ProgBlog and Meta
- garethsprogblog
- 13 hours ago
- 6 min read
I deleted the ProgBlog Twitter profile, with a degree of reluctance, on the day Elon Musk bought the company. Though the character limit made posting about prog rock somewhat challenging, the community primarily concerned with prog was welcoming and mostly well-behaved and facilitated my introduction to a wider range of music, most notably Wobbler and the 1993 progressivo italiano album Nymphae by Lethe, via the band’s keyboard player Lorenzo Gervasi, which ultimately resulted in my acquisition of the entire Wobbler discography on vinyl and my attendance at a press conference in Arese, Italy earlier this year where Lethe talked about their new album Il cavaliere inesistente and Alphataurus discussed 2084: Viaggio nel nulla, both albums having been released at the tail end of last year. At the time I left Twitter I had around 2000 followers including a number of well-known musicians and I did wonder about signing up to Bluesky but I’m not convinced I need a microblogging platform, even one that encourages the creation of communities.
While the former shrewd investor set about ruining his newly acquired social media toy, slashing the number of staff and embracing former hate-merchants who had been banned under the previous ownership, tech royalty began to line up to show obeisance to Donald Trump who was threatening old adversaries with the settling of scores as soon as he’d been re-elected President. I started to investigate the feasibility of abandoning Meta-owned platforms in January this year, having become disturbed by Mark Zuckerberg’s sudden doe-eyed admiration for the bully about to become the 47th President of the USA and his willingness to abandon checks on the increasing level of hateful and deliberate misinformation allowed on Facebook.
ProgBlog’s Instagram profile is close to insignificant (166 followers) and though the photo and limited text format is a handy medium for posting about record stores, gigs and prog trivia, the platform has become flooded with adverts, unwanted suggestions (“anne.onimuss has just posted a reel you may like”) and so beset with glitches as it tries to catch up with whatever TikTok has just introduced that I find posting more trouble than it’s worth. On the other hand, ProgBlog’s Facebook profile is relatively successful, with some posts reaching an audience of well over 700; it’s some way from influencer level and will never help me upgrade my lifestyle to a cushy non-job but I believe it’s a valid source of promotion for musicians and the genre as it surely must figure in the reasoning behind my inclusion in the Indie Bible.
I already had some alternatives to Meta in place. I create a short gif of the playlist on the ProgBlog site front page and post Vimeo videos of the playlist on specific year pages; Vimeo allows a fairly lengthy description of the video, though I’m not sure how many users access this feature. I’ve had a ProgBlog channel on YouTube for a long time, so I’ve begun to post the playlist on there and I intend to add other material to the channel.
After some searching, the community structure of Reddit seemed quite worthy so I signed up to the subreddits r/Prog (8.6k members), r/progrockmusic (69.9k), r/CanterburyScene (1.1k), r/RockProgressivo (a site devoted to Italian prog with 112 users) and a couple of architecture groups, r/brutalism and r/ModernistArchitecture, these last two communities potentially accommodating a large number of my personal Instagram posts. The format for posting material varies between the subreddits: r/Prog, r/CanterburyScene and r/RockProgressivo allow photos and videos to be uploaded but r/progrockmusic does not, though it will allow the insertion of links to YouTube videos to single songs. I’ve noticed the moderation on r/progrockmusic is quite strict and I’ve inadvertently broken the subreddit rules three times in less than three months, each resulting in the removal of a post: for straying off topic with a link to the ProgBlog guide to Milan blog; for reasons unspecified with a link to a blog about the cover art of Genesis’ Trespass; and another unspecified transgression, either a breach of the guidelines on an ‘off topic’ subject, politics, for a post about the US prog in my collection which I’d introduced with a joke about upsetting JD Vance for not being thankful enough for American prog or the post title ‘Happy With What You Have To Be Happy With’ not clearly indicating the actual content, which is against the rules. I’ve only just seen a post from the moderators to all members of the subreddit that they’ve noticed a sudden increase in posts falling under the guise of self-promotion so they’re going to restrict self-promoting posts to one per user per month; meanwhile the issue is being monitored.
