Christian P. Pewitt Blogs: August 2016

Wednesday, August 31, 2016

3 Ways to Remove Bathroom Mold

Content originally published and Shared from http://perfectbath.com

Knowing how to get rid of mold in showers, and keep it from returning, can save you both time and money. Here are 3 simple ways to remove bathroom mold. Read on!

Image Source: Flickr

Scrub Away
To properly care for your bathroom and remove the mold from tile grout, you will need a good scrub brush and baking soda. To effectively scrub the mold away, treat the grout between tiles and the caulking with a paste made of water and baking soda. Leave on for as long as you need to—for example, very dirty grout can use an hour or two. Spray the tiles with water and use a scrub brush to clean the grout with a brisk back and forth motion. Rinse well and buff dry. Once you have scrubbed the grout, you can prolong your mold-removing efforts so that you do not have to use as much elbow grease next time! If your bathroom is not properly maintained between cleanings, it does not take long for mold to come back. In fact, think of mold prevention like oral care—we have to maintain our teeth to keep plaque away. Source: NaturallySavvy

Vinegar
Put mild white vinegar in a spray bottle without diluting it. Vinegar has a mild acidity, making anywhere you spray it very inhospitable for mold. Do not dilute the vinegar when placing it into the spray bottle; you want to use it at full-strength, not watered-down.
Spray the vinegar onto moldy surfaces and wait for an hour. If possible, let the bathroom air out during this time.
After an hour, wipe the area clean with hot water and dry the surface with a towel. Damp surfaces encourage mold growth, so be sure to wipe the area clean fully. After you have wiped the vinegar away, it should not smell anymore.
Use vinegar to prevent outbreaks of mold before they happen. Vinegar is reported to kill 82% of mold species, making it an exceptionally effective solution for preventing mold from inhabiting your bathroom like it owns the place. Plus, vinegar does not have any toxic fumes (like bleach) and is all-natural.

Simply spray a bit of vinegar onto a mold-prone surface and leave it. If you do this regularly, mold will have a tough time growing, and you will not have to remove it in the first place. Source: wikiHow

Hot Water and Baking Soda
You’ll need one teaspoon of washing up liquid, one cup of baking soda, and a few drops of something fragrant (we recommend lavender or citrus oil). Then add water and mix until the solution becomes a viscous paste and you’re done – a natural black mould remover. Source: Cleanipedia

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How Music Industry Project Management SHOULD Work

Proven Content Ideas For An Artist's Social Media Calendar

For musicians, setting up their social media accounts is only half the battle. The real challenge comes when it's time to put out material that will interest and engage fans. Here we review several proven avenues to explore when it comes sharing content.

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Guest Post by Jessica Hackett on Soundfly's Flypaper

You’ve already taken step one. You bit the bullet and created the essential social media accounts for your music. Now you’re stuck figuring out what content to post, or you’ve been posting, but don’t know why certain posts gain traction while others fall flat. Building a branded presence for your business is a key step in your career as a musician. It takes a huge pair of ovaries to put yourself and your work out there publicly!

Whether you’re naturally inspired by Instagram or terrified of Twitter, building a content strategy and scheduling updates in advance cuts your time working on social media in half. And I know that sounds like a chore, but for artists committed both to their craft and to securing steady audience growth, it’s a huge help. More importantly, it allows you to build more natural marketing into your daily social media content over time.

The secret is to brainstorm content ideas that you can use and reuse, especially when you don’t have concert dates, album releases, or music video launches coming up. Here are five general content prompts to get you started.

Who Inspires You?

Creatively, musically, emotionally: who are the artists and innovators that give you a rush? Share your playlist, your summer reads, or the latest research from your favorite scientist with your followers.

Tagging, sharing, and shouting out on social media is a great way to network, contribute to the artistic community, and be discovered by fans of the stuff you love. Don’t worry if you don’t immediately hear back from the other artists you reach out to. Trust that they check their mentions and know that a bit of name recognition can go a long way. Maybe your simple, heartfelt shoutout will be enough for an artist to think of you next time they need an opening act.

+ Learn more: “Band management” doesn’t have to be as scary as it sounds. Gain the tools you need to run a successful DIY band with our free course, Building a Better Band!

What Drives You?

