“Learning To Love Music Festivals As A Sober Person” plus 1 more

Learning To Love Music Festivals As A Sober Person

Posted: 29 Aug 2018 03:28 PM PDT

Music festivals and nightclubs may seem like places to avoid if you’re recently sober. That might be true, if the scene is a specific trigger for your addiction. However, attending music festivals sober can be a fantastic experience and a welcome opportunity.

Here is a series of tips and tricks for joining up with your peers in recovery who also love music. Keep safe and protect your good health by learning to attend music festivals clean and sober.

{How to Enjoy Music Festivals Sober} Infographic

Better music=better chances

Awesome music doesn’t need any embellishment, including drugs or alcohol. However, if you’re hearing a band or DJ that’s only so-so, the trouble begins. To make sobriety feel easier, avoid attending festivals and events with bands and DJs that are mediocre; be choosy about great entertainment.

Bring supportive friends…

There’s no reason to go it alone. Find someone else who is willing to attend the event clean and sober, and support each other by going together.

Whether your friend is sober or not, when you plan to hit the festival together, decide in advance what kinds of support you might need while you’re there. For instance, let your friend know about things that could trigger you, and decide together both how to avoid those things, and how to let each other know that you’re ready to leave.

…but not people you used to use with

For many people in recovery, music festivals and nightclubs used to be a place to get drunk and/or high with the usual suspects. If that was you, don’t try attending festivals with those same people. It’s too easy to relapse under those conditions. Give yourself the best possible chance instead, by going with a sober group, or friends you can rely on.

Avoid haters

Almost anyone you run into will support your decision to recover. They might have questions, but they won’t challenge your decision to get clean, or try to change your mind. Anyone who tries to get you to fall back off the wagon or makes fun of your sobriety isn’t a friend, so avoid them.

Don’t be a hater yourself

Being sober all the time will give you a new level of insight into most things—including how annoying things can be! You may see many new irritations for the first time when you’re clean, like drunk people who act ridiculous, bathroom lines, and even traffic. You didn’t notice before, because you were among the drunks!

Just relax and stay calm. Your focus should be on the music and on your own enjoyment. You can’t rush a massive music festival, or its traffic or attendees. If you find yourself hating on everything around you, you are swimming in negativity that can trigger you.

Stay close to home

Stay close to home for your first several sober events. This way you won’t get lost or stranded, and you’ll have maximum support under conditions you have more control over.

Take care of yourself

Self-care is critical to recovery, and to good health more generally. Sometimes, a lack of self-care is what leads people to self-medicate with alcohol and drugs. When you’re hitting the music scene, sleep, eat well, wear sunscreen, stay hydrated, and always take your meds.

Know what’s coming

Not knowing what to expect causes stress, so eliminate that by finding out what’s coming. Research before you go so you know whether you can bring water, where to buy it if you can’t, where bathrooms are, and other facts about the venue. Bring anything you’ll need, based on your research into what you should expect from the venue.

Be choosy

You’re going to be in recovery for life! You don’t have to see every music festival and events on your radar right now. If this is your first time out sober, skip after parties and pre-parties, and start with a day pass instead of a whole weekend or weeklong event.

Caffeine, gum, and sweets

Getting through a music festival sober can be coffee or tea unless you can’t have caffeine. Bring gum or hard candy so you have a “pick me up” and something to keep in your hands or mouth where your drink used to be. This will also help you fight that cotton mouth feeling.

Sit out as needed

Sensory overload is new to many people in recovery; they’ve never been through something like a live music festival without chemical enablers. If things start to feel overwhelming, sit out for a bit and relax until you feel better. Don’t rejoin the crowd until you’re ready, and leave if you want to.

Hit the sober tent

The sober tent at any music festival is your friend—and most of the larger festivals have one. It feels like a safe haven, and being around others in recovery is a protective factor.

Have a wonderful time!

Everyone loves the idea of a special event or celebration. For people in recovery, though, the idea of attending such an event can be fraught. Remember why you want to go: you love the music and care about having a great time. You can do this sober, and once you do, you’ll never see music festivals the same way again.

