#Sorry about the spotify link - I downloaded the song so i could post it directly to tumblr and tumblr was like “do you have permission”

[candyriku]

So, my upcoming angst-riddled doomed Soriku fic is heavily inspired by the themes and lyrics of My Chemical Romance's first two albums, however, this song probably most perfectly encapsulates the general vibe I have in mind for it. Lines like 'I will see you in the next life' are just. Chef's kiss.

It's a bummer that the official release removed the verse that I personally love (you can find the piano demo on YouTube, 'beautiful angel, pulled apart at birth' is a great line - especially for MY purposes - but alas). I still decided to post this version over the OKNOTOK version because I love the harp and choir, very much adds to my Guardian Angel AU

[rushingheadlong]

This isn’t exactly Queen-related, but since this is my “bandom” blog y’all are getting this post over here instead of on my main so. sorry about that I guess lol.

I mentioned this a little bit in my post about the sale Tim Staffell is having on his bandcamp right now, but I also want to talk about this in it’s own right too: Music artists, especially independent creators, earn hardly any money from streaming services and it’s important to actually buy their products to support them!

I know there are other posts going around talking about the problems with Spotify’s payment model right now, but a) I can’t find them to reblog at the moment and b) I think it’s easy to get confused when you look at “average amount paid per stream” because that’s not actually how streaming sites pay out their artists at all.

Rolling Stone did a breakdown in August 2020 of what Spotify most likely pays out to artists, based on the available revenue information. If you don’t want to read the whole article, the long and short of it is that:

The conservative estimate for the number of artists on Spotify is 3 million - of which only about 43,000 artists account for the top 90% of streams on the site. 

Spotify doesn’t technically pay artists per stream. All the revenue that it distributes to artists each month is pooled together, and artists are paid out from that pool based on popularity of individual tracks. 

As this separate Rolling Stones article explains, if five hit new songs by one artist pull in 2% of all the streams in December, that artist (and everyone with rights to those five songs) gets 2% from that pool of money. But that means that if you listen to nothing but small, independent artists the money Spotify makes from you is going first and foremost to top-name artists and not the people you actually listen to.

Here’s a breakdown from that first article that makes this a little clearer: The top 43,000 artists make about $22,000 per artist per quarter. Everyone else (over 98% of all artists on Spotify) averages $36 per artist per quarter, or roughly $12 per artist per month.

You can also see that in breakdowns of what artists with high stream numbers actually make. Just over 1 million streams earned one group just under $5,000 across three months. Although to be clear, this is not a problem with only Spotify and buying digital copies of albums from places like iTunes and Amazon also doesn’t result in high profits for artists - usually netting them less than $1 per album, or about 9 cents per track downloaded. 

Here’s the thing, though: If you buy directly from the artist themselves that percentage of profits goes way up. 

That should be obvious, but it’s easy to rail against how unfair Spotify and other streaming sites are and lose sight of the fact that there is a very clear way to support independent and/or less popular artists and it’s by simply buying their stuff without using a middleman!

Not to keep talking about Tim Staffell but that’s exactly what we’re going to do for a moment here: He sells his music and limited merch through Bandcamp which takes 15% of each sale of digital downloads and 10% of each sale of merchandise. 

His albums are priced a little more expensive than a $9.99 iTunes purchase, but you can buy digital copies of his entire discography for £24 and he’ll make about £20.40 on each sale. If you buy a physical copy of one of his albums for £20, he makes £18. Hell, even if you buy a CD during his 50% sale he’ll still take home about £9 from it and that is still a significantly higher profit than what either streaming sites or iTunes pay out. 

This article talks more about how much more money artists earn selling through Bandcamp than they do through streaming sites. One example given is a band who made $4,200 releasing a new album on the site, vs maybe making $100 a year in streaming. 

From a broader ethical standpoint, that same article talks about some of the charity donations that Bandcamp makes from their revenue and the fact that since the COVID-19 pandemic started Bandcamp has launched “Bandcamp Days” where they waive their percentage from each sale entirely so all profits go directly to the artists. (There’s also the fact that Bandcamp simply pays out artists faster than streaming sites do, so they aren’t waiting for their money to be released.)

It’s also worth noting that Bandcamp requires artists to set a minimum amount, but you can also choose to pay more if you want so if you have some extra cash to burn you can, in fact, give it directly to that small indie artist whose music you fell in love with if you so choose!

