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Tomorrow night, my wife and I are going to our first show at the HopMonk Tavern in Novato. The day before the show we received the following email from the talent buyer:

A forthcoming feature will allow Spotify users to block certain artists from playing in their libraries. This is a great solution for empowering subscribers to limit who monitizes from the music they stream, but what are the broader implications to others who benifit from the royalties of abusive artists?

I received this email at work via our company contact form. It made it through the Google ReCaptcha. It reads sort of like an SCP, and I found it pretty entertaining, so I thought I would post it here.

I know I’m a little late to the game with my album picks this year, but 2018 was just so rich with amazing new music that I couldn’t just poop this out all willy nilly. Unlike other folks with their best album lists, I believe in waiting a few weeks after the new year to let all the late releases settle in with me. And it’s a good thing I did, as a few late December releases made my list!

As with last year, this largely reflects my music listening at work. These lists tend to be more metal-heavy as this is where I do most of my headphone listening.

I’m a segmented sleeper, and am usually up between 2 and 5 a.m. on any given morning. I sometimes pass the time by giving sympathy and advice to sufferers on the /r/misophonia subreddit. Recently, I’ve noticed a trend of teenagers complaining about their parents hassling them about wearing headphones at the dinner table. As a father of teenagers, a headphone enthusiast, a music lover, and a Misophonia sufferer, I feel I am uniquely qualified to advise in these situations when asked.

I was an early adopter of Instagram—well before the Facebook acquisition. For some unknown reason, I have never seen an ad or sponsored post in my feed. Until recently.

The trend in new releases is to trickle out a song each week or so leading up to the release date of your new album. As an artist, I understand this. As a music fan, it can be mildly annoying. As a heavy Apple Music user, it’s usually a pain in the ass. Not all pre-releases are created equal, or so it seems.

I don’t know if there is anyone Robbie Fulks doesn’t sound amazing with, but Linda Gail Lewis isn’t it either.

My office is moving to another city and my commute is going to drastically change. For drivers, this move will be fairly trivial. For low-car folks like me, it poses some significant challenges.