#buy spotify promotion

[deansmultitudes]

Why is there no good way of sharing my silly little music taste with my friends who live in my phone? 😭

[overexciteddragon]

Punk is whatever the state fucking hates so I'm sorry to announce to the functionally conservative but contemporary punk isn't leather jackets and punk rock from the 2000s, it's hyperfemininity, it's transsexualism, it's kinky leather harnesses, it's polyamory, it's Black female rappers, it's reading books from the library, it's pirating media, it's sharing your Netflix and Prime and Spotify passwords, it's patching up your thrifted clothes with cute embroidery until they're in tatters, it's "borrowing" groceries from corporations that make up inflation that doesn't exist, it's supporting small weird freaky artists on Etsy instead of buying the newest Official™️ boring low effort promotional image enamel pins, it's drawing and writing the raunchiest most disgusting and freaky porn you could possibly fathom, it's showing off your tits or top surgery scars in public, it's cis women packing and cis men tucking, it's dykefags and fagdykes and boylesbians and girlgays, it's paying for OnlyFans of trans people fisting themselves, it's making up new genders and sexualities and romantic orientations and editing whole new flags for them, it's refusing to label yourself for the gratification of a government that wants to know under what misspelled drafty legislation they should legally kill you

Punk is being/supporting whatever the state currently fucking despises and wants to burn off the face of the earth, not whatever you think is Punk Aesthetic. If you wanna be punk just to look like you were born in the 80s instead of actually BEING PUNK by supporting the degenerates and the freaks and the sex workers and the BIPOC and the transsexuals and the faggots and the dykes, burn your fucking $800 corp bought leather jacket because you're not Hobie Brown you're just a fucking poser.

Punk is fighting the system beside the ones the system is fighting against, Punk isn't a Pinterest moodboard.

[zooophagous]

So why do you hate the advertising industry?

Hokay so.

Let me preface this with some personal history. It's not relevant to the sins of the advertising industry perse but it illustrates how I started to grow to hate it.

I wanted to be a veterinarian growing up, but to be a vet you basically have to be good enough to get into medical school. I do not have the math chops or discipline to make it in medical school. I went into art instead, and in a desperate attempt to find some commercial viability that didn't involve moving to California, I went into graphic design.

I've been a graphic designer for about seven or eight years now and I've worn a lot of hats. One of them was working in a print shop. Now, the print shop had a lot of corporate customers who had various ad campaigns. One of them was Gate City Bank, which had a bigass stack of postcards ordered every couple months to mail to their customers.

Now, paper comes from Dakota Paper, and they make their paper the usual way. Somewhere far, far from our treeless plain there is a forest of tall trees. These trees are cut down and put on big fossil fuel burning trucks and hauled to a paper mill that turns them into pulp while spewing the most fowl odors imaginable over the neighboring town and loads the pulp up with bleach to give it a nice white color.

Then the paper is put on yet another big truck and hauled off to the local paper depot, then put on another big truck and delivered to my print shop, where I turned the paper into postcards telling people to go even deeper into debt to buy a boat because it's almost summer. The inks used are a type of nasty heat sensitive plastic that is melted to the surface of the paper with heat. Then the postcards are put on yet ANOTHER truck and sent to the bank, which puts them on ANOTHER truck and finally into the hands of their customers, who open their mail and take one look at the post card and immediately discard it.

Heaps and heaps and literal hundreds of pounds of literal garbage created at the whim of the marketing team several times a year. And thats just one bank in one city.

I came to realize very quickly that graphic design was the delicate art of turning trees into junk mail.

And wouldn't you know it there are a TON of companies that basically only do junk mail. Many of them operate under the guise of a "charity," sending you pictures of suffering children or animals and begging for handouts and when they get those handouts the executives take a nice fat cut, give some small token amount to whatever cause they pay lip service to, and then put the rest of the cash right back into making more mailers. "Direct mail marketing" they call it.

Oh but maybe it's not so bad, you can advertise online after all. Now that there's decent ad blocker out there and better anti-virus ads usually don't destroy your computer anymore just by existing.

Except now when I search for the exact business I want on Google it's buried under three or four different "promoted search items" tricking me into clicking on them only to shoot themselves in the foot because I searched for the specific result I wanted for a reason and couldn't use those other websites even if I felt like it.

And now we have advertising on YouTube and on every streaming service, forcing more and more eyes onto the ad for the brand new Buick Envision that parks itself because you're too stupid to do it on your own.

Oh thats ok maybe I'll get Spotify premium and go ad free and listen to some podcasts- SIKE we have the hosts of your show doing the song and dance now. Are you depressed and paranoid from listening to my true crime podcast about murdered and mutilated teenagers? That's ok, my sponsor Better Help can keep you sane enough to stay alive and spend more money.

It's gotten so terrible that now you have content farms, huge hubs of shell companies that crank out video after video to get more and more precious clicks. Which if the videos were innocuous maybe that wouldn't be so awful except now you have cooking hacks that can actually burn your house down and craft hacks that can electrocute you being flung into your eyes at the speed of mach fuck so some slimy internet clickbait jockey doesn't need to get a real job.

It of course goes without saying that animals are also relentlessly exploited by clickbait companies that will put them in compromising situations on purpose to create a fake fishing hack video or even just straight up killing them for sport by feeding small animals to a pufferfish that rips them apart for the camera.

And all of this, ALL of this doesn't even touch how adveritising is the death of art in general. Queer topics, any kind of interesting art, any kind of sex or substance use topics are scrubbed clean and hidden at the behest of advertisers.

Sex education, a nude statue, topics such as racism or sexism or bigotry in general have tags purged or hidden from search, even life saving information about SDTs or drug use, because if someone saw that and complained then Verizon might sell fewer tablets and we can't fucking have that.

Conservative talking heads often bitch and moan that they're being censored on social media. The stupid part is, they're right! They are being censored! But it's not by a woke mob, it's by ATT and Coca Cola not wanting their adspace sharing screen time with their stupid fucking opinions.

However, they won't ever figure that out, because the talking heads they get their marching orders from like Tucker and Jones ALSO rely on the sweet milk flowing from the sponsorship teat and they aren't about to turn on their meal ticket so they have to come up with even stupider shit to say for the train to continue rolling.

I managed to rant this far without even getting into the ads I see for the beauty industry. The other day a botox ad described wrinkles as "moderate to severe crows feet" as if wrinkles are a symptom of a fucking serious disease! Like having a flaw in your skin is a medical problem that you need thousands of dollars of literal botulism toxin to fix! I was incandescent with anger.

Advertising is a polluting, censoring, anti educational and anti art industry at it's very core. It destroys human connections, suppresses human thought and makes us hate our own bodies. It ads no value, actively detracts from value, and serves no real purpose and I believe it should be almost if not entirely banned.

