3 Communication

3.1 Blog

All Digital Music Observatory, Cultural and Creative Sectors Industries Observatory websites and related projects, like the Listen Local project website, and our currently inactive Data & Lyrics blog work on hugo. (See technical details later.)

All websites have a blog function. This means that we can place the blogposts on to the Listen Local blog or DMO blog. We have more or less ready automation to regularly feature posts on our social media channels.

See a blogpost:

Listen Local: Why We Need Alternative Recommendation Systems

We welcome any blogposts related to your work, particularly if they have to do something with music, data, lyrics, locations, scenes, genres, feminism, and making the music ecosystem more just and sustainable.

3.1.1 Blog & Website Technical Background

All Digital Music Observatory, Cultural and Creative Sectors Industries Observatory websites and related projects currently work on hugo.

The hugo system is a static website generator (similar to Jekyll) that creates blogs, websites, from simple, marked up text and images or other media files. This means that if you upload a correctly formatted page to the correctly selected folder, the website engine will generate a new version of the blog/website, with placing the new folder with the correct layout, place, date, search index in its place.

Traditional website engines like WordPress, blogpost work similarly, but you store the page contents in a database, which makes the migration of the content, or the re-use in other long-form PDF, Word, PPTX difficult. Furthermore, you have no access to the code of the database engine.

The hugo system treats a few folders like a database, for example, everything placed in the posts folder becomes a webpost.

The hugo engine itself is written in an open source language called Go. We use a family of hugo themes (pre-programmed websites) from an opensouce developer collective called wowchemy, who provide for a small monthly donation support.

The pro of this system is that the content we generate can be easily reused in reports, presentations, animations, PDFs, etc, and we own all. Furthermore, we can re-program and change any element of the website, and we can create multi-language websites with ease. Any page, post, interview can be written in any word processor that can create markdown files. (For example, Google Docs.)

The con is that the content must be perfectly formatted, and changing things in the website, unless you know a bit of programming, is not plug and play or WSIWYG.

3.1.1.1 Post header

The header of each page or post is a text file with TOML markup. You do not have to learn TOML, just fill in the basic details, like title=..., subtitle=<if applicable>, etc. This is a plain text file and you can just use our template.

The header starts with: +++

Then it has fixed items that hugo will read in:

title = “KharkivMusicFest in 2022: Concert Between Explosions”

subtitle = “The Russian military invasion and the siege changed the program of the KharkivMusicFest in 2022 but did not cancel the festival.”

date = 2022-03-28T11:00:00

lastmod = 2022-03-28T11:00:00

draft = false

authors = [“Daniel Antal”]

project = [“listen-local”]

tags = [“Ukraine”]

summary = “The Russian military invasion and the siege changed the program of the KharkivMusicFest in 2022 but did not cancel the festival. The KharkivMusicFest in 2022 takes place on the metro station Historical Museum, currently a shelter from bombs for many Ukrainian children, women, and elderly.”

# Featured image

[image]

# Caption (optional: a caption placed on thumbnail preview version of the post in the post catalogue)

caption = ""

#Focal point (optional)

Our template has comments that are not used by hugo as small helpers for you, in this case, to help you select the focal point of the picture you use as the main picture for the post catalogue:

# Options: Smart, Center, TopLeft, Top, TopRight, Left, Right, BottomLeft, Bottom, BottomRightfocal_point = "Top" </br>#Show image only in page previews? (TRUE: not shown at the start of th post) preview_only = false+++`

That’s all. It can be edited in Notepad, Notepad++, Google Docs, or any text editor.

3.1.1.2 Post content

The post content is a markdown text file. The markdown “language” is a super-simplified HTML that can be easily translated to html, docx, PDF, odt, or any text formats. Below the first part of the body of the interview with our future Czech curator: Marie de la Montagne: I lived in the mountains for six years, and I loved it because it was a place where you needed to rely on yourself to survive

Again, this can be edited in Notepad, or any text editor:

*Marie works in Prague, and helps musicians’ careers, particularly in TV and feature film synchronization. She is also a performing artists, whose music is connected to different parts of Europe. We interviewed her because of our shared interest in how music crosses borders.*

The * sign is the markdown equivalent of italics. The ** sign is the bold.

