#this is my rogan playlist that is entirely Taylor Swift

[me-4eva]

I’m going to vent about something for a sec.

I’ve seen a fair few posts on tumblr being all like “oh piracy and copyright infringement isn’t a big deal we should all totally be allowed to do it.” On one level, I get it. I grew up in the 2000s-2010s, I pirated my fair share of tv shows, especially when that tv show wasn’t yet out in my country and the best/only way to watch it WAS to pirate it. BUT.

I work as a musician. I’m a (very) small indie artist and I’m going to give you a glimpse behind the curtain of the industry. Music is especially bad for this but I’m not commenting on other creative industries. I occasionally release tracks that I’ve spent months working on. Each track I release costs me literally hundreds of pounds. That money goes towards paying musicians to play on the tracks, towards my producer who helps me put it together, to renting recording space when I need it. That does NOT include the big initial upfront costs that are investments towards future tracks - my DAW, my gear, my instruments and of course, the mountain of debt I accrued studying my entire life to learn how to do the things I can do.

I make this money working freelance at a part-time job, and ideally from gigs (though there haven’t been many around the last couple of years and even with the world opening back up I’m still not really getting paid gigs because all name recognition has dropped off after 2 years moving online.) It’s a sad reality but I don’t really make money from my music at the moment. So why do I release music online?

First of all: I want to. Every single song I’ve written means something to me and often comes with a message that I’m trying to share. I love my music, I love what I’ve written and so I want to share it with the world.

Secondly: It’s very helpful to my career. Being able to go to open mics and various other things and say “hey I’ve got music out on Spotify! Check me out my name’s XXX!” helps build up hype, name recognition, publicity etc. It helps me take that next step. And it’s this that I want to talk about.

You see, musicians are getting royally screwed over by Spotify and all the other streaming platforms. It’s no secret that they take the biggest share of the pie and are fighting not to even give us crumbs, despite the fact that Spotify has a long history of refusing to invest in artists (though they do invest in podcasts). Every now and again a big name will come along and say “hey I’m taking my music off Spotify because they don’t pay artists.” (Think Taylor Swift in… I want to say 2016?) Every time this happens (or indeed any artist takes their music off Spotify for any reason - see the whole Joe Rogan outrage) everyone gets super outraged at the artist, calling them greedy. But the truth is, the big names are the only ones with the power to do this. Us little artists can’t afford to do that, because the only person who suffers from me taking my music off Spotify is me. It has no impact on Spotify. Because to little artists, Spotify and the other streaming platforms are only a publicity tool. And the reason we keep putting our music on there is because they’re probably the best tool we have access to.

Getting music heard when you’re a nonentity is HARD. Especially when every single aspect of the industry is stacked against you. Social media, streaming platforms… they want to push the big names in front of people. It’s all a numbers game. The fewer listens you have, the less likely your music is going to get pushed in front of the people who matter. Playlist creators are more likely to put a big name song on a playlist than a tiny little artist like me. And this goes for every single aspect of the music industry. If you want to get booked for gigs (remember when I said that’s how musicians make money?) and someone hears you, likes you, then goes to your Spotify page or whatever and sees you only have like 20 monthly listeners? They ain’t gonna book you.

It happens at a higher level. Say someone gets signed on a record label. Only a very small percentage of artists signed actually get to the point where they release the album they were signed to release. Some get dropped immediately after that. The reason why is because the hype dies down. Those streaming numbers, those social media followers, that name recognition all has to keep going - and keep going UP - in order for the label to keep wanting to work with the artist. And here’s where the piracy issue comes in.

Pirated streams do not get counted.

You may think that by pirating music to avoid Spotify or Apple Music or any major streaming platform like the plague is somehow your own hardcore act of rebellion, standing up for artists etc. But the truth is you’re taking away not just the pennies we’d get from Spotify or whatever, but what is far more important at those early stages of our career. The music industry is and always has been a numbers game. A popularity contest. And it’s got to be public. Your pirated streams of the ESTABLISHED giants of the industry may have a negligible effect, but anyone new, upcoming, just broken onto the scene, even if they seem to be everywhere with a giant number 1 hit… stream their music. Because if people stop streaming them, following them, supporting them LEGALLY, then every aspect of their career will fall away, they may get dropped before they finish their album, and they become another one-hit-wonder.

So in short, when you think about pirating music, remember a few key things:

1) the track you’re pirating probably cost that artist hundreds, if not thousands of pounds/dollars to make. That’s in expenses that can only be applied to that track.

