let's triple down on durable community, comradery and support, and also a new website appears...
Welcome friends new and old! The RFF community continues to grow. We are continually excited, surprised, and honoured to play any part we can in fomenting intentional acts of collaboration, solidarity, support and kindness around an ever expanding cast of players and artistic formats.
So many of you have “just gotten it” over the past ~15 months in what we are trying to convey and do on the proverbial smell of an oily rag, amongst a smaller but organic and dynamic corner of the internet, and against the massive and pummelling pressures of the big internet, for the love of our artist siblings.
That isn't to say it's been a barrel of sunshine and kittens. If you have ever read the deep dive state of the station reports you'll have had some serious how the sausage is made behind the music kind of candor. We've been berated, minimalised, attacked, harassed and treated as if we are some resource laden massive operation that can cater to every demand. These are usually from folk who have not or refuse to experience what the community that has rallied around RFF can be, can offer, and can do. Sure anyone can rip a bunch of music, slap up a randomised stream and say RADIO, but thank you to the amazing listeners, advisors, community and artists who realised early and often that we deserve better, and that while it's hard it is also worth trying to do things a bit different.
Please know that the positive words and experience YOU have shared with RFF directly, or out in the feeds, and especially toward other amazing artists and listeners is the absolute predominent vibe, and that so very rocks! -RFF
EVERYONE can help!
There is so much more we can, could, should do to help support and promote independent art and to advocate for durable organic community building. We have even more projects in the pipeline but will need your help to realise them. If you have any capacity for hearing about where we might need some help of all kinds including very non technical tasks or just want some occasional calm and friendly exposure to some of the amazing artists contributors and listeners of RFF, we have some Matrix rooms as a stop gap and off the feed means of organising.
Fear not if you haven't the spoons or time to put a hand up for community working bee projects. You are having an immense impact every time you drop in to the streams, discover a new to you artist or track, drop the artist a follow, check out their support links, or even more awesome, drop them a kind word that you appreciate or love their work. Rocket fuel!
a new website appears
So here is an indicative incremental type project realised. You may already have noticed, we've updated the public website. We have gathered that a HUGE number of you use the website as your primary playing method which is great as it is the very best place to get ALL the point of difference information on tracks and artists we love to pass along with every song or piece. We also learnt that many of you at many times are on smaller format screens.
Many thanks go out to @oleksiy@sonomu.club for contributing new responsive layout and web player to the RFF community. As a volunteer community building experiment around agency, consent and how to rally support for and between our creative cousins, the main website was always brutalist simple. This was equal parts not wanting to bloat and track your world as so much of the web has become and not wanting to distract from the core mission of discovering artists and community. Having some help and inspiration to move forward and respect that vibe was awesome.
We hope we can continue to be a rally point or a conduit for such ethos as well as the unapologetic advocacy for the wellbing and continued ability to create and share for the bards, the writers, the creators and the open and loving art supporters of the world.
While the fediverse has been a means for the microblogging and tagging portion of what we do, the signal is to the universe. What the organic fedi had afforded us was a means to prove a concept. And you all proved that there IS desire for community, comradery, agency, consent, lovingly linear programming outside of walled gardens and coporate silos, and so much comfy, ya'll love you some Comfy channel!
We are so thankful to have found and continue to find so many of you eager and keen to seek support for your amazing work, seek amazing work to support, and find organic community in different “social” spaces.
So the main website...
What's new:
responsive layout that should be much more usable in the single column small screen world
most platforms should show your preference for light or dark mode
new web audio playing method that allows easier channel hopping and rejoining
What's the same:
there is no less information presented per track
the desire to be a transparent and transient layer of discovery as an informative jump off point to traverse the wider fedi and web in support of amazing artists and creatives
our eclectic programming that may slightly challenge but also will never try to be a hyper focused end point of consumption at the expense of diversity, unexpected joys and interactive community
What's next:
- we are laying the foundations for a more interactive artist directory
We've done our best to test in many environments. The experience should be improved for our appararent and many! small screen format friends.
We've also tried to keep core information layout and functionality usuable for our many visually impaired and unsighted friends.
On balance this is as “pretty” as we care to get as to not be a distraction from what really matters which is indie artists, discovering and going elsewhere to directly communicate and support these awesome creatives.
We made a trade on a bit of visual intuitiveness for the web audio playing buttons as opposed to a browser default audio players. You should now get live feed straight away on restarting a stream or switching channels rather than the browser pausing or caching. This is a small bit of javascript but we still rely on zero cross domain rubbish.
wrap it up captain
So overall we've softened some edges, accomodated small screen a lot better, hopefully improved the web player experience for many and stayed within the brief to never be the “end point of consumption” persay by neither distracting, bloating, nor trying to position RFF as anything other than a transparent discovery layer on your way to supporting awesome artists.
We hope you will continue to submit amazing, weird, wild and wonderful music, sounds, voices and writings. We hope you will encourage others to create, share and maybe even join the RFF community.
We hope you will continue to drop in, discover amazing independent artists, and keep getting out there in the feeds and the interwebs sharing your experience, seeking collaboration and support, materially support artists if you have the means, and dropping artists kind words!
Listen, submit, contribute: https://radiofreefedi.net
In solidarity, the hamster sprinting in the wheel under the RFF tower