[From The Legion] - Stats For Nerds/Why Music Groups Matter - And A Bunch of Musolegion Content!
For those unaware and, because apparently I’m sadomasochistic, I am also involved with the wonderful heavy/alternative/but also anything really music community Musolegion, as an admin. It’s a fantastic team, a wonderful, respectful and collaborative community. A community that saw me through the worlds’ most locked-down city during the thick of the pandemic, then into Whatever The Fuck Post-Lockdown Life Is.
Of late, I’ve been really, really struggling to keep up with content in general - both here, and Musolegion. Something that feels particularly lacking is our periodical check-ins with this great music tribe, and I’m here to rectify that today.
Before we proceed proper, I just want to acknowledge the recent uptick in content-creation and effort from the admins involved in getting a HEAP of community feedback/their own original content together. Amazing work, team!
Now it’s time for giving back, so without further ado, here’s the latest missive from our international Legion.
Peace, Love and Not-The-Fallout-Legion Legion xoxo - Brady.
FIRST - ADDRESSING SOMETHING IMPORTANT:
Broken record on this one. God. Damn.
But it’s very important, and bears repeating for my sake, the team’s sake, the community’s sake and your sake.
I will, in fact, be continuing more analyses of this nature as part of our overarching review, analysis and critique of how algorithmic changes by private social media enterprises have affected our capacity to be together with our bonded interests and passions. It’s been the subject of a few early podcast episodes and articles here, and will continue to be something I’ll speak to as a matter of topical importance ongoing.
A challenge in the current times is how forgettable/invisible FB groups are in the Feed. As mentioned in previous posts, this is deliberate. I mean, when you’ve got multiple widespread human rights disasters and domestic terrorism associated with the insularity and reach of groups on your platform, as an entity who ultimately don’t give a shit about user-experience but feel obliged to provide this aspect I can see why they were shunted in the algorithm.
The blog, Discord server and other avenues (subreddit - yes we have one!; Youtube Channel, etc) were borne from this frustration with how the widely-lambasted algorithmic tweaks affected our own and Legionnaire’s feed visibility and presence. I won’t dare fucking day we have Meta to ‘thank’ for those initiatives, as they largely represent the admin/community desires to expand ML beyond one constrained platform.
Mr. Zucc - you’ll never read this, but if you take umbrage on anything said here, feel free to @ me. Oh, and two not-legally-binding-words… Schmohingya Schmassacre.
NUMBERS FOR NERDS:
Dyscalculia and fear of maths notwithstanding, another broken-record comment from myself:
For someone who hates maths so much that he waited until age 28 to pick up tabletop RPG’s, for instance, I find my love of interpreting statistics hilariously ironic. It is what it is, and a Psychology undergrad/hons degree will drill that into you (or it won’t).
More importantly, whilst The (Numbers) Game is something largely avoided as a focal point of either ISC or ML - in both instances, it does provide a nice overview and feedback loop to everyone involved - community and staff. Whilst we’re here on both sites and our various incarnations primarily to spread the stoke, build and foster community and support the scene, it’s always nice to take a moment to reflect on progress and the like together. Stuff like that.
There you go, I made numbers sentimental. I’ll take any offers for a PR rep job, thanks.
Facebook Group (LINK):
a) Engagement - Comments and Posts/My Interpretation:
From a 60-day comparison and according to site analytics, we had a total of 627 posts and comments - a 150% increase on February 2025! Of these, 213 were original posts, which indicates one-third of all activity is folks dropping links, asking questions and the like.
Taking a macro view of online communities generally, I think this is a pretty solid ratio. If you think about certain subreddits, forums or groups you’re involved in where the comments ratio is much, much higher than the amount of total posts - that could be reflective of anything. Unfortunately, as a platform inherently geared to incite negative emotional reactions (no really, here’s some direct evidence), this may also be indicative of less-than-wholesome engagement.
Contrastingly, a heavy trend towards posts over comments likewise could be indicative of anything too, but in my experience tends to be in massive groups and/or groups where the type/nature of content posted is moderated in a lax fashion. Often these can amount to little more than repost/content-mills, something we’ve been mindful of avoiding both here and across the broader Musolegion online-iverse.
We don’t gatekeep too heavily; in fact, all we ask is for a little bit of context with any incoming posts. And, for those looking to promote their stuff in-house to a) not use the group as a rapid-fire means of dumping press stuff with no follow-up and instead, b) keeping with what the intention is - i.e. a group as a place for conversation, recommendations and socialising/mutual support amongst the music tribe.
Sadly and/or interestingly enough, this laissez-faire-enough standard feels like it may not be enforced in some larger communities, and the end result feels like a duplication of your main profile’s feed - sponsored-content style reposts.
Again, we don’t mind those, but a little effort goes a long way!
b) Views:
What blows is my mind is the total number of views, which is in direct opposition to aforementioned challenges I noted before, or perhaps in spite of them! Since Feb 2025, Musolegion’s Facebook group has seen over 11,000 total views - a 263% increase in this same time period.
