@Ian Newman Even Caleb has addressed this issue. Berlin did too a couple years ago. It is a real point of concern in the music industry. There is nothing new about this kind of behavior from big music. A biggie from the early days ... Little Richard. He never saw a penny from any of his hit singles sales. The history of Rock & Roll & Country are repleet with tales of wonderful young bright eyed dreamer musicians singing contracts that they didn't think that they needed to have a lawyer read. And they inadvertently gave their rights to their own creations away.

@Tom Baldwin Well .. okay. You gotta ' do you I suspect. I respect your words and opinion. I personally have no issues with her look or presentation of her videos. Will check out the Rick Beato interview. He is a YouTube fave and a Mentor for sure.

Shane ...what DAW are you working with?

Digital EQ's are wonderful. That Fabfilter Pro EQ 4 that someone mentioned is really great. I have Studio One Pro 7 so we have built in the Pro EQ 3 which is very good as well. I wanna' suggest looking at a real oldie but a goodie. You might look into the Pultec EQ. It was designed to handle exactly the content that Audio Engineers run across doing mixes and masters. It's old school for sure but truly actually get the job done right (in my opinion.)

Make music when you fell like it. Don't involve any kinda' guilt in it. Think of your music from a place of joy. Stop listening to forces out and about saying "go go go" & "more more more." Just let the universe guide you through. You are part of it and you should trust your instincts and feelings. Write music 🎵 🎶 when you feel inspired and want to.

Here is three shots from my studio rig...