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I'm almost socialsless but still find myself clinging to Instagram mainly to follow bands, galleries and a few brands who's product updates I'm interested in... I'd rather not.

If anyone here is managing to follow stuff they're interested in without social media, share here. I wish there was the Good Ol' Days of newsletters but with the ability to aggregate news on stuff I want to follow. I know this was what pre enshitification social media was, but we all know that that isn't what it is now.

This may be a hopeless task without signing up to a bazillion individual newsletters.

Doesn't anyone know of any individualized / customizable aggregators that could do this... I realize I'm basically reinventing Web 2.0 here

Same. I only have Insta for band stuff, but I'm barely on it.

The “Upcoming Shows in Chicago” thread is probably the most valuable resource for me in this regard.

I miss the days when bands had their own web sites and would post their own blogs and journal entries on them. I’m sure someone, somewhere is still doing this, but unfortunately it’s just easier to do it on social media now.

It's dishearteningly bad. The word of mouth record shop, posters on poles downtown type of organic stuff is greatly reduced. When I think about someone thanking me for handing them a quarter sheet flier for a show at a party I feel like we must have been driving Model T Fords.

I'm on Instagram still and the feed has continuously gotten more algorithm driven. People's posts are often entirely lost in the flood and the only chance you have to be seen is a 'story' but those are fleeting. The bands I know who are cutting through the fog are relentlessly posting which I find tedious for promoting my own shit. I can tell there are others with the same problem as me because I sometimes miss that someone came to town and I'm on that stupid app way more than I'd like to admit.

No social media at all for me. Unless you count here or the Slack channels at work.

I exchange emails relatively frequently w/bands, labels, and publicists.

And browsable websites still exist for most venues, plus it's possible (w/limitations) to glimpse musicians' and clubs' Instagram, Facebook, etc. sites not to mention fan-related subreddits w/o actually being a member, giving them your personal info, or engaging the cursed algorithm.

For my own relatively minimal activities, I still promote them by keeping and using an email list. Works well enough. Then again, I don't tend to hang w/a terribly plugged in or youthful crowd.

I also do a fair amount of talking to people at bars and record stores in person. You can certainly still hear about stuff if you're relatively outgoing.

I'm not remotely up on everything that's going on in town, but then again, I wouldn't wanna be; it seems overwhelming and a lot of it is just noise (not in the musical sense; that'd be great!). But I get by.

It's easy enough, it just requires making a different kind of effort. Not very different from networking the old-fashioned way.

OrthodoxEaster wrote: Sat Sep 27, 2025 12:31 pm It's easy enough, it just requires making a different kind of effort. Not very different from networking the old-fashioned way.

It is, though I'd argue that for some people the effort required isn't much different from what it has always been: going out to shows, record stores, making organic, real time connections with other humans. Instagram is quick and serviceable, but I get more hits and connections from this community. I do miss going to record stores on Tuesdays for new releases. Residing in a large, urban area is much easier to network than living in smaller communities with a dearth of relevant culture, and for that platforms like Instagram are a positive thing. There's an entire generation that has been able to foster community without it.

rsmurphy wrote: Sat Sep 27, 2025 1:03 pm

OrthodoxEaster wrote: Sat Sep 27, 2025 12:31 pm It's easy enough, it just requires making a different kind of effort. Not very different from networking the old-fashioned way.

It is, though I'd argue that for some people the effort required isn't much different from what it has always been: going out to shows, record stores, making organic, real time connections with other humans. Instagram is quick and serviceable, but I get more hits and connections from this community. I do miss going to record stores on Tuesdays for new releases. Residing in a large, urban area is much easier to network than living in smaller communities with a dearth of relevant culture, and for that platforms like Instagram are a positive thing. There's an entire generation that has been able to foster community without it.

It's always been easier in a big city, for sure. Then and now.

Social media definitely opens things up in less urban areas, at least to an extent. But I wonder at what cost? Those are some crappy companies to support w/a lot of algorithmic bullshit and advertising to wade thru. And it's just so painless, for me anyway, to live w/o becoming part of that.

Plus there were certainly influential, vital smaller-market scenes in places like Amherst, Chapel Hill, Norman, Iowa City, Trenton, etc. well before social media or even the internet. They just happened differently, and I'd argue more organically. If anything, they felt more distinct from one another—less influenced by, although by no means immune to, national or global trends—which is part of what made them so interesting. Personally, I appreciated that kind of regionalism. In that sense, their isolation from one another made them seem more local and special.

But you could have this same discussion about social media's influence on everything, from restaurants (personally, I preferred professional critics to often visual-based TikTok shallowness causing people to wait in long-ass lines) to travel (I don't think I'm the only person who doesn't appreciate Instagram's contribution to worldwide overtourism).

Is it more convenient and much, much faster now? Absolutely. But is it better, deeper, or more egalitarian? I'm not so sure. It's a good question.

bandcamp ain't perfect by a long shot, but "following" bands on there seems about the best way to keep up these days.
you automatically get an email update when there is a new release announced, or when bands send out a message through their "community" page.
not all bands are great about using this, but most seem to use it for bigger announcements.
email lists are good too.
i've been off of meta for months (and twitter for even longer) and it has been very good for my head/heart

To post on socials for band stuff, you have to pretend it's your life and that's all you do. Post relentlessly to cut through the fog.

This isn't a full time or even part time job for me. If I was younger and single, I'd be down to fuck around with this. But I don't want to play the stupid game where I'm at in life. I just want to play music.

I miss when every city had some kind of calendar website dedicated to all the underground shows happening. I’d just find the good one for cities I was planning to go to and schedule travel around them.

Whatever site the local corporate-owned newspaper has does not count unless you are looking for museum days for kids or w/e.