Stop posting, start releasing: The 2025 Creative Playbook
In December, an artist on Metalabel sold out an entire collection of NYC garbage — literal trash from the streets of NYC packaged in glass cubes for $100 each — in under an hour. No viral TikTok. No paid ads. Just by following a different way of releasing creative work.
The internet wants you to post. Post faster, post more, post everything you're thinking. Like a toddler demanding snacks, the feed is never satisfied. When all we do is post, there is no satisfaction. The feed is anti-satisfaction. The feed is perpetual hunger and anxiety for more.
But there's another way: RELEASE.
The differences between releasing and posting are subtle but significant.
The numbers back up the power of releasing. In their Metalabel release, NYC Garbage:
Generated nearly 200 waitlist signups from a single free release
Sold out their full collection in under 60 minutes
Built direct relationships with collectors instead of getting anonymous likes
Maintained full control over the story and pricing of their work
This is a model I also use for my creative work. Last year:
I released an essay as a limited edition zip file to express the gravity of the work in my eyes
The piece generated more than $1,000 from collectors in a week
More than a hundred collectors wrote long responses that were incredibly meaningful
The essay continues to have a strong online shelf life almost a year later
At least some of this response was because of how I chose to release the essay. How you as a creator treat your work shapes how your audience does too.
The 2025 Creative Playbook
This is a playbook you can follow too. The steps aren’t complicated:
Establish your creative home. Create a space where people can directly support your work. You can build your own site, use a paid service like Squarespace, or join Metalabel for free with built-in features for splits and treasury management. Start your free Metalabel page here.
Select what you want to release. Digital? Physical? An event? An idea? All of the above? A release can be whatever you want it to be.
Present with context and story. A post is pixels thin, but a release is as deep as you make it. Tell the story of the work the way you see it.
Set up automatic splits. Before the release, decide how funds will flow. Are you splitting with collaborators? Saving some in a treasury for future projects? On Metalabel, this happens automatically.
Offer to collectors. Free, fixed price, or pay what you want — each collector shares their email and starts a direct relationship with you.
Drive strategic attention. Use social media to point to your release, but remember: platforms deprioritize posts with external links. Your collector relationships become your most valuable promotional channel.
Build your community. Thank collectors, encourage them to share their experience, and involve them in your creative journey. Each supporter makes you less dependent on the feed and more empowered to release again.
This is what NYC Garbage put into action:
Made a Metalabel page to catalogue their work
Announced a new season of their decade-old project
Posted their free waitlist drop on Instagram (getting almost 200 of their followers to signup and establish a direct relationship)
Dropped the release to the waitlist first (leading to the quick sellout)
Shared the sellout story on social to drive FOMO for future releases
Built community by having collectors share photos and stories
A simple series of actions, none difficult on their own, but that together unlock real value for creators and collectors. Not by fighting algorithms or chasing likes. By doing something truly meaningful: building connections with people who value your work.
This new path is what Metalabel exists to build. What our squad is dedicated to helping creative people do even more successfully in 2025. Want to be part of this story together? Get started releasing with Metalabel right now. (Literally. Right now!)
ANONYMOUS CREATIVE FUTURES REPORT
This Friday is the deadline to share your perspective on the state of the creative landscape in 2025. Your opinions will be featured in a new Metalabel release debuting later this month.
FEATURED RELEASES
Ruby Justice Thelot, A Few Essays on Taste
Designer, artist, and cyberethnographer Ruby Justice Thelot is prolific not only in his opinions on the implications of being-on-line, but also in the tools he uses to explore them. His latest project is a perfect example of the power of the release. Ruby has taken a series of essays written over the past year on the subject of taste and compiled them into a beautiful, limited edition book. A member of the Dark Forest Collective and an influential voice on our own thinking, we’re always first in line when Ruby has something new to share. (We’re especially here for the indie sleaze slander.)
Bana Mutibwa, Essays of a Revolutionary MC
Musician and revolutionary activist Bana Mutibwa’s new album weaves storytelling, declarations of resilience, and celebrations of resistance throughout the turmoil of Uganda’s tumultuous transitions of political power. This bass-heavy Luga Flow sparks energy for change and sounds best with headphones on at full blast.
Collect Essays of a Revolutionary MC
Murakit, E-Angels
Muri Pixel is a nostalgic exploration of 8-bit aesthetics, drawing inspiration from early internet culture and video games. Their first release on Metalabel brings 8-bit off the page with a kawaii inspired fanzine complete with a viewing score to match.
Quality Time, WET BOOK
As devoted bath-readers ourselves, we can only imagine the origins of this incredibly unusual project which promises “the world’s first book designed specifically for bath time.” Its laminated, spiral-bound pages include a collage of scientific facts, old Playboy spreads, and page clippings from the legendary early 2000s Abercrombie & Fitch catalogue penned by philosopher Slavoj Žižek. Bath, anyone?
Extreme Animals, Should I Delete My Channel?
The wild visions of Extreme Animals — the part music, part video art duo of Jacob Ciocci and David Wightman — return to Metalabel, this time in a new analog format: the VHS tape. Fresh off last year’s Music Television DVD release of their polyphonous work, the NYC-based artists are back with another mind-bending release. Safe in its archaic VHS confines, this release is DRM-free, not susceptible to DMCA takedowns, and yours to own and cherish forever (unless your VCR accidentally eats it). Support physical media!
Collect Should I Delete My Channel?
Yancey Strickler, Bentoism
In 2019, I published my first book, This Could Be Our Future: A Manifesto for a More Generous World, which explored the consequences of a world overtaken by a belief in financial maximization as the one value to rule them all. My answer to this challenge was the idea of Bentoism: a wider view of rational self-interest that includes not just Now Me, but Future Me, Now Us, and Future Us too. Over the following years, thousands of people from around the world came together to explore these ideas and ways of being. This archival release documents some of the basics behind the Bento and gives newcomers a starter kit to explore.
Thinking of our friends in Los Angeles
A final note that’s painfully inadequate for the awful circumstances. Like everyone, we’ve been focused on the fires in LA this past week, checking in on friends, family, squadmates, and members of our community in Los Angeles. The devastation to so many lives is unimaginable and carries a sense of unease and pain we can’t shake.
See this list of places where you can help.
Love to all our friends in LA,
Metalabel
shooting from the hip here but I wish there was more of a culture to show of your collections without it feeling like carguy bragging. make it the point of the evening to pull everything out and have people be able to spend time w/ things in the collection, “open studio”ish
Lowkey obsessed with the “release vs. post” distinction, but also... Gen Z thrives on moments, not just drops. A sold-out garbage cube is cool, but the real flex is cultural impact. Posting isn’t just feeding the algo—it’s how movements, aesthetics, and discourse actually spread. If you’re not in the right niche, dropping without momentum is just shouting into the void.