^28/6/26 To the artist who believes music can heal, unite, and spark change: your choice to step away from US Big Tech is powerful. By sharing your songs, stories, and show dates through the Fediverse, you are not just posting updates, you are building a Sovereign Creative Space where your voice belongs to you and your community, not to an algorithm or a corporation.

Every time you post a new lyric on Mastodon, share a rehearsal clip on Pixelfed, or announce a local session via ActivityPub, you are proving that art can thrive without surveillance, without data mining, and without the pressure to go viral at the cost of your values. You are part of a growing movement of creators who prioritize authentic connection over reach, and ownership over exposure.

Your path forward, inspired by Simon Oak:

1. Claim Your Handle: Secure your identity on a community-run server (e.g., `@yourname@musician.social` if you are US-based (and as such subject to the US Cloud Act), or a local instance, like mastodon.ie, as Simon Oak is using). This is your permanent stage.
2. Share Your Movement: Post your gig dates, workshop locations, and new releases directly to your followers. No middleman decides who sees it.
3. Connect Deeply: Reply to comments, boost fellow independent artists, and use hashtags like `#Folkmusic` or `#Livemusic` to find your tribe.
4. Own Your Archive: Use your personal website as your home base, federating content out to the Fediverse, ensuring you never lose your work if a platform changes its rules (see below how to).

The road less traveled is often the most meaningful. By choosing independence, you ensure that your music remains a force for good, controlled by the hands that create it.

Keep playing, keep sharing, and keep making the world a little brighter, on your own terms!

Steps for artists who have their own WordPress website

For artists like Simon Oak who already own a WordPress website, connecting to the Fediverse is a straightforward technical process that transforms the site itself into a social profile. This eliminates the need for a separate Mastodon account while keeping full ownership of the content.

Here are the specific steps to federate a WordPress site:

1. Install the ActivityPub Plugin
   The core engine for this connection is the official ActivityPub plugin (developed by Matthias Pfefferle and now supported by Automattic).
   * Log in to your WordPress dashboard (`/wp-admin`).
   * Navigate to Plugins > Add New.
   * Search for ActivityPub.
   * Click Install Now and then Activate.

2. Configure Your Profile
   Once activated, the plugin automatically creates a federated identity for your site.
   * Go to Settings > ActivityPub.
   * Enable Profiles: You can choose to enable a Blog Profile (where the whole site is one user, e.g., @simonoak.nl@simonoak.nl) and/or Author Profiles (where individual writers have their own handles, e.g., @simon@simonoak.nl). For a solo artist, enabling the Blog Profile is usually sufficient.
   * Customize Appearance: In the Profile tab, you can set a specific avatar, header image, and biography that will be visible to followers on Mastodon/Pixelfed. This ensures your brand looks professional outside your website.

3. Verify Technical Requirements
   For the federation to work smoothly, two technical conditions must be met:
   * Permalinks: Ensure your permalinks are set to something other than “Plain” (go to Settings > Permalinks and simply click Save Changes to refresh the rules).
   * Author Pages: If you use Author Profiles, ensure your theme or SEO plugin (like Yoast or Rank Math) is not redirecting or disabling the author archive pages. The plugin needs these URLs to be accessible to verify your identity to the Fediverse.

4. Publish and Connect
   * Write a Post: Create a new post (e.g., an event announcement or new song). The plugin automatically formats this for the Fediverse.
   * Follow Yourself: To test the connection, go to your Mastodon account, search for your website’s handle (e.g., @simonoak.nl@simonoak.nl), and hit Follow. Your new posts will now appear directly in your followers’ timelines. Even better: ask your friends to follow you and verify if they see your posts.
   * Interact: Comments made by Mastodon users on their end will appear as comments on your WordPress site, creating a two-way conversation without leaving your platform.

By following these steps, artists turn their existing website into a Big Tech-independent hub, exactly as Simon Oak has done, where the website is the social network.