PLAYLISTS
Tue, 12/21 6:19PM • 35:29
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
artists, song, music, people, playlists, kailyn, pandemic, tik tok, tick tock, spotify, influencer, creating, album, label, release, listen, video, band, wrote, stacy
SPEAKERS
Andrew Oliphant, Clip, Afua Mfodwo, Kyla Ma, Kalen, Lil Nas X

Afua Mfodwo  00:05
How is social media affecting the way people listen to and make music? In this episode of unraveled, producer Andrew Oliphant will help us understand this and the ways digital distribution platforms are shaping the future of the music industry. My name is Afua Mfodwo, and this is unraveled.

Andrew Oliphant  00:42
Music besides food and language might be the most defining aspect of culture. Like all art brings us together. There's something about music musicians that seems so relatable like anyone can do it. So in the world of TiC tock and instant gratification, what happens when you decide to make the leap and try to create it? Can anyone do it? My name is Andrew Oliphant, and like many others, music has informed so many of my memories. For me, when I'm listening to a certain song, I can close my eyes and be immediately transported to a specific place or time. I remember when I used to listen to CDs that my brother gave me for Christmas on my Walkman, those held together by tape and rubber bands. I would lie down in my bedroom with the lights off staring at the glow in the dark stars pasted on my ceiling, and I'd be taken on a journey that was just for me. But today, like a lot of people, I rarely feel like I have the patience to sit through an entire album. streaming platforms have given me access to a seemingly infinite amount of music. So why would I want to listen to an album when I can just play all my favorite songs in a row. So on this episode, I'll be looking at how social media has influenced song releases and listening habits, the rise of the music distributor in collaborating in the age of zoom calls and social distancing. I want to see what's changed in the way artists approach making music and how it will be made in the future. So let's get to it. With around 40,000 songs released on Spotify every day can seem nearly impossible to break through as an artist find out more. I spoke with an artist trying to make it in today's music scene to see how he's been navigating the competitive landscape.

Kalen  02:37
My name is Kalen. My pronouns are he him and I play in a band called Best Friend with my friend Stacy. I am a producer and a songwriter and Satoshi.

Andrew Oliphant  02:48
Kalen met his bandmate Stacy Kim through a mutual friend. And after DMing each other about some covers they posted on Instagram, they decided to start a band in 2018 the band best friend released a new EP in the fall called places I've lit. The song you hear now is off that EP. And since then, they've received radio play and have been featured on some prominent Spotify playlist like indie pop and chill and fresh finds. His indie artists, they've used music distributors to push their songs onto prominent playlists.

Kalen  03:26
The role of the distributor is changing for sure. It used to be that you absolutely needed to have a label in order to get your music in front of almost anyone of consequence. And more. So it seems where we're kind of going with some of these new distribution platforms is that they're almost like distribution label combinations, they do like they did a lot of them offered label like services without actually signing a band on to be some part of like some exclusive retainer label some sort of thing like, oh, we have you for the next five years, that sort of thing that all this, all of this stuff that we've all heard all the horror stories about. I've noticed that there are definitely a lot of distribution companies who are starting to offer some of those services just with their distribution, which is making it a lot easier for people who aren't on a label or who may not have those immediate, like label like connections to get their music in front of people who might be able to do something with it. And that's a that's a big thing is being able to get your track in front of someone who has the clout to sort of make something happen with it.

Andrew Oliphant  04:34
Playlists chasing has become even more important for the future and longevity of our artists, bands and relying on digital service providers or DSPs to put them on their playlists. 

Kalen  04:45
In terms of like editorial playlists on on DSPS and so like on your Spotify is in your your apple musics and Amazon's there'll be the playlists that come with them. It's especially a strong ecosystem on Spotify. And the artists that get placed on those editorial playlists do extraordinarily well usually, they're usually set up for success they're usually having because there are already hundreds of 1000s of people usually who have that playlist saved. So if you're looking for a quick way to success or a quick way to start being recognized by people, you could very easily say to yourself, maybe I want to try and get on one of these playlists. And if you're giving yourself as many kind of tries with that as possible, it would only make sense to put out just a bunch of singles until, until you kind of get have enough support that you could really support. A longer release.

Andrew Oliphant  05:34
Best friend is a band with him, and Stacy is based out of Vancouver. So on top of them trying to make it as an indie band, they've had to manage to make music from two sides of the country as well. Kailyn and Stacy have been lucky, they've been able to get distributors who have backed their music on Spotify.