2) you’re also taking publicity away from artists. Like I say, EVERY aspect of the music is a numbers game. If you like someone’s music, just let them have your number.

3) if you want to be radical and screw over Spotify or whatever streaming service you want to screw over for not paying artists, consider either downloading that track so you can listen to it as many times as you like, (many artists will offer direct digital downloads of their music where the money goes straight to them), or shop around and find the streaming service that pays musicians best and get a subscription for that one. (Napster and Tidal are pretty good for that.)

Thank you for listening!

[lizziesxltzmxn-archive]

You Can ALWAYS Talk To Me

I’ve struggled with depression for about 3 years, not counting that time I was suicidal when I was SIX, and anxiety my entire life. I know it’s hard to talk people, and sometimes it’s just hard to listen. I would talk to my mom and end up so pissed off because I didn’t want her to rationalize or give me advice, I wanted someone to listen.

But I want you all to be able to talk to me! Even if you don’t want advice or anything. I know it can be hard to message people, even if they say you can because you get anxious that they don’t really mean it or you’ll be bothering them, so send me an anon! If you can’t bring yourself to do that either, but you’re feeling low, I suggest watching your favorite Kids Show from your child (I’m currently rewatching Big Time Rush). A John Mulaney special usually helps me as well, his jokes are usually quite clean and very easy to laugh along to (my other favorite comedians include Hasan Minhaj, Jack Whitehall, and Daniel Sloss). If you like cruder humor and sci-Fi (mainly time travel) then I suggest Future Man! It’s a Hulu original by Seth Rogan that stars Josh Hutcherson! I also tend to watch talk show monologues. Not any parts with the celebrities and interviewing, just the monlogs, my favorite are The Late Late Show with James Corden and The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, I do watch full episodes of John Oliver’s last week tonight but that can be really depressing.

If you feel like this sadness is something you need to ride out (you can’t hold it in anymore), put some chocolate milk in a wine glass (or actual wine if you’re over 21) and listen to your favorite angsty music.

My favorite’s include

The 1975

Coldplay

I Almost Do by Taylor Swift

All Too Well by Taylor Swift

Innocent by Taylor Swift (the one song that NEVER fails to make me cry)

Over Again by One Direction

Spaces by One Direction

If I Could Fly & Love You Goodbye by One Direction

Mirrors by Niall Horan

Seventeen by Alessia Cara

Be Alright by Justin Bieber

Down To Earth by Justin Bieber

Youth by Daughter

Touch by Daughter

Home by Daughter

Medicine by Daughter

Home by Daughter

If You Don’t Know by 5SOS

Iris by Goo Goo Dolls

Liability by Lorde

Elastic Heart by Sia

idontwanttobeyouanymore by Billie Eilish

When The Party’s Over by Billie Eilish

Alone by Halsey

Devil In Me by Halsey

Already Gone by Sleeping At Last

And I always listen to this playlist when I need to calm down.

[tatianasatizabal-blog]

Ending the Year With Good News.... Finally!

It’s officially December!

Congratulations on making it to the end of another year, and a tough one at that. Now that 2020 is coming to a close, the best part of the year has arrived.... Spotify Wrapped! Today, our fun stuff, pulls-on-your-heart-strings-but-makes-you-feel-warm-inside-stuff, and the good to know stuff will revolve around music. Get your headphones and your favourite low-fi studying playlist ready, here goes nothing! 

Every year, in December, Spotify allows users to rediscover and share the music and podcasts that formed their personal soundtrack throughout the year with the use of awesome and interactive visuals. While the creative design of Wrapped is always the highlight, here’s some good to know stuff about what actually goes into preparing Spotify Wrapped! Did you know Spotify collects data from every listener (in a totally non-creepy) way throughout the entire year? That’s what makes Wrapped possible. Spotify tracks how many minutes you’ve listened to Spotify, your top five artists and songs, if you’re a top listener for any artists, as well as your top genres and decades. Then, at the end of the year, using a database that held all of this information, a custom-generated Wrapped list is available to every user. Amazing right? According to spotify.com, these were the following top lists for 2020: 

Spotify 2020 Wrapped Global Top Lists:

