How well do you know USGA tournament rules? Quiz yourself on a few of the rules below to either familiarize or refresh yourself before competitive play. Identifying your Ball USGA rules allow you to lift... Read more
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This Friday is the day - or likely midnight tonight, Thursday - that Taylor Swift's new album 'Reputation' will finally be available on Spotify, Apple Music and other streaming music services. The news leaked when fans in Australia and The Philippines, where it is already Friday, began streaming the album.
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Overseas streaming availability of the new Taylor Swift album "Reputation" was first reported by The Verge. Now multiple sources are confirming that the album will be available tomorrow in the US, likely at midnight tonight. "Reputation" was released three weeks ago, and is on track to be the year's top selling album.
In another confirmation that streaming is tomorrow, the full album is now listed on Spotify in the US with previously unavailable tracks greyed out.
The countdown begins....
Content originally published and Shared from http://perfectbath.com
No home is complete without a proper working toilet. The thought of relieving yourself out in nowhere can be literally scary. However, with a toilet in place; it is simple and very convenient. However, simple as they may look, there is much to know about toilets. You need to know how they work in order to get trouble free use and long life from them. Here are some vital facts about toilets you need to know.
The shape of a toilet plays an integral part in how your toilet looks. Indeed it determines the style of the bowl, seat, and also lid. Additionally the shape of your toilet will also determine the amount of installation space that your toilet requires. Here is what you need to know about toilet shapes.
Elongated toilet bowl shape is not the most common yet. However it has many ad
vantages such as these.
Unlike their elongated counter parts, the round toilet bowls are the most common designs due to these.
Elongated Toilet Bowls often extend from wall about 18 inches plus. On the contrary the Round Toilet Bowls take slightly below 17 inches making them super options for the very small space designs.
Also known as the Compacted Elongated Bowls, the oval toilet bowl saves 10% more space than the normal Elongated Toilet Bowls. They are likable for.
Usually, round shapes require less space but are much more comfortable. Oval shapes on the other hand require more space to install, while elongated shapes are the master of class and design.
The reason why a knowing the height of your toilet seat plays a key role is simple. It determines how comfortable your will be when using the toilet. When your legs dangle, they grow tired fast and a leaves you quite uncomfortable. Here is what you should know about the toilet seat height (Source: Toiletrated).
Toilet height is simply measured with a tape measure. The measurement is taken from the floor to the top of the seat. Heights vary, but more often they fall somewhere between 14 inches and 18 inches.
The standard toilets sit 14 inches. However the Chair Height Toilets or the Comfort Height Toilets – like Kohler refers to them will measure 15 inches or more. Many of them 16″+ are ADA compliant.
Standard toilets are ideal for people with smaller stature or average heights. On the other hand, Chair Height Toilets are often two inches higher than standard-height toilets. They are easier to use as too.
Finally there are the Custom Height Toilets. A good example of this type of toilet is the Wall-hung toilets that can often be positioned at a desired height from 15-3/8″ to 28-1/2″ to allow range of users.
Another important consideration to go with is the toilet trapway. The main job of a toilet trapway is to carry waste from the toilet bowl to the main sewer line piping. A fully glazed toilet trapway will keep a smooth flow. Here are some toilet trapways that you can always go along with.
The Exposed Trapway is traditionally designed. They can be easily seen from the side of any toilet that uses this design. They are characterized with standard caps to cover the exposed bolts that attach your toilet to the floor.
These one features a smooth trapway surface. You can easily wipe the surface clean. Low-profile bolt caps are used instead of the traditionally exposed raised caps in order to provide a smooth, easy-to-clean surface on toilets (Visit: Toilet Rated).
This is also known as the skirted trapway. It offers an easy-to-clean uniform base usually extending from the front to back of the toilet base. Usually, no bolts are exposed and many models require no drilling or caulk to install.
Toilet trapways are easy to manage as you can learn how to remove your toilet caps and again replace them with a more exquisite design. The process is usually simple and more specifically a DIY procedure.
Apart from what we have seen the next thing in line to play an integral part on how your toilet operates is the flushing system. From gravity, dual flush, to double cyclone, or single flush the choice literally lies with you.
Even so the way your flushing lever is placed will be determined with what types of design you need. Today, toilets come with varying flush leavers and some of the most common ones that you might find are these.
