Updates
Explore & Grow #3 - Thinking About Social Media When I Should Be Thinking About Christmas
Hey friends! Hope you’re having a good day so far, wherever you are.
Since the last update, I’ve watched most of the Christmas movies I wanted to watch (Bad Santa, Home Alone, Elf, Christmas Vacation, and Die Hard), installed a new GPU in my gaming PC (an open box RTX 2060 that I got from Best Buy for $250), and spent a little too much time thinking about social media.
I wrote a couple of pages about social media and after some internal debate, I’ve decided to share it in this update, just because I wanted these updates to include the real shit I’m living in real time. I love writing polished articles too, but there’s something about just dumping thoughts on a page and doing minimal editing that has always appealed to me. So here you go.
Thoughts on Social Media
Right now, I’m struggling with feeling motivated to spend any energy on personal social media. The core of why I’m not motivated is that I’m not convinced the value generated is worth the time and energy invested. There’s a lot to unpack there but I’ll save that for another time.
The key questions I’m thinking about are:
Q: How do I best use these platforms to reach people and drive attention to things I think are worthy of attention?
A: TBD
Q: How do I reach people and get their attention off of the digital platforms? (What are real life methods for connecting with people and building community and fandoms, in other words.)
A: TBD
Q. What should I be spending time on instead of social media?
A: TBD
Q: What are the outcomes I want to get from social media?
A: Connect with interesting, inspiring people who are doing cool work. Get more work opportunities (playing drums, building companies, traveling, teaching, working on podcasts, helping bands, producing video).
Q: What turns me off about social media?
A: The focus on creating mindless entertainment for views / engagement. I’m not a fan of algorithmic feeds (that’s ok! Don’t use them). The focus of the companies on getting people addicted to using their platform with dopamine hits, date mining, surveillance capitalism, and profiting off of controversial content / ragebait.
Q: How do I want to use these platforms, and what are some rules I should follow?
A: Create stuff that meaningful to me to share with other people. Tell compelling stories. Sharing things I create. Highlight stuff I think is great. Create meaningful videos. Learn in public.
Q: How much time should I be spending on social media every week?
If I treat it as a necessary part of my job, how much time and attention am I willing to invest?
Let’s say 5 hours a week. What does that look like in practice? • 3 hours producing content • 1 hour posting / updating • 1 hour replying
Something I need to remember: I don’t have to keep coming up with new content every time I need to post something. You can stretch out the content calendar by reposting stuff older than 6 months.
Q: What kind of content resonates with me? What do I want to make and share?
I think this is the core question. A lack of clarity on the answer to this question makes everything so much harder to execute on. If I get clear on what I want to make, how I’m going to make it, and how long it’s going to take, the actual execution will be much less tiring or frustrating.
A: Tutorials—What’s something you do that you are familiar now, but used to be hard? Write a How-To guide. Make a video explaining it. Expect to spend 4-8 hours for an evergreen video that you can repost every 6 months.
A: Live performances—Mix a show, sync to drum cam. Pull 5-10 short clips of the best parts of songs. Add captions, do coloring. Expect to spend 4 hours for 2 months of content.
A: Practice videos—Make a playlist of songs you like to play along with. Record into a Logic Project with the song and a short section of your drums. Mix and sync audio to video in Final Cut. Batch this once a week. Do 5-10 songs. Expect to spend 4-8 hours for 2 months of content.
A: Great photography—As you take photos, group the best ones into collections. Write a short story to go with each.
Recap
Writing this out has helped me get some clarity on the topic of social media. Since I do think it’s one of the tools I need to use and master to progress my career and grow an audience for my band (and people I’m working with), it’s worth treating as a skill to develop and something I do for work, even when I’m not in the mood. But I also want to be careful to avoid falling into the time consuming traps that are presented by these platforms—endless feeds and mindless entertainment.
That’s all for this week. I hope you have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Aaron Dowd
Sunday, December 21, 2025
Fort Worth, TX
Explore & Grow #2 - It's Almost Christmas Again
What’s up friends! Another exciting week here in Fort Worth, Texas.
