social media

6 lessons from 6 weeks without net neutrality

Posted on June 25, 2017 | by Bas Grasmayer

My music consumption has been clearly impacted by the lack of net neutrality on my new mobile plan. Here are my key takeaways as a heavy user of music services.

This Spring, I moved from The Netherlands to Berlin, which means setting up new contracts for everything. While I’m still waiting for my flat to be connected to the internet (for 2 months already!), my mobile plan is keeping me connected.

My mobile provider Telekom, known as T-Mobile in most countries, is zero-rating certain partner services. So data consumed by streaming from the Netflix or YouTube bundles are not deducted from my 6GB / month data bundle.

I decided to give the bundle a try, as I think the EU will eventually declare zero-rating in violation of net neutrality (which means the telco should compensate me or release me from the plan). Net neutrality demands that you treat all traffic the same, and while they’re not prioritizing traffic of particular services over others in terms of speed, zero-rating does influence consumer decisions over what service they use.

Here are my main take aways of living without net neutrality for the last 6 weeks or so.

1. Zero-rating influences the services you use

This is beyond a doubt for me. When I want to listen to music, I now search music on YouTube (zero-rated partner) instead of through Spotify (not a zero-rated partner). I basically only listen to Spotify through offline synced music, and have stopped using it as a way to explore music – until I get WiFi at home, or Spotify gets zero-rated.

Telekom's current zero-rated partners — Telekom’s current zero-rated partners

2. Spotify’s stickiness is strong

Despite the fact that Apple Music, Amazon Prime Music, and Napster (Rhapsody) are all included in the zero-rated partners, I’ve somehow stuck with Spotify. I have so many years of history in there, that it’s hard to start using a different app.

I have a lot of friends on Apple Music, because they were the first major Western music service to launch in Russia and really double down on the market (as opposed to Deezer, which struggled to gain traction). Having lived there a few years, most of my friends are on there now. But having done 2 three month trials, I never really developed a feeling for the service. Can’t stand iTunes either by the way (I listen to files through VLC Mediaplayer instead).

But the key point here is:

Music is not the most important part of music services. It’s the behaviours around the music. For Spotify, the only service that has managed to help me find a new home for some of my behaviours is YouTube, but to move collection management to a new place: no way.

And to clarify that first statement: if you have all the music, and a lot of other services do too, the music is no longer the key point that people come to you for. People never had a music access problem: piracy solved that. The music access issue was an industry problem, not a consumer-problem.

3. It’s hard to dig into niches through YouTube’s mobile app

I’ve been trying to use the YouTube app as a kind of radio station, because it sucks to search for decent playlists in there. The problem with the Play Next function, is that when you start on something very niche, it sends you ‘upward’ to more popular tracks. So if you’re listening to underground trap, you end up on Migos after a couple of tracks.

Likewise for related music on particular music videos. You have to sift through unrelated recommendations that are related to your personal profile, rather than the particular thing you’re viewing, but even then, it directs you out of the niche and into the mainstream.

4. Netflix finally found its way into my life

I’ve never really developed a strong habit for Netflix, but it finally happened. Browsing the web, and reading article after article, gets tiring when you’re doing it from a small mobile screen (I’m on iPhone 5s).

Besides, I get ‘data anxiety’: am I using too much data? Will I have enough data at the end of the month? Better play it safe: Netflix.

This actually pulls me away from Reddit, Instagram, Facebook, and other social platforms. Which brings me to my next point.

5. Using YouTube as my default mobile music service is keeping me from social networks

The thing with YouTube is that it can’t keep playing music in the background, unless you are on a certain subscription that’s not available in Germany.

Because of this, I have to choose: am I going to listen to music, or am I going to write to a friend, see what they’re posting on Instagram, etc.

6. If I cared less about music, I’d switch services

The reason why I’m using YouTube, if not obvious by now, is because it’s a nice temporary space to do some of the things I’d prefer to do on Spotify.

But if I were less invested in Spotify, I’d 100% be using one of the partner services offered. I would not even consider any other options. And I think this goes for most consumers, who are not quite as heavy users of music services. It’s troubling: it gives ISPs and mobile operators a lot of control over the music, video, and social landscape.

And for one aspect of music, it already changed me over: I stopped watching live streams on Facebook and Twitch, and instead the only place where I watch live video is YouTube now.