[junnieverse]

IT GIRL L♡VER ➳ ENHYPEN

➙ what it's like for enhypen to be dating their s/o who is also an idol

pairing: enhypen x afab!reader

genre: fluff, a tiny bit suggestive under heeseung's

request: " Cutie patotiiiiii. What do we think about enhypen dating an idol s/o? Maybe even the it girl of the generation? Sending you lots of love <3 ~ sunshine ☀️"

a/n: here it is anon, thank you for the request sweetie and sending you even more love right back, hope you like it!

a/n (2): it has also been brought to my attention that @/rlcswo on tiktok has stolen this word for word so please do go and report this user everyone

a/n (3): shameless self promo, I have a new enha series (still ongoing) so please do check it out, thank you <3

🖇️ — 양정원 ; JUNGWON !

he is constantly doing covers of your group's dances

he is a bit more lowkey and 'professional' about your relationship

more 'private but not secret' because he knows how you both need to keep your work separated to your private life

but he will be posting his selcas with you to show fans how smitten he is

jungwon is already incredibly active on weverse always replying to fans but now talking about you is all he ever does

'Jungwon how was your day?' a fan would ask

'Just had lunch with my sweet (y/n) and now I'm going to practice!'

biggest simp ever actually

sees you on the big screen during an award show and he's all smiles now, it's adorable :(

but ofcourse you would be displaying the biggest grin ever seeing jungwon shining on stage too

🖇️ — 이희승 ; HEESEUNG !

this man would risk it all for your relationship

whenever you were both together in public he would always be overly affectionate (giving dispatch a field day with the amount of content)

he knows you want to keep things a bit more private despite being in a confirmed public relationship because engene are a little... yeah

but ofcourse majority of them were very supportive and found you and hee to be such a cute couple

the amount of edits of him giving you 'the look' and fans constantly commenting how they wished they were you even for just a second

you'd usually try to stay composed around heeseung but your boyfriend was a tease and he wanted to see you become a flustered mess even on camera

k-netz knew this too because during an enhypen performance, when heeseung's part would come up the camera workers would always try to get the camera on you to get your reaction

let's just say there are many YouTube compilation videos of you simping for your boyfriend

'(Y/n) folding for Heeseung for 8 minutes straight'

🖇️ — 박종성 ; JAY !

jay usually keeps your relationship with him private unless it is brought up or he has something to say about you relating to something he was talking about

"Speaking of actually, (Y/n) showed me how to play this new song on my guitar." jay says during the live as he played a few chords

and during the en o clock episode where he was making muscles for the boys, he wasn’t sure on how to make them and so he called you to help him

fans found it endearing how he causally stayed on the call with you throughout him cooking and his phone would pass around the boys whilst they all said hi and made small talk with you

it soon became a normal thing where during lives if you were to call you would say hi to engene and during your lives he would say hi to your fans

he's always buying you gifts

during your lives there is atleast one item you have on that you'll mention saying you got it as a gift from jay

jay is very much into his rock music and that's pretty much 95% of his Spotify and then the other 5% is your group's songs

🖇️ — 심재윤 ; JAKE !

the most supportive boyfriend ever

best believe he is cheering the loudest during your performances and when your group wins an award

if it's one thing jake was gonna do, it was shamelessly promote you and your group's music

he plays atleast one song from your group during his solo lives and he talks about which songs he likes more and how hard you worked on it

during interviews, just from hearing your name he becomes like a happy pup wagging it's tail like it's time for his walk

the members always tease him for how much of a simp he is but fans find it so cute and wish for a jake of their own

'10 minutes of Jake being (Y/n)'s biggest fan'

you both have matching couple rings that you never take off even during performances

overall just super proud to call himself your boyfriend :(

🖇️ — 박성훈 ; SUNGHOON !

when ni-ki mentioned how sunghoon has high standards he wasnt lying, but then again you are the standard :p

a complete show off unlike jungwon

"Oh you know (y/n)? Yeah they're my girlfriend, isn't she pretty." he would say during a live

despite your protests telling him to stop he just wants everyone to know that your his

now he's all boastful when you aren't there but the minute you're both in one room, it's like he doesn't know how to act

hoon becomes almost robotic and can't even maintain eye contact with you

gets all shy in front of everyone and can't show you any pda

you both had to mc together once and hoon kept stumbling over his words and would blush everytime you looked over to him and smiled

the 4th gen it couple everyone loves and wants to be or be like

🖇️ — 김선우 ; SUNOO !

being called the 'sunshinez' as your couple nickname

loves spending time with you

he passed the friend check too and your members absolutely adore him (just as much as the enha members adore you)

you didn't know this until he mentioned it on a live but he collects your pcs

your no. 1 fanboy that's for sure

fans even noticed how you'd both started picking up small habits from each other

the couple that has all the juiciest tea on people in the industry

fans soon found out you'd actually been supporting him since his i-land days and found it so special

he posts atleast one photo he has with you atleast once a week and it's always the cutest thing

🖇️ — 西村 力 ; NI-KI !

he loves seeing you wearing his clothes during lives or part of your airport fashion

similarly to jake, you and riki have matching couple necklaces that you always have on

now riki usually keeps to himself but when it comes to you he suddenly comes out from his cave

he could disappear without posting for weeks to a month but when your group has a comeback he is the first to post it on his weverse to promote it and fans will tease him about it

'Ni-ki coming out of the trenches to hype up his girl' fans would say

'You'll know Riki's alive when he makes a post about or with (y/n)'

ofcourse netizens are quick to notice that too calling it couple goals

if he's not out with jake then he's either at home or with you, no in between

he's always sharing inside jokes he has with you to fans and they love how happy you make him

if ni-ki isn't updating fans, they come to you begging you to tell your boyfriend and miraculously he updates on social media

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Live Nation/Ticketmaster is buying Congress

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me THURSDAY (May 2) in WINNIPEG, then Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), Tartu, Estonia, and beyond!

Anything that can't go on forever eventually stops. Monopolies are intrinsically destabilizing and inevitably implode…eventually. Guessing which of the loathesome monopolies that make us all miserable will be the first domino is a hard call, but Ticketmaster is definitely high on my list.

It's not that event tickets are the most consequential aspect of our lives. The monopolies over pharma, fuel, finance, tech, and even beer are all more important to our day-to-day. But while Ticketmaster – and its many ramified tentacles, like Live Nation – may not be the most destructive monopoly in our world, but it pisses off people with giant megaphones and armies of rabid fans.

It's been a minute since Ticketmaster was last in the news, so let's recap. Ticketmaster bought out most of its ticketing rivals, then merged with Live Nation, the country's largest concert promoter, and bought out many of the country's largest music, stage and sports venues. They used this iron grip on the entire supply chain for performances and events to pile innumerable junk fees on every ticket sold, while drastically eroding the wages of the creative workers they nominally represented. They created a secret secondary market for tickets and worked with ticket-touts to help them run bots that bought every ticket within an instant of the opening of ticket sales, then ran an auction marketplace that made them gigantic fees on every re-sold ticket – fees the performers were not entitled to share in.

The Ticketmaster/Live Nation/venue octopus is nearly impossible to escape. Independent venues can't book Live Nation acts unless they use Ticketmaster for their tickets. Acts can't get into the large venues owned by Ticketmaster unless they sign up to have Live Nation book their tour. And when Ticketmaster buys a venue, it creams off the most successful acts, starving competing venues of blockbuster shows. They also illegally colluded with their vendors to jack up the price of concerts across the board:

https://pascrell.house.gov/uploadedfiles/ful.pdf

When Rebecca Giblin and I were writing Chokepoint Capitalism, our book about how tech and entertainment monopolies impoverish all kinds of creative workers, we were able to get insiders to go on record about every kind of monopoly, from the labels to Spotify, Kindle to the Big Five publishers and the Google-Meta ad-tech duopoly. The only exception was Ticketmaster/Live Nation: everyone involved in live performance – performers, bookers, club owners – was palpably terrified about speaking out on the record about the conglomerate:

https://chokepointcapitalism.com/

No wonder. The company has a long and notorious history of using its market power to ruin anyone who challenges it. Remember Pearl Jam?