And the thing is, it can be really easy to look at a group and see that they have their music on iTunes or Amazon or whatever and just buy from there out of habit, but I guarantee that if you look at their website they’ll also have a link to their Bandcamp page - but you do have to go looking for it!

If you follow my main blog, a few weeks ago I was waffling over whether I wanted to buy merch from The Longest Johns (yes, you’re getting a real glimpse into my musical tastes today). I spent well over an hour looking through their store and I was so tempted by the vinyl copy of their newest album. And I’m still tempted by it but y’all, I live in the US and conversion from £ to $ plus international shipping is not always the kindest so I didn’t buy it. And I will never judge anyone for not having the money to pay for international shipping to support independent artists.

But here’s the thing: The Longest Johns also have a Bandcamp page, which I never went looking for because I’ll admit that I found their music to stream and I just did that and never looked further into it. But now that I know that I can buy digital copies of their albums for £10, of which 90% of that is going directly to them, I am definitely going to be doing that instead.

I get that not everyone has the money to do this, and I fully understand that streaming sites are sometimes the only way that people can listen to the music that they love. If you don’t have the money to spend on something, then of course that’s fine!

But if you do have the money, considering spending it to directly support an independent artist!

Look, Queen is a multi-million dollar enterprise. It’s one thing to advocate for supporting new album releases, like Live Around the World, because that can influence future projects that they might release - but at the end of the day, I genuinely don’t care if you illegally download their music or stream it or anything else. (Seriously, I don’t care if you stream Queen, because the issues with Spotify’s payment structure don’t matter to them when they’re that rich already and there needs to be a massive overhaul* across all streaming platforms anyway in order for smaller artists to make a reasonable profit off streaming sites.)

But if you have an independent artist that you love - be in Tim Staffell or The Longest Johns or Omnia or anyone else - how you engage with their music does matter a lot more. And if you’re financially able to do so, look into buying their music or their merch from them directly, either through Bandcamp or whatever other storefronts they may use. They’ll get a much larger share of the profits if you do that than any amount of time you could spend streaming them on Spotify.

*If you want to do something to start forcing changes with how streaming sites pay out artists, the Union of Musicians and Allied Workers has a list of demands for Spotify specifically which includes paying at least one cent per stream, adopting user-centric pay models, revealing existing payola and then ending it altogether, and crediting all labor in recordings, among other things. You can sign on to support them and read more information HERE and there’s a tumblr post you can reblog HERE as well.

[uwunnie]

Updates (December 17, 6:30 PM US Mountain Time)

There’s a lot to unpack, so let’s get into it.

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Voting:

Seoul Music Awards

Android link

Apple link

3 votes daily

Voting ends January 22, 2020

Global Disk Awards

App link

3 daily votes & 2 additional votes if you share the link (there’s full instructions on the link)

Voting ends December 27, 2019

Global Golden Hands (fan-video for Wonho)

Stream the video

There’s also a poll on their YouTube channel page, I think, but I can’t pull it up from my app right now.

Voting ends December 20, 2019

HoneyPop Artist of the Year

Vote here

Twitter: #VoteTHPMonstaX

Voting ends December 20, 2019 - 11:59 PM EST

Idol Champ (Best Song)

Download app

I think you get 30 votes per day

This ends today, but I’m pretty sure there’s always new categories to vote in.

Streaming:

Middle of the Night

Follow and Someone’s Someone on Spotify (Spotify Awards)

Follow performance (MAMA 2019)

Forever & Never Die (MAMA 2019)

MX Moments (MAMA 2019)

⚠️ Remember to not skip ads nor put the videos on the mute. Do not replay otherwise the algorithm thinks you’re a bot. Watch the entire video - especially the mv - without pausing or skipping. Don’t play Spotify songs on loop, and listen to at least 30 seconds otherwise it won’t count. ⚠️

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Twotuckgom videos:

I made a playlist of all the recent ttg videos. Please stream them! Minhyuk has mentioned that he wishes there were more views so that they could gain more publicity, so let’s stream them for him and all of OT7!

Playlist here.

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Concerts:

Japanese MBB did the OT7 fan chant at MX’s most recent show in Japan.

At one of the recent shows, MBBs holding Wonho slogans and signs were encouraged by the boys to raise them higher.

If I’m correct, I believe Jooheon actually had a ment where he encouraged MBB to raise their signs up. He mentioned that the signs were very beautiful and that he wanted to see them and asked MBB to raise them up one more time. He didn’t specify exactly which signs, but it’s pretty easy to assume he was referring to the Wonho ones because of him mentioning he noticed MBB were hesitant to hold them up and MBB tweeting from that show explained how the ones holding Wonho signs were afraid of holding them up because they didn’t know if they could.