My Midem wrap-up: Chatbots + marketing Run The Jewels panels

Posted on June 10, 2017 | by Bas Grasmayer

What a week. I spent it at Midem – one of the most well-known music business conferences organised every year in Cannes. Before I’m off to Sonár+D this week, I thought I’d type up a little update.

About 10 months ago, Midem‘s conference manager got in touch with me to see if we could put a panel together. We landed on the topic of chatbots and Messenger apps, because I think the trend signifies an important shift to a new generation of user interfaces (especially considering voice-activated UI, which will quickly be permeating our daily lives).

It was so great to finally be able to have all these people in the same room, and talk about what they’re doing, get their thoughts out, get them discussing with each other. And the line-up was awesome.

Panel: Messaging Apps, Bots, AI & Music: A New Frontier of Fan Engagement

A quick look at the line-up:

Ricardo Chamberlain, Digital Marketing Manager, Sony Music Entertainment (USA)
Runs a very interesting label bot, which includes messages from artists such as Enrique Iglesias. He also worked on the CNCO campaign with Landmrk, which I’m a big fan of.
Luke Ferrar, Head of Digital, Polydor (UK)
Launched the first chatbot with Bastille.
Gustavo Goldschmidt, CEO & Co-Founder, SuperPlayer (Brazil)
Runs Brazil’s biggest streaming service which not only recommends music through a chatbot, but also builds chatbots for artists, which then drives fans to their service when they want to stream something.
Syd Lawrence, CEO & Co-Founder, The Bot Platform (UK)
Launched the Hardwell bot, which is probably the most well-known example of chatbots being used in music.
Tim Heineke, Founder, POP (Netherlands)
Used to run a cool startup named Shuffler.fm which turned blogs into radio stations and became a kind of StumbleUpon for music discovery, and also co-founded FUGA.
Nikoo Sadr, Interactive Marketing Manager, The Orchard (UK)
One of the most brilliant minds in digital marketing, in general. Previously with Music Ally.

FULL VIDEO:

WRITE UP:

Messaging, bots, and AI’s music evolution by Music Ally’s Eamon Forde

Run The Jewels’ Marketing Panel

A few weeks ago, I was asked if I could also moderated the RTJ marketing panel — which would have been a no-brainer anyway, but having a personal connection to this, made me so excited to do it that I forgot to even introduce myself during the panel.

My first real music business job was with a startup called official.fm. As a student, I listened to a lot of underground and indie hiphop, which made me a big fan of the Definitive Jux label, which put out music by Aesop Rock, Mr. Lif, RJD2, and El-P (also one of the founders). The other founder was Amaechi Uzoigwe, who now manages Run The Jewels. I remember feeling a little starstruck at the time. Now, years later, it was so good to catch up with Amaechi and the inspiring success he’s created for RTJ and himself.

Also on the panel was Zena White, who’s MD of The Other Hand, and does great things for RTJ, Stones Throw, Ghostly, BadBadNotGood, DJ Shadow and more.

FULL VIDEO:

WRITE UP:

How Run The Jewels found fame & fortune: by focusing on fans by Music Ally’s Stuart Dredge

Why playlists should be part of your social media strategy

Posted on May 14, 2017 | by Bas Grasmayer

The emphasis of playlist strategy is usually placed on how artists can get their music on popular curated playlists. Let’s discuss the long-term value of artists stepping into the curator role themselves.

In the context of this article, when referring to playlist strategy, I mean playlists that you create.

For most of the readers of this article, the two most important places for developing a cohesive playlist strategy are YouTube and Spotify (and maybe Soundcloud). They’re the places with the highest amount of traffic and search queries.

Objectives

You’re going to be using your playlists to achieve 3 things:

To get discovered by (potential) new fans;
To establish a habit for fans that keeps them connected to you;
To create regular engaging content for your socials to help you stay top of mind for fans.

Discovery. Habit. Top of mind.

Building your playlists

Let’s address objective 1 first: getting your music discovered. This is the main concern for most artists. Before anything, your music has to be good. If people are not sharing your music, it’s probably not that great. This needs to be your #1 concern and priority. If people are not sharing your music, go work on your sound instead of marketing something that people don’t care about.

Keep reading if you’re actually at a level where your music gets traffic through friend recommendations.

You’re ready to get your music discovered.

Variety

Take a couple of your best tracks. For each of these tracks, create a playlist. Add tracks from similar artists, artists that inspire you, anything that is somehow logically related to your music.

