Bluesky Starter Packs for Music

DiS compiled guides to help you find some of your favourite musicians, labels, magazines and more. Plus a tip for improving your account.

Being the supercool dork that I am, I turned up to the Bluesky party far too early. Erm, it was a year or so ago. To be fair, when I have dipped in, it has felt like a nice public group chat.

However, in the last few days you could safely say the platform has 'blown up' and it suddenly feels like the public square. With a parade going on. And Billy Bragg is playing on the main stage.

The social network has gone from a few million users to over 20 million in a week.

For context, this time last week I had 500 or so followers, now I have over 11,000. This has mostly been due to compiling starter packs for music that people have found really useful and shared around, so it seemed wise to get them out to all of you who may be looking to reconnect with the people you follow elsewhere.

ICYMI: We've Shed Our Twitter Feathers - Now What? Like the mayor in Jaws, Elon Musk seems to be prioritising ideology over public safety.

Here's a summary of the starter packs I've made so far.

Lots of names you'd know, like Robert Smith and NME appear on these lists alongside some you might not who I recommend following like music bloggers and people campaigning to save grassroots music.

Each pack is limited to 150 users, so the music industry one will soon fragment into some separate starter packs as more trade bodies, publications, indie label bosses and the like join.

There's still room if you have suggestions for people, orgs and acts for these lists should sign post.

Note: You can click "follow all" or cherry pick people you already know are worth following or who sound interesting.

Support DiS

If you have found these starter packs useful and have a few quid, please consider taking out a half price annual subscription to this newsletter to support the time, passion, thought, and attention that goes into it all.

Get the offer here: drownedinsound.org/bluesky. Or if you'd rather pay-it-forward with a one-off donation, you can do so here.

FAQ: Do you need to join another social network?

Of course you don't have to join. I totally understand why a lot of burnt out musicians and busy music fans can't face migrating to another platform.

However, if you are someone who quit Twitter and is not getting what you want from Facebook or Insta or Tiktok, find Threads a bit frustrating, and you miss being in the hive-mind of silly chat, news links, long reads, podcasts, YouTube recommendations, telly chat, and the like (and you're not already a regular on the DiS forums), then I recommend signing up to Bluesky. Especially if you're a musician or blogger or label or organisation looking to engage and inform your fans. Things can spread on there pretty quickly it seems.

The take up in the last week suggests now is a good time to join Bluesky and given the sorts of people who've been dedicated users for the past year (lots of FT journalists, music geeks, and activists), it's going to be a fairly worthwhile time investment to join now, as it'll likely keep snowballing in size and become the app most people open to start their day or when a big news story breaks to see the reaction.

If you've not already, you can sign up here: bsky.app

It's a fairly no frills platform, that has a chronological feed, and doesn't suppress links or shadow ban politics like Meta's ecosystem reportedly does. There also aren't currently adverts or extremists all over it, like other platforms.

You can sign up to some algorithmic feeds like Discover and Popular with Friends. And there are feeds on all kinds of topics you can have in a separate tab. I might try to make one for independent music but it's a fairly big task that I'll need to carve out some time for.

Improve Your Account

Other than following these starter packs, one nerdy thing you can do, is set up a custom domain. Great for musicians and organisations who want to verify that they're legit.

Here's how:

If you follow me, this is the sort of thing you're gonna get (see more on this story below)

Current Song Obsession

When a political poem hits this hard and gets a wibbly backing track, it might not be a contender for song of the year, but this isn't a normal year.

Recommended Browsing

• Drowned in Sound community recommend the one album you should hear before making your year-end list (DiS)
• Minister urges live music industry to introduce voluntary ticket levy to protect grassroots venues (Gov.uk)
• Music Venue Trust reacts to the government's statement (LinkedIn)
• UK music contributes record £7.6billion to the economy – while the grassroots remain under threat (NME)
• Bristol leads the way on a city-wide ticket levy (BBC)
• Daniel Ek just cashed out $35.8 million in Spotify shares. But that’s nothing compared to his co-founder… who just cashed out $383.8 million. (MusicBizWorldWide)
• My reaction to this Spotify story has had a big reaction on LinkedIn (and on Bluesky to be fair)
• No, Vinyl Sales Aren’t Down 33% in 2024. They’re up 6.2% (Discogs)
• WHSmith to start selling vinyl records again after 30 years (Retail Gazette)
• MeToo stories latest: Diddy (NY Times) and Tim Westwood (BBC)
• Has MeToo damaged any men's careers? (Instagram Reel)

Podcast Recommendation

Been really enjoying The Vergecast's trilogy of podcasts about the future of music. Here's one of the episodes that I think many of you would enjoy:

The DiS Playlist

If you're looking for something to listen to, here's my tracks of the year playlist:

We’ve Shed Our Twitter Feathers - Now What?

Like the mayor in Jaws, Elon Musk seems to be prioritising ideology over public safety.

Drowned in SoundSean Adams