What we want in 2025

New year, new dreams

We’re showing up to 2025 fired up. The year feels like the start of a new decade. New energy. New excitement. Sorry haters — this is going to be a bad year for you.

Our ambitions this year are significant. We’re going to aggressively pursue bold and useful ideas for supporting creative people, bringing every skill and capacity we have at our collective fingertips to together make a new creative era for us all.

What has us so fired up? Let us count the reasons. All 28 of them, to be exact.

What we want in 2025

1. Creative people to feel less alone in their work (including us)

2. To see a show that sends us floating in the clouds for days

3. To buy a work of art that makes us feel complete, even if for a moment

4. Small groups of people using releases to build worlds and tell stories over time

5. The return of the zine as a serious medium for self-expression and culturejamming algorithmic monotony

6. Digital work being seen as legitimate as physical work, a creative anti-materialism

7. Groups of people forming their own micro-institutions like Do Not Research

8. Creative collectives building treasuries from shared work, like early punk scenes but with better tools

9. More people publishing bold and original ideas like Aksioma

10. More Dark Forest-style releases where 10+ creators come together to make something bigger than them on their own

11. Collaborators to meet each other on Metalabel

12. Creative people helping each other grow through shared resources like the Creative Independent's "On Finding Your Voice"

13. Artists conjugating work across formats — books becoming films becoming music becoming art becoming fashion

14. Release schedules replacing posting schedules — more intention, less content

15. For Josh Citerella, whose 2024 was off the charts, to continue his meteoric rise

16. To be carefree, prolific, and community-grounded like Train Songz

17. More artists bridging the digital-physical divide like Spencer Chang’s Field Companions and Molly Soda’s mollystuff

18. Creative people building real equity in their work and being able to share it

19. Independent creative groups having the same financial capabilities as small businesses

20. Structures that empower and protect artists and creators like never before

21. Elle Griffin’s “federated collective of independent writers” vision coming to life and writers build wealth together 

22. More projects connecting physical and digital realms like L00bi's ENDLESSITY

23. More artists exploring what a "release" can be, like SAMARITUAL's “Ceremonies in the Multiverse”

24. More creative people pursuing the satisfaction of building something meaningful with others instead of metrics

25. To channel our overwhelming gratitude for all the people, ideas, and support that have gotten us to this point, wherever it is we are

26. To build and support a creative community of others brought together for the right reasons

27. For Metalabel itself to grow, and for this project to reach its collective potential for us all

28. To say thank you, to each and every one of you, for being here with us on this journey so far

What are you dreaming about for the coming year? We’re creating the first-annual Creative Futures Anonymous survey to centralize our hopes, dreams, and fears as creative people for 2025 and guide the way to a new era. Contribute here:

Peace and love y’all,
Metalabel