Understand that a lot of users will start playing your playlist and then switch to background listening. The logical relation has to be there, even when people are focusing on a different tab in their browser, or have moved on to another activity away from the computer.

For the music you select, the most important criterium is that it has to be music that people actually search for.

People will type search queries, and you need to create the best chance that they will land on your playlist. Think carefully the first few times you make these playlists. Over time, you’ll find the best way to do it and the amount of effort required will decrease.

Do not place your track at the top. People need somewhat familiar content to get into a playlist. Place it somewhere in the middle.

Remember the listener’s perspective: this is not about your music — this is about their experience. If you provide them with a good experience, they’ll listen to your music. If you don’t, they won’t. Simple.

Consistency & regularity

You’re going to pick a day of the week and every week you’re going to update your playlist on that day. If your playlists delight your listeners, they’ll check back every week on that day (that’s why Spotify’s Discover Weekly feature is so important to them).

This means you let people create a habit around your playlists. And while all other content of the playlists might change every week, you’ll have at least one of your tracks in there. So, the habit implies that returning listeners will listen to you every week.

It’s an elegant way to make sure fans don’t miss out on new music through their cluttered Facebook and Twitter feeds and inboxes.

Bi-weekly is also ok. Monthly is a maybe. Anything irregular is a big no. Either you execute this strategy, or you don’t. This particular strategy only works when applied consistently and with fixed regularity.

YouTube vs Spotify

YouTube and Spotify require their own approaches. They’re very different services, that drive very different types of music listening behaviours, bookmarking, etc.

For YouTube, I’d focus on making an ever-growing set of playlists from your main channel where you also post your music videos. It might net you subscribers, too.

This means every YouTube playlist becomes a finished product. Keep them short: roughly 10 tracks. Every week, you’ll create a new playlist with new content, and one of your tracks in there. Share it on your socials: some nice new content for fans.

For Spotify, you’re going to do something different. They’ve actually demoted user-generated playlists in search results, so it’s a bit harder to get found now. So, instead, you’re going to turn it into a tool to connect with your fans and familiarize them with your music taste.

Your Spotify playlists should be longer. 30 tracks or more. Think of them more as radio stations that are refreshed every week. Your followers check in, tune into the new content and also reconnect to your music (like the Diplo & Friends playlist).

User stories

I want to explain a concept from product management called ‘user stories’ — they’re used to describe certain things people expect from or want to be able to do with a product or service. They’re a useful way to not lose sight of what’s important to the people you’re making something for. What’s important to you, is not always what’s important to your target audience.

For your fans

Let’s think from the perspective of fans. And let’s define fan as someone who has shared your music with someone else. Facebook likes don’t count. We’re talking about the people who care enough about your music to share it with others.

Let’s think of some of the reasons why they might be interested in your playlist:

“I want to learn more about the music that inspires this artist.”
“I’ve already heard everything by this artist, but I want more!”
“I wonder what other music this DJ / producer plays besides his own tracks.”

As people get more familiar with your playlists, they may start to develop some more specific expectations, such as “I want to know about the freshest new releases this artist curates” or “I just need some great party music” and they associate your playlists with that.

Focus on the bullet pointed user stories first. You need to get people in, and then get them to form a habit. There are a lot of people creating good playlists for more specific purposes, but the advantage of the bullet pointed items is that they’re all focused on you — and nobody does you like you.

For people who don’t know you

This gets more tricky, because there are so many reasons why someone might land on your playlist. Think about what kind of music you’re curating. What are people trying to achieve when they’re searching for that type of music? A lot of them are going to land on your playlist by looking for an artist other than you, Four Tet for example.

“I want to listen to Four Tet.”
- Yup – some people will just click the first playlist they see if it includes Four Tet and they spot the cover art.
“I want to listen to music like Four Tet.”
“I just want to put on some chill out music and not think about it.”
“I want to listen to a playlist that includes music like Four Tet.”
“I’m curious about discovering more music like Four Tet.”

Although similar, these are different motivations that correspond with different behaviour types. It also means people will judge the quality of your playlist differently (quality is defined as to whether it scratches the person’s itch).

Long term effects

If you do well, your music might actually become associated with the other acts you include in your playlists. This means algorithms will add it to the ‘play next’ queue on YouTube, to ‘similar artists’ on Spotify, or even have you appear in the Discover Weekly of people who listen to a lot of music like that.