Ok it’s actually been pretty chill. But that’s great cause I’ve had time to think and reflect on everything that’s been going on, and what I want to do next. Clarity! Underrated in these fast times. I’ll spare you the boring details, but I will recommend taking time to reflect if you’re feeling a little bit overwhelmed with everything you got going on.
What I’m Reading & Watching This Week, or RECOMMENDATIONS:
🔗 Jesse Cannon Drops Epic 4 Hour Video on How to Build a Fanbase
A free full course on the step by step way you grow a music fanbase to millions of fans.
If you’re not familiar with Jesse Cannon’s work, this is a good video to start. It’s so good. So, so good. I’m almost done with a first watch, and I plan to rewatch it several times to let all the good advice soak in.
I started following Jesse back in 2012 or 2013 after I came across his book “Get More Fans” (which is still one of the greatest collections of good ideas and tips for musicians I’ve ever seen). In fact I wrote him a long email back then, pitching him on the idea of starting a podcast (pretty cringy now that I’m re-reading it 😂). Of course podcasting was already on his radar, but he was kind enough to humor me and even grab lunch with me in Brooklyn the first time I visited NYC in 2018.
Anyways, Jesse is a gem and one of the smartest guys out there sharing what he’s learned about music production and marketing. You’d be an idiot to not watch this video at least once. And you should probably watch it twice, take notes, and sign up for his newsletter.
🔗 AI Enshittification Continues
You ever sign up for a service and then immediately hit a road block because of a poorly implemented AI system? Ugggghhhh.
That happened to me last week when I tried to upload a song to Musixmatch (a service that is supposed to help you get time-synced lyrics to show up in the social media apps when someone uses the song in a video or story).
We’ve reviewed the issue you described and can confirm that what you encountered appears to be a random error within the AI sync feature. This can sometimes happen due to the way the AI processes certain audio files.
What the fuck, bro? Fix your shitty AI app.
It’s best for everyone that I stick to this rule.
Ok that’s all I have time for this week. Thanks for reading and have a great weekend/week,
Aaron Dowd
Saturday, December 13, 2025
Fort Worth, TX
Explore & Grow #1 - Weekly Update
Hey friends! Hope you’ve been well.
I’ve been staying busy with video editing and managing behind-the-scenes band work, but I wanted to write a quick update for you. I’ve got a new goal to do one of these updates every week. This one is just gonna be a blog post, but I aim to start making vlog updates too (cause I like them and miss doing them). So you know you can always check back and get updates, and I can spend less time on social media platforms (more on that in a minute).
1 . What Do We Call This Thing?
I’ve been struggling with a name/title for my work for awhile. What do I call this? What do I call my YouTube channel? I used to be “The Podcast Dude”, but I’ve been mostly working with tech startups and my band for the past 8 years or so, so that name doesn’t really fit anymore…
How do you find a title for everything you’re doing when you’re playing drums and helping manage and grow a band but also helping people make video podcasts, but also doing photography and writing and design and more? Seems impossible. Or maybe I’m overthinking again.
I was listening to one of my favorite writers (Ben Thompson, Stratechery) on the drive home from picking up band merch in Denton this week, and he was talking about what Americans used to do well, better than anyone else, back when we were working on sending rockets to the moon and other big projects like that — explore & grow.
Explore & Grow.
That was perfect, I thought. It encapsulates my ethos and overall goals for my life better than anything I’ve heard before, so I’m gonna steal it and use it.
I’ve always loved exploring and growing, so this is an invitation to you to join me in the journey (if it sounds like a good time). We’re gonna explore the world. We’re gonna explore music and what it means to be someone who creates music and art in 2025 and beyond. We’re gonna study and learn and grow from the experiences and stories and books and lessons that other people share.
Explore & Grow. I like it. Let’s roll with it.