Kalen  05:52
I think that a lot of our decisions, and a lot of the directions that we've tried to go in terms of Playlist pitching is that we really just tried to make sure that we have a strong enough community behind us. And we have people who can put our music in places to get seen. And our for example, like the distributors that we work with have been fantastic for that have been very good at being able to just reach out to their couple of people and say, Hey, we have these songs going out this week, and you should definitely check them out. And even not like one recommendation is enough to make something stand out over like a lake, a whole sea of music that gets submitted all the time. So I think that's where that that's where we kind of had the tides turn for us a little bit was when we could have someone someone like hand delivering to the curators, basically.

Andrew Oliphant  06:47
To look another side of the industry, I wanted to speak to someone who works for a large music label to see if there are any differences in how they approach the release and distribution of new music. Kyla Mah is a visual content producer with Universal Music Canada. She works on the creative team at the record label. She's worked for the company for three and a half years and has helped produce video content for rising stars in the Canadian music scene. Kyla has noticed that the industry has been shifting to the single as well. And even though the artists he works with are signed to a major music label, they still have to go through the same pitching process to Spotify and other DSPs that Kalen is so used to.

Kyla Ma  07:27
Its pitching anything, basically, it's pitching your song pitching your artists every single time. It's not like we're ever entitled to playlists like even though we are like a massive record label. And we have these artists that are established just because your artist releases a song Spotify isn't going to see that and be like, yeah, we'll throw it on our playlist unless you're Justin Bieber. So if you're trying to develop someone, it's still very much like, here's our whole marketing plan. Like, here's all the stuff we're going to do with this artist, this is the plan for them. This is their main track that we're focusing on. If you're going to put one on a playlist, Please promote this one. And this is why and blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's like selling yourself every time it's it doesn't just come to us, which is something that I was pretty shocked by because I just thought like, I don't know, you send cold music to Spotify, and they would want to put it on a playlist but it's it's still very I think for Spotify, like business front. Just based on my own experience and the artists that I've been working with lately, like it is very much single over album now. And unfortunately sometimes that kind of means like quantity over quality and it's how do you make the biggest pop song now? Like how do you get on the top 40s And all the music is kind of headed in the same direction I find lately and it's all about those viral hits. So people are finding those like eight second sound bites in a song and using that to carry out an entire release. Like I think a great example of someone that's used this up like this pandemic and like the digital world to a crazy extent is lil NAS x.

Lil Nas X  09:10
Hello everyone. It is I, little NAS x here to bring you some good news. Follow me.

Andrew Oliphant  09:17
Since the release of his 2018 hit Old Town Road, which holds the record for the most weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 charts. Lil NAS X has quickly become one of the biggest names and popular music

Kyla Ma  09:30
Like he he's killing it like first off like he started as like arguably like a meme singer you know like Old Town road is it it's a gag like it's it's not a legit like it is a legit song but you know what I mean? It's it's almost like a parody like I don't know. And then now that's his whole vibe like all his music now it's slaps he really uses the Internet to its full extent and like the marketing it's unreal like how much he speaks the language of Gen Z. And the importance of that, like, if you blow up on Tik Tok, it's like instant streams. And that's so crazy to me.

Andrew Oliphant  10:12
For the release of his debut album Montero, Lil NAS X use social media to promote the birth of his new album. And he posted a number of videos and short clips that promoted this birth.

Lil Nas X  10:29
My beautiful, beautiful. Congratulations, thank you. 

Andrew Oliphant  10:40
He's shown how important the virality of music has become. And with the rise of tick tock and social media platforms, it's changed the world that the music industry, even in the three and a half years that Kyla has been at Universal, there's been a shift in how music is promoted and released.

Kyla Ma  10:57
I think it's been changing. Like it's definitely changed since I first started but like, and that's crazy to even say, because I've only been there for three and a half years. But it made sense to me, because my background is Business School. So I'm like, yeah, why not? Like, why not make the most of this? Like, how do you get people to listen to music, but it was shocking to me at first where it's like, there's so many really talented people in this world, like creating music. And like, it's so scary to think that that doesn't matter anymore. Almost like there's incredible artists that aren't heard just because they don't have the right resources to put out the right teasing content and like, but then we have like the same top 40 artists that are just blowing it up. Because once you get there, it's like you have the resources, you have these pockets, and people care more about the random things you put on social media so you can promote your song. So it's like, it was shocking, but also like, with anything. That is social media on the way things blow up. Now, it's like nothing is shocking.