Your playlist may become a brand on its own: something artists try to get their music featured in. This means you’re able to shine a light on great artists you feel are not getting enough recognition. Then there will be the people who follow you on playlists, but not on other socials. These may be actual fans (people who share your music) or just people who are into the music you curate.

Playlists are a social medium in their own right. Treat them like that.

Like MC and DJ: an audiovisual alliance for the digital age

Posted on May 8, 2017 | by Bas Grasmayer

The digital age is demanding for artists. Simply releasing audio is often not enough. You have to take care of artwork, video material for Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook, and then you still have to figure out how to get people to actually pay you.

The time has come for a new band member – even if you’re just a bedroom producer. That band member is the visual artist.

The case I’m making is not new. It has happened before. On a tremendous scale. Back in the early days of hiphop, DJs needed MCs to hype up the crowd. As MCs moved center stage, they needed DJs to keep their shows dynamic, so these two different disciplines combined and allied. It was necessary for the format of that day.

Jazzy Jeff & Will Smith / Fresh Prince — DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince: “He’s the DJ, I’m the rapper!“

The format of this day is audiovisual. It needs to compete in feeds, it needs to stop people from scrolling, and has to get them to unmute the video in order to hear your music.

Like the DJ and MC in the 1980s, the musician and the visual artist face similar problems today:

You need to get your work in front of people’s eyes;
And, outside of certain well-established business models, it’s challenging to monetize.

For the visual artist, you are usually the client, not the people who watch the final work. So they’re used to be commissioned to create their art. It’s you who monetizes the live performance and the recording. Teaming up creates the possibility to do both, together, like for brands.

Advantage #1: combining business models generates new revenue streams for the musician and the visual artist.

But before the business model comes getting your work under a lot of eyes. That requires honing your skills plus defining and refining your style. This can be challenging by yourself, but in partnership you can work off of each other. Instead of stepping in when a big part of the creative product is already finished, the visual artist can be involved in the creative process from the beginning. This has the effect that the music and video are integrated elements of the same work, rather than two separate works, and over time, the symbiosis between the artists develops further.

Advantage #2: music and video are interwoven elements, rather than separate works made at different points in time.

Advantage #3: the creative product is a new container uniquely suited for, and born out of, the digital landscape.

The song, as we know it, came from the record. We’re still thinking in songs, but it has lost its novelty as a format. While audio-only music is obviously not going anywhere, the most engaging material on social networks right now is video. Moving image is powerful — it took a while for video to take over the web, but with growing data caps, increasing network speeds, and great cameras and screens on our mobile devices, video has finally conquered the web.

What is also not going away is the live experience. In fact, it’s one of the most important revenue sources. Engaging live shows are hard if you’re a solo musician. If you’re a band, they’re tricky in terms of logistics, and possibly costly.

If you can do a live show with just 1 or 2 people the economics are much better. Bringing not just your own music, but also your own visuals that extend from the experience you provide on your site, your album artwork, and your audiovisual experiences on YouTube, Instagram, and other social media.

You should actually be able to charge a bit more for your bookings, because of this show element.

Advantage #4: the economics for live are better, and you get to offer a very integrated experience to fans.

Advantage #5: it gives a live, real-world experience to the visuals — which is something that may be trickier to achieve if the visual artist were on their own.

For some good examples of artist collectives who strongly emphasise this audiovisual fusion, check out NAAFI, ZZK Records, NON, and Meneo:

Online music is about to experience another MySpace moment

Posted on April 17, 2017 | by Bas Grasmayer

An emerging void signals new opportunity for innovation in digital music.

The benefit of writing thoughts down is that you get to revisit them. Six years ago, I penned a piece for Hypebot called The Next MySpace. At that time, people in the music business were desperate to for another MySpace to emerge: the site had been a ray of hope, but as it collapsed, online music was scattered across an immature ecosystem of rapidly growing startups like Soundcloud, Bandcamp, Facebook, Spotify, and many others that were eventually acquired or perished and forgotten. I argued:

The closest we will ever get to a “next MySpace” will be either a music network or a social network that manages to gather, organise and integrate the fragments in spectacular fashion.

Defining the MySpace moment

What I call a MySpace moment is not when everything was going well for MySpace: it’s when decline set in. People started replacing MySpace’s music players, which sucked, with Soundcloud’s beautiful waveform players. People started moving much of their social lives to Facebook (for friends) and Twitter (to connect to strangers). Up until then, the dominant social network had been music-driven — people, especially teenagers, expressed their identities by making long lists of bands they liked.