2 . Changing Focus - Less “Social Media”, More Long-Form Writing & Video
We’re overstimulated by screens, social media, constant notifications, the 24-hour news cycle, doomscrolling—this just floods our brains with cortisol, which is adrenaline, and then it perpetuates anxious thinking. — Sleep Dreams - Wired Magazine, Jan 2026
Social media doesn’t feel social anymore. It doesn’t feel like platforms like Instagram and TikTok are optimizing for connecting people. Seems like they were designed (or redesigned) to keep everyone scrolling and watching short form videos and ads. I don’t feel good about it anymore, and it’s a black hole that sucks time & attention. If it was just stuff from the people I choose to follow, that would be fine, but all the apps are constantly trying to put shit I don’t want to watch in front of me.
I do like keeping up with friends, and writing and making videos and sharing updates with you all, so my plan is to share an update once a week via an email newsletter and my website, and post a video version to YouTube as well.
My goal is to stay off of the social media platforms as much as possible the rest of the time. They just take more of my time and attention than I’d like and it feels like doing free work for those corporations.
I’d rather spend my energy intentionally, writing and filming and sharing something substantial once a week instead of giving away fragments of my time and attention multiple times every day.
Wish me luck. :)
3 . Recommendations (What’s Good?)
Stuff I’ve been enjoying lately.
Watch - Bugonia (Movie)
Two conspiracy obsessed young men kidnap the high-powered CEO of a major company, convinced that she is an alien intent on destroying planet Earth.
Strong contender for best movie I’ve seen this year. Must watch. After this and Poor Things, director Yorgos Lanthimos has shot to the top of my list of favorite filmmakers.
Watch - Pluribus (TV)
From the guy who brought you Breaking Bad, this one is a little hard to describe. It’s science fiction, but not really what you’d expect. My favorite thing about it is the questions it asks about what it means to be an individual that is also part of a larger collective, and if the decisions we make in the pursuit of happiness actually lead to the best outcomes for ourselves and others.
There’s also a ton of dark comedy and moments that had me howling with laughter. The pacing feels uneven at times, but overall I’ve enjoyed and think it’s worth watching for the philosophical questions at least.
Listen - “Head is Like a Sinking Stone” - Tigers Jaw
I’ve been a Tigers Jaw fan since 2009 (I think?) or so, when I saw a recommendation from Eric Solomon on Twitter. I love all their albums, but my favorite to date was their collaboration with Will Yip for their 2017 album “Spin”. If you’ve been following me for awhile, you know I hype up Will Yip every chance I get.
If you’ve been living under a rock or are new to this genre of music:
William Yip is a Grammy nominated American record producer, audio engineer, songwriter and musician. Yip is an owner of Studio 4 Recording in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania. Yip is also the owner of Memory Music, an independent record label that he launched in June 2015, that features projects worked on at Studio 4.
Yip’s partial discography includes producing, engineering, mixing, and mastering recordings for artists such as Lauryn Hill, Panic! at the Disco, Circa Survive, Code Orange, Anthony Green, Blacklisted, Title Fight, Turnstile, The Wonder Years, The Disco Biscuits, King Sunny Adé, The Fray, Keane, Balance and Composure, Superheaven, mewithoutYou, and Movements.
If I remember correctly, I first became aware of Will’s work when I heard Balance & Composure’s 2013 album “The Things We Think We’re Missing”. It was so perfectly recorded, mixed and mastered, and sounded absolutely incredible. Ear candy. The perfect drug. Etc.
I’ve heard a lot of great records in my years, but that one was a standout, so I had to find out who was involved with making it. And that’s how I found out about Will Yip and his work. I’ve been a huge fan ever since. Every time I hear that a band I like is working with him, I shout “YES” and jump in the air and do a fist pump in celebration. He’s that good.
That new Turnstile record? Yeah, that was him. (The band rules too, obviously, but he just has a way of elevating every band that comes into his studio to record.)
Anyways, back to Tigers Jaw — when I saw that they had a new single out and listened, I knew right away that they were working with Will again. And that makes me incredibly fucking happy.
So yeah, go listen to that new Tigers Jaw song, and presave the album.
Ok that’s it for this week, be good to each other and I’ll see y’all next time.
Aaron Dowd
Sunday, December 7, 2025
Fort Worth, TX