Who are you beyond your music? Do you love the outdoors, get lost in video games, or are you more of a nightclub person? There’s always one member of every band whose character quirks are naturally entertaining, make them a band meme! Share what you’re doing offstage, showcase the unique aspects of your personality, and look for communities of fellow enthusiasts with whom to connect.

A word of warning on sharing your personality as a professional: What you put out on the internet as a musician could stick with you throughout your career. If you don’t want a fan, journalist, or potential connection probing into it, don’t post it. You get to pick and choose which parts of yourself you share.

Where Did You Come From?

There’s a whole weekly hashtag devoted to answering this question. In fact, there are tons. Dig up your 5th grade yearbook photo, the flyer for your first performance or footage of an early band rehearsal and share like there’s no tomorrow.

You can make your throwbacks as silly or personal as you want, as long as your tone is on brand. Remember that the internet is a sucker for a good inspirational story. Talk about your progress as a musician, as an artist. Share the highlights and the embarrassing moments. Let your fans become a part of your journey, and they’ll want to stick around to see where it goes.

+ From the Flypaper Archive: “How to Be Every Sound Guy’s Best Friend”

What’s Your Process?

Many of your fans are also looking for ways to express themselves creatively. Your carefully constructed songwriting rituals and tips could help to inspire them. Post your creative process, tips for beating writer’s block, and rituals or routines for summoning the muse to lend your fans a dose of encouragement.

To make your tips extra-shareable, try writing them as blog posts, publishing them to Pinterest, creating a YouTube tutorial, or live-streaming a talk on Periscope.

Who Supports You?

When all else fails and you’ve got nothing to say, reach out to your fans. Keep on the lookout for photos, recordings, and comments fans have shared and repost them. Host a Q&A with your fans on Reddit or Twitter. Publish some (credited) fan art on your Instagram.

Remember that fantastic story of Guster recreating their fan’s cover video of their song, “Diane”? When your fans do react with their true colors, it’s important you reward them for doing so. Reaching out through the tangled knots of the web to show your appreciation for fans’ creativity, and providing them a space to share it, are great ways to build deeper levels of engagement!

Any opportunity that you can find to interact is an opportunity you should take. Followers that feel noticed and involved are more likely to stay that way.

Untitled design

Remember that social media is just another medium to tell your story and share your art. See what fits for you and no matter what anyone else says, if it works it works! Keep updating your strategy based on what resonates with your followers. When you put time, planning, and personality into your posts, you will see results.

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200+ Musicians File Joint Brief In Support Of "Blurred Lines" Appeal [Read The Full Document]

More than 200 musicians and songwriters have filed a joint brief in support of overturning the verdict in the Marvin Gaye Estate vs. the writers of the hit "Blurred Lines." The diverse group, which ranges from Rivers Cuomo to John Oates and R. Kelly to Hans Zimmer, sites both case law and music experts.

"this case threatens to punish songwriters"

"The verdict in this case threatens to punish songwriters for creating new music that is inspired by prior works," states the brief authored by Ed McPherson. "All music shares inspiration from prior musical works, especially within a particular musical genre. By eliminating any meaningful standard for drawing the line between permissible inspiration and unlawful copying, the judgment is certain to stifle creativity and impede the creative process. The law should provide clearer rules so that songwriters can know when the line is crossed, or at least where the line is."

document via the Hollywood Reporter

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A Look At How Well Streaming Music Is Really Doing And The Major Label's "Streaming Reality Distortion Field" [Mark Mulligan]

All 3 major labels have reported impressive growth in streaming income. But that's only a fraction of the story, says top industry analyst Mark Mulligan of MIDiA. "If the music service wins, the label wins, if the music service loses, the label still wins," he says. "This disconnect... is one of the festering wounds of the streaming music market."

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Guest post by Mark Mulligan of MIDiA

All of the three major record labels announced strong streaming music revenue growth in the 2^nd quarter of 2016. On the surface it is a clear cut success story, but as is so often the case with music industry statistics, all is not quite how it seems.

The Global Streaming Market

First of all, let’s look at the global picture. According to the IFPI’s Recording Industry in Numbers (RIN) 2016 edition record label streaming revenue grew by 45% in 2015 reaching $2.9 billion, up from $1.9 billion in 2014. But even that number requires a little due diligence. The IFPI restates its historical numbers every year to reflect the current year’s exchange rates, which can, and does, overstate things. Indeed, a quick look at the 2015 edition of RIN shows that streaming revenue was reported as $2.2 billion for 2014. So on a non-adjusted basis (i.e. without restating the numbers) streaming revenue actually grew by 31%.

