@Robert Wilder thanks Robert!

@Martin Eibisch thanks Martin! YouTube's algorithm is weird - I'm getting thousands of views for Shorts made from the excerpts of this video, but the traffic for the video itself is pretty slow so far.

Hi Robert, I've been with distrokid for ages but am looking into switching for the following reasons: - they charge a yearly fee for covers, while the licencing for online streaming is in fact a one-off thing - so this is a blatant and unfair rip-off (i'm about to release my 4th cover, and this is getting really expensive). - Their support has become unusable. It's now AI, and when you do get through to a human, that's always an incompetent outsourced person who sends you genereic pre-made answers and cannot look into your issue. - The overall vibe has changed. It used to feel like the cool down-to-earth distributor. Now it feels more like an industrial scale rip-off machine, slapping fees on everything for no good reason. I was thinking of switching to Gyro Stream. Looking forward to reading the link Martin gave!

May i add this one from Ereignis :) https://open.spotify.com/track/2aDeQwln1kWasJGvfTwHQc?si=VurJ3QgcQ4-Ieo7rGQ9DYw

@Martin Eibisch i see, what you're saying but I can't see how the math is working out. If I understood your original comment about this correctly, you seemed to be saying that there's a tension between a higher overall number of streams and a higher lift efficiency (but a lower overall number of streams). But if including more tracks in the discovery mode doesn't lift any of them at all, and they would've gotten the streams anyway, then including more tracks in the discovery mode does NOT lead to a higher overall number of streams. The streams just peak at the point of maximum lift efficiency and don't increase further as you add more tracks to Discovery. So there's no tension after all between lift efficiency and the overall number of streams? Or am I missing something?

@Martin Eibisch ah, so the overall royalties you earn with a small lift are smaller than the royalties you earn with no Discovery lift at all, because you give away 30% from the streams you would've had anyway without Discovery? Is that right? Thanks for explaining!

@Sebastian Jautschus haha, thanks for the positive pep talk attempt :) But yes, you're definitely onto something there. With the gallery gig, I simply heard about it from a friend, got in touch, and they took me. A rare alignment of the right place, right time, good fit, and available funding from a major government-funded institution. So probably not easily replicatable and scale-uppable if that's what you're thinking :) With the hot springs - yeah, they're just that, hot springs. People come to soak in the pools with friends, and this particular batch chanced upon this concert (which was simply being held there - not as a dedicated "go to the concert" event). But still, it was beautifully organised and special - not merely a background. I'd say anyone with enough musical interest or at least politeness should have been compelled to listen and not talk. Oh well, people :/ Yes, I'm planning to have a bit more social media presence, which hopefully will build some more active engagement, but I don't think I can or want to make "content" and post all the time. I want every post to be special, meaningful, and deliberate (and I don't really have the energy for anything else). Will have to see if such blatant disregard of the algorithm's hunger for consistency is actually compatible with engagement (I'm hoping it is through re-targeting the posts at those who already showed interest).

@Francesco Domenichetti nah, I'm stubborn, I'll make them listen :D