Notices by Ether Diver (etherdiver@ravenation.club), page 3

Phew! Found a new home for the boxes of taped-from-TV VHS I couldn't take with me. Now I just have a few pieces of furniture, some food and some housewares to find a home for...

Oh, and books. So many books.

If you're in #Denver and want/need some #free stuff (books, furniture, beds, food, housewares), please contact me ASAP!

@HauntedOwlbear I picked up a sealed box (of 10? 20? Honestly not sure) at the thrift store for a whopping $3 a few months ago.

Not sure if there's a thrift around you, or how many you need/how regularly you need them, but it's definitely worth checking.

Oh, and thrifting pro tip! If you don't see a particular kind of item, tell the managers or sorters/pricers that you're looking for them. Chances are decent they're just throwing them away because they think no one wants them.

@BlackAzizAnansi When my dad is feeling talkative, which is not often, he'll casually mention his involvement in a handful of war crimes...

@BlackAzizAnansi my uncle got friend of his pregnant. Didn't want a child, so he just told her it was her problem. She had the baby, *stayed friends with my uncle* and everyone just decided to not say anything. This girl grew up knowing *nothing* about her dad... Even though she knew him very well as a friend of her mother's.

Obviously she found out, but not until she was a whole ass adult. And, in a completely unsurprising turn of events, she was righteously and royally fucking pissed off.

If you're in the Denver area and need any furniture and/or household stuff, LMK. I'm getting ready to move house across the country and am taking basically NO furniture/small appliances/etc. Talking everything from couches/beds to toaster ovens/dishes/etc.

I'll be looking to sell stuff (cheap, tho) first, then giving away whatever didn't sell. Reach out to get on the cheap sales or free stuff mailing list (or both!) and I'll reach out shortly to show you what's available.

Boosts appreciated.

@RickiTarr you always have to consider the biases and structural limitations of your news sources. Always. There's exactly zero sources you can take at face value without reflection/critical assessment.

Not just now, but throughout all history and going forward forever as well. It's the nature of humans and news gathering/reporting.

I started 2023 with a handful of simple goals for my music, and as I accomplished them (or hit very close) I added a few more "stretch" goals to keep me engaged.
(Gotta gamify those tasks that aren't inherently rewarding or I'll never do them.)

Let's start with streams! I started the year with about 3,200 streams lifetime for the project, all but a few hundred from 2022. I had two goals regarding streams for the year: first, hitting 10,000 streams overall ...

And second, continuing my streak of continuous days with at least one "new" stream every day for a full year (the streak started Nov. 28, 2022) or longer.

And I accomplished both! My streak of days with a stream is still ongoing and I hit 10k in September!

My average streams per month for 2023 was ~710, with a mean of ~540. Interestingly I had almost exactly three times as many streams this year as last!

I think that's partly that Psychedelic Ghost Stories was a big step up from my previous work on multiple levels, and partly due the fact that Mastodon has been a much better platform for finding an audience than anything else I'd tried previously. (Thanks, Mastodon!)

Here's that album, if you haven't heard it:

https://etherdiver.bandcamp.com/album/psychedelic-ghost-stories

Sales wise I didn't start the year with any goal because I didn't expect to make much money (and it's not what's motivating me to make music) but I was inspired by a friend of mine, and an impressive number of sales early in the year, to add it as a goal.

And you know, I think having a sales goal *definitely* helped me sell more albums! I set a goal of $100 a month from music sales and I hit that goal all but three months this year, and my average is *well* above $100/month.

My total for the year came out to about $1550 and change, which isn't a huge amount obviously but nothing to sneeze at either. Heck, it just about exactly paid for my Soma Terra, and that's the most expensive standalone synth I own. It's also about 5x what I made the year before.

Turns out doing stuff like sales and promoting to a willing and appreciative listener base who believes in supporting art makes a difference.

On a personal note, at the end of 2022 a long-standing gig that provided a steady and significant portion of my income ended. The income from my music, though barely a third of what I'd lost, went a large part of the way to making it an uncomfortable but manageable income loss instead of a devastating, red-alert income loss, so an extra special THANK YOU to anyone who bought something this year!

Oh, one more streaming goal I forgot to mention! Last year, in 2022 my breast month was just barely over 500 streams. In 2023, I started the year with three months where I beat that, so I decided to shoot for beating last year's great month *every* month this year...

I fell *just* short: every month but one (October, for what it's worth) I managed to beat last year's best month, usually by a considerable margin. That one month I missed it was just 30 streams short, so pretty close!

@ninavizz @aral in the US, it's not sufficient to simply earn enough to have housing/food security, since there's almost no safety net for anyone but rich people. If you want anything like real security in our society, you have to accumulate some amount of real wealth in case you, or someone you love, gets sick and can't work, for example.

@aral in general I agree but I don't think it's shameful to want to become rich and/or powerful in a system where doing so is literally the only way to have any security.

Or, as wise men are known to have said: Don't hate the player, hate the game

So, Spotify is laying off 1500 people AND not paying *ANYTHING* for 2/3 of the music on their platform, but hey, they finally showed a profit of $35 million on $3.57 BILLION in revenue!

I'm not trying to shame anyone, but if you feel a need to use Spotify, at least download the extension that lets you use premium for free as a fuck you back at the company.

Better yet, directly support the artists who make the music that you care about.

@botvolution Interviewing Alex Cox was one of the coolest moments of my journalism career (I did a shit interview TBH, one of the few times I was star struck in my career!)

Hey Mastopals, I'm looking for some work so if you know of anything, LMK. Looking for part time (20 hrs/week or less), fully remote work. I have experience in software QA, writing (that's what I'm best at), and music production, plus the usual bullshit (customer service, spreadsheet fuckery, etc). Happy to take short term contracts, one off assignments, etc. Would love to do something meaningful that isn't just enriching a capitalist but hey, I know how rare that is.

Did my own #BandcampFriday purchases! A relatively small month, as I have recently spent all of my available cash on a new synth... but I did pick up my designated minimum: one discography, one thing from my wishlist backlog, and one thing new I discovered this month.

It's #BandcampFriday, where BC waives their fees from sales so artists get all the $$$. If you consider yourself a music fan, I'm challenging you to spend AT LEAST as much today at Bandcamp as you spend every month on music streaming services, OR MORE.

(Also, boost this message!)