I take your point about responsive staff, it's true though. There have been plenty of suggestions from users here on steem but does seem to be slow to respond. I just put it down to "it's complicated tech" but can't help but feel there's a bit more at play.

There's definitely more at play.

I put my name in for the beta to see what's going on but not heard anything. Just all seems like "could be something big" is all that's needed to build hype and hopes via word of mouth.

https://voice.com/

The whole cross posting thing is another philosophy I can't get my head around. Sure, you want to get your content spread far and wide but cross posting the same content from your website to steem then to whaleshares then to Trybe, narrative, voice... Is that what these new competitor platforms want to have happen - "post your steem articles here as well"? It just seems like they are trying hard to separate themselves but still need to be tied in to steem. Baffling.

I think cross-posting is more user-led than platform-led. Most would rather see original content, but if you are too busy for original content, an easy way to start is with content you've already created. You're a musician. If you want to promote your music to new audiences, are you going to write original music for every platform? What music artist does that? They write enough new songs to record new albums then promote that album by putting on shows, concerts, etc., moving from town to town performing the same act over and over again for different audiences. Same concept. Would you want to do that all the time? Probably not, but it's a good way to get old material in front of a new audience, then you can hit them with "exclusives" and original content.

For testing the platform, I recommend using the least painful approach possible. If it's cross-posting, fine. If not, try something else. You're just looking to see if your audience is there. And, by the way, Independent Music is the No. 1 niche on Narrative.

For me, it's just so time consuming to write posts for Steemit then promote them on Discord. On Narrative, and other platforms, the social is baked into the platform. It takes less time to be interactive. This is one of the downsides to Steemit for me.