Spotify’s Contribution

31% is still impressive growth but the plot thickens when we factor in Spotify’s contribution to those label revenues. Spotify’s total royalty payments were $1.9 billion in 2015, of which around $1.4bn were label payments, and of those around $1.1 billion were royalty payments (i.e. minus advance payments such as Minimum Revenue Guarantees (MRGs) paid in anticipation of future growth). That $1.1 billion was up 85% from $610 million in 2014. As the IFPI numbers only represent payments in respect of actual royalties (i.e. minus advance payments) the Spotify label royalty payments can be considered as a share of that global total. That share was 39% of all label streaming revenue in 2015, up from 28% in 2014.

This results in 2 interesting points:

Spotify’s share of the global music subscriber total was 35% in 2014 and 37% in 2015. So the label royalty payments over indexed in 2014 and under indexed in 2015. The fact that 2015 was a big year for heavily discounted promotional offers such as $1 for 3 months most probably plays a key role here.
If we remove the Spotify label royalty payments from the equation, label payments from other streaming services grew by just 10% from $1.6 billion in 2014 to $1.8 billion in 2015. Not exactly the most robust of pictures for the wider streaming market place.

major label streaming

So much for 2015, let’s look at where we are now. All three major labels reported strong streaming growth in Q2 2016. Together they reported $918 million, up 51% from $607 in Q2 2015. That growth generated $311 million of new digital revenue. At the same time, and as a direct consequence, download revenue fell by 24% from $925 in Q2 2015 to $705 million. So streaming is now nearly as big as downloads were 12 months ago. The net increase in combined digital music revenue was $91 million, or a combined digital growth rate of 6%. Solid growth, but not far from treading water. This is a transition process, not a transformative growth process.

Universal Is The Big Streaming Winner

Each of the 3 majors had differing streaming experiences. Universal was the big winner, growing its share of major label streaming revenue from 38% in Q2 2015 to 42% in Q2 2016 (boosted more than other majors by ‘embedded’ independent label revenue). UMG’s streaming revenue grew by more than 60% while Sony and Warner grew by an average of 42%. However, it is important to note that UMG’s reported streaming numbers may be skewed more by currency restating than the other majors, so this share increase might be slightly on the high side.

Sony Music meanwhile lost share from 35% to 33% while Warner Music, which was most coy about its streaming revenue in its reporting, also saw a fall from 26% to 25%. Warner’s and Sony’s loss was Universal’s gain. An interesting side note: Sony was the only major that saw growth in physical music sales over the period. Yet more evidence of the Adele effect?

The Role Of Advanced Payments

But perhaps the most important element of the majors’ streaming reports is the difference between royalty payments (i.e. money earned for music streamed) and total streaming revenue (i.e. including advanced payments such as MRGs). Spotify states rights payments are 70% of its revenue though its 2015 accounts show royalty payments as 82% of revenue due in large part to advanced payments. Using this benchmark advanced payments represent around 16% of all label payments. Applying this to the label reported numbers we can extrapolate that $145 million of all major label streaming revenue is advanced payments.

Why does this matter? Because this is the major record label’s streaming reality distortion field.They get streaming revenue regardless of how well the marketplace actually performs. If a streaming service pays an MRG of $30 million but only earns $10 million the label still gets $ 30 million. So in that scenario the label’s view of that part of the streaming music market is 3 times better than it actually is. If the music service wins, the label wins, if the music service loses, the label still wins. This disconnect between how the market performs and how the label performs is one of the festering wounds of the streaming music market. And its revenue impact is massive. In fact, advanced label streaming payments were 158% of the $91 million that digital music revenue grew by in Q2 2016. Yes, that’s right, advanced streaming payments accounted for all of the digital music growth, and more.

Streaming Will Continue To Grow, But Haunted By Advanced Payments

So where does all this leave us? The streaming market is without doubt entering a phase of accelerating growth and is doing enough to counter the resulting decline in downloads to contribute to a combined total recorded music revenue growth of 4% for major labels in Q2 2016. But growth is not quite as stellar as the headline numbers would suggest, with the single most important factor being the impact of advanced payments distorting the bigger picture and crippling cash flow for streaming music services. Expect more impressive growth throughout the remainder of 2016 but also expect streaming music economics to continue to be fractured.

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