From the ashes of MySpace, which never managed to recover, rose a new ecosystem of music startups. They’ve managed to make it easy for artists to connect to fans, get paid for online playback, let fans know about new shows, and be able to very specifically target people with ads.

That moment, that void, was a massive opportunity and many companies benefited from it.

That moment is here once again.

The new MySpace moment

There are two main factors contributing to a new emerging void for entrepreneurs to leap in. One has to do with product adoption life cycles, which I’ll explain below. The other has to do with the important position Soundcloud claimed in the online music ecosystem.

Soundcloud came closer to being the ‘next MySpace’ than any startup has. And let’s be blunt: the company is not doing well. After years of legal pressure to tackle the problem of works being uploaded to the service without rights holders’ permission, they were forced to adopt a service model that does not make sense for Soundcloud. The typical $10 a month subscription doesn’t make sense. People are on Soundcloud for the fresh content, the mixtapes, remixes, unreleased stuff: the things that will not be on Spotify for weeks or months (or ever!). Why inject the catalogue with music of long deceased people?

There have been reports that Soundcloud would consider any bids higher than the total amount of money invested into the company to date. That’s not a good sign. The road they’ve been forced into is a dead-end street, and the only end game is a quick acquisition.

I don’t think Soundcloud will die, but it is hard for the company to focus on what they’ve always been good at. Now that they’ve been forced into the Spotify model, those are the types of metrics that are going to matter. Subscriber numbers, conversion, retention. So it may struggle to do as good a job serving the audience they’ve traditionally serviced so well. (small note: I love Soundcloud, and the people there: prove me wrong!)

This leaves a vacuum.

Adding to that vacuum, is the fact that Spotify (and other streaming services) are looking beyond early adopters. To understand the phenomenon, have a look at the below graph:

The top part of the graph details the product life cycle. The bottom part explains the type of audience you address during the steps of that life cycle. As we’ve all noticed from the jubilant press reports on streaming’s expansion, we’re in the growth part of the cycle. This means services like Spotify and Apple Music have to get really good at targeting Early Majority and Late Majority type consumers.

If you’re reading this, you’re in the Innovator or Early Adopter segment. Startups typically start off by targeting those segments. So when Spotify moves on from Early Adopters (their de-emphasizing of user generated playlists is a big hint!), it leaves room for new startups to target and better serve those types of users.

Filling the new void

What happens then? Well, we’re going to get to the next phase of the digital music ecosystem – which is mobile-driven, and flirting with augmented reality, VR, and artificial intelligence. Early adopters are likely to keep paying for their Spotify subscriptions – it’s too big a convenience to give up… So entrepreneurs will have to figure out ways to monetize new behaviours.

Now is a great time to look at very specific problems in music. Don’t try to build the next Spotify or the next Soundcloud. For a while, everyone was trying to build the next MySpace — all those startups are dead now. Instead, take a specific problem, research it, build a solution for someone, test it, try it again for a broader group, and if it works: double down and scale up.

Personally, I’m very curious to see where startup accelerator Techstars Music’s current batch will be five years from now.

Why I’ve stopped posting on Medium

Posted on March 27, 2017 | by Bas Grasmayer

A recent change broke my trust and made me act on my pre-existing skepticism. That change is not the membership plan.

Okay, I haven’t completely stopped publishing on Medium, but I have stopped making Medium the go-to destination for my audience. Instead, I’ve placed focus on my own WordPress-based site again, and cross-post articles here after some time, without sharing to socials.

This article will be my last exception to that rule: the Medium is the message, after all.

The reason for my recent switch has to do with the limited access Medium gives me to data, combined with the lack of meaningful organic traffic, and a breach of trust, but before I dig into that I want to emphasize the other side of the coin.

Why I love Medium ❤️

Medium’s editor is slick. Sometimes I use it to write pieces I have no intention of publishing to Medium. Sure, there are desktop editors that do it, but Medium is free and available in any browser, so I can use it anywhere.

I started a weekly newsletter about innovation in the music business over a year ago with the intention of writing a new thought piece every week. At some point, the pieces started getting longer and it didn’t make sense to post the entire texts in emails anymore. I also wanted to make the content more shareable. So I started publishing to Medium and started the MUSIC x TECH x FUTURE publication, which now sits at well over 5,000 subscribers.

