A few concrete mechanisms that made this work (happy to expand):
* “Host layer”: greeting newcomers + making it safe to arrive alone mattered more than we expected.
* Curation as governance: coherent music changes how people behave in the room.
* Offline outreach outperformed posting: visiting local businesses in person built trust faster than Instagram.
* Scale changes the social physics; we stayed small on purpose.
Curious if anyone here has built local repeatable formats (meetups, reading groups, hackerspaces), what made them stick?
> early on we needed Instagram content that could show music visually without filming crowds in a club. We started filming headphone-walk clips: one person, headphones on, walking through town to a track we chose.
Brilliant. Fantastic example of constraints producing richly creative results.
Thanks. The idea came from trying to visualise “listening to music” in a way that actually works on social media without filming crowds inside a club. The constraint forced a better format.
A few years ago, I started again to attend regularly to concerts, and often in small / mid size local rooms, with an audience from perhaps 50 to a few hundred people.
Those are much more meaningful to me than those giant stadiums where you watch the band on giant screens. These thoughts will seem obvious, but smaller spaces with a limited audience are really warmer. You feel much closer to the artists, you are sharing emotions, sometimes the artist comes playing or singing in the middle of the audience. Things happen! A guitar string breaks, a drum falls, the singer goes out of tune. This is real live music!
Strong spring lineup. Tonight is Hidden Lines, end of Feb Sydney Valette (Paris), and 20 March Liminal Project (UK) + Yugoslavia (ES) with Inåt Bakåt Records. On 11 April there’s a one-day festival in Norrköping (Kallsup, Poloklubben, Zack Zack Zack, etc.).
We’ve been experimenting a bit with how much we pre-announce (small room, and we don’t want to spread people too thin), but the schedule on the site is the best place to check. Instagram is our main outreach: @kolibrinkpg
Not against AI, but I think you would find this post to be better if you didn't use AI to write it. They are not quite at the point yet where they generate something interesting enough for most people to want to read. Additionally, it goes somewhat counter to your stated goals. You (or chatgpt) said:
> People return when they feel recognised and when the night has a consistent identity.
But there's no identity to your post, because it doesn't feel like it was written by a person. Try writing it yourself! It’s boring, but it builds trust because it’s human, not algorithmic.
Anyway, congrats! I used to be a little bit into the DIY music scene in Chicago. Super cool to see other manifestations of it around the world
I don't think it's AI, they're just Swedes, we talk in a kind of boring way I suppose, and directly translating it into English usually makes it read kind of "stiff". I don't get the same feeling as you, but might be I'm just used to it.
OP here (Maria & Jonatan). This took off while we were asleep.
Maria is the creative force and writes Swedish very well. We used ChatGPT as a bouncing board to translate/tighten the English and get the story across. The piece reflects what we do, but in hindsight it probably ended up a bit over-polished.
> What we built isn’t an app. It’s a repeatable local format: a standing night where strangers become regulars, centred on music rather than networking.
A few concrete mechanisms that made this work (happy to expand):
Curious if anyone here has built local repeatable formats (meetups, reading groups, hackerspaces), what made them stick?Sick, nice to see something like that in the neighborhood. Too late for me to pay a visit today, but see you in 4 weeks!
> early on we needed Instagram content that could show music visually without filming crowds in a club. We started filming headphone-walk clips: one person, headphones on, walking through town to a track we chose.
Brilliant. Fantastic example of constraints producing richly creative results.
Thanks. The idea came from trying to visualise “listening to music” in a way that actually works on social media without filming crowds inside a club. The constraint forced a better format.
A few years ago, I started again to attend regularly to concerts, and often in small / mid size local rooms, with an audience from perhaps 50 to a few hundred people.
Those are much more meaningful to me than those giant stadiums where you watch the band on giant screens. These thoughts will seem obvious, but smaller spaces with a limited audience are really warmer. You feel much closer to the artists, you are sharing emotions, sometimes the artist comes playing or singing in the middle of the audience. Things happen! A guitar string breaks, a drum falls, the singer goes out of tune. This is real live music!
raves are also severely underrated among autistic nerds
I'm intrigued but also very confused on what this is about. Posting so I can looking into that later
Might travel down from Stockholm in a couple of months. Too few nights like this in Sweden (Hosoi can be quite good though).
Nice, you’d be very welcome.
Strong spring lineup. Tonight is Hidden Lines, end of Feb Sydney Valette (Paris), and 20 March Liminal Project (UK) + Yugoslavia (ES) with Inåt Bakåt Records. On 11 April there’s a one-day festival in Norrköping (Kallsup, Poloklubben, Zack Zack Zack, etc.).
We’ve been experimenting a bit with how much we pre-announce (small room, and we don’t want to spread people too thin), but the schedule on the site is the best place to check. Instagram is our main outreach: @kolibrinkpg
Not against AI, but I think you would find this post to be better if you didn't use AI to write it. They are not quite at the point yet where they generate something interesting enough for most people to want to read. Additionally, it goes somewhat counter to your stated goals. You (or chatgpt) said:
> People return when they feel recognised and when the night has a consistent identity.
But there's no identity to your post, because it doesn't feel like it was written by a person. Try writing it yourself! It’s boring, but it builds trust because it’s human, not algorithmic.
Anyway, congrats! I used to be a little bit into the DIY music scene in Chicago. Super cool to see other manifestations of it around the world
I don't think it's AI, they're just Swedes, we talk in a kind of boring way I suppose, and directly translating it into English usually makes it read kind of "stiff". I don't get the same feeling as you, but might be I'm just used to it.
It's definitely AI. There are many tell signs
OP here (Maria & Jonatan). This took off while we were asleep.
Maria is the creative force and writes Swedish very well. We used ChatGPT as a bouncing board to translate/tighten the English and get the story across. The piece reflects what we do, but in hindsight it probably ended up a bit over-polished.
Happy to answer questions.
Agree.
The paragraph when I stopped reading:
> What we built isn’t an app. It’s a repeatable local format: a standing night where strangers become regulars, centred on music rather than networking.