Andrew Oliphant  12:08
The emergence of these viral hits have become important for indie artists as well. Kalen says that the industry is set up right now to serve as little moments from artists. Whether that's a single or a live performance on tick tock, the industry can support these little snapshots in the hope that a song gains virality online.

Kalen  12:27
Basically, it's the notion of if something's gonna blow up, it'll probably blow up with one song, it'll probably be one hook that people are obsessed with. It'll probably be one riff that someone heard in a tick tock, and then the Tick Tock went viral, and all of a sudden, this person is on the cover of Indy All Stars kind of thing. So I think a lot of the drive towards putting out singles, I think, is kind of in the name of giving artists every possible chance, they have to catch a wave. It's almost like a lottery. And if you put out singles, you're basically giving yourself more darts to throw at that lottery board. Whereas if you put out one album without doing any sort of lead up singles to it, or any sort of additional promotion, you can probably pitch one of those songs to playlists. And that's ultimately what it comes down to is the playlists are driving a lot of listeners, like listening habits.

Andrew Oliphant  13:20
Kalen says that a song essentially loses half of its power to an audience or label the moment and artists releases it. And with playlists, driving listening habits, artists don't need to release a cohesive 12 Song album anymore for it to become mainstream. All they're looking for his eyes and ears on these little moments and snapshots to make as much hype as possible on social media before they put out new music.

Kyla Ma  13:44
Yeah, no, I feel like it's, it's that whole thing. It's like you try a bunch of things until one hits. And that's like kind of the mentality around tick tock, because there's no loyalty on that app. It's like you're scrolling, you're scrolling, and it's viral video after viral video. So somebody can post eight times a day, and not even think twice about it. Because people aren't living on your profile, people are living on this explorer page where there's a million like 1000s Billions of videos. So you can post whatever you want until one picks up so you can post the same video almost with different sound bites of your song until one of the videos works and then just get rid of the other ones. And there you go. And it's crazy. It's so crazy how that works. And I think that like what you said like it's not cohesive because it doesn't have to be it's like as long as one works, it's gonna work and that's so nuts to me.

Kalen  14:42
There are a lot of popular songs that you can hear on like a lot of Spotify playlists right now that are that basically just came from someone like saying a few words or maybe playing something on their acoustic guitar on tick tock or doing like a tiny snippet of how they wrote a song or something but like the song isn't even out yet. No one knows when it will be or what's going on that kind of hype that like, Oh, what is this? When's it coming? How can I hear more? Oh, I can't yet. Oh my god that makes me want to hear more even more. It really like drives a bit of a hype train that that you can really take advantage of such that when the song is released, there are as many people as possible listening to it right away, which helps in a lot of reasons. It helps obviously, get yours on your music, it helps get your music in front of people who would have otherwise seen it. It helps indicate to the algorithm that the big Almighty algorithm that your music is maybe perhaps worth promoting, and things like daily mixes and discover weeklies and just general radios.

Kyla Ma  15:45
Like an artist of ours, Valley. A few months like during the pandemic, they wrote a song with their friends, and they put up a little like teaser of it on Tik Tok. And they're like, we just wrote this song and like they sang a few bars of it. And the whole song came together because tick tock was like, We need this song, we need this song. So then we got to watch the artists like create the song via tick tock like every few days, they would put up updates, and they're like, we wrote more lines and this knot. And then now it's like one that song was really so it was their biggest song. And like instantly and filmed a video for it. And like now streams are trickling into other songs because people know them as this band that wrote the song. And now they have a social following too. So works both ways.

Kalen  16:43
For me, personally, I know that if I don't know what to listen to, I know that I can click on one of like five or six playlists that I generally really like. And I can click shuffle. And I will almost always be handed something I've never heard before by an artist I maybe don't recognize. And I will probably like it because it's in the spot. It's in the bucket of things that are like the other things that I like. So the whole the playlist ecosystem has really, it's ultimately I guess, you could kind of look at it as a win win for artists and for listeners, because artists are being given more of a platform to have their songs heard by other people. And we the other people get to hear a bunch of music we wouldn't have otherwise heard. So I think yeah, it's definitely influenced my my habits.

Andrew Oliphant  17:31
Being on the business side of things. Kyla told me that she enjoys silence more than ever now. But when she is listening to music, she's also seen her listening habits changed from the album to playlist.