Looking at what having a great toilet entails, we can’t still walk away from the benefits of a good flushing toilet.
High Flow toilets offer an easy to use method to remove waste. They are very hygienic and will help to keep germs and bacteria away. Additionally, a high flow toilet is easy to take care of will last longer than a normal toilet. They also keep odor away and leave you with a fresh breath always. One last thing though, they are eco-friendly but can a little pricey but generally worth it.
To keep your toilet functioning at best, it is important that you learn some of the most Common Problems of Toilets and how to take care of them. This will help you to learn more about your toilet and also work with it in the most appropriate ways.
Toilets are a necessity in a home. They also help to boost the value of your home and also to keep your options for improvements open. Always choose a design that is best for you.
Contributed by: Perfectbath foremost experts in Toilets and bathroom fixtures
The post Things You Didn’t Know About Toilets appeared first on Perfect Bath Canada.
Splitting a single photo into equal individual tiles for a grid photo posting has become a unique and effective way for artists and their PR teams to tout new material and engage fans. Here we look at some creative tips for using Instagram grids.
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Guest post by Ta'Rikah Jones of the Symphonic Blog
Splitting your photo into equal tiles for an Instagram grid photo posting effects is both fun and beneficial in terms on your social media marketing career! Instagram grids are a great way for musicians, artists, producers, etc. to promote new materials and keep fans excited.
So how can you use this style on your own artist account?
Expand your reach with Symphonic Social!
The days leading up to a big tour or gig can be teased using the grid technique! You can splice your tour poster or any graphics related to the show.
This will have your Instagram followers on the edge of their seats as they eagerly await the arrival of tour dates to see when you’ll be playing in their city!
Any upcoming event, festival, promo, meet and greet, mixtape release, etc. that you feel is important to you and your fans can be used to add a fun twist to your profile!.
Cover work is intriguing and unique on its own but by releasing it mysteriously through the Instagram grid effect, you are adding to it’s hype. Be sure to use a high resolution photo for this.
Double check the order you’re posting these in as well so that the full effect is achieved.
You can also use the Instagram grid technique to promote a marketing campaign around your next release. Here at Symphonic, we used the technique to promote our “Spread Your Music” campaign with rapper Dynasty. One of the posts was actually a video that described the campaign a bit more.
You can get even more creative with this tip and possibly use 3 or 6 squares, instead of the most commonly used 9 for Instagram grids.
When doing this, give your audience a context as to what’s to come. They might be confused if they have not seen this technique used before.
Using hashtags consistently throughout posts will also let your fans know that they are related.
If you’re looking for a simple way to manage all of your social media profiles, Symphonic Social can help you to do just that, while increasing your sales and plays.
Ta'Rikah Jones: Symphonic's Marketing Coordinator, love discovering new music, shopping, yoga and reading!
As the international duo of besties was faced with limited option when it came to the promotion of their new album, artists Kurt Vile and Courtney Barnett came with a unique way of boosting their new album via a Spotify playlist sharing program.
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From the Spotify For Artists Blog
During a particularly disorienting time in her life, the Australian singer-songwriter Courtney Barnett found a friend in Philadelphia alt-rocker Kurt Vile, years before the two would ever meet.
While unemployed and drifting through life, Barnett recently told Uproxx, she listened “over and over” to Vile’s song “Peeping Tomboy,” finding solace in his tale of a drifting misfit. Years later, she opened for Vile when he played her hometown of Melbourne. He was immediately taken by her song “Outta The Woodwork” from her debut compilation The Double EP: A Sea Of Split Peas.
From there, the pair became fast friends, hanging out backstage at music festivals across the world. Eventually, Vile suggested they record a single together, and one song ended up becoming an entire album. The resulting collaboration, Lotta Sea Lice, finds the pair bringing out the best in each other: Vile’s sprawling, slowly unfolding melodies merge perfectly with Barnett’s off-kilter lyrical observations. The two even nod to the roots of their friendship on the album, with Barnett covering “Peeping Tomboy” (renamed here “Peeping Tom”) and Vile covering “Outta The Woodwork.”
The album was a way for both artists to take a breather and recharge their creative batteries, and while they did embark on a brief tour to support it, they both planned to get back to work on new solo albums soon. This meant that the promotional options available to the publicity teams at Matador Records and the Beggars Group were somewhat limited.