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/pearl-jam-taking-on-ticketmaster-67440/

But anything that can't go on forever eventually stops. Not only is Ticketmaster a rapacious, vindictive monopolist – it's also an incompetent monopolist, whose IT systems are optimized for rent-extraction first, with ticket sales as a distant afterthought. This is bad no matter which artist it effects, but when Ticketmaster totally, utterly fucked up Taylor Swift's first post-lockdown tour, they incurred the wrath of the Swifties:

https://www.vox.com/culture/2022/11/21/23471763/taylor-swift-ticketmaster-monopoly

All of which explains why I've always given good odds that Ticketmaster would be first up against the wall come the antitrust revolution. It may not be the most destructive monopolist, but it is absurdly evil, and the people who hate it most are the most famous and beloved artists in the country.

For a while, it looked like I was right. Ticketmaster's colossal Taylor Swift fuckup prompted Senator Amy Klobuchar – a leading antitrust crusader – to hold hearings on the company's conduct, and led to the introduction of a raft of bills to rein in predatory ticketing practices. But as David Dayen writes for The American Prospect, Ticketmaster/Live Nation is spreading a fortune around on the Hill, hiring a deep bench of ex-Congressmen and ex-senior staffers (including Klobuchar's former chief of staff) and they've found a way to create the appearance of justice without having to suffer any consequences for their decades-long campaign of fraud and abuse:

https://prospect.org/power/2024-04-30-live-nation-strikes-up-band-washington/

Dayen opens his article with the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, which is always bracketed by a week's worth of lavish parties for Congress and hill staffers. One of the fanciest of these parties was thrown by Axios – and sponsored by Live Nation, with a performance by Jelly Roll (whose touring contract is owned by Live Nation). Attendees at the Axios/Live Nation event were bombarded with messages about the essential goodness of Live Nation (they were even printed on the cocktail napkins) and exhortations to support the Fans First Act, co-sponsored by Klobuchar and Sen John Cornyn (R-TX):

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/08/arts/music/fans-first-act-ticket-bill.html

Ticketmaster/Live Nation loves the Fans First Act, because – unlike other bills – it focuses primarily on the secondary market for tickets, and its main measure is a requirement for ticketing companies to disclose their junk fees upfront. Neither of these represents a major challenge to Ticketmaster/Live Nation's control over the market, which gives it the ability to slash performers' wages while jacking up prices for fans.

Fans First represents the triumph of Ticketmaster/Live Nation's media strategy, which is to blame the entire problem on bottom-feeding ticket-touts (who are mostly scum!) instead of on the single monopoly that controls the entire industry and can't stop committing financial crimes.

Axios isn't Live Nation's only partner in selling this distraction tactic. Over the past five years, the company has flushed gigantic sums of money through Washington. Its lobbying spend rose from $240k in 2018 to $1.1m in 2022, and $2.38m in 2023:

https://thehill.com/business/4431886-live-nation-doubled-lobbying-spending-to-2-4m-in-2023-amid-antitrust-threat/

The company has 37 paid lobbyists selling Congress on its behalf. 25 of them are former congressional staffers. Two are former Congressmen: Ed Whitfield (R-KY), a 21 year veteran of the House, and Mark Pryor (D-AR), a two-term senator:

https://www.bhfs.com/people/attorneys/p-s/mark-pryor

But perhaps the most galling celebrant in this lavish hymn to Citizen United is Jonathan Becker, Amy Klobuchar's former chief of staff, who jumped ship to lobby Congress on behalf of monopolists like Live Nation, who paid him $120k last year to sell their story to the Hill:

https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/lobbyists?cycle=2023&id=D000053134

Not everyone hates Fans First: it's been endorsed by the Nix the Tix coalition, largely on the strength of its regulation of secondary ticket sales. But the largest secondary seller in America by far is Live Nation itself, with a $4.5b market in reselling the tickets it sold in the first place. Fans First shifts focus from this sleazy self-dealing to competitors like Stubhub.

Fans First can be seen as an opening salvo in the long war against Ticketmaster/Live Nation. But compared to more muscular bills – like Klobuchar's stalled-out Unlock Ticketing Markets Act, it's pretty weaksauce. The Unlocking act will "prevent exclusive contracts between ticketing services and venues" – hitting Ticketmaster/Live Nation where it hurts, right in the bank-account:

https://www.klobuchar.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2023/4/following-senate-judiciary-committee-hearing-klobuchar-blumenthal-introduce-legislation-to-increase-competition-in-live-event-ticketing-markets

It's not all gloom. Dayen reports that Ticketmaster's active lobbying in favor of Fans First has made many in Congress more skeptical of the bill, not less. And Congress isn't the only – or even the best – way to smash Ticketmaster's criminal empire. That's something the DoJ's antitrust division could power through with a lot less exposure to the legalized bribery that dominates Congress.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/30/nix-fix-the-tix/#something-must-be-done-there-we-did-something

Image: Matt Biddulph (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/mbiddulph/13904063945/

CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

--

Flying Logos (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Over_$1,000,000_dollars_in_USD_$100_bill_stacks.png

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

[toskarin]

hey rin, a friend of mine enjoys composing music digitally and has a lot of respect for you as someone with more experience with that sort of thing. he has a hard time convincing the people around him to listen to the things he makes, in both the "finding an audience" way and "getting the people around him to give him their opinion on something he's working on way," and he wanted me to ask you if you could speak on your own experiences with those problems and how you've dealt with them. less related, he was also curious about your inspirations for the music that you make. i know this is a lot to cover, so if it would be easier for you to speak with him directly then please let me know

so I'll open by saying that, as far as people who can give good advice on this go, I'm probably not one of those. a lot of what I do only works because of some specific problems with my brain that are oddly adaptive to this sort of thing

that being said, this is a bit of the "tough love" kind of advice for surviving as an artist, so I'll make a second reblog for the second half of the question

this is either advice that will work or a ramble that will lead your friend to making his life unbearable, so look before you leap

