If you aren’t old enough to remember relying on college and underground radio stations to discover new music, cheer up! There’s a movement afoot to bring the serendipity back to culture. Serendipity is the magical experience of happenstance discovery. No one should be deprived of it.
Hi, there. I’m Kirsten Lambertsen, https://mastodon.social/@mizkirsten, and I operate The Indie Beat Radio. I’m a long-time tech entrepreneur, going back to 1999. I’ve started The Indie Beat Radio as a way to amplify independent artists who host their music in the fediverse. The goal is that you’ll listen, discover new artists, and then mix your own playlists that you’ll share.
Why is it important to share mix tapes? A mix tape’s more than just a collection of tunes. Something extra, something intangible is created when a mix tape’s lovingly crafted by hand. Mix tapes and cultivated radio playlists are vehicles for a deeper, more magical, music discovery experience.
My hope is that TIBR mix tapes will help more and more independent music artists find more and more listeners. I hope those listeners spend their hard earned money buying albums and tracks from those artists and/or send them a monthly pledge so they can keep going. And I hope everybody has fun in the process.
Please feel free to contact me:
@mizkirsten:matrix.org | https://mastodon.social/@mizkirsten
So, what’s The Indie Beat Radio going to do?
First, The Indie Beat Radio will simply play tracks (with permission) that are hosted at our federated partner, Bandwagon.fm. Each track will be linked back to Bandwagon where you’ll be able to play the full album whence it came. (That’s right. I said, “whence.”) And you’ll be able to discover more music from that artist.
Next, TIBR will offer genre-based channels. These genres will be the ones that’ve been assigned by the artist.
Then, TIBR will introduce personal mix tapes. You’ll be able to create play lists of tracks that are available on TIBR. You’ll be able to share those play lists (I like calling them “mix tapes”) with anyone.
More about me and the long-term plan for The Indie Beat Radio
I’m the sole owner and operator here. I’m committed to independent culture and federated systems. I’m fighting for a world liberated from monster oligarchical corporate platforms. I truly believe that we should make art, not billionaires. I believe no one should be a billionaire.
Here’s my and The Indie Beat’s pledge:
- I will never take venture capital funding.
- I will never sell to a venture capital funded company
- If I become unable to operate The Indie Beat Radio, myself, my adult children will take over and assume the same pledge I’ve made. If this isn’t possible or if they’re unwilling, The Indie Beat Radio will be gifted to the community. This will be accomplished by me or my adult children via a set of simple instructions allowing them to transfer ownership of all the infrastructure and codebase to a designated representative from the TIBR community.
- The Indie Beat Radio will never prioritize profit over people.
- The Indie Beat Radio will never make changes for the sheer purpose of increasing or maximizing monetary profit.
- This pledge statement will always be accessible to the public. Any changes will be clearly noted with prior versions remaining publicly available.