Words by W.B.T.G. Slinger

Introducing our latest feature, the KGLW.net forum!

More on that in a moment, after a brief recap following the last update.

Songfish Recap

The response to our re-launch on Songfish has been amazing. With all the new features, it has been the first glimpse into the long term goals and user experience of the site. With 1000 users registered since, it seems you all are enjoying it as much as we are.

A welcome is in order to those who have also joined the site team in this period, you have been crucial help in both setlisting and the development of the forum!

The Songfish update arrived just in time for the '23 Residency tour (this page is brought to you by another new feature, the inclusion of specific tours as stat filters), which has been the perfect way to test the functionality of updating setlists while they are being played live on stage, and to service what we discovered is surprisingly high demand for this instant information. Reddit has been the primary source of this connection with site users, where we host a discussion thread to not only crowd-source information for the setlist, but to join in on the communal part of following the tour digitally.
This brings me back to the main topic of this post.

KGLW.net Forum

Implementing a forum has always been on the wish list for the site — and just like the last update, it has come up faster than we expected. Being just that bit less ephemeral than most forms of social media, forums are very important to the culture of internet music discussion and posting on one begs more effort and quality than we have come to accept from more modern discussion spaces.

But with technical and legal requirements, it seemed out of reach until the rest of KGLW.net as a project grew big enough.

The King Gizzard subreddit has always been a core hub of King Gizzard fandom; so when much of the site voluntarily went dark on June 12th, 2023 to protest a set of anti-user API changes, the impact was strongly felt. This coincided with the subreddit reaching 100,000 subscribers, and two of the Chicago shows during the Residency tour, for which we had to miss the setlist threads. We began to forge ahead with the forum (up until it actually happened, we had been notified that r/KGATLW was not going to participate in the protest), and with the implementation of Discourse, and new team members, it all came together quite smoothly and naturally.

The future of Reddit remains uncertain. The King Gizzard subreddit remains active, but it is difficult to say what long-term effects this will have on the Reddit userbase as a whole. In addition, there is a not-insignificant proportion of King Gizzard fans who prefer not to use Reddit or social media anyway (shoutout to everyone doing it old school patiently waiting for a dedicated service on Phish.net, Phantasy Tour, and even Steve Hoffman music forums and many others).

This all makes for a good time to establish a new King Gizzard discussion platform, made, hosted, and moderated advertisement free, by and for King Gizzard fans. So, we are very pleased to welcome everyone to come join the discussion happening right here at KGLW.net!

You may notice it has been running privately for a little while, this was done in order to keep the launch as smooth as possible and mitigate potential technical issues due to a large influx of new users. Please be assured it is tested to satisfaction, but if you do have any issues or queries, please reach out in the feedback thread, at [email protected], or our social media accounts.

The next King Gizzard tour kicks off in less than a month! As ever, we'll be right here in anticipation :)