About 7 to 10 years ago, I heard about Welcome to Night Vale on a now-defunct podcast. Welcome to Night Vale is an audio drama in the format of a local news show from the fictional town of Night Vale. As of 25 episodes listened (in less than a week, I am ok, please don’t send help), it’s a strong recommendation if that’s your cup of tea. One of the sections of the show is “The Weather”, where an indie artist’s song is showcased, and this is what I’d like to expand upon.
Welcome to the Night Vale, aside from being an amazing show, and not the subject of this article (although if you want it to be, contact me through the usual channels), started about 12 years ago, and being the kind of person that I am, I started listening it at episode 1, now in 2024. At the end of the episode, credits are given for the artists featured in the “Weather” section, and an address where to find them is provided.
I was intrigued by two artists featured in respectively 2012 and 2013. Both of their addresses were unavailable. For the first one, they had their own website. As of this day, the domain name isn’t really held by anyone anymore. They have a YouTube channel (the URL is different from the one on their Wikipedia page) and a Spotify account. For the second one, it used to be a Tumblr blog (Is Tumblr a microblogging platform? But isn’t microblogging a Twitter-like thing? So it’s in the middle? What is Tumblr? What is reality? Who are you and what are you doing here? Why are you holding a jar of mustard? Oh no! What are you doing!?).
It is really saddening that I had to resort to finding the first artist on Wikipedia and finding the Bandcamp page for the second one on the updated transcript of Welcome to Night Vale, instead of just going to the URL that was archived in the recording.
As I mentioned in I miss the Web, I miss the little interconnection of villages: the little communities made of each person having their own little corner of the Web. Both of these artists on the Internet are dependent on private companies that, by their very nature, cannot be committed to the preservation of culture and artistic integrity.
YouTube is… well, YouTube. Listen to a YouTuber talk about YouTube, and you’ll have a better idea of what YouTube is YouTubing these days. Spotify, a startup success story, is a publicly traded company that is there for its shareholders. Not that I can find any information about it ever being profitable, it might disappear at any time or stop featuring any artist at any time. As for Bandcamp, they’re currently owned by a music licensing company that would have an interest in keeping music published unless it’s bad for their main activity, which is being attractive to the business world.
Tying your online presence to the interests of others is risky. It can so quickly turn villages into ghost towns (different from towns with ghosts in them).
This summer, I went to Hellfest, the music festival. As I don’t even have Napster money, I won’t publicly talk about the Metallica concert I attended. What I can tell you, however, is that I went to see a band called (DOLCH). It was actually awesome, and I would gladly recommend the band.
And look at their website! It is absolutely beautiful. I even think this site has flair and is a good representation of the band. It’s a very rare specimen of lightweight WordPress. The homepage took 76 KB to load. There’s a section dedicated to their cats! Others are under construction. Their Bandcamp might disappear some day, but this site doesn’t.