-

The Easy Section, or "You've Gotta Be a Bit of a Tradie"

let's go over the business stuff quickly before I start rambling at length about the boring stuff

learn to love the work itself. "find a job you enjoy and you'll never work a day in your life" is garbage, but creative work really is the one area where you should double down on this. kick back and bump your own album on release day, thinking about how every second of it is something that didn't exist before you put it together. this is what's gonna keep you above water when the wind is dead

get on bandcamp. there is nowhere better for small musicians right now. bandcamp is basically the last remaining website with an effective suggestion algorithm that caters to people who want to actively engage with music and buy it

consider getting on instagram. in the majority of places you're likely to live if you're reading this, the local music scene is on instagram. probably don't use your personal instagram for this

consider getting on soundcloud. you won't make sales through soundcloud, because it's a streaming-focused site (more on that in a moment) with a focus on passive listening, but it's pretty decent for networking, especially with digital music production. soundcloud is linkedin for deadbeats

stay off spotify. streaming generally isn't worth the trouble these days unless you're playing concerts or are otherwise already established. if you aren't uttering the words "you can find me on..." more than once a month, it's probably not worth pursuing a spotify presence to end that sentence with

self-promote. if you have platforms, use them. find the subreddit for your genre and post yourself on the self-promo day. consider posting some bandcamp album codes when you do this, not just so you can get word of mouth, but because someone having an album in their collection means you effectively have a permanent zero-cost advertisement for your music which will only show itself to people who are verifiably looking at something similar. companies pay dizzying sums for ads that couldn't dream of being this targetted. this is a big reason why bandcamp is THE place to be for small musicians

cross-promote and collab. work with your friends. if you don't have musician friends, go make some and then help each other out. "independent" music is a misnomer

blind yourself to the metrics. do not look at engagement metrics. pay them no mind at all. don't look at them unless you're trying to see how effective a specific, deliberate course of action was and already know what you want to find

remember that strangers are unknowable. people do things for arbitrary reasons. if you don't have someone giving you written feedback, don't make any assumptions at all about why they did something. skipped tracks and minimum-price pwyws mean nothing at all

present your stuff in a way that gives it context. why should someone care about your stuff? give them a reason. carve out an hour to really work on a nice album cover, go the extra mile and include track-by-track narrative with your dungeon synth album, or just describe what you're expecting people to buy. I firmly believe that NOMAD/VIRTUE was successful in large part because of its presentation

gimmick. gimmick gimmick gimmick. discount codes are more fun than automatic discounts, free album codes are more fun than free albums, contests are more fun than giveaways, so on so forth. lacking any physical goodies to bundle in, you should still endeavour to give people Something To Do that makes them feel like they're really engaging with your music

zero expectations, zero overhead. do not rely on the whims of complete strangers to justify whether or not you end up in the red. if you ever find yourself saying something like "I can afford to pay for a session musician because I'll just make it back" you can't afford to pay for a session musician. you're probably never getting bailed out if you eat a loss, so try not to put yourself in a situation where you can eat a loss to begin with

someone else's expectations, someone else's overhead. if someone else is paying you to make this music for a soundtrack or something, if (and ONLY if) you have the money in your hand and know you have it, you're no longer gambling. at this point, you can start to look at expenses as investment

now onto the less fun stuff. here's where I ramble for like an hour at you.

-

if there's one thing I've really had hammered in over my decade-odd as a somewhat commercial artist (in all the disciplines I've worked with, which is most of them), it's that you have to be a bit of a bitch about it sometimes

that nagging fear in the back of your head that you're annoying? it's stopping you from doing what you need to do: annoy people

with that being said, this next section is kind of...

The Rough Section, or "You've Gotta Be a Little Hard-headed"

at the end of the day, you'll often find that you are your only advocate, and that means you kinda have to get your foot slammed in a few doors if that means holding them open. this also unfortunately means that you've gotta convince yourself you're pretty good. you don't have to think you're great, but confidence is a trade skill

the last opinion people see before the first time consciously engaging with your work (which here means "the thing that primes them for how they feel about it") is yours

which brings us to the first uncomfy rule

absolutely no cutting yourself down before anyone else even gets a swing

you can be modest if you want (you don't have to), but you absolutely cannot prime people to see the flaws in your work. if 50% of people are discerning enough to notice a flaw, why make that number 100%? what do you gain from that?

if something isn't as finished as you'd have liked it to be, but you've pushed it out the door anyway (which you will sometimes have to do), you absolutely cannot prime people to consider it unfinished

if the thing is still being worked on, there's nothing wrong with being forthcoming about that, but the fastest way to make someone think of something as "inferior product" when they otherwise would never have reached that conclusion is by telling them it is

and that, of course, leads us into a bit of an inversion of the previous rule

absolutely do not take the majority of your validation from strangers

doing this is bad for a million reasons, but I see the worst of this in visual arts, where artists double down on what gets them the most engagements and lay themselves at the mercy of complete strangers who have no actual investment in them

of course, it's normal to desire validation and approval from people you respect, but if you put yourself in a position where it's possible to enter a negative feedback loop that crystallises into you no longer making art from the default response of neutral apathy from strangers, it's not a matter of when: it's going to happen to you one day

so what's the move here? spend 8 years making music you don't release like you're in a compressed time chamber? probably not. I did it that way, but I didn't get much out of it, so you probably won't either

the actual answer is that you've gotta network. you need an inner circle. you need people with shared interests so that you can gas each other's stuff up

just like everyone else, you need your friends

you need to have friends who care about you, about what you're doing, and you need to care about them and what they're doing

this is because, while self-confidence is important...

the majority of your external validation as an artist should come from your friends and peers, not strangers

it's important to have artist friends, because then you can encourage each other in ways that are personally meaningful, but having your friends behind you, whether or not they're musicians, is so incredibly important

if you're motivated exclusively by success, however you're choosing to measure that, what you're actually doing is forming a nightmarish parasocial relationship with the concept of a crowd. not even a real crowd! a fictional group that materialises when you've created "the conditions for success"

there is no such thing as a truly independent artist. if your understanding of artistic success requires competition against others, you're going to lose that competition and then explode (unfortunately common)

finding your audience as an artist (and mind you, art is a social field) is very much a process of networking, but it feels gross to say it that way, so I'll just leave that at "if you want to be known by others, you need to be willing to know others"

anyway, this doesn't really terminate in a complete sentiment. I was just transcribing a train of though

if I were to boil this down to a shorter, snappier answer that I could read comfortably read out, it'd be...

TL;DR

the process of finding an audience is so much less about actually finding one than it is about learning to create happily whether or not you have an audience. developing an audience is the largely incidental byproduct of long-term creative efforts coupled with self-advocacy and interpersonal networking

if you want to be found by a scene, you have to participate in a scene, and if you want to participate in a scene, you need to be in the scene. so on so forth

as stupid as it might sound when I put it into words, the truth is that you can't build any kind of audience in isolation. someone has to find you somehow, and it's a lot easier to be found if you're actually somewhere that people might look

[yaostars]

HOW THEY WOULD BE DATING AN IDOL

note: fem reader, she/her prns, part 2 a/n: i love my bllk emos..!! LMFAO the last time i posted on here was aug 9 and its sep 3 im dying its been that long... well eat up people i might randomly poof till christmas next time /hj summary: dating a soccer player whilst being an idol characters: reo, kaiser, rin, sae

reo

i love this man honestly he would buy EVERY SINGLE PIECE OF MERCH!!!

