Okay, the last talk of the conference. I'm quite tired. I hope you are awake. This is going to be not too technical and I hope a bit entertaining. Wow, that's a good start. Yeah, my name is Hilke, and I'm here to dream about the future of the Atmosphere for artists. I am an artist myself. I mainly do music. You can find all that on my website, hilk.eu. I'm also a software developer. Very recently I started a new job at Petsy. That's a very indie ticketing service in Switzerland. And I also help out a bit at North Sky.
This happens to be my very first post on the Atmosphere. It's uh paraphrasing a post by a statement by Alok, like the only identity I really chose for myself is to be an artist, because being an artist is about being creative, it's about the imagination. It resists every definition. When something like a queer or a trans identity, that's more how other people see you, how the society puts you in boxes and it's like shaped by discrimination patterns, and you can reclaim that identity, and I think we do that as a community. But for me personally, my gender expression is as much it for me, it's the same thing as the music.
It's like it's like an output of my of my creative drive. So that's a little side note about the relationship between my artist and my queer identity. But why the hell did I become a software developer? I got an interest in the internet and in technology around 2007. When we had the first wave of social media apps, and back then for me it felt very empowering as an artist. My space in the beginning changed the relationship between between artists and fans. SoundCloud and Bandcamp came on the scene, also YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and then when Instagram came, it gave like gave like a visual identity to artists.
So that felt empowering because it it became possible to talk directly from artist to fan to be in some kind of community or or um communication. So back then I was like, yeah, we can like pass bypass the traditional gatekeepers of the music industry. Um yeah, and that felt empowering, like I said. A couple of years later, around 2010, I was lucky to be part of this band. The person in the front, that's an earlier younger version of me. And we had this um quite a big radio hit in a very small country, Belgium. Um yeah, um we that was um that opened a lot of doors.
Um it was a combination of traditional radio and press, but also the new social media band camp, quite a lot of sales there. Um so from the outside it was like a success story with to be taught internationally, but in in reality it was not financially sustainable. So after a couple of years in 2016, I decided uh to switch careers. Uh I took an internship as a software developer because I was working in technological stuff because of what I had told before. So that is what I've been doing the last 10 years to to earn money.
But I still kept making music. So let's flash forward. What does it mean to be an artist in 2024? Actually, that is be very present on Instagram. Um, even better by ads on Instagram. Uh those ads you you should you uh um point the people to Spotify to convert them to to listeners to generate plays that will not bring you money or you really need a lot a lot of place. But when these those statistics look good on Instagram and or Spotify, then uh you can convince show promoters that you might sell tickets, and then when people come to your shows, that is how your career can somehow start to grow.
That is so a bit the situation. Maybe TikTok comes into the game. I must say most of my peers are 30 plus. So we start we are still figuring it out, and we find it not very creative and very annoying. So the conclusion is 15 years later, the gatekeeping is completely back. And it's driven by two or three big tech companies, and that's not even people, that's like an algorithm that you are fighting with. So you might wonder: is that a mistake to 24? It was on purpose, because for me to 25 and my friends was a big wake-up call at the beginning of the year when Trump got re-elected.
Maybe naive for some people, but that was like oh yeah, some statements by Zuckerberg. Of course, those companies are super capitalistic, but actually they also align with authoritarian and fascist regimes. So yeah, what do you do as a queer artist then? So I gathered with with my peers with my friends. We organized some some workshops to try to find out what to do. Stay, leave, find alternatives. Because I have this technical background, I was looking also to the technical solutions and like informing people about that, how does this all work. In the beginning, more that and then more and more at the Atmosphere, and I had the impression that it is like more suited for for what musicians need if they want to build some more reach.
I started explaining everybody how this works. I created a starter starter pack, I created a custom music feed of my local scene in Switzerland. Yeah, a lot of explaining, trying to convince to make an account to start posting, it leads it needs a lot of uh repetition and patience. Because the problem is a bit um we still have to be on Instagram, we cannot just leave it because our audience is there, so we need to still put time in there. Um and this means that most artists are quite burned out from social media, they want to be less on social media, um, they are low on resources, and yeah, when you then say let's try out this new these new channels, it's difficult because they are really they have had enough.