**So, you’re currently living in Prague, after spending several years located in France, London, and Berlin. What was this journey like for you?**

I got locked down in Prague actually. I intended to move to Berlin after leaving London, as my pianist lives there and has kids. It seemed like the best next destination, but it just didn’t work out. Lockdown came out of the blue and I decided to stay in Czech Republic. I eventually found an apartment in Prague and a job I’ve wanted to do all my life, so I think this is it. `

I now work for a label and I am in charge of our sync & publishing department. My professional focus is still abroad for the most part which helps me work towards my ambitions, yet also come back to my roots. I feel like this is what I really needed for my creativity to strive. `

Our template has instructions between the <!-- and --> sign which is the comment in markdown. It is not shown on the website.

<!-- HERE I WOULD INCLUDE A BREIF INTRODUCTION ABOUT WHO MARIE IS AND WHY WE'RE INTERVIEWING HER-->

I consider myself a storyteller. My music is a space to communicate emotions about experiences we might not always talk about. I love performing live and I can see myself doing this anywhere, but mostly in Europe. I feel very close to all the countries I’ve lived in, so France and even the UK. I always build a small fanbase where I live, and then uproot again.

This is the place of a Marie_de_la_Montagne_with_band.jpg in the text with the caption Marie on stage:

<!-- This is the script to include a jpg or png file. If it is large, it will be ready for zooming in. -->

{{< figure src="/media/img/listen_local_interviews/Marie_de_la_Montagne_with_band.jpg" caption="Marie on stage" >}}

You can place HTML in a markdown text: ><!-- This code is copy pasted from Spotify. You can adjust the height to look better. -->

<iframe src="https://open.spotify.com/embed/artist/7qkfyK1GehyVxF42lDhO5V" width="700" height="433" frameborder="0" allowtransparency="true" allow="encrypted-media"></iframe>

And at last links are [Text with link](https://the-actual-link), which will turn it to a html link, a Word link, a PDF link, etc.

I also love [Dirt Miller](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0pylMlxf_0jE256FLv9ZMg) and [Lauren Ruth Ward](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8dfUJJ-3op3B5wF5uono0w), both of whom I met in Los Angeles, and I think that they are geniuses. Their songwriting, their social media artistry, and their vocals are mad!

In the interview with Marie this last paragraph is shown as:

I also love Dirt Miller and Lauren Ruth Ward, both of whom I met in Los Angeles, and I think that they are geniuses. Their songwriting, their social media artistry, and their vocals are mad!

3.2 Short Artists Interviews

The interviews are usually conducted in the local language, and they are usually hybrid interviews: a face-to-face (online or physical) conversation followed up, and sometimes prepared in emails to exchange photos, links.

In Slovakia, we created two versions of the interviews: Slovak and English. In case we want to continue this, we need two website versions for Lithuania and Ukraine, too, and Mark has to proof-read the final English versions.

3.2.2 Interview template

We want to initiate a conversation with the artist, and eventually with the music ecosystem, about localitiies, recommendations, and getting the music from location A to location B.

The questions should include (losely followed) these:

Locations:

  • Where is (are) the artis(s) coming from—literally and physically? Where is the artist feeling home? Where does the artist has the most dedicated fan base?

  • Where are they going to? Where they want to find new audiences? Where they want to be heard? Is there a place where the artists has a fan base far from her working base? A location-related scene, genre, a community, where the artist(s) want(s) to be heard?

  • Are you planning to go on tour? From where to where?

  • Potential further questions: who they decided on this route? Who recommends them routes? Do they get any marketing help to design tour routes?

Recommendations:

  • Ask the artist to recommend her/his/their music (ask for a few songs on Spotify, one select YouTube or Vimeo video). we can also include other platforms and Bandcamp, but currently the easiest choice for us is Spotify and YouTube.

  • Let the artist talk about this particular new release, favorite video, etc.

  • The artist should give a recommendation to the city where he/she/them live(s), or where the artist(s) want to belong as part of a scene. If a fan from a far away country would visit: who should be seen on stage? what would be a great music club to visit? Or anything else that is dear to the artist in this particular location, a neighborhood, a statue, a park, a club, a restaurant, whatever.

  • You can ask any questions about the role of recommendations in radio, blogs, by word of mouth, on Spotify, etc, if this is an interesting topic to the artist.

AI and streaming platforms:

  • Ask about their personal opinion or knowledge related to AI, algorithm, and recommendations of YouTube and Spotify. (Does not matter what they have to say.)

Media that we can add to a blogpost:

  • Ask a few photos for the post (with photo credits.)
  • Links to their selected YouTube video (alternatively: Vimeo or else) and the links to a few songs (preferred: Spotify link, alternatively anything else.)