Kyla Ma  17:43
I feel like for me, when I listen to albums front to back, it's all things that came out like a long, like not long time ago, but like 20, pre 2016, or things I listened to as a kid like old blink 182 and stuff like that. But when it comes to new music, I find that again, it's like I don't really have loyalty to certain artists anymore. It's like you have one good song, I'm gonna put that one good song on my playlist. And I think that's the difficult thing is I think I'm not the only one that has that listening habit now. So growing an artist becomes increasingly hard because how do you differentiate an artist from just being one song? But yeah, that's actually crazy. I'm like thinking about it. Now I'm very much a playlist person.

Andrew Oliphant  18:29
Kyla says that the rise of social media means that audiences want artists to be an influencer as well. Fans get to see every aspect of an artist life. And they expect that behind the scenes content all of the time.

Kyla Ma  18:41
I think it gives people a little more opportunity to have extra things to hold on to because like, I guess when we're growing up, like our music, it's just like, we just listen to good songs. We don't know who these people are, we get like a post or put it on our wall, but like, we never get a deeper look. So I feel like back then, like a behind the scenes video was so meaningful to us. And it was like so in depth and whatever. And now it's just like another part of the marketing plan. It's like, we need this piece, this piece this piece and everybody's entitled to know everything about your life now, versus back then it was like wow, like, I feel like I know this person. And now it's like that's the expectation.

Andrew Oliphant  19:18
One of the artists Kyla works with is Johnny Orlando. With 6.3 million followers on Instagram and over 630,000 followers on Spotify. He's one of the fastest growing pop stars in Canada. Canada says that there are growing pains and trying to become the next big thing.

Kyla Ma  19:35
He's like teen pop sensation. young kid. Lots of Instagram and Tik Tok followers like he he was famous as like a YouTube cover artists and like an influencer first. So making that jump to artists has definitely come with its struggles and will come You too, because people that found him a long time ago as like a young kid influencer, have to relearn who he is. Because kids grow up. And I think that's, that's a difficult thing. Because like, a lot of people in our generation, like looked at Justin Bieber for a long time. We're like, oh, Justin Bieber cringe until he grew up. And like, that transition was huge. And nobody wants to follow that path. Because he went, he went off the rails there. And like, this guy got arrested, like he went the wrong way with it. But it's still making that jump from being internet famous to Ilja artists is difficult, is very difficult.

Andrew Oliphant  20:44
For copyright reasons, I can't play you a Johnny Orlando song. But Kyla told me that with everything they do, their team at Universal is always thinking about the branding of the artist, and making sure that it's in tandem with the music.

Kyla Ma  20:56
There is an a&r that works on the project that basically like does a song that the brand is this song going to be like what you want to say, for the next amount of time. And then with that, it's like you work with the marketing team. And it's like, so how do we make this known to other people? Like how do we tell them this story? That's like, this is your sound now, but what else does that mean? Like? What opportunities does this sound bring you? Like? Is it brand partnerships? Like, are you getting new audience because now you're singing about like, older stuff, like instead of kid pop music, like maybe you're singing about, like, drugs, or whatever? And it's like, how do you make that marketable? And I feel like it's completely in tandem. Now. Like, when you're releasing a song, it's not just like, oh, we want to put this out songs done. It's like songs done. And then it doesn't get heard by people for like six months, because we're like, Okay, now we need a music video. And now we need to shoot BTS in this music video. And then we need to shoot the content that teases the music, video, and then all the trailers that come along with it. And then like, a tick tock that like, puts out a demo from months ago when you first wrote the song so that people are even excited and asked you for the video, not knowing that you already filmed the video. It's like such a, it's a roadmap now, which is so crazy. Like, because artists will sit on their songs for like two years before they go out. And it's like, this has been done. But here you go. This is what I sounded like.

Andrew Oliphant  22:25
With all that extra demand for content, it can be tough for the artists when they always have to have a persona available to the public.

Kyla Ma  22:32
I feel for them, because it's it's like they're entitled to each other's like privacy. Now, you know what I mean? Like, fans kind of feel like they're owed these pieces of info about a person just because it's been shared once or whatever, that there's, there's almost like, I'll make an example. Like, his recent song is called you're just drunk. And he's an 18 year old, like, he's a teenager and whatever. And like, he'll have younger fans that are like, can't believe you would sing about this and like, you're such a bad influence now and it's so crazy to me that it's like damn, like, you can't even live your life like a normal teenager without getting flamed for it. And that's so crazy. Like, what like the shit that we did at 18 Oh my god, like