But there are some of them who do it who are like have more political drive or something like that, or yeah, I don't know. So that's the reality, but this talk was about dreams, so let's start dreaming. I have four of them. Um they go from very pragmatic to something more artistic, and for the last two, I build a little prototype. Um last month I was here in Vancouver at Zpace, card of kind of residency, thanks to Boris that uh I could be his guest. Um yeah, so I finally got to code something. Um but the first two are not that much about codes.
My first dream is about connection, finding that connection again that we used to have on Instagram. So I think what we really need is a real alternative to Instagram with more product maturity, and I don't want to this uh splashes and that kind of apps. This is like one person uh project. Um, but I really hope uh that Sebastian gets much more resources that that the product can improve and and that it is like what blue skies to micro-blogging that we um something have uh for um what I I don't know if I invented the word micro-visual right now.
Um but yeah, artists they don't really think in this micro-blocking um format, they think more in visually. I'm not very well in visually, but most of us do. Um so yeah, we need a good platform to have like a visual language on on the on the protocol. There are such things like you try to explain this, yeah. You want something like Instagram download flashes, but then that it's like a Bluesky account, and it's so complicated to to to um to explain that. So if if if it would be uh more mature, then maybe we can we can get uh bust that friction.
I also noticed that in in my community there is a an important distance between the feeds of the normal feed of posts and the stories. Um and stories are not really a thing on flashes or yet, I think. Um to explain that um we see the feeds much more as a an an art a curated artist identity, so it needs to look good, it's like it's thought through. Um stories are much more uh spontaneous. Um we go a lot to each other's shows, make a quick video, uh upload it, the artist re reposts it and it can be bad quality, song out of pit of the tune, doesn't matter, it's way after 24 hours, but you don't want to have that in your feed um for eternity.
Of course you can delete, but it's it's yeah, it's just a different a different medium. So that's like the skew of morphism that is missing for us right now. Um those are basics. Uh I discovered also a couple of nice to have for the the last weeks. It would be really great to have like an integration with uh event lexicons so that you would scroll your feed, you see like a video with an announcement of a show, and there's a link to something smokesignal uh like and you can just do I will attend. Um I've been talking to a lot of of uh a couple of of music uh venues, and I still use Facebook events for over 40 drum and bass and rock concerts because it's it's still works a bit, it's almost over, so it would be really uh great to have that back.
This like oh, all my friends are going, and it gives also some security to uh show promoters that people will will turn up. So that would be cool. Um I also noticed last month I have been posting quite some music. I did like a Ad Proto Music March, I think. More or less. I don't remember the name. Um I post a lot of bandcamp links. Um bandcamp links have like artwork, so that's visually good material, but because it's not really a photo in the feed, it will not show up on flashes. So it would be cool that that would also work.
Nice. Dream 2 inspiration. How am I on time? Because I have no idea. You have 15 minutes. Okay, I still have a lot. Um, what bo then I've been thinking what could be even more inspiring an app that would be specifically about music and art. Um and how I think about it, I would like it to have it different paces that aligns a lot with the earlier talks. That's the disadvantage of being the last talk. Um yeah, what I would like to have is that uh to have also these quick updates, right? Like Instagram like personal feed, what are my what are the new shows, what are the new releases in this micro-visual micro-brogling style.
But I would also like a much more curated part that much goes much that goes much deeper into uh the artist's work and that slows us down. Um the pace I'm thinking about is like the artist of the month. Um, like really one month uh there is this one artist that you can go deep into, you can really immerse yourself deeply into the world. Um after some talks, this sounds a bit boring now, but uh, some of the ideas that uh I had like yeah, maybe they can present a feed of the accounts that that they uh find interesting, maybe they have a selection of long form articles that you they want to point you to to like that is the things that uh influenced me.
I like a lot uh leaflet um feeds on Bluesky because it's it points me this door to more long form content and that goes deeper. Um could be something like what are the favorite albums, what are the favorite books. Um but to be honest, what I would love the most to see is like anything that this artist can imagine that would be on this app and after the talk of Dame and also of uh what was uh the name of the last talk. You it was like, yeah, that would be that would be that would be cool to have something like that uh there for one month.