@joohoneybunch created an OT7 fan chant for their final jingle performance and I believe mbb used it

I think that may be it for concerts.

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Appearances:

Going back a bit, Monsta X won two awards at MAMA 2019.

Fast-forwarding to more recent events, the active members went to the US for Jingle Ball and it wasn’t too chaotic.

Changkyun said Monsta Truck is about a truck for Monbebe that he wants us all to get on..sure, yeah, def.

When prompted to answer what MBB have taught MX, Minhyuk said ‘love,’ Hyungwon said ‘live,’ and Shownu said ‘dougie.’

They appeared on Ryan & Kelley.

Their B96 interviews are up!

Here’s a Spotify link, but I think there’s videos up on YouTube as well - especially their performances.

VLives were done.

Jooheon had fallen ill prior to coming to the US, but he’s since returned and informed everyone at the last US concert that he’s okay. In addition, at one of the recent shows, he said how MBB have been his strength for getting through his mental and physical sickness.

Back in SK, ISAC commenced and it was...chaotic good?

MX was two hours late - I presume because they had just flown in from America and went directly to ISAC.

MBBs attending ISAC fell asleep while waiting and one of the managers told them to wake up because it was “time to support.” 🥺

MBB said the food provided didn’t taste good.

Minhyuk told MBB to go home and rest.

MX only participated in the categories they had to - I think they were hoping to get banned tbh.

Despite their semi-obvious efforts to lose, MX ended up going to finals.

In addition, despite their efforts to lose and the fact that they had absolutely zero practice beforehand, arrived late, and just came back from the US with probably less than four hours of sleep - they won second place overall.

Hyungwon wore this shirt:

Kihyun basically dyed his hair blue after MBB talked about it on fc.

They’re aware of everything we’ve adopted and bought for them.

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SBS/KBS:

The top two major news angencies played OT7 footage when talking about MX. This is very unusual, but a good sign because usually when an idol is terminated and/or no longer respected, they get blurred from footage or cropped out, but there was actually a Wonho focus throughout most of the broadcasts’ durations.

This could hint that the general public no longer views him negatively.

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In addition to new merch for the active members, from my understanding, Twotuckgom has also restocked old Bebegom products, and continues putting a small BBG in the comics.

They also had one comic in particular that showcased one of the goms as a magician who is looking for the ‘rabbit in its hat.’ When it looks inside it’s hat, there’s another gom dresser as a bunny lifting weights with a little BBG hidden in the background. I don’t know about you, but to me that sounds like they’re finding Bebegom like we’re finding Wonho.

TTG’s Twitter also retweeted a rendition that a MBB made of the goms involved in the The Ugly Duckling (I think?) fairytale. Basically, Bebegom leaves because it doesn’t feel like it belongs and the other goms search everywhere until they find each other again.

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There are projects going on, but I’m not going to post about any until I research them. There’s certain groups I do not support because their intentions are ill, but they hide behind a sort of..veil. When I get time to properly look into everything, I’ll make a post.

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Searches have been cleared for the most part, but please continue a little bit more since some bad things still pop up when searching certain members.

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Interesting things are happening with the 🐍🐍, but I’m not going to talk about it publicly. Maybe at some point I’ll release a post, but not until more info emerges.

In the meantime, please refrain from leaving negative comments on either of their social profiles. Don’t make posts, either - even if you think your profile is small enough that no one will see. Trust me, eyes are everywhere and a negative post on an account with so much as 0 followers will still pop up and travel like one for someone with 1000 followers.

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I think this pretty much sums up what’s been happening as of late. Sorry for being slow - all of this occurred during finals, so I didn’t really have a lot of time to make long posts. Now that I’m on break for a month, I’ll catch up with the recaps and go back to the steady updates.

Continue with your efforts and try to ignore the hypocrites who continue spewing toxicity despite spreading positive mantras.

Honestly, Monbebes have accomplished a lot and made steps towards a positive change in both the industry and the world. In addition, at the end of the day, our goal isn’t to please other fandoms, but win justice for Wonho and other artists who have been wronged, as well as prevent the wrongdoings from incoming and current trainees.

Be proud of being part of the “sticky-note fandom” because regardless of other people’s opinions, we’re not only inspiring and demanding change, but succeeding in doing so.