he's your number one fan and always will be

he wont say it but if you ever brought out a perfume he would buy it just to use it for his house

money is the reason we exist everybody knows its a fact kiss kiss and right he doesnt care about it he just loves u smsmsmsm

he will come to every concert anywhere even if it meant to all the way on the other side of the world

he's social media is filled with you when both of you want to go public with the relationship

reo is just a happy man in general

kaiser

he's the type of bf to "accidentally" make your relationship public but its only because he HATES seeing those ship edits of you and some other idol

he tries to make it to as many concerts around the world but when its in germany he will be there every night

wears your merch for papz to see and so he can promote your career bc he loves u

has all yours songs in one big playlist on spotify and he'll play it while working out or training

whenever theres a concert he'll be in the vip or back stage watching you and the first to give you a hug

loves it when you randomly sing around the house

he just loves you heaps and would do anything for it even tho hes a bum bum

rin

boy oh boy hes cold and all until he finds the loml

absolutely adores you heaps

keeps a special rare photo card of you on the back of his phone and in his wallet (he just wants to see your face all the time)

wont admit it but before dating you he always idolised your music and would listen to it 24/7

he wasnt a fan that people knew that you guys were dating but he secretly loves it so he can watch ship edits of both of you

will randomly hum your music around the house

whole camera roll is you

softie js 4 u

sae

he's never home due to his career but you never minded it since you both had careers that would be tough to have free time

sae always tries to make it onto livestreams of yours that are sponsored or interviews just to watch you while being in spain

has at least a few merch items; hoodies and shirts

he always makes sure to wear them out

sometimes he surprises you at concerts when he says he cant make it

always tries to make a time with you

doesnt care about private or public relationship status he just wants to know if you're comfy thats all

his insta story is always photos of you, sponsors to do with you, and.. well pretty much everything about you

he loves u sm hes like a teddybear

[roo-bastmoon]

SGMB Flight Controllers, listen up...

Streaming: YouTube, Spotify, Pandora, Apple, Amazon Music, Tidal, Qobuz, Deezer, Screner -- GO!

Buying: iTunes, WeVerse, Walmart, Target, Amazon, Barnes & Nobel, Record Store --GO!

Promoting: TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, text a link to your family and friends -- GO!

T-minus 4 hours to lift-off.

Smeraldo Garden Marching Band, prepare for launch.

[xkaidaxxxx]

Kuroo Tetsuro

The Man

y/n and kuroo : started dating 2nd year of high school

Currently : married and living together

Having a degree really doesn’t give you a great job from the start. During your 2nd year of college you got engaged with him. After that you both got an apartment and married. You’ve been living there for 2 years now. “I’m off to work sweetheart.” He said. You fixed his tie. “ I love you very much.” Giving you a quick kiss leaving afterwards. He wants to be in a sports promotion division but everyone has to start off somewhere. Now kuroo has told you endless of times that you don’t have to pay rent, buy groceries nor pay any other type of bills. It honestly made you feel bad. Yeah you were a housewife with a degree in business management and marketing. Everything was going great. You had breakfast, lunch, and dinner ready for Kuroo everyday. He loves your meals. He’s grateful for everything you do. Recently you’ve noticed he’s been stressed out. It was odd. You’ve never seen him so quiet,upset, looking like he’s going to explode at any moment.

Things were going downhill at work. Many people were being let go due to company issues. All the current workers pay went down. Long story short work was a shit show. He’s saved up money however still struggling to pay bills. He’s at this lowest right now. He won’t say a single word about it. He grew up hearing “you’re going to be the man of your house. You’re the man. Start getting that in your head.” From his dad. His mother agreed but she added that if he ever needed help they’d be there. Yeah his dad wasn’t in on that part. That grew upon him in an awful way. He’s beating himself up. It’s not his fault the company is falling to the ground. Not this fault his paycheck was 71,000yen(about 500usd) less from 341,100yen(2,400usd)= 288,162 yen (1,900usd)

That evening his mother accidentally called your phone instead of his. “Kuroo I have told you endless of times that you’re my son and that I love you very much. I know how it feels to struggle with money. You’re a strong person. Very dedicated and smart. If you need the money sweetheart take it. You can move back in with us. I’d love to have company. Y/n is such a sweet girl.” She spoke. There was a long pause. You hung up with without a word. You waited for kuroo to get home. Time passed by. Dinner was ready as Kuroo walked in and set his briefcase down. “ I’m home my love.” He spoke walking into the kitchen. You helped him take his blazer off along with his tie. “ Eat up lovely. I couldn’t wait today. I was too hungry.” You replied. You sat down and watched him eat. Allowing him to enjoy his tasty meal. Once he reached the end of it you asked, “ How was work?You’ve been working a bit longer?” You crossed your legs. “ It’s good. There’s just more work to do this time around. It’s kind of annoying don’t ya think.” He replied smiling. You wanted to slap that stupid fake smile off of his face. “Yeah I know. I’ve heard. The neighbor downstairs told me her husband got let go. You guys work in the same building right?” You lied. There was no such neighbor nor same building. “ U-uh yeah? Really?” He replied nervously. “ It suck’s they must be so stressed out. There’s rent,water bills,electricity, movie apps,Spotify.” You said. He finally knew what you were doing. How did you find out only god knows. “ Y-yes y/n I’ve been struggling with work. I swear baby I’ll figure it out. I promise. We will be okay.” He got up and held you in his arms. Tears soaked his tshirt. “Hey shh it’s okay. It’s not going to be easy but we’ll be fine. Don’t worry about it. Allow me to do that. I’m the man of the house after all. It’s my job to keep everything in check.” He said letting go and wiping your tears away. “I was planning to tell you yesterday that we got a call from the house phone. They said you wanted to be the Japan Volleyball Association’s Sports Promotion Division? They loved the resume and idea’s you’ve submitted. I’m guessing you put some of your high school and college volleyball background.” You said. Kuroo looked at you in shock. This was what he wanted. He got it after 3 years. “I told them yes..yeah so you start next week. On Monday. I know you’ll do amazing baby.” You said tip toeing giving him a peck on the cheek. “ This is perfect. I told you we’ll be okay.” He blushed. Your stomach grumbled loudly. “I thought you ate already.” He smirked. You smacked his arm. He served your plate as you sat down. “Here princess. Eat up. I love you very much.” He pecked your cheek setting the plate down. “ I love you too baby.”

[day6source]

it's that time again! how insane is it to be getting another comeback!? if you haven't heard yet, 'band aid' will be arriving to us soon, september 2nd, 2024! just like before, i'll be keeping things all updated from written interviews to videos! keep an eye out and save the link if you're wanting to keep up and want some easy reference! 화이팅!

SHOPPING

as always, below are options for where to buy! most of them are online shops linked directly from twitter, as well as a few places i personally like to buy from that have pretty good prices. i did my best to include mostly international sites (they default to english) for the main set provided by jyp. if you have any sites used in your country feel free to send them and i'll add the links in (these are american centric given i'm in america haha).

STANDARD VERSION (*indicates a pre-order benefit):

THE JYP SHOP* ꕤ YES24 ꕤ WITH MUU* ꕤ APPLE MUSIC ꕤ MUSIC PLANT* ꕤ MUSIC KOREA* ꕤ BLUE DREAM MEDIA* ꕤ ALADDIN ꕤ SUBK SHOP* ꕤ MUSIC PLAZA* ꕤ CHOICE MUSIC LA* ꕤ KPOP TOWN ꕤ KTOWN4U

PLATFORM NEMO VERSION:

THE JYP SHOP* ꕤ YES24 ꕤ WITH MUU ꕤ APPLE MUSIC ꕤ MUSIC PLANT ꕤ MUSIC KOREA ꕤ BLUE DREAM MEDIA ꕤ ALADDIN ꕤ SUBK SHOP ꕤ MUSIC PLAZA ꕤ CHOICE MUSIC LA ꕤ KPOP TOWN ꕤ KTOWN4U

LISTENING

APPLE MUSIC ꕤ SPOTIFY ꕤ AMAZON MUSIC ꕤ BUGS! ꕤ DEEZER ꕤ FLO ꕤ GENIE ꕤ ITUNES STORE ꕤ MELON ꕤ PANDORA ꕤ TIDAL ꕤ YOUTUBE MUSIC ꕤ YOUTUBE VIDEO PLAYLIST

WATCHING

below is all of the content to watch!! m/v's, concerts, promo stuff, performances!! if it pertains to the album it goes here!