Um I can also see some spillovers into the offline world. If there are these petition project, uh warming up. Sorry. Timing is very flexible the last ones. Okay, good. Yeah, yeah. I was volunteering yesterday, so I'm preparing.
Yeah, if we if artists are talking about their favorite books and records, we could have like deals with local record stores and bookstores to that if people have a subscription to this app and the more expensive expression uh subscription, you would just go to pick up those physical books and records, something like that. We could have book clubs and listening parties that extend on on this app. That is how I would like to be inspired. Next uh dream is about distribution. When I heard about the protocol and um how PDSs work, that my thing was it would be very interesting if artists would distribute their music releases from their PDSs.
It would shift the power dynamics because it would be like they own their own the music and they give permission to the streaming platforms to offer the audio files to the end users. Those there could be different platforms that have very different business models and artists can choose which with with which one they want to work with or which which one they want stopped working with because they invest in war drones or something like that. So you would upload everything once with all the right metadata, also uh for royalties and and and copyright and rights holders and streaming platforms can evolve but you keep control over your data as uh as an artist.
And you can take everything with you to another PDS provider, like this the story we all know, but like for artists is like completely new that it would be possible that together a bit of social media content that you would also make take with you all your releases. So the little concept I started working on is like atproto music streaming don write. Um also from a music industry point of view because I'm also part of a label and I do a lot of administration work there, so I have a bit of background in there how that works.
So I made uh a little demo of that. Of course I need to sign in. So I mainly oh yeah. I posted about this a couple of days ago. Uh mainly proposed a couple of um lexicons to have the metadata right about about your music. The most important thing to understand the difference that I made is the difference between songs and recordings. Songs are like the more abstract part of music, like the melody, the lyrics, um, the chords that are made by composers and lyricists, and then you have recordings, those are recordings like performances of this song, and there can be many performances of one song.
That's also why you have different rights in the music industry to that because some people just write songs and don't perform or record them. So everybody needs some money, so that's why this difference exists. Um let's look at a song record. Um you can add a lot of metadata in this UI like this thing, the ESWC, that is something that um copyright collecting societies care about. This is like the identifier of the song, and you see there are all the rights holders, that's me but also my producer and and my label as a publisher. Um that's all on the PDS now of this song.
Then there are existing recordings of that song. Well, one. And there you have like the recording, this ISRC number is like important to get the money to my label and to me. So you can also all record that stuff in on the PDS. And then a release is like an album, it's like normally a collection of songs. They are a sellable product, and they have this GTIN number. So you can also encode that on the PDS. Because we have this difference, I also have like three lexicons which I call actors. I think that's the right way to do that on the protocol.
So I'm to uh related to my repositories like the artist Hilke, which is a bit confusing because that's also my name, but that's also my brand, you know. Something what I call publishing owner, that's like songwriters and lyricists. There I'm registered with my full name and this IPI number, which is important internationally to recognize that's me. And I don't have a master owner record because my label has that label has the rights. But what I did with the recording is assign it to the master owner red brick records, and it was easy because it was already registered with a DID, so I could just add it.
Yeah, the same for uh the songs. Okay, that's this little demo. And it like on the PDS, it looks something like this. So to sum up, artists upload all the metadata that the music industry cares about for monetization with all those um acronyms and the data points are linked to user this. This is like a very basic um uh proof of concept. Some future features uh that I see is that artist composer slaves could verify the the data um with each other and that would build more trust and it would uh uh streaming service would have better nights that they are not infringing copyrights, hopefully.
If they even would better. And of course, right now it's not really uh possible to upload audio files. I didn't want to do that because I on the PDS when I just upload it and just everybody can actually download it. And it's not good for my monetization. I think we need some kind of permission data for that. Um of course player FM is also going that direction, that's what I learned this weekend. Um so we will probably collaborate on that. Um yeah, I made some proof of concept bit encryption. It's it's in a PR. I didn't want to have it in the main branch.
Um, yeah. I guess when when the permission data are there, we will have better solutions for that. The fourth dream is about creation.