"We had this tour, and the record, and that was kind of it," remembers Rian Fossett, director of marketing at Matador. "So we just put our heads together over the summer."
The team decided to lean into the idea of distance, and the result is the Intercontinental Mixtape Exchange program, created in partnership with Spotify. The name and idea for the program both nod to a standout track from Lotta Sea Lice, "Continental Breakfast," and the fact that the songwriting pair are friends who live in different hemispheres.
"We're trying to find a way to take the themes of some of the lyrical content of the record," says Naomi Scott, Director of Creative Development at Beggar's Group, pointing to that song in particular. "We built it in a way that it attempts to connect you to a person who is in a different part of the world."
Courtney Barnett, of Kurt & Courtney.
The website for the Mixtape Exchange allows fans to create a playlist from Spotify and send it to a music fan on the other side of the globe, and then receive one in return, in the spirit of musical discovery and making digital friends. This writer received a playlist from a Glasgow, Scotland, resident named Dom titled "Faves Forever" that included beloved cuts from Daft Punk, R.E.M., and Barry Manilow, and sent a mixtape to someone with favorite recent songs from Danny Brown, Car Seat Headrest, and David Bowie.
The program is designed to notice where the user is located when sending the mixtape, and to match them with someone in a different part of the world. "It was very much an exercise in trying to reach across different continents,” explains Scott, “rather than simply a random matching of people."
The visual style of the site and the gathering together of curated songs is meant to harken back to the mixtape culture of the 80s and 90s, when friends would turn each other on to new songs via dubbed cassettes. "Sharing Spotify playlists is arguably the new sharing mixtapes," Scott says.
Kurt Vile, of Kurt & Courtney.
Adam Berman, a designer and developer who works at Beggar's Group, says there were "500 or 600" playlists made in the first day, and now more than a thousand have been created and sent, many of them including Vile and Barnett songs. "The best result of the project was that we got responses from places all over the world that we didn't even think Kurt and Courtney had fans in, like Malaysia or Japan, places in Africa and Europe," he says. "It really became an international experience. Just because of the internet, word got out, and we had a bunch of different people who used it.”
An early plan to have Vile and Barnett share playlists from each tour stop was scuttled due to their time commitments, but creative programs like the Intercontinental Mixtape Exchange show how to work around limited access and a time crunch while staying true to the artists’ creative ethos. The program both keeps fans engaged and aware of Lotta Sea Lice, while also deepening the album’s theme of long-distance friendship. And who knows—maybe some fan’s next great creative collaborator is just an international playlist exchange away.
While not place necessarily associated with pop culture preservation, the University of Tulsa is teaming with a philanthropist to make the city home to an archive of documents and objects belonging to Bob Dylan and others.
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Guest post by William Glanz of SoundExchange
Bob Dylan will remain in Tulsa forever.
That’s because philanthropist George Kaiser teamed up with the University of Tulsa this year to purchase thousands of documents and objects belonging to Bob Dylan.
Bob Dylan and Joan Baez during the Civil Rights March on Washington, D.C., on August 28, 1963. Photo by Rowland Scherman, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Public Domain
The pieces of music history will be consolidated at the new Bob Dylan Archive in Tulsa’s Brady Arts District once it opens in 2019. Today the archives are housed at Tulsa’s Helmerich Center for American Research at the Gilcrease Museum.
The archives include hand-written lyrics, tapes from studio sessions, clothing – the leather jacket Dylan wore at the Newport Folk Festival when he plugged in – and even the wallet the singer carried in 1965. There are 6,000 objects in all.
First Woody, Then Bob
The idea for the Dylan archive hatched in 2014, when Kaiser Family Foundation Executive Director Ken Levit received a call that the archives were being put up for sale. The Kaiser Family Foundation funded an effort six years ago to purchase Woody Guthrie’s archives, and in 2013 the Woody Guthrie Center opened in Tulsa.
So acquiring the Dylan archives made sense to the foundation, and the George Kaiser Family Foundation paid an estimated $15 million to $20 million to acquire the archives and relocate the entire trove in Tulsa.
With the archives of Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan in the same neighborhood, Oklahoma’s second-largest city is becoming a hub of music scholarship. The University of Tulsa announced last month it will open the Institute for Bob Dylan Studies, giving students the opportunity to study the artist’s life and work.