Medium also has a great community, and its highlighting feature that works across all its publications and authors’ pieces really adds a lot of value. In the obvious way, that it points out friends’ highlights that let you quickly see important information, or give you a perspective on what people you follow find important. But also in a less obvious way: if I share a Medium article to my newsletter followers, many of whom follow me on Medium, they’ll automatically see passages I’ve highlighted.

But that’s about it. I’ve always assumed there were more reasons to love Medium, but as an author who is skilled at driving his own audience to destinations, I think that’s kind of it.

Medium’s organic traffic problem

About a year ago, I built a site for my newsletter which had quickly turned into a consultancy agency after I started getting requests to share my expertise. I wanted to publish my articles on my own WordPress, but it was just too cumbersome. I didn’t feel the motivation to publish on my own site, because my articles looked so much nicer on Medium.

I realized I needed to build a personal site that I could be proud of. So I redesigned musicxtechxfuture.com, put the agency to the background, and the content front and center. From that point onwards, I started posting new articles to both platforms simultaneously. Sometimes it would look nicer on Medium, and sometimes it would look nicer on my own WordPress. Depending on aesthetics, I’d make decisions about which links to prioritize when sharing to my newsletter and socials.

This taught me something about organic traffic on Medium. It turned out that that 5,000 publication followers number is a bullshit vanity metric.

Medium article view count — I didn’t share any of these on social media.

The above data includes traffic from people who follow my personal account (not publication) on Medium, because they get push notifications from the app, or email updates from Medium.

Meanwhile, the limited data Medium gives you makes it very hard to understand from what context these people are finding my articles. Are they my personal audience, my publication audience, random people using the Medium app? I have no idea.

Which brings me to the next issue…

Medium does not give you enough data — and it controls your connection to your audience

The above is a typical issue when you publish on platforms, but I’d really love to know more about my audience. Instead, Medium basically doesn’t tell you where they come from, doesn’t tell you what links they’ve interacted with, it doesn’t tell you what keywords they used to find your content… It just gives you this:

Medium referral count with more sources — Pretty useless…

Usually this is okay — that’s the sacrifice you make for publishing to a platform where your content is exposed to a greater community. But how is it that I get less than 50 views on 2 pieces after multiple years of posting, including a year of consistently posting every week and building up over 2k followers on my personal profile, 5k followers on my niche publication, having multiple articles featured by Medium staff, and being featured as a top writer in music?

My WordPress has more organic traffic than that!

So basically: Medium offers a nice editor & easy way to publish. In exchange, you hand over the audience you build up, your content, and your data. Yet I still was giving Medium the benefit of the doubt.

Then I wanted to connect a domain name to my publication

Previously, you had to submit an application and then they’d send you instructions for the process of pointing your domain name to your publication, so that your Medium publication lives on your own domain, but is still linked into the wider Medium ecosystem.

They still do that. Except since last month, they’ve started charging publication owners $75 for that (way above cost price, since you still have to pay for your own domain name). So in all the noise about introducing membership programs to support authors, they’re also monetizing their creators. It’s like Soundcloud for articles. And we all know how things have been going for Soundcloud.

That’s when I lost hope. And trust.

It just doesn’t make sense. It shows a confused strategy. I’m not sure how they justify the registration fee, because as I’ve explained above, there’s very little you’re getting in return.

You’re really better off sinking a few weekends into setting up a WordPress installation and learning to tweak a theme. You will have more control and ownership over your audience, can engage with them more directly by integrating tools, and you’ll end up learning a thing or two about web development: a valuable skill to have.

Until I start seeing Medium’s bogus follower counts translate into meaningful traffic, I’m done.

I’ll keep publishing to here. Perhaps sometimes a week later. Perhaps a month. Just whenever I get around to it. It’s just that Medium simply doesn’t generate traffic to make it worthwhile to give up so much data, insight, and direct relations to my audience. Why give ownership of that to a platform?

In the last months, I’ve gotten notifications that articles of mine were “featured by the Medium staff” — this had no meaningful impact on traffic. I’m also featured as a “Top writer in Music” — this had no meaningful impact on traffic, either.

So, my Medium’s not a priority anymore, until the company figures out a way to make it a priority.

I’ll still occasionally use it for articles that don’t fit the scope of my own page. Medium remains the best way to quickly share some thoughts, but as a publication I’m out.

I really love your product and its elegancy, Ev, but until you map out a clear strategy that’s focused on creating more value for creators, and find a way to articulate that strategy thoughtfully, I’m out.

I just don’t trust Medium anymore as the home for my creativity.

Love,
Bas