You're in the Atmosphere now — here's what to do with it

Hey folks —

If you signed up for Round 31, you have an Atmosphere account. Your signup is a record in a repository that belongs to you. Same for your submission when you turn one in, and your ballot when you vote.

The account works everywhere else on the network too, not just on eptss.at. So here's a short tour of the neighborhood.

None of this is required to play Round 31. Voting opens August 10 either way. This is the optional part.

Recommended First Step on Bluesky

Add the For You feed by @spacecowboy17.bsky.social. It's the most-subscribed custom feed on the network by a wide margin, and there's a companion site at foryou.club.

Bluesky's default Discover feed is generic. For You builds off your likes — it finds people who liked what you liked and shows you what else they're into. It takes about a week of liking things before it sharpens up, and then it gets very good. If you bounced off Bluesky once because the feed felt empty, this is usually the fix.

Worth understanding: feeds here are not chosen for you. Anyone can build one, you can subscribe to as many as you want, and you pin the ones you like to the top of your app. The algorithm is something you opt into.

Music feeds worth pinning

All active, all free — you just subscribe:

• Indie Music — @iplayitofflegit.bsky.social
• Music — @firesky.tv
• Original Music — @tremendodude.neocities.org, people posting their own work
• Music & Audio People — @ianshepherd.bsky.social, more the production and engineering side
• Music Challenges — @track.goodfeeds.co

Genre feeds exist for most things: Classical, Jazz, Ambient, Techno, Synthesizer Music, Trans Music, Blues, Japanese Music, BlackSky Music.

Semble, and why collections beat bookmarks

Semble is a bookmarking app where the bookmarks are Atmosphere records — so collections are public objects other people can follow and contribute to.

Three worth following:

• 🎵 ATmusic by @youronly.one — music projects being built on the Atmosphere, in one place
• ATProto Live Music by @tyler.fun — live music apps and writing
• ATmospheric Apps by @hilarybaumann.com — 115 cards of things built on the protocol that aren't Bluesky clients. The broad map, if you're curious what else is out here.

Other cool music apps

Expanding on that ATmusic collection, because some of these you'd actually use:

• plyr.fm — audio streaming, and where your Round 31 submission audio lives. Every cover you upload becomes a plyr.fm record owned by you.
• teal.fm — scrobbling. Last.fm, but your listening history is yours.
• rocksky.app — also scrobbling, further along
• openmusicevent.app — live music events

None of these needed my permission to read your EPTSS records, and none of them can take those records away from you.

Unrelated to music, but I also love rpg.actor. Login in with your Atmosphere account, create your character, play fun minigames and collect items of clothing for your character. Here I am, for example:

Come say hi

There's a group chat for folks in the round. Log in at eptss.at, open the Round 31 page, and the invite is there.

If you want to bring somebody, your profile page has a personal invite link good for ten people. EPTSS grows by invitation from its members.

Thanks for reading.