A possible audience of 70,000 was one of the reasons I joined r/progrockmusic, because I’d like my writing to be seen by as many people as possible. The total number of visitors to the ProgBlog website between its inception and an enforced change of web host (2014 – 2021) was over 2 million, though the traffic during the first year was rather sluggish. The Guardian used to run a variety of courses for its readership under the title of ‘Masterclasses’ which were held in the newspaper’s offices at Kings Place in London and lasted a single evening. I attended one, in an attempt to broaden the reach of my blogging, under the title of How to write a successful blog, in 2015. There were 100 delegates with a spectrum of abilities from those with little understanding of blogging to those who were interested in more efficiently monetising their efforts, with me somewhere in the middle; I learned enough to open a Twitter account and hits on the ProgBlog site increased rapidly when I started to include links to blogs in my tweets. Since being taken over by Yell, I haven’t looked at the analytics of the website but I can see how many times individual blogs have been read in their entirety; for some reason The instruments of Prog: the Mellotron and the mini-Moog, originally posted in 2014 has been read 391 times since 2021, but it might get highlighted in online searches for a 2019 book by Gerard Brassols, ‘The Musical Instruments Of Progressive Rock from the 1960s to the present’. I continue to refuse to monetise ProgBlog.
I find the YouTube links on r/progrockmusic posts pretty meaningless, but if it helps other users find new music to listen to it can’t be a bad thing and having just seen a post New Prog from Yorkshire, England linked to a live in the studio video, I've just ordered an LP and a CD (the vinyl had sold out) from Yorkshire's Plank.
Posts are tagged with ‘flairs’ which help to better identify topics, the first time I’d come across such a thing on social media, and enables the moderators to produce league tables of the most successful posts indicated by the number of ‘upvotes’. This is a feature I dislike because posting discussion points or even YouTube videos isn’t a competition and the flairs ‘vocals’ and ‘instrumentals’ are just inane. ‘Downvotes’ are also featured though from what I’ve seen these are rarely used; I’ve been given at least two downvotes.
I’ve used my time on the platform to research the influence of streaming services on listening habits of subscribers, posing the question Prog on vinyl or CD: How often do you go into a physical music store? and the discussion point Spotify does not help any prog artist. The combined number of views for those two posts was 12,700 and each post generated 31 comments. The consensus appeared to be that Spotify was not at all helpful to prog musicians but most users rarely stepped inside a record store. Based on the responses, I concluded that although Reddit has a worldwide reach, the commentary on progressive rock appeared to be dominated by users from the US.
A post with the title Feeling defeated as a prog musician in 2025 (flaired with ‘discussion’) was more promising and elicited some interesting insights, some related to my Spotify post concerning the difficulty of getting new prog to a wider audience. These responses were thoughtful and attempted to be helpful, offering support and analysis, with a few comments coming close to the way I think about the current state of prog. One suggested that Reddit wasn’t a good forum for promoting prog and cited r/progrockmusic’s aversion to self-promotion, so I may not be buying any more music inspired by announcements of new releases!
It appears to me that the community within r/Prog seems much better informed than r/progrockmusic and the moderation more sensible but I’d like to encourage readers to look into the different prog groups on the platform as a way of weaning themselves off Facebook and Instagram, not for the single YouTube tracks or posts with no text other than the title, but as a valid medium to discuss the issues impacting on prog rock, with a reach greater than the circulation of Prog magazine. It's good to see Wobbler guitarist Marius Halleland has a presence on the r/progrockmusic subreddit, as input from (and feedback to) successful musicians increases the validity of the site. I’d also love to see an injection of interest in the r/RockProgressivo group, which desperately needs a large boost in membership and I’m currently waiting for the r/recordstores subreddit with its 31 members to review my membership request.
The countdown has started and I've just got to make a few adjustments before I become Meta free. Isn't it time to shake off your Meta addiction with some grown-up discussion?
