What's that thing ?

HzMycelium is a tool meant for the musicians of the underground and independent scene !!! Originally it was built for the french underground rap scene, but if you're reading this in english I guess the scope went further than I imagined lol.

The goal is to generate a website with all of your releases : a front page with the artist's presentation, and one page per release/album/single...

It works without any generative AI, with only a Python script to download. It will gather the files and infos from the folders that you organised on your PC. Then the only thing left is hosting your website !

The complete process is explained in the documentation, with all the steps necessary to use the tool, from downloading the script to uploading you site online !

But what for ?

Right, why would we bother to create and host a website is our music is already on Spotify ?

Even if the new generations of artists in this scene are more and more politically aware and active, they still use by default the big platforms like Spotify, Deezer, Apple Music, Instagram, Tiktok, Youtube...

It's a bit contradictory : these plateforms and social medias ran by BigTech corporations are REALLY problematic (maybe later I'll throw in a list of all the reasons why, but it'd be too long). I think it's a shame to post our songs and communicate on these platforms without taking a step back and think about what it implies (don't panic, it's normal, there are so much problems everywhere that it might not be the absolute priority).
HzM is not going to compete with these platforms (let's be honest), I'm just trying to remind us, artists and listeners, that we are very dependent of them of course, but not binded, enchained to them.
Publishing/distributing our music, and offer a distinctive listening experience is also part of the artistic process.

On top of that, we often forget that the visual presentation of a release is also part of the experience, and of all the visual identity of the project.
On the platforms, the interface doesn't leave any space to the artist's visual universe, except from the small cover !
On the web, we can go wild and offer listening experiences that would be impossible elsewhere. That's why HzM has a lot of customisation options, and allows the artists to choose images that will be displayed during a song plays, so that the listener can be that much more immersed in the music !

And for everyone interested by the indie web, it's right in the POSSE (Publish on your Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere) territory that this tool allows you to take place. It means get back to a web outside of the huge social medias and platforms, in order to have our very own space, completely autonomous and apart from their control, their obligations, their algorithms...
There's a lot more to say on this matter but that would be way too long. Anyway, by searching around just a bit on the web you'll quickly find a lot of articles and blogs that talk about it way better than I do. It's really worth to look into it !
Long story short, having a website is DOPE !! Look at Death Grips, H Jeunecrack, or many other sites like this one or this one.

« What we need is not to form a continent, but to create an archipelago of resistance isles. Édouard Glissant [...] was also writing about the rhizome : « The unique root is the one that kills around itself, while the rhizome is the root that extends towards other roots. »
We need this rhizome, this archipelago. We need islets, organised and united by a common strategy and a common goal. Yet this belonging to a group, either we call it a social class, the human race or the living world, this collective interest has been brutally revived again by the universal concern to preserve life on Earth. This will only be possible with a vision both systemic and "archipelic" of the fights to wage. It is this double principle that should, nowadays, guide each and every reasonable political reflexion. »

Future features ? (roadmap)

Features that are planned, or that I wish to implement in the future. Feel free to contact me if you have any other idea, or even better if you want to help me realise them !

▒ add more fonts the be chosen from (like a monospace, kind of code font). Any other ideas ?

▒ marquee scrolling for the song titles in the bottom player

▒ on Spore, being able to add videos to the ThreeJS canvas (with videotexture ?)

▒ move the progression bar of the playing songs by dragging, not just clicking

▒ a « News » section on the front page to display the new infos/releases. I'll have to think about the aspect it would take, like a blog with every post appearing on a chronological order, or just an insert that changes regularly ?

Tools used 

▒ AmplitudeJS and their super useful documentation for all the audio side

▒ ThreeJS and their 3D canvas example (a bit revamped and fused with OrbitControls) : the images cloud on Spore

▒ ASCII drawing of the roots : MoebiusXBIN, with the font newschool_font_hf from the newschool group

The ressources, examples and links to the librairies and forums I used are also sometimes credited in comments within the HTML, CSS, JS, and Python files.

Fonts used 

▒ Wondertype by Clémence Fontaine

▒ Inter Semibold by Rasmus Andersson

▒ GNF by Nyt Rock

▒ La Machine Company by Woodcutter

▒ MBA Slice Mono by Maksym Baluiev

▒ Necto by Marco Condello for the command blocks in the documentation

Thanks a lot 

- To Julien Bidoret for his immense help on all the technical side and his advice during the realisation of the project

- To Vincent Meyer and Jean-Paul Labro for their listening and advice, to Corentin Brûlé for his answers to technical questions

- To the people that publish tutorials, that write documentations, that ask and answer questions on forums, I couldn't have done anything without them

- To the art schools that allow us to work 6 months on a project like this with a full creative liberty, again I would never have finished this with a full time job on my hands