| 1 | The Erinyes | "Death by a Broken Heart" | single | I assume if I were a better fan, I could have recognized the three singers in the Erinyes from either their voices or their pictures, since they're each also in bands I already knew and liked: Justine Daaé in Elyose, Mizuho Lin in Semblant, Nicoletta Rosellini in both Walk In Darkness and Kalidia. |
| 2 | The Spider Accomplice | "Fight" | single | In the version of the world where every band lives on the patronage of 1000 true fans, I am not the fan you want. |
| 3 | Allen/Olzon | "So Quiet Here" | single | We were cross-checking a data thing at work last week, and I knew it was broken because it said I had listened to over 800 artists so far this year. |
| 4 | Beyond The Black | "Is There Anybody Out There?" | Is There Anybody Out There? +1 | I was right that it was wrong. My correct number was 5685 with four months still to go in the year, and that's only counting artists if I listened to at least :30 of one of their songs. |
| 5 | Inferiority Complex | "Till Death Do Us Part" | single | I've heard at least 2 seconds of songs by thousands more in the process of scanning new releases. |
| 6 | Sever The Light | "Blinded & Miserable" | single | 800 was the number of bands where I've listened to at least 3 different songs, and on 3 different days. |
| 7 | Silentlie | "On My Skin" | single | The 1000-fan model is predicated on getting each of those fans to spend $100 on you. |
| 8 | Imperial Age | "Distant Shores" | New World | I do not have $586,500 to spend supporting these bands, never mind $852,750 scaled to the whole year. |
| 9 | Circus of Fools | "Primal Force Humanity" | single | I do not have $80,000 to spend on the 800 bands I've played repeatedly. |
| 10 | Kassogtha | "Eclipse" | Eclipse +1 | I go to concerts occasionally in non-plague times, |
| 11 | Therion | "Pazuzu" | Pazuzu +2 | and I bought a Zola Jesus T-shirt when her new record came out. |
| 12 | Dynazty | "All the Devils Are Here" | Final Advent | I do not buy "vinyls". |
| 13 | Kaledon | "The Story Comes to an End?" | single | I am not a patron. |
| 14 | Induction | "Queen Of Light" | Queen Of Light +1 | I love you but I have chosen the infinite. |
| 15 | Brymir | "Fly with Me" | Voices in the Sky | I will listen to this song, but then |
| 16 | Enigmatic Entrance | "Time & Tide" | single | the next one. |
| 17 | Grimner | "Västerled" | single | And while I don't think anybody else should listen this way unless you want to, |
| 18 | Tad Morose | "Witches Dance" | March of the Obsequious | in which case you should because we can, |
| 19 | Kampfar | "Flammen fra Nord" | Flammen fra Nord +1 | I also don't want a world whose culture is predicated on patronage, either. |
| 20 | ColdWorld | "Soundtrack to Isolation" | Soundtrack to Isolation +1 | The peril of relying on 1000 fans is that you have to get $100 out of each of them, |
| 21 | Weltenbrandt | "Apotropaion" | single | and that's assuming you're a solo artist with negligible production costs |
| 22 | All The Cold | "Zero Coordinates" | single | and don't want to live in an expensive city. |
| 23 | Gaerea | "Mirage" | Mirage +2 | Maybe it assumes your fans don't live in an expensive city, either. |
| 24 | Hexis | "Letum" | Aeternum | Most music-buyers in the CD age spent a lot less than $100/year on CDs, |
| 25 | Valborg | "Asbach" | single | so the number of potentially-true fans available has to be small. |
| 26 | Cloud Rat | "Kaleidoscope" | single | You have to find somebody who is temperamentally willing and financially able to spend $100/year on a single artist, |
| 27 | Sigh | "Kuroi Kage" | Shiki | but who despite this willingness and ability hasn't already pledged their truth to some other artist. |
| 28 | Enslaved | "Kingdom" | single | The patronage model, conveniently, is always described in artificial isolation: |
| 29 | Choronzon | "Madness Swallows This Flesh" | ...and Battlements Rose Out of Hallowed Ground | one artist, reaching out to an attentive audience of casual fans |
| 30 | Lacrimas Profundere | "Nebula" | How to Shroud Yourself with Night | eager to become loved |
| 31 | Dwell in Doom | "Nevermore" | Forest of Mourning Souls | and thus devoted. |
| 32 | Bloody Hammers | "Black Sunday" | single | It sounds a bit less appealing |
| 33 | Teramaze | "Gold" | single | and a lot less indie |
| 34 | Threshold | "King Of Nothing" | King Of Nothing +1 | if you describe it as a tiny audience of the idle barely-rich |
| 35 | Lonely Robot | "Species in Transition" | A Model Life | considering the relative specific benefits of every artist offer |