Most Streamed Artists Globally

Bad Bunny

Drake

J Balvin

Juice WRLD

The Weeknd

Most Streamed Female Artists Globally

Billie Eilish

Taylor Swift

Ariana Grande

Dua Lipa

Halsey

Most Streamed Albums Globally

YHLQMDLG, Bad Bunny

After Hours, The Weeknd

Hollywood’s Bleeding, Post Malone

Fine Line, Harry Styles

Future Nostalgia, Dua Lipa

Most Streamed Songs Globally

“Blinding Lights” by The Weeknd

“Dance Monkey” by Tones And I

“The Box” by Roddy Ricch

“Roses – Imanbek Remix” by Imanbek and SAINt JHN

“Don’t Start Now” by Dua Lipa

Most Popular Podcasts Globally

The Joe Rogan Experience

TED Talks Daily

The Daily

The Michelle Obama Podcast

Call Her Daddy

Most Popular Podcast Genres Globally

Society & Culture

Comedy

Lifestyle & Health

Arts & Entertainment

Education

source: https://bit.ly/2VSKcm6

Next, let’s focus on some fun stuff. Notably, Billie Eilish topped Spotify’s “Most Streamed Female Artists Globally” list. The American singer-songwriter first gained attention in 2015 when she uploaded the song "Ocean Eyes" to SoundCloud. Clearly, she has a great track record with streaming platforms. This year, she beat some BIG names by ... a lot. Billie has 49,736,031 monthly listeners on the platform, and the number only keeps growing. Considering she’s only 18, I cannot wait what else is in store for such a talented person. 

Finally, on some pulls-on-your-heart-strings-but-makes-you-feel-warm-inside-stuff, I wanted to reflect on the significance of yet another year coming to a close. For some, a new year means new resolutions, new challenges and adventures to take on, but for myself, a new year means another year I’ve survived. New Year’s 2015 going into 2016 was the last one I was able to celebrate with my father. He passed less than a month later. And every new year since then, I can’t help but feel like I am entering the year with a new found sense of bravery, and knowledge. New year’s signify to me that while one year is coming to a close, a new beginning is on the horizon (in a totally not cliché way). But, let’s face it, this year sucked. We survived a global pandemic, a historic presidential election, and numerous other things. 2021 can be the redeeming year, if we make it so. Ultimately, the world is in our hands and this year has proven the lasting effect of human selfishness and greed has on it. We lost countless lives that could have been prevented. Next year, I hope to do my part, tenfold, and encourage everyone around me to do the same. I want every year after this one to be the ultimate contrast. Let’s never have another 2020 again. 

And let’s not forget how many good things are still to come. 2021 is a world of possibilities, an empty journal waiting for us to fill it with memories and laughter. It will also be the year I become an aunt to both my nephew and my soon-to-be niece! Surprise!!!! My brother and sister-in-law are expecting again, and IT’S A GIRL. Knowing I’ll have not one but TWO small human beings that share my blood is the ultimate explosive ending 2020 could’ve had. It’s a signal of all the beautiful things 2021 has in store, and I cannot wait. 

I hope you are having a beautiful, magical and triumphant day.

-Tati

[foursprout-blog]

A Few Songs That Helped Me Get Through 2017

New Post has been published on http://foursprout.com/happiness/a-few-songs-that-helped-me-get-through-2017/

A Few Songs That Helped Me Get Through 2017

Chrissy Stockton

Every year I keep an auditory scrapbook by dragging the song I listened to the most (or that meant the most to be) that month into it’s own playlist. At the end of the year I have a soundtrack for the year. Years later (this is the 11th year I’ve done this) I can go through an old annual playlist and know exactly what I was doing and feeling each month because of how visceral the memory of loving and relating to music is. Here are few songs that helped me get through 2017:

January — ‘Lost in my Mind’ by The Head and the Heart

I’d gone to this concert a few months earlier with an old friend and had one of the best nights of that year dancing and being affectionate and the way you feel when you’re around someone who knows you and loves you and makes you feel like the best version of yourself. I don’t see her often so it was novel for me to remember feeling like this. This month we also started working on the Thought Catalog magazine in which I had an essay about when I lived with this friend on a mountain as part of an intentional community of students with no wifi and wood burning stoves in all our cabins. The Head and the Heart was the perfect kind of music for me to romanticize the life I had there and the people I loved and who loved me and how lonely I feel for a community like that sometimes.

This month I was also obsessed with this Phillip Roth quote and thinking about how I could live my life like this:

“I read till all hours if I want to. If I get up at five and I can’t sleep and I want to work, I go out and I go to work. So I work, I’m on call. I’m like a doctor and it’s an emergency. And I’m the emergency.” — Phillip Roth, Into the Clear

I don’t know if I’ve made that much progress over the year of figuring out how to be in more of a community again, or how to orient my life so that it feels like “I’m the emergency”. I don’t know how to do that on a big, real, permanent scale. I made a secret facebook group for my writer friends to do peaks and valleys every week or so, which has been really, really good. I went to Montana on another trip that was meant to be more about being with people than it was about being on vacation. I’m trying to do more.