If you think about the math for a second, and I mean only a second because further time will sap your soul if my brain’s to be believed - 263% increase out of 2K+-and-rising members, on a platform that’s really putting in a concerted effort to sweep groups under the rug for ads and reels, etc? That’s huge.
Ultimately, my point is this - in 2025, unless you’re playing a game of mile-wide/inch-deep spamming and promotion, it’s very difficult to build an organic community on Facebook in particular.
And I must reiterate the term organic, even if doing so makes me feel like a less problematic Pete Evans.
Why AM I Harping On About All This?
Easy question to ask, fairly involved question to answer.
Just a few of many key points about the Facebook experience in 2025, from a user standpoint (and in places, citing some sources!):
With the removal of Meta’s Disability, Equity and Inclusion team earlier this year, seemingly in a desperate bid to rebrand a company tanking profits with a very specific… demographic… cohesive and respectful Groups are now more important than ever.
Concerning a community like Musolegion (but certainly not limited to it as the only example) there’s a lot of evidence regarding the benefits of being able to access a hive of avid music-lovers.
For instance, Snell and Hodgett (2021) conducted an intensive ethnographic study, the findings of which demonstrate what we music-lovers already know, really. That is, concurrent with an increased sense of cohesive identity, a protective effect against marginalisation found in the wider community - e.g. as a result of gender, ethnicity, disability and/or other intersectional forms of ostracism and disadvantage.
Likewise, being involved with any form of music community - bands, groups, hangouts with mates at gigs, etc - has demonstrably and repeatedly been shown to foster increased theory of mind, empathy, cultural cohesion and even blood-serum levels of oxytocin, a.k.a. the bonding hormone.
The fact that Mark FZuckerberg decided to prevent another self-inflicted public-relations nightmare (and also recoup profits lost from members leaving - hence all the ads you see on your feed, now) by turning the volume down on group visibility and participation might seem trivial, to some.
In light of the algorithm-fenangling + research discussed above (and a lot more, which I’ll eventually get to in more thorough detail in a podcast episode), it’s a relief to see that our natural inclination towards gravitating towards one another over mutual creative interest hasn’t died with Facebook’s rapidly-declining Kids-These-Days demographic.
Okay. That’s enough wafflin’.
In addition to the increase in activity/participation, I’m glad to state that the official blog’s been absolutely going off lately too!
MUSOLEGION - BLOG:
Brendo’s Rankings - Bathory Edition
Progenitor of the group, lover of diverse metal styles and My Summer Car alike, increasingly-fluent-in-Finnish admin Brendo has been going to town on Bathory’s discography! Rather than rote-reviewing per-track, my man’s taken things in an interesting direction - ranking preferred tracks from most-to-least-favourite!
Have a peep at the collection (he’s done a few) and see how the rankings align with your thoughts around the following LP’s:
Great work! Now you’ve only got like, 10 or so more albums to go dude. Enjoy!
2. Classic Dudes Sammy and Ash Review Classic Death Metal Albums - Classic!
Sick of that word, yet? Hah, that’s just classic you.
Pit-Fiend Admin (Sammy) and The Most Inked Admin (Ash) have been going veritably bonkers producing more reviews for the Musolegion site, which is freaking awesome to see!
Rather than lean into the horrific, nightmarish mess of pressers for upcoming albums like your music-journo usual, Samash?/Ashmy? have leant into the tried-and-true. The two intrepid extreme-metal explorers have put on their pith helmets, plunging headlong into the labyrinthine jungles of the classic death metal era.
And to great effect, I might add!
Check out the lads’ most-recent scriptures to the church of OSDM here:
Sammy buys a vowel - this one’s Massacra’s Enjoy The Violence!
For me, I’m personally super, super proud and stoked to see the blog gaining momentum!
Looking forward to reading more o’ these, and as an admin myself can confirm there’s more on the horizon.
3. Musolegion Recommends: Moldova Edition
Musolegion Recommends is an ongoing collaborative series involving admins and members, where we explore and discuss a specific nation each week.
If past Music Mondays/FTL coverage of the Recommends series hasn’t already shown it (or, more likely, you’re new here), our focus at the moment is highlighting a mix of more well-known and obscure/smaller nations in the global heavy/alternative music scene.
Check out the discussion here, which of course also includes a whole ton of links to the artists mentioned!
Of those mentioned, my personal picks from those mentioned are: Walk Away (Brendo’s recommendation) - NYHC-meets-crossover; stoner rock/metal cruisers Bujola (Chris) and old-school death-thrashers Axident (Shane).
Thanks for the reccs, guys!
Aaaand that’s a wrap. Again, mum’s the word, but I can confirm this is far from the last you’ve seen of us (evil laughter) both as admins, and as passionate music-lovers keen to share and discover great new alternative/heavy music.
If that’s a shoe that fits, or you’d be at least willing to try it on - check out Musolegion’s links below.
Peace, Love and Online-Metalhead Band-Spamming Solidarity xoxo - Brady.