Forever Young Concert

Coming soon !

OFFICIAL VIDEOS

ALBUM RELEASE TEASER ꕤ CONCEPT FILM TEASER ꕤ CONCEPT FILM ꕤ ALBUM PRODUCTION PART #1 ꕤ ALBUM PRODUCTION #2 ꕤ ALBUM SAMPLER ꕤ 'MELT DOWN' MV TEASER #1 ꕤ 'MELT DOWN' MV TEASER #2 ꕤ 'MELT DOWN' MV ꕤ 'MELT DOWN' SING ALONG GUIDE WITH MY DAY ꕤ 'BAND AID' JACKET MAKING FILM ꕤ 'MELT DOWN' MV MAKING FILM ꕤ 'MELT DOWN' REACTION WITH MY DAY ꕤ 'MELT DOWN' STUDIO LIVE VERSION ꕤ 'MONSTER' STUDIO LIVE VERSION

PERFORMANCES

MCOUNTDOWN 240905: COMEBACK INTERVIEW ꕤ 'MELT DOWN' PERFORMANCE ꕤ SUNGJIN CAM ꕤ YOUNG K CAM ꕤ WONPIL CAM ꕤ DOWOON CAM ꕤ ꕤ SUNGJIN FANCAM ꕤ YOUNG K FANCAM ꕤ WONPIL FANCAM ꕤ DOWOON FANCAM ꕤ PERFORMANCE BEHIND THE SCENES

MUSIC BANK 240906: 'MELT DOWN' PERFORMANCE ꕤ 'MELT DOWN' FULL CAM ꕤ SUNGJIN CAM ꕤ YOUNG K CAM ꕤ WONPIL CAM ꕤ DOWOON CAM

SHOW! MUSIC CORE 240907: 'MELT DOWN' PERFORMANCE ꕤ 'MELT DOWN' FULL CAM ꕤ SUNGJIN CAM ꕤ YOUNG K CAM ꕤ WONPIL CAM ꕤ DOWOON CAM ꕤ SUNGJIN FAVORITE CAM ꕤ YOUNG K FAVORITE CAM ꕤ WONPIL FAVORITE CAM ꕤ DOWOON FAVORITE CAM ꕤ PERFORMANCE BEHIND THE SCENES

INKIGAYO 240908: 'MELT DOWN' PERFORMANCE ꕤ 'MELT DOWN' FULL CAM ꕤ SUNGJIN CAM ꕤ YOUNG K CAM ꕤ WONPIL CAM ꕤ DOWOON CAM ꕤ YOUNG K FACE CAM ꕤ DOWOON FACE CAM ꕤ PERFORMANCE BEHIND THE SCENES

PROMOTIONAL VIDEOS

IU's PALETTE ꕤ 'CONGRATULATIONS' @ IU'S PALETTE ꕤ YOUNG K ON BDNS ꕤ TIKTOK CHALLENGES

READING

MELON SPOTLIGHT

[fromtenthousandfeet]

All Cash and No Credit

Let's talk about HYBE's strategy for Jimin's MUSE. It's pretty simple

Maximize Profit - Minimize Success

Let's break down how they're doing it.

Goal #1 is to get as many customers as possible to buy from Weverse instead of regular retailers like chains (Target, Walmart, Barnes & Noble) and online sellers like Amazon. When fans buy on Weverse, a HYBE subsidiary, the company keeps not only the wholesale portion of the album sale, but the retail portion as well. This is obvious, right? If not, I'm happy to explain. The company likely makes twice the profit (give or take) on albums purchased via Weverse. AND, they can control when those albums are shipped, and how, when, or if the sales are reported to the music charting agencies.

The fact that Target pre-sales of MUSE is sold out within hours is suspect. This indicates limited stock, just like the strategy used for Like Crazy CD singles. Meanwhile, Geffen is very slow to release the pre-sale links for other retailers. The Walmart presale just went up. Where are B&N and Amazon? Will they have limited inventory, too?

Putting Jimin's Production Diary on Weverse only was a conscious choice. The cost of the documentary was expensive - more than the monthly fee for streaming services, the company kept all the profit (didn't have to share the costs with Netflix or Disney+), and limited his exposure to the general public. I suspect they will operate the same way with MUSE.

Goal #2 Keep Jimin as low as possible on the charts. We've seen this over and over. First, by splitting Like Crazy versions and disappearing sales, no CD restocks. Then we saw the same behavior from BH/HYBE again with Closer Than This being released on the worst possible day of the year and almost zero promotion. You know the details.

HYBE will limit stock. They will likely not report all sales.

MUSE physical albums will not be eligible for UK charts because of a random inclusion. The previous four solo album releases have had specific UK versions with no inclusions. UK fans will have to rely on digital sales for charting purposes unless BH provides a new version. Dirty.

Goal #3 Promote the album just enough to garner sales from fans while minimizing advertising to the greater public. The announcement of the new album is also strange. The teaser video was only on Instagram and only on the BigHit/BTS channel (this didn't stop anyone, though, as far as I can tell) as well as Weverse (I'm getting tired of that platform). TikTok is a far more effective advertising tool when it comes to targeting young people. Why wasn't the teaser posted to TikTok? Either way, "Jimin Jimin" was trending on X/Twitter with over 1.7 million mentions many hours after the announcement of the new album. There's only so much BH can do to suppress Jimin now that fans have taken marketing him into their own hands.

Let's keep an eye on this.

What's different this time around? This time the fandom knows who is behind thwarting Jimin's success. Precious time was lost during the FACE era when everyone was blaming Jimin's sabotage on Billboard and Spotify, rather than the rightful villain - HYBE/Big Hit. This time the fandom knows to watch their every move and call them out on their shady and unequal treatment. That said, tagging Geffen, Big Hit, and HYBE on X is pretty much useless. They have shown they won't change their behavior when fans complain. Instead, fans must start tagging Billboard, Spotify, and media outlets. Media outlets are the most important. HYBE does not care about the fandom, but they do care about their public image, especially after all the damage that's been done to the company and the stock price due to the ADOR controversy and court case.

I think Jimin is going to a different label for his solo work. That's my hunch. The company is going to squeeze as much profit out of him as possible before he goes, but it's a balancing act because they don't want him to outshine Jungkook. Of course, I could be completely wrong.

[fallloverfic]

"Nimona" fandom informational rundown

New to the fandom and a bit confused about things? Hopefully this will help!