That's something that I've I've been thinking about for many years. The internet changed a lot how we promote and distribute our music, but not that much how we create music. It's mainly a play button, and people push the button and they listen to the same recording. And I found it a bit limiting and I saw so many uh possibilities, but somehow the the timing was not right, Ned. Um so my question is what do we do if we redefine the music formats for social internet because music is to be supposed to be a social experience and we actually unlearn to listen to music together.
So I have this idea a couple of years already, but now I thought this is the right time to build a demo of that ID. I'm not sure how to pronounce it yet, but two to the end or something like that, and let's try the demo. So what it tries to do is to um motivate people to listen to music together in the same place, physically with together with each other. Um yeah, I have to say, please don't try it out yet because it ruins my explanation. And David will be my volunteer to to to make it work, and after that you can also all try it.
I'm curious what will happen if we all do it.
Okay, I logged in. Now I can like join the music experience. This will create a record on my PDS that I want that I will join this. It needs to be needs to know where I am because we want to track physical district, so I'm going to allow that. The first song of this project is two to the first power. I can listen to the music on alone.
It's some Indian track that I made the last couple of weeks.
But what would happen if we listen to it with two people? Cause two to the first, like two people. So I would I like to invite David to join. So what happens if he joins the arrangement becomes richer. There are like more layers to the to the music. Yeah, that's like the idea I have and that I could make quite easily with this. If you want to join, I'm very curious what will happen. It will break.
It's not that long anymore.
Oh, some other people are listening on speaker, huh? I'm going to stop it. Um yeah, nine people, ten. Oh not bad. Not bad. Um I have I have one more secret dream that next year at the next Atmosphere Conference I can perform the last piece of this project, which should be two to the tenth. Thank you. Thank you so much, Hilke. This was a very inspiring way to end the conference. Yeah. We have time for maybe one or two questions. I know the closing remarks are going to be starting in about ten minutes, so yeah. Does anyone have any?
Yes, one sec. Yeah, thanks so much for this inspiring talk and for yeah being the first in the Atmosphere who speaks publicly about like uh bringing artists to the protocol and I'm really impressed by the by the two to the end. But I want to comment on the actually you already answered the question in a way but when you talked about um doing uh the artists of the month, I was thinking of this this could actually create some kind of uh competition with attention economy, so because uh any like any kind of institution is bringing the artists of the month and there is this is creating some kind of where should I look for the artist of the month and I was thinking what what we could do instead in the Atmosphere is like uh building tools for uh music circles, like small groups of people.
I mean you answered this already now, but this is something maybe we we should not forget. So like people bring together in a room and then don't don't have the artist in like artist of the month, but have a group of people who are artists but are at the same time people who are who who enjoy art, and then they maybe they can select among themselves the the artist who should be in the spotlight for for this uh for this event or for another event. Yeah, and I and I really appreciate that you think of was it the including the creation process.
So this is not a question I I I should have said this before. It's it's just I'm just impressed and I want to say thank you for for doing this for us. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, definitely the artist of the mental. I was also not really sure because it's it's some kind of curation, but it it couldn't be. I think I was thinking it shouldn't be. I was thinking a bit in the same direction. Maybe it should be like we say Asta Fet in in English. I don't know. Like you give the way there is one artist and they give it to the next or something like that.
Pass the torch, yeah, something like that. Yeah, it's I mean I it's not about nominating an artist. It's for me it's more about going really deeply into someone's work. Yeah, it's not about choosing something, it's about finding depth in in a story of one artist. But thank you for your comment.
What do you hope to do next with uh two in? What do you want to do next? Yeah. Uh yeah, I think what was nice about this it took me only two days to program it and I had more time to for music. I think this is one of the exciting things now with with with with uh agents. Um I'm certainly going to make more music. So the concept is that you need to be with more and more people, right? Um it's I think it's also challenging from a musical perspective. How do you make that work together?
Um I think it's like now there are two versions, but like if there are four people, maybe it would be cool that there are like four parts that also work on their own, but then together, and then they would be different. And if you would be only two people, then it would also work. That's the kind of thing that I find interesting as as a composer or some writer. Um yeah, I I can imagine I don't know if it's worth it. It's sort of a game, but maybe it's a model that more artists want to use, and then we can make it into some crazy music service.
Cool. Thank you so much, Hilke. Thank you, everyone.