“From pop culture historians to social scientists, the academic world clearly is excited to study Bob Dylan, his work and his influence,” University of Tulsa President Gerard P. Clancy said. “An interdisciplinary institute devoted to the Nobel laureate and housed within a national university should bring increased prominence to The Bob Dylan Archive and the Tulsa community. It also will generate new findings and amplify the scope of Dylan’s legacy for generations.”
Guthrie and Dylan, who won the 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature, may soon have company in Tulsa. The Washington Post reported last month that the George Kaiser Family Foundation also is negotiating a deal to purchase the archives of Johnny Cash and relocating those in Tulsa.
Editor: Tulsa is also the home of the Phil Ochs archives.
As streaming's dominance in the music business to grow, we're taking a moment to look at the current state of streaming, as well as where it might be headed in the near future.
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Guest post from Rethink Music by Allen Bargfrede, original article on Slush Music
“Alexa, play some Tom Waits.”
That’s how my children will grow up interacting with music. Streaming has changed the game, forever, and in a good way.
In my earlier post for Slush, I discussed the return to growth for the music industry, attributed primarily to the significant increase in streaming revenue. According to IFPI’s Global Music Report, streaming now makes up the majority (roughly 60%) of digital revenue and for the first time, digital revenues make up 50% of the share of total recorded music industry revenues.
Rough estimates show that if 10% of the global population eventually subscribes to a music streaming service, the music industry’s worldwide recorded music revenues will far exceed its best year ever in 1999. In fact, a recent Goldman Sachs report predicted that streaming will hit $34bn in revenue in 2030, as part of a healthy $41bn industry.
Now, with voice interactive control and robust data analytics, streaming services are showing they are not sitting idly by in a continuously evolving technological world. Sonosrecently released their own platform for voice-activated music. Streaming services are making a major effort to provide data and analytics to artists to help them make decisions about how to market and promote their careers. Some are going even further: Spotify recently launched its RISE program, which will provide “on-platform, out-of-home, digital and social promotion” for developing artists.
Beyond programs like RISE, as the market evolves, we may see Spotify and Apple take a Netflix approach and start pushing out exclusive in-house content on their streaming services. There is both fear, and hope, they’ll become their own record labels, investing in acclaimed creative content – the next step beyond some of the recent “exclusives” on each service.
In fact, this is a key challenge for services to sustain themselves – they must find a way to differentiate.
Beyond exclusive content, curation engines and desktop and phone interfaces are key places where users can see large differences between the offerings. Audio quality could become a factor in tiered premiums as technology develops and the amount of audiophiles grows. (TIDAL already offers a hi-fi version, at double the monthly cost and to which I subscribe, but many dispute whether listeners even care about audio quality in today’s market.) We’ve also already seen a big push to include streaming music in home cable/internet packages, or programs like Amazon Prime. With Apple and Spotify at the front of the game, these are all options for any service that wants to grow into a major brand, or merely develop a niche.
Finally, no discussion about creating a sustainable streaming economy would be complete without a mention of the many disputes about payments. Concerns continue to exist about how artists can be paid from streaming service. Some artists are making a fortune from Spotify streams (Drake is said to have made an estimated $33,840,000), but Pharrell Williams is unhappy making very little off from “Happy” on Pandora ($2,700).
Average streaming royalties paid currently range from $0.005 to $0.009 USD per interactive stream, depending upon the tier. Non-interactive pays much less, at as low as $0.0017 per stream. Services without a free tier (Napster and TIDAL) have the highest average payouts, since their numbers are not brought down by advertising-based revenue. One thing is true: transparency between streaming services and labels and publishers and then onward to artists and writers must increase, and the industry seems to be acknowledging this.
Blockchain may be a catalyst to solve some of the rights and payment transparency issues and a fair sensible payment/information distribution method. Further, converting more users from free to premium tiers will increase the total amount of revenue to be divided.
With music industry total revenue growing for its second consecutive year within the last 20, I am hopeful (and confident) that this growth will continue, and exponentially. YouTube will likely become the penultimate freemium service with by far the most users, reaching users in countries that do not yet offer subscription services or where uptake has not yet occurred. Regardless, streaming is what excites me most about the potential for tomorrow’s music industry. The market has finally reached a critical mass, and will continue to grow at a healthy pace over the next 5-10 years, and that means very good times ahead for the recorded music industry.