| 36 | Devin Townsend | "Moonpeople" | single | in ruthless implicit competition. |
| 37 | Maraton | "Boltzmann Brain" | Boltzmann Brain +3 | What will you give them for their $100? |
| 38 | The Untold | "Red Horizons" | Red Horizons +2 | Will you sign LPs? (Oops, pressing LPs is expensive, you need them to spend $200 now because you owe the plant.) |
| 39 | MY FIRST STORY | "MEMORIES" | X | Will you take cover requests? (Oops, learning and recording covers takes longer than you thought, and eats into your songwriting time.) |
| 40 | ARCANA PROJECT | "快晴のエスタリスタ" | 創世記 | Will you write a recording journal on your subscriber-only substack? Maybe, if that sounds like fun to you anyway, |
| 41 | Machico | "Let’s go ahead - 『風都探偵』挿入歌" | Let’s go ahead 2 | but what if it doesn't? |
| 42 | SATORI MONSTER | "青になる" | single | What if the thing you like to do is make music, not entertain a court? |
| 43 | sui sui | "GO OVER!!!" | single | What if your art thrives on solitude, |
| 44 | POPPiNG EMO | "kimi to tsunagaru sekai" | single | not social-media engagement? |
| 45 | THE UNCROWNED | "WITNESS" | single | Worse, what if your music is made for people who thrive on solitude, |
| 46 | Aimer | "オアイコ" | single | or are trying in solitude to thrive, |
| 47 | Hitomi Yaida | "花のような君に" | single | rather than strutting into OnlyFans with sheafs of $100s? |
| 48 | Kaneyorimasaru | "I was" | single | And hasn't more or less all the historical social progress in artistic economics |
| 49 | チョーキューメイ | "燃え尽きろ君の命" | 燃え尽きろ君の命 / 溶けた魔法 2 | been away from beholdenness to Dukes |
| 50 | AprilBlue | "Spring Fever" | single | towards -- what? |
| 51 | postman | "kitty" | single | I think it has mostly been, in this as in most civilized things, |
| 52 | れん | "ゆらせ" | single | towards the distribution of power: |
| 53 | BLUE ENCOUNT | "終火" | single | from the feudal dependence on the dispensed whims of your relative elites |
| 54 | Mono Inc. | "Empire" | Empire +1 | towards a democratic equality of natural rights. |
| 55 | Seelensturm | "Ich trag Dein Herz" | single | Patronage is a formalization of power over you, sold as if it's for you. |
| 56 | Drei Meter Feldweg | "Lagebericht" | Durak | I think you would rather require less from every fan, |
| 57 | MegaMensch! | "So Leicht!" | E1NS | until you require nothing from any of them. |
| 58 | Jadu | "Frau von Welt" | single | Maybe this is too obvious to say aloud, |
| 59 | Paola Pinar | "El Oasis" | single | but it's not too obvious to believe: |
| 60 | Coridian | "Rakshasa - with Michael Murphy from Written by Wolves" | single | civilization is a progression towards universal leisure. |
| 61 | Apulanta | "Kämmenen kuva poskeen" | single | Labor is not a goal, it's a contingent adaptation to scarcity. |
| 62 | The New Division | "Silent Films" | single | Patronage is a disingenuous reformulation of that scarcity as opportunity, |
| 63 | Mœnia | "Amante Bandido" | single | and thus a market opportunity for intermediation platforms. |
| 64 | Chusma | "Tal Vez" | single | I don't actually think I'm a bad fan. |
| 65 | División Minúscula | "La Última Llamada" | single | I will listen to your song. |
| 66 | La Paloma | "El Adversario" | single | It doesn't have to be better than every other song I've heard this year. |
| 67 | Maryland | "Ser Motivo" | single | You don't have to make it into plastic and autograph it for me. |
| 68 | Eros Ramazzotti | "Sono" | single | I will listen to your song and afterwards you don't owe me anything. |
| 69 | The Sun | "Voglio qualcosa di vero" | Voglio qualcosa di vero +1 | Your next song doesn't have to sound the same. |
| 70 | Muse | "Verona" | Will Of The People | You can lose me and I will find you again years later, |
| 71 | Jagwar Twin | "It's Your Time" | It's Your Time +3 | or today. |
| 72 | Bastille | "Family Ties" | Give Me The Future + Dreams Of The Past | We are never far, |
| 73 | KARLIEN HUSSELMAN | "Skyn" | single | rarely farther than light on skin, |
| 74 | 10eighty6 | "Can't Stop (Thinking of You)" | single | only ever forgotten as a flirtation neither of us have recognized yet. |
| 75 | Himera | "Umbrella" | single | You sing and I remember what it was like to hear Zoolook for the first time, |
| 76 | LI YILEI | "A Hush in the Dark" | Secondary Self | and "1/1" and "Cascade", |
| 77 | Mabe Fratti | "Cada Músculo" | single | and "The Olde HeadBoard" and "Sun Will Set", |
| 78 | Rachika Nayar | "The Price of Serenity" | Heaven Come Crashing | and do we want a world where we remind each other of nothing? |