February — ‘I Don’t Wanna Live Forever’ by Zayn and Taylor Swift

I went on a yoga retreat way up north with a friend and we had fun driving up there but then on the way home we kind of had to drive in silence for about 45 minutes before we could finally turn the radio on because every sensory experience felt like overload after 4 days of being without a phone or listening to music or doing anything but yoga and reading quietly. We’re both Taylor Swift fans and I love the moment of a good pop song where you hear it everywhere you go and it just makes you happy. It was a really good memory to be silly and sing along to this song with someone after being so serious for so long.

March — ‘In Your Atmosphere’ by John Mayer

I watched John’s live concert Where the Light is like 40 times this month, particularly him performing this song. I was thinking about how I need to be more hopeful than nostalgic.

In the song, John says:

“Wherever I go, whatever I do, I wonder where I am in my relationship to you. Wherever you go, wherever you are, I watch your life play out in pictures from afar.”

I was thinking about how much I hate that I have to be on Facebook. I hate how much people can look me up and read about me even though I also think that for me personally being transparent about my life is one of the healthiest things I do on a consistent basis, and something that helps me learn and grow faster than if I weren’t doing it. And Facebook is so important, it’s so much free information. I want to be a commercially successful writer and every day when I am on Facebook I am getting a free education in what makes people want to read or look at something.

April — ‘Love on the Weekend’ by John Mayer

I spent this entire month thinking about a vacation I took the north shore of Lake Superior the previous winter and how magical it was and every night I was there I took a bath and opened the window so I could hear the waves crashing while I was cozy in the tub.

This was a really difficult month because I was dealing with a lot of personal stuff and this song helped me escape and think about the simple, good times I’ve had in the past and will have again in the future.

May — ‘I Love You Always Forever’ by Betty Who

I discovered Betty Who because she sings on one of my favorite Troye Sivan tracks and I think all I did in May is space out and listen to this on repeat.

June — ‘Higher’ by Carly Rae Jepsen

I think the only people in the world who aren’t Carly Rae Jepsen fans are the people who haven’t heard the first 45 seconds of ‘Higher’. I listened to Emotion Side B on repeat all month and particularly one day when my cousin and I were going to a beach in Wisconsin which involves an incredibly idyllic drive through the river valley and around some cliffs before you get to this little beach town on the St. Croix. It was such a peaceful and happy day and I think I was feeling really happy and hopeful all month.

July — ‘Lust for Life’ by Lana Del Rey and The Weeknd

I went to see Ryan Adams in a neighboring city and didn’t plan it out very well so I ended up getting a ride home from a friend who didn’t even go with me and we ended up driving around for a really long time listening to music and talking. It was a very July Forever kind of night and we listened to this song but it was also just in the same howl-at-the-moon kind of vibe.

August — ‘All I Really Want’ by Alanis Morissette

The only things I did in August were work and walk around the lake by my house and listen to Joe Rogan and My Favorite Murder. But I liked this song I rediscovered, especially the remastered version. It’s a very bossy demand for reciprocity and it made me feel very in control of everything around me as I spent an entire month against a deadline for a 25k word project I wanted to have done by September.

September — ‘Free/Into the Mystic’ by Zac Brown Band

This is kind of cheating because it’s two songs in one, but I was listening to a lot of live recordings this month and went to Montana and just had a very happy, chill month which is reflected in this track.

October — ‘Over When it’s Over’ by Eric Church

I don’t know how I discovered this song but the more times I listened to it, the more times I needed to listen to it. It was a really stressful month and I was working so, so much and when I’m stressed out I romanticize songs about breakups. It just feels cathartic to think about the end of whatever period of stress I’m going through even when it has nothing to do with a romantic relationship.

November — ‘Oh Baby’ by LCD Soundsystem

I think if you opened up my body and a song came out it would be this one. It’s a very Chrissy song, very emo and depressing but in a way that is fun to dance to. I went to an LCD Soundsystem show this month and all my friends left or spent the entire show on a biz call in the lobby and everyone was super apologetic about it and I was like “um I am having the time of my life you’re fine.” I was alone in a crowd dancing to some of my favorite music. There are very few things that make me happier than that kind of night.

And through the rest of the year, there were some other tracks that were there for me as well. You can find your own Spotify year in review here and work backwards to make yours.