The Promo Bay, Reimagined
Update: 18th Feb, 2015:
Since the shutdown a few months ago, we’ve not heard anything from TPB headquarters, and haven’t been able to put anything on the home page. Sorry. ☹
August 15th, 2013:
We’d been throwing bands on the front page of TPB for a while now, from Finnish death metal in bear suits to Tweet-powered indie rock.
Promobay.org was the web app that let artists opt in, list their video and their torrents. We could easily choose what should get featured.
But then Tobias, The Pirate Bay’s spokesman quit, saying:
“I felt as if I had done my part. One thing I love about the Internet is the continuous flow from old to new. As The Pirate Bay got stuck, both technologically and by attitude, all I could do was to leave. ”
Looking at The Promo Bay in this light, it feels like whilst we‘re helping unsung artist get press and shining light on torrents as a legitimate form of artist promotion, yay, great, but that’s not enough.
12th September, 2013
People start to notice that promos aren’t being posted any more, Ernesto from Torrent Freak asked me to comment about The Pirate Bay stopping artist promos. The reply:
Heya man,
[…] The internet is a shifting canvas and I can’t mourn this breakdown anymore than I can mourn street art in an alley written over by a new piece. It’s our job to make the new piece better than the last.
I’d also like to broaden our focus from just music. I feel like music online is kinda old news. I wanna see writers, comedians, activists and everyone else all doing more of what they love, digitally. If we can help, great.
The Pirate Bay was up for it.
22nd October, 2013:
The promobay.org team chat about new functionality and focus. We add favouriting and expanded categories. We ask the Facebook page for help and settle on a new category list.
We’re talking seriously about open-sourcing the framework it’s built upon. We’re in talks with another Aussie startup that does in-swarm monitoring, for more complex measurement of our impact.
Today:
We relaunch promobay.org.
Squinting over the horizon, you can see pretty game-changing disruption around education, transport, charity and anything else in need of a solid kick in the arse.
We’re shifting how we work, play interact, speak, live and fall in love.
Hopefully, we can reveal some of the good stuff to a wider audience.
Thanks to everyone who’s helped. Get amongst it. :)