| 79 | Jónsi | "Birki" | single | Or everything? |
| 80 | Zbava | "Stará Mohyla" | Úsvit | Where our histories are sequencings of regret |
| 81 | Harrogat | "Caina" | Inferno | or substrates of tranquility? |
| 82 | BLESSED MANE | "Blade" | single | Where the stuff the kids are into makes us feel older |
| 83 | BLADEFEAR | "Fusion" | Eternity | or distemporal? |
| 84 | Brothel | "LEGION" | single | Where we are legion |
| 85 | CREEPYMANE | "Overdrive" | single | or already gone? |
| 86 | Jean-Michel Jarre | "BRUTALISM" | single | Nothing new can be that strange if you've heard new sounds before. |
| 87 | Lustre | "Quiescence" | A Thirst for Summer Rain | It's the same air, governed by the same indulgences of nitrogen |
| 88 | Duthaig | "Cyhyraeth" | single | and the same sporadic conviction that it binds ethereal forces. |
| 89 | Tides From Nebula | "The Sweetest Way To Die" | single | Maybe we are immortal or universal, too, |
| 90 | Girih | "The Key" | The Key +1 | but we shouldn't get ahead of ourselves, |
| 91 | The Otolith | "Sing No Coda" | single | or at least not out of earshot. |
| 92 | Shedfromthebody | "Nude" | single | We could have been infinite, but we have chosen love, |
| 93 | Pinkshift | "GET OUT" | GET OUT +2 | and love is noisy. |
| 94 | Dentist | "Check the Calendar" | single | The boys who wanted heroines |
| 95 | Alissic | "bugfood" | single | built churches and then left them to be recaptured by ants. |
| 96 | NOVACUB | "You Like Girls" | You Like Girls +1 | I have been in rooms with bands playing to five people, |
| 97 | The Warning | "CHOKE (with grandson & Zero 9:36)" | single | and arenas with altars formed of our aggregated regard. |
| 98 | Cold Night For Alligators | "Frame by Frame" | The Hindsight Notes | They look different in pictures, |
| 99 | The Front Bottoms | "Hello World" | Hello World +1 | but sound the same in our hearts: |
| 100 | Tiny Moving Parts | "Decibel" | Tiny Moving Parts | loud; |
| 101 | Archers Of Loaf | "Screaming Undercover" | Screaming Undercover +1 | loud. |
| 102 | Fraxriel | "My Devotion" | single | Devotion is not refined by forcing it to make arbitrary choices, |
| 103 | nothing,nowhere. | "M1SERY_SYNDROME (feat. Buddy Nielsen)" | single | any more than pain is diluted by abundance. |
| 104 | Lil Xtra | "Human" | single | I don't know if some of these people are half my age or quarter of it, |
| 105 | Lil Skele | "perfect target" | single | but I'm pretty sure every feeling I've ever had, I've felt at each of these ages: |
| 106 | EKKSTACY | "i want to die in your arms" | i want to die in your arms +2 | yours, mine, however old we will each be tomorrow |
| 107 | GARZI | "HELLO//GOODBYE" | single | in the instants before you leave. |
| 108 | MASN | "High School" | single | Another year starts, and we shift into our school positions |
| 109 | Werd (SOS) | "Shooting Star" | Childish Games 6 | even if those positions are running through American campuses listening to Scottish hip hop. |
| 110 | Tzusan | "Strange Fictions" | WSPSNSYRP | I don't even know you. I can't be responsible for your decisions. |
| 111 | Oakzy B | "Highs & Lows" | WARD 9 | I don't want a world where I have to validate your opinions to listen to your songs, |
| 112 | Eddie Berman | "Time Waits for No Man - Acoustic" | Anchorite: Broken English from the Stronghold | and you shouldn't want it, either. |
| 113 | Dustin Tebbutt | "Changeophelia" | single | Truth is even more expensive than cities. |
| 114 | Prince Kaybee | "3 In The Morning" | single | You can't afford 1000 true fans. |
| 115 | MASHESHISA | "Kwakhala Isayoni" | Kwakhala Isayoni. 4 | You can barely afford your own friends and their ancestors. |
| 116 | Ubuntu Brothers | "izinyembezi" | single | We walked to the edge of the world and threw our CDs over it, and walked back home singing. |
| 117 | Valerie June | "Into My Arms" | Under Cover | I believe in so many kinds of paths. |
| 118 | The Giant Void | "Billie Jean" | single | We are the ones who will follow all of them at once. |
| 119 | Edge Of Paradise | "Welcome to the Jungle" | single | We can find whatever we need: |
| 120 | RichaadEB | "Running Up That Hill - Instrumental" | single | one true fan who won't give us money and walk away, or offer, no more helpfully, to trade roles, |
| 121 | Halocene | "Castle of Glass" | single | but who will be with us, singing, shouting, indistinguishably whole, for as long as this song lasts, |
| 122 | Harrogat | "Anterora" | Inferno | and then quiet, but not silent, not gone. |