I started Simuze because the tools musicians use don't fit the way musicians work.
Streaming pays fractions of cents. Booking happens in DMs nobody can find later. Everything good about being in a band, the people, the venues, the friends-of-friends who get you on a bill, runs on relationships that aren't visible anywhere. The platforms that did surface them got bought and shut down, or pivoted into something nobody asked for.
So the list of things I want from a music platform is short. I want a place I can find shows in my city. I want a place a band can keep their tour dates without paying a tax to four different services. I want to know who's playing where, who's looking for support, who runs the venue, and how to reach them. None of that is exotic. It just doesn't exist in one place.
Simuze is my attempt at that one place. It's a network of artists, labels, venues, cities, countries, all linked. You can follow a city the same way you follow an artist. You can publish your music and own the link. You can see what's happening this Friday in Rotterdam without an algorithm guessing at it.
Will it work? I don't know. The Open Media Foundation tried something similar in the early 2010s and ran out of runway. But the ground has shifted. People are tired of being the product. Bands are tired of paying for tools that don't fit. The audience for something honest is larger now than it was then.
I'm building this in the open, one piece at a time. It's a work in progress. There are pages that don't load yet, features that are sketched but not finished. If you're here, you're early.
Love,
Marten
