Studio B: The road so far…

My digital artefact is a community-based platform where musicians and songwriters could connect with each other and work together on musical compositions and projects. I developed this project because I wanted to create a welcoming community for those new to the industry and wanted help. I had seen other similar online communities, but had noticed that they were either very small/inactive groups, or massive/over-saturated groups.

Based on my research on aspiring songwriters, I decided to make a Discord server called Studio B as I believed that it would be a familiar platform for my audience. The server included several text and voice channels and a DJ bot that plays music in the voice channel. I thought this would be useful to aspiring songwriters as it meant users can listen to music together, discuss projects, and collaborate/contribute to each user’s progress.

I decided I would develop this project by researching other Discord servers to gain an understanding of what is expected and the different add-ons that can be included to make the server more interesting. I would then continue to develop the server by observing my audience and add features that would appeal to users.

The first main change after creating the server itself was installed a free Discord mod called ‘BetterDiscord’ which allowed me to change the aesthetic of the server. Around the same time, I adding the Rhythm music bot. The bot provided a use for the server outside of being a community and was an inexpensive addition to the server. The bot never ended up being used by the server’s members, but it did show on the server list, which made it appear that there were more people online which helped with taking screenshots for instagram and twitter.

After a while of not gaining more members, I decided to create an Instagram account to advertise the server in hopes of gaining new members. I utilised some free online tools such as canva and buffer to create and schedule the posts. The account gained a total of 4 followers and 12 likes. The attempt was unsuccessful for the most part as the server gained no new followers. Trying to create the posts was a difficult task as I didn’t have any new content to talk about as the server had little-to-no interactions taking place.

Seeing the lack of engagement on the server, and after a failed attempt at an online open mic, I decided to change the direction of the project entirely and began creating content on TikTok. The discord server was abandoned, but after the first week of posting I gained 10 new followers on top of my existing followers that I had from doing TikTok as a hobby at the start of Covid-19 lockdowns. The videos gained 140-180 views each and one user provided positive feedback saying “neat” with a fun emoji.

This project had so many road bumps that caused the server’s progress to slow each time. Overall, while the original purpose of the server may have been a useful social tool, discord may not have been the appropriate platform as it cannot be used to create content. I have come to the conclusion that Discord requires content, or a content creator, for a community to develop.