An Editorial by someone unqualified to talk about anything.

Horrible headline aside, I came to a realization this week that’s going to make me seem incredibly stupid. I end up having to explain what AuraLink is on a pretty regular basis in my real life to explain things like “why are you editing a tiktok before this lecture Rob?” or “why are you editing a tiktok during this lecture Rob?” and various other things, and the biggest issue is explaining the specific kind of music we cover. AuraLink to some extent is based on what I specifically want to listen to, which narrows down the coverage into a very, very specific niche within the post-hyperpop scene. I love music that has those crazy digital sounds, cut up synths, and distorted basslines, but I want to hear them in a controlled context that’s more akin to a traditional pop or electronic song than the maximalist chaos that is hyperpop-proper. I love clean mixes, but I love experimental sounds. Boiling that down into an elevator pitch without scaring people off is, as you can imagine, a bit of a challenge. The general public is scared of microgenres, in fact my partner absolutely hates them. Microgenres are only actually appreciated by people who are already within a specific “scene” who want to find more of a specific sound within that scene, but talking about those genres to people outside the scene makes you sound like an insane person who’s way to deep into intimidatingly complicated counterculture movements. So with that, what is my one simple step getting people to listen to the music I love and talk about on AuraLink:

Step 1: Call literally everything “Experimental Pop”

…and that’s it. Genuinely that’s the entire solution. Experimental Pop is such an insanely vague term, but that’s its strength. If people are still curious after you say that, they’ll ask you to elaborate, and that’s when you can whip out the intricacies of what you’re really talking about. It’s so insanely simple that I’m outright embarrassed it took me this long to figure out. It genuinely took me giving the elevator pitch probably 50 separate times with that final time being to a potential assistant to help me on back end work to realize how easy the fix to the problem was. It took nearly scaring off a helpful connection for me to go “huh, there’s definitely a less intimidating way to talk about this type of music” and now I’ve found it. Am I an idiot? Possibly. But now I’m an idiot with a really smart assistant and data analyst, so who’s really winning tough guy.