had started to happen. They are, currently, my favorite of the Bandcamp alternatives, for the following reasons: * They actually care about artists and trying to make a better ecosystem for everyone * Their principles are based on socialist collectivism * Their long-term goal is to provide interoperability and a federated world so that they don’t _have_ to be a single point of failure, business-wise, and are being developed as open source * Their uploader is great (especially when paired with Bandcrash) * They give artists a choice of how much of a cut they take * They provide integrated merch sales (albeit with fairly clunky shipping setup), a fully-fledged artist blog (for those who need it), and monthly support options as well * They support pay-what-you-want with both an absolute minimum and a suggested default Things are still a bit rough with them in some places; for example, I don’t like how their frontend is currently a ReactJS app without any server-side rendering (which is bad for SEO and some forms of interop), and they still don’t currently have the ability to generate discount codes or do per-track artwork, but they’re constantly making progress, and ethically and politically they are about as far left as is possible in the space. I really want to see them do well. ### itch.io itch.io is an independent games, assets, and content store. I actually first learned about them as a place to sell my comics, although they’re primarily used for games and tools. They aren’t designed specifically to be a music store and leave a lot to be desired in the music sales department, but with Bandcrash it isn’t too difficult to manage your albums there. Like Mirlo, they allow you to set whatever platform cut you like, and they also have flexible bundles and discount codes, which puts them a bit above Mirlo. They also let you organize your catalog into categories/sections. They also give you an incredible amount of control over your page layout, with the ability to provide custom CSS on request. And they even provide the ability to sell merch, although it’s pretty clunky to set up. They also support pay-what-you-want with both absolute minimum and suggested default prices. However, there are a few reasons why they don’t earn my top choice; for example: * The company is very small and centralized, and has a very high bus factor * Their interoperability is quite minimal and lacks a robust API for doing things that would be very helpful to do * As they do not have a music focus, there are a lot of places where things could be better, especially with sales reporting and discovery Still, as an independent digital asset shop (with potential merch sales), you could certainly do worse. ### ko-fi Ko-Fi started out as a Patreon alternative with a tip jar and monthly support options, but they also have a commissions platform and sales for both digital and physical items. It’s pretty okay as a shopping cart, although handling physical and digital versions of things is a bit clunky as they have to be separate items (which means uploading the digital version twice, once for each version). Also, the only way to provide an audio preview on the shop itself is via a YouTube embed. To that end it works as a supplement for having your own website, but it’s not a great shopping experience. Also it offers absolutely no discoverability at all. They don’t offer a flexible sales cut option, but the standard cut they take is a mere 5%, and you can choose to pay a small monthly fee to waive that. They also do have discount codes, but they don’t have easily-managed discography bundles. Also, they support pay-what-you-want with absolute minimum prices, although there’s no way of doing a suggested price. Personally I focus on Ko-Fi for selling physical goods that aren’t music-related, but I do have all of my albums available there in digital form. ### Subvert This is a newcomer to the indie sales space. I’ve written a bit about them already. They have some interesting ideas, namely instead of taking a cut they ask for customers to pay a tip to the platform to keep it running (similar to Gofundme), but I personally feel like they are prioritizing style over substance, and the actual upload and metadata editing process is a bit onerous. There’s nothing about them that stands out in particular aside from the co-op business model and the customer-driven cut. Like many other sites, they support pay-what-you-want with an absolute minimum; they also let you offer discounts to other co-op members, which is nice. One notable missing feature is the ability to have hidden tracks on albums. There’s also no means of doing per-track artwork that I can find, which is something supported by both Bandcamp and Bandcrash. I’m not focusing too heavily on Subvert, although I will probably continue to upload new releases there for now. I’m not super confident in their future but hopefully they’ll surprise me. ### Places I am not interested in and why I used to use Gumroad, but its founder, Sahil Lavingia, has a long history of problematic behavior. Additionally, Gumroad is now primarily AI-coded and supported. I have also been receiving spam from various up-and-coming wannabe services that are being vibe-coded on platforms like zilla.so and so on. My thought on things like that is: if the promise is that you can start up a company based on just a notion that you don’t have to think about, why wouldn’t anyone else just do it themselves and cut out the middleman? ### A note about web presence Personally I think that any musician should have their own website that they run on their own terms, with whatever features make sense to them and with their own web domain and so on. I don’t believe in putting all your eggs in someone else’s basket. I run this site using Publ (and I will someday get around to releasing my site templates to make it easier for someone else to do so). A lot of folks use Faircamp which has a lot going for it. You can also build a site with any number of site generators like 11ty, Hugo, or any number of static site generators. Heck, you could also hand-code it the old-fashioned way. Even if you don’t want to build your own site, I highly recommend getting your own web domain and at least forwarding it to your favorite sales channel, or setting up a Linktree or Carrd to direct people to your preferred sites.

sockpuppet.band

[Audio] [Original post on sockpuppet.band]

Sunny Again

Back in 2003, when this song was originally written, it was considered “okay” and “funny” to dox and harass trans people. And if it happened to someone, clearly it was their fault for being trans and not being 100% perfect at keeping their private information private. **_Ask me how I know._** In the midst of getting dozens of harassing phone calls, random evangelists being sent to my door hearing I’d “found Jesus,” and being added to dozens of religious mailing lists, I was, as you might expect, pretty tired and grumpy. And the people around me thought it was just a joke, or my fault for being trans. What could I expect from society, because of this “choice” I “made?” And meanwhile, being largely in the closet in person, I couldn’t even share that this was going on with most people around me. They could see that I was stressed, but as usual, leaned _hard_ on toxic positivity nonsense, telling me that I needed to cheer up and that things weren’t so bad. Sometimes you just need to wallow and hide, and sometimes it’s okay to tell people to fuck right off, especially when they refuse to get it. The original version of this song was a lot angrier, and also only had three chords. It was one of the first songs to be selected for remixing on Remix Fight (a long-gone side project from a bunch of Song Fight! people), and I was fortunate enough to have the song be remixed by Victor “fourstones” Stone, who would later go on to found ccMixter. I had actually forgotten all about that until a few days before I started on this track (and had no idea how I was going to handle this song) and his remix came up in my playlist, and one of the changes he made to the chord progression gave me the inspiration I needed to complete my new arrangement. So, thank you, Victor, wherever you are.

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