Mermaid's Tavern Sessions go Zoom-Only in October 2020

 October marks eight months of Mermaid's Tavern programming, six months of DIY Digital coaching and research, and 45 livestream events. Facebook has also launched new livestreaming policies and a new look with changes that impact livestream hosts and audiences.

Digital Heritage Consulting has taken a deep dive into our core mission, live production numbers, platform policies, and level of effort. It is clear that our session audience overwhelmingly prefers the interactive experience on Zoom. For security reasons, Zoom links will continue to be mailing list only, with a same day email option for first-time listeners.

Our much smaller Facebook audience is made up almost entirely of casual listeners from the mailing list who enjoy multitasking, and the occasional singer who wants to replay and learn a song from a prior session.  We can meet both these goals without risk of noncompliance with Facebook livestream policies. We will refocus on using Facebook events to advertise the Zoom sessions.

If you would like to be a casual session listener, join us on Zoom and turn off your camera if you'll be away from your screen. There's no pressure to lead a song, but if you'd like to, just type SINGER into the chat or speak with the host if you cannot use chat.

For song swaps, we will continue to track and publish the  rosters, which are linked on www.mermaidstavern.com (see screenshot). Rather than visiting the livestream for replay, you can check the roster for the name of the singer and the song, send me a request, and I will put you directly in touch with your source singer. This avoids any copyright concerns and is more in keeping with folksong transmission. 

Since we will not offer a replay option, we will no longer be recording sessions, also for copyright reasons. We have no plans to publish or release session recordings, and will be removing them from Facebook over the course of the next few weeks to avoid compliance risk.

We are focusing our video editing on Crosscurrents Music, and will provide recordings (raw only) to houseconcert artists at their request. Lynn's own recording, writing, and publishing has taken a back seat to knee replacement, and it's time this fall to bring some more focus back to Crosscurrents projects like the Gulf of Saint Lawrence CD. 

If you can't make a session, come next week! Or take in more of the firehose of great live music that's out there. We are rebalancing producing, coaching, and practicing digital heritage as we continue to build and sustain our small corner of this amazing international community in song.