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Crash Course On Using Spotify And Other Streaming Services - For Independent Acts

Posted: 29 Aug 2018 02:38 PM PDT

The subscription-based music streaming model of Spotify and others – at the moment – makes it extremely unlikely for independent artists to make any significant money from sales of their music directly via those services.

It’s still also yet to be proven as a viable business model in itself, even after hundreds of millions of pounds invested in it. However, subscription-based streaming (although it will change and evolve) is here to stay, for the foreseeable future.

Having your music on these services isn’t essential, but having a presence on them is better than not having a presence on them. They are focussed on consumers more than the artists, and do provide an excellent, convenient, immediate service for music listeners – so are great platforms on which to share and showcase your music, and potentially be discovered by new fans.

And if you can’t make money directly, you can, for example, have a certain selection of your music on there as tasters, and the music you want to sell, at your website.

Outside the subscription-based streaming model, a leading option is Bandcamp (which can be incorporated into your website very easily if you choose to). Bandcamp is the “global music community where fans discover music and directly support the artists who make it”. Bandcamp is discussed at length in the Music Strategy Programme.

Below is a rundown of what’s required to get your material on Spotify and other subscription-based streaming platforms. You need to either be with a label that deals directly with these platforms, or pay a Distribution service to distribute your music to them.

- Subscription-based streaming platforms such as Spotify, iTunes, Apple Music and the others, are what can be seen as the outlets, or stores.

- To have your music available on those stores, you don’t have to go to them all directly, because they receive the music they have on their platforms from services such as CD Baby, TuneCore, SongFlow and others – who are the distributors.

- Distributors automatically send the stores the required information about your music for you (which can vary from store to store).

- You upload your music to one of these distribution services. The distributor will then distribute your music to a large number of the stores, including Spotify, iTunes, Apple Music and others.

- The distributors make money through either a flat fee from you for your submitted material, and/or by taking a royalty percentage on sales. Some distributors also ask for an annual fee to keep your music available on the stores.

- Some of the more specialised stores have a screening process and don’t accept all the music submitted to them, but on the whole your music will be accepted on most of the general stores.

- It takes time for your music to be processed and released on the stores. Times vary from store to store, and can be a week to several weeks from the time you submit the music to the distributor website. So it’s best to plan ahead with your releases. (There’s a detailed guide on releasing a new album/EP in the Music Strategy Programme.)

- Legally, the distributors deal with a huge number of acts, so have a general type of contract, which you agree to in order to use their service.
Note that, if you were to be signed to a label at some point, labels often require you to hand over your right to distribution and sales of your entire catalogue… So if you’re hoping to sign with a label later, make sure the distributor’s contract allows for you to terminate at any time, or it could get in the way of signing to the label. This is usually the case anyway, with the larger distributors, but you may be more tied in with smaller, more specialised or personalised distributors.

- You need what are know as UPC/EAN and ISRC Codes for your albums and tracks, which help to track store sales, distribution numbers, and even radio airplay. They’re also used by royalty collection societies to identify revenue generated by music for the music’s owner. You can get your own UPC/EAN codes by purchasing a license to a batch of them – but many distributors will provide you with these codes, so that you don’t have to.

- There are lots of distributors, each with their own pros and cons. Do some research to see which one suits your needs or appeals to you. Look at reviews, contact their customer services, read their Terms and Conditions… There are some pointers and options in the Resources Area of the Music Strategy Programme.

Paying to have your music available in subscription-based streaming stores may be helpful in giving fans/listeners easy access to your tunes… Or may help some peoples’ perception of you if they think being on Spotify or the others makes you viable in some way… Or possibly gain you a little ‘exposure’… Or help you to try and impress your peers or fans by being ‘where it’s at’…

(Note that the music that gets the main spotlight (on Spotify for example), is highly controlled and manipulated by the owners and partnered major record labels.)

It is better to have a presence on the stores than not, but it doesn’t make you money directly at the moment, unless your tracks are getting humongous numbers of listeners. And even then, your cut is abysmally small. The best hope is that some people listening on the stores might want to find out how to buy and own your music…

By Victor Taylor.
Creator of the Music Strategy Programme.

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