Nimona was a webcomic by Nate Diana Stevenson/ND Stevenson that was first shown on tumblr on December 14, 2011, and Nate later launched it as an official webcomic on its own website on June 19, 2012. It was contracted for publication post-completion as a graphic novel sometime before November 1, 2012. The webcomic finished online publication on September 30, 2014. Shortly afterward, most of the webcomic was taken down as part of the contractual agreement for publication as a physical graphic novel, leaving only a short bit of the opening as a preview. The website for the webcomic later went down entirely, and is no longer accessible.

The comic was published in entirety as a single graphic novel on May 12, 2015. The movie adaptation rights were sold to Fox in 2015, as well, and the project was given to Blue Sky Studios. The comic was later adapted into a full cast audiobook on October 4, 2016. The graphic novel is available for purchase in paperback, hardcover, and as an ebook, and the audiobook is also available for purchase. (The link has international seller links). The graphic novel has been translated into 16 languages. It is also available in a special edition English hardcover via Illumicrate. They only ship from the UK, but ship internationally, and you don't need a subscription to buy the book. As the standard graphic novel and audiobook are ~7+ years old now, if you have a local library, you can see if either of them are available that way.

Disney bought 20th Century Fox Animation (later 20th Century Animation, the purchase completed in 2019), but later shut down Blue Sky Studios in 2021, cancelling the still-in-production movie. Crew worked on shopping the movie around for a new home after talks with Disney. The movie was later picked up and completed by Annapurna, DNEG, and Netflix, premiered June 14, 2023 in France, showed in select theaters starting principally on June 23, 2023, and released to general audiences on Netflix for streaming on June 30, 2023. I have more info on this here.

In English, Nimona is voiced by Chloë Grace Moretz, Ballister Boldheart is voiced by Riz Ahmed, and Ambrosius Goldenloin is voiced by Eugene Lee Yang.

If you're looking for official merch, the movie soundtrack is up on multiple platforms, including YouTube, iOS, Spotify, and Amazon, and a vinyl version of the soundtrack was sold by iam8bit. There is an official humanoid Nimona plushie, a whale Nimona plushie, and a shark Nimona plushie, available via Gee and Hot Topic, as well as a variety of official shirts available via Hot Topic and Amazon (just search Brand: Nimona). Nate also still sells "Nimona" comic art on his INPRNT store.

Netflix released a free-to-read digital-only multimedia 358-page artbook for the movie (but took it down in March 2024). (It's also been released at least for crew/friends of crew(?) in physical release, so maybe it'll get mass release as a hardcover). Outside of this, a lot of the crew for the movie from both Blue Sky and DNEG have been releasing a ton of concept art and development stuff, and the cast and crew have been doing a lot of promotional interviews and videos going back through like April 2023, so there's a lot of material to look through on YouTube, tiktok, tumblr, twitter, Instagram, Facebook/Meta, and Vimeo, as well as various news and media sites. Nate is active on tumblr, his personal blog, twitter, and Instagram. Annapurna, DNEG, and Netflix also have multiple accounts on many platforms, including their own websites, YouTube, Facebook/Meta, and Twitter, and have been sharing clips and behind the scenes stuff.

Nimona actually has been added to a video game: Nimona was included as an event companion in SharkBite 2, a Roblox game.

If you're looking for fanworks, the fandom is active on most platforms, and has been ever since Nate started posting early art of the characters. Nate's talked at length in multiple places about how big the fandom was during the webcomic's publication. Mostly back then folks were very active in the Disqus comments on pages, which are a bit harder to find these days. There's a lot of the older comic fanart still circulating in different places (particularly tumblr, where the fandom was most active), some of which Nate reblogged. There is crossover between the comic and movie fandoms, as many fans of the comic love the movie and vice versa, and both fandoms are quite active. There is at least one active subreddit and fanwiki (and many others on assorted fantasy, comic, movie, and non-English language sites), as well as TV Tropes pages for both the comic and movie adaptation and a number of Discord servers.

For fanfiction, there are a ton of fics on Archive of Our Own in the comic tag and in the movie adaptation tag. There are also a number of fics on tumblr, some fics on fanfiction.net, and some on Wattpad. There are fanvids on tiktok, Instagram, and YouTube. There is fanart on tumblr, twitter, deviantart, instagram, and pixiv. There are cosplayers, meta analysts, roleplayers, music makers, and many other fanworkers

Some tags to use/browse for posts on tumblr and other sites:

Nimona

Nimona fanart

Nimona comic

Nimona movie

Ballister Blackheart

Ballister Boldheart

Ambrosius Goldenloin

Gloreth

Meredith Blitzmeyer

Ballister x Ambrosius / Goldenheart / Boldloin / Boldenloin / Blackenloin / Blackloin / Goldheart

Will update this post as I come across new things.

[tightjeansjavi]

okay another pornstar!joel headcanon (I can’t be stopped idc) with pride month on the horizon, I think it’s more than appropriate to highlight just how BIG of an ally Joel is to the queer community 🏳️‍🌈

Miller-Co has a pride float every year for the Austin pride parade

He donates to local queer groups and organizations

He promotes local queer artists/performers on the Miller-Co IG page and his own account

He proudly flies the gay pride flag on his front lawn, and for pride month he lines the walkway and driveway with various pride flags

He features local queer artists on his Spotify podcast

At one of Austin’s gay bars he is known as everyone’s bar dad

There’s a plaque with a photograph of him surrounded by local drag queens and regulars at the bar. ‘Everyone’s favorite bar dad; Joel, Teddy Bear Miller’ is engraved in the plaque.

He wears an ally pin whenever he is in queer occupied spaces so everyone knows that they’re safe with him

He makes sure that everyone from the bar gets home safe. ie: walks couples/friends to their cars, offers to drive them home or buys them an Uber

He’s a stand in therapist when someone needs a shoulder to lean on

“oh, your parents disowned you? I’ll be your dad.”

he does this all selflessly and with the utmost care and love because his momma raised him and Tommy right 🩷

As if we couldn’t love this man anymore, right? 😩🥹

[chocotonez]

skz love languages: acts of service

a/n: I have so many ideas yet none exist in my head,,that’s not meant to be poetic it just means I struggled with some of these

genre/warnings: I don’t think there’s any, gn reader (should be, pls tell me if there’s anything implying otherwise!!), swearing, guys I promise I know my grammar I just like casual language for my hcs

chan

-okay these will be short and sweet because I have so many thoughts

-folds your clothes along with his, or washes your laundry with his

-remembers your schedule so he can remind you of important events

-gives you tips if you ever go to the gym together and shares his water with you

-blows on hot food before he gives it to you

-takes photos of things he remembered you talking about when he’s at the store and asks if you want it

-holds your hands in his when it’s cold and rubs them to warm them up!!

-brings you water/snacks if you’re studying/working with little notes on them saying ur doing a good job <3

-brings extra tissues or lip balm or hand sanitizer just in case you need it

minho

-okay this is kinda niche but like clearing out your phone tabs or compter tabs and scolding you if you have a messy layout or smth like that

-texts reminders to you regularly, drink water, eat, take meds, clean your desk when you get home…

-sends you cute gifs to cheer you up

-always checks in with your feelings in his own way “hey u big baby, are you okay? do you need anything?”

-pretends to laugh at the videos you send him because even tho they’re usually kinda lame it’s from you and that makes him smile but he’ll never admit that </3

-organizes any mess you left behind, puts your dishes away or puts your shoes away and then makes fun of u for being “messy”

-wipes away food you got on your face

-begrudgingly lets you have more blanket when you sleep/cuddle together because he doesn’t want to see u cold or uncomfortable :(

-takes your glasses/jewelry off if you fell asleep with them on

changbin

-opens jars/wrappers/bags for you

-lifts you into his shoulders at festivals

-because it’s October here’s a lil Halloween inclusion of him holding your hands at haunted houses and yelling at the scare actors for you <3 (also because it’s his way of coping lol)

-turns lights off/closes doors if you forget

-if you’re in the bathroom before bed he fluffs up your pillows so ur all comfy and cozy

-reads messages you got out loud if you’re preoccupied with something else, or alerts you if something seems important

-tells you stupid bedtime stories to help you go back to sleep if you had a nightmare

-begins to buy larger umbrellas so you both can stay dry together

-if you wear makeup he wants to help you by either by blending it or just straight applying it and giggling like a kid because “it’s fun”

hyunjin

-brushes your hair and styles it

-this might be also niche but holding onto your shoulders while you walk rather than your hand because it feels more secure?? also because he feels like he can bring you closer to him

-I never really write idol s/os but the idea of him looking over to you during an awards show to periodically make sure ur okay makes me melt

-feeds you and then pinches ur cheeks while laughing

-usually lets you choose the movie/show you want to watch, same with places to eat (unless you don’t know what to pick, then he’ll help you figure it out)

-runs you weekly bubble baths for you two to relax in

-holds/opens doors for you

-always wants you to relax, back rubs or nights off and doing face masks together

-he applies ur face masks for you :)

han

-he’s more of a receiver than a giver for this love language, his is mostly mixed with gift gifting

-making you playlists or untitled songs or coded titles so only you can find them on his Spotify :)

-he adjusts ur clothes, I feel like he’s the type of boyfriend to pick lint off of u without being promoted

-he’s a bit messy so he’ll tend to throw things into your drawer so it at least has the appearance of looking neat, he’ll help u organize if that’s what u want tho!! U just need to ask <3

-always checks in on you unprompted tho, makes sure you’re doing well at any hour of the day and whines

-he either spam texts u or shows up at your house with no warning to check up on you

-stands up for u but subtlety (English is not my first language it took me like seven tries to get that right pmg)

-BUT as I was saying, if you want to go to a restaurant but ur too shy to say it in front of the ppl ur hanging out with, he’ll be like “I WANNA GO TO ____” until they relent <3

felix

-kills bugs for you

-teaches you how to bake and if he’s alone, he’ll bake extra treats for you (his fave thing to bake u r cupcakes !! )

-helps you build furniture and never teases u if you don’t get something <333

-if you play online games together he’ll try to always watch your back and fight off enemies for you

-or if you prefer taking the offensive, he’ll simply cheer you on :))

-sends flowers to your workplace/leaves them on your kitchen counter

-stargazes with you or plans out meaningful dates where he treats you

-makes you playlists

-sings you lullabies if you can’t sleep or just wanna hear him

-stays up after you to make sure you went to bed okay

seungmin

-plugs in your phone for you before bed

-he always listens to your advice or at least takes it into heavy consideration, makes sure you feel heard

-asks if his jokes ever go too far

-“excuse me, they asked for no pickles”

-alway thanks you for acts of services that you do for him, leaves sweet texts or letters expressing his gratitude

-weirdly sweet remarks about how you’re so pretty it’s annoying or “who gave you permission to look so good tonight?”

-covers your eyes during scary parts of movies

-unless asked, he always lets you sleep in on weekends but never fails to be a human alarm clock if your digital one isn’t working

-wakes up before you 99% of the time so he can at least start a cup of coffee/breakfast for you

-pesters you into taking care of yourself (laying on top of you until you brush your teeth, tickling you until you relent to drinking water…)

jeongin

-never breaks pinky promises, and always tells you in advance if there’s a schedule conflict so you don’t have to wait

-if he pays you back for anything he adds a little message “thanks for lunch, love you so much”

-tries new things for you because he trusts you, and encourages you to step out of your comfort zone as well

-asks if you’d like anything before he goes to the grocery store, and always remembers it

-thanks you randomly for being such a good partner or if you did something nice in the past few days

-always gives you a comfortable space to express yourself in, lets you talk and never interrupts you

-makes sure you stay uninterrupted as well, glares down anyone who speaks over u lolol

-makes a special handshake between the two of you

-very playful acts of services but they r still acts of services <3

[jimin-bangtan]

Jimin's MUSE EP - 1 billion Spotify streams!

Congratulations to Jimin...AGAIN!⭐🌟

I also want to congratulate and thank the fans who supported MUSE and Jimin. Everyone who purchased albums and songs, participated in streaming parties, streamed on your own, requested radio play, sent positive comments to Jimin and each other, sent reminders for voting and streaming, you are so appreciated. Even if you couldn't buy a CD packet or songs, or even stream songs due to your circumstances, your positive energy and comments are part of the teamwork that makes the dream work.

The above words are the same thanks I posted when Jimin's 1st solo album, FACE, reached 1 billion streams. With his 2nd solo album, MUSE, just reaching 1 billion streams too, the exact same sentiments still apply and then some. Among other tremendous accomplishments, Jimin is the first KPop soloist to have TWO albums achieve this goal, with his 2nd being the fastest to do so. Once again, congratulations to Jimin's fans for all of their perseverance, organization, and energy.

What is different this time is that because of Jimin's hardworking and devoted fans, the company finally realized that Jimin should receive a company-backed promotion. The hard work you all did allowed new fans to find Jimin and his talent. The hard work allowed the company to be shamed by the public appearance of neglecting their very own successful, popular, and talented artist - not to mention perhaps finally realizing or admitting that they were losing out on potential, untapped profits. In addition, the hard work allowed Jimin's 2nd solo album, MUSE, to soar to even greater heights.

In hindsight, the company is now pulling out Jimin-focused pop-ups and exhibitions that even look as though some time and attention were paid to them. The exhibition sounds like an expansion of his small (but quality) documentary that they put solely on Weverse and was filmed mainly by Jimin and the small SGMB production team. Among other items, it is said that evidence of his writing contributions, as well as awards & recognition, will be on display at the event.

I hope what we are seeing is that the company realizes that they miscalculated and underestimated Jimin's popularity, talent, potential, power - and fanbase. Sadly, they did much of the same to most of the remaining members as well. I hope we are seeing them in the process of reassessing their plans to what seemed like inequitable distribution of support and that we're seeing them begin to fairly invest in all 7 members who invested their bodies and lives believing in a company that they built with their own blood, sweat, & tears.

Jimin proved once again that his hard work, versatility, and creative instincts are the driving force of his success as well as the motivation of his fans' who put forth tremendous energy & effort for him. While the company makes our job difficult, Jimin makes it oh, so easy. He produces quality material and is a quality human being who inspires people to love and appreciate him and his work.

Please keep up the great work, and continue to support Jimin as earnestly as you have, so he can truly feel the full appreciation and love many people feel for him and his projects.

I REPEAT from the last 1 Billion celebration post: Park Jimin rocks! 🌟 And so do his fans! ✨

cr2: @akookminsupporter