Introducing: The Extra Chill Community

A Community Platform for DIY Music

Ever since this website started to get popular, there has been a disconnect between how much music gets submitted and how much we are able to cover. We receive a lot of requests for coverage, and since the sheer volume is so high, we tend to gravitate towards people we are already familiar with, or share mutual connections with. 

However, the process of becoming a fan is complex, and there definitely are artists who have cold emailed me that I’ve become a fan of. The reality is that it takes more than just one article, email exchange, or social media post to get to know an artist enough to care about their creative output. It takes time and effort.

So, the emails, DMs, texts, calls, and social media tags get buried and lost, and I barrel on with my life, working on ideas that we come up with each week. It’s not my intention to ignore people, but when everybody wants to be featured on Extra Chill, we become very selective about who actually gets featured.

The Extra Chill Community changes everything.

Enter The Community

Prior to the Community, everything that showed up on Extra Chill first had to pass through the often-quite strict filter of my inbox, and the narrow scope of my personal interest.

The Extra Chill Community is a way to create a more living, breathing experience for the people who engage with Extra Chill. Meaning, when an artist contacts me looking for a feature, I can send them to the community to engage with the people there, and myself. This way, they won’t get lost, and we can all band together to build our collective music careers. 

Artists can build a following in the community, and gain real fans who will listen to their music, come to their shows, and buy their merch. Not only that, but they have a chance to engage with the people behind Extra Chill and catch our attention for bookings and features in articles on the main blog.

Business in the Front, Party in the Back

On Extra Chill, we will continue to be highly selective about what we feature, thereby increasing the value of everything we write. In the Community, anything goes. It’s like the wild west. A band can share their new single and then go debate 90s hip-hop greats in the Rabbit Hole.

By connecting with others in this way, people will foster genuine relationships based around mutual tastes that gives listeners an actual incentive to check out an artist’s music. Because they can get to know the artist behind that music.

In the music industry that often feels vast and unforgiving, the Extra Chill Community is a way for everybody to come together and figure things out, and have fun while we do it.

Sharing new music is just one piece of this puzzle, and the vision goes deeper than this. The Extra Chill Community also offers sections for users to discuss the challenges of the music industry with other like-minded people, and get advice on their careers from people like myself and the rest of the Extra Chill team, plus any number of other experienced people who join the Community.

You Support Us, We Support You

Another layer to this whole thing is the concept of mutual collaboration. A lot of the people who constantly reach out to me about features have never once shown up at an Extra Chill event, or otherwise engaged with what we’re doing. They want us to share their stuff, without reciprocating.

Life is hard. Sometimes buying a ticket to Extra Chill Fest is too much to deal with. I get it. The Community is free. You can promote yourself in there, and discuss music and life with me, and once I know you, there’s a much better chance of me writing about you, much less booking you for an event.

So, Extra Chill becomes a comprehensive platform that allows users to not only come together, but to promote themselves in the process, while enriching their own skills. Plus, a look behind-the-scenes at Extra Chill and the overarching microcosm of the music industry that it represents.

A More Permanent Social Platform

Essentially, Extra Chill is now quasi-social media platform that is built on top of an established blog. The Community becomes the center for engagement, and the blog maintains its journalistic and entertainment lean, and the two are linked together seamlessly.

When you create a Community Account, you not only gain access to the music forums, but also the social features on Extra Chill itself. When you log in to the Community, it unlocks the upvoting and commenting features here, while linking back all your upvoted posts and comments to your Community dashboard.

Gone are the days of things getting buried in a mass feed never to be seen again. The Community allows us to keep things fresh at all times, while building our own beacon for independent artists, businesses, and fans in the music industry.

Our Respite from the Corporate Hellscape

Anybody who spends time in the music industry will be able to tell you how much corporate money ruins everything. Sometimes, you learn things about artists and people you once admired that makes you view them completely differently, and it’s usually not in a good way.

The bands and festivals you love grow up to become sell-outs and contribute to the very thing they once stood up against, while Live Nation continues to gain more power and influence.

With the Extra Chill Community, we gain a permanent foothold that is outside the reaches of corporate influence, where independent music can grow and thrive.

This post aimed to encompass my overarching vision behind the platform. I know it doesn’t dive too much into the brass tacks of the features. I will get to that as I continue to build out the website over time.

For now, I just hope you all join the discussion and see what this thing is all about. It’s already pretty cool, and I like to think it’s intuitive enough to be understood with a bit of use. And if it’s not, I’m open to feedback.

Thanks for reading, thanks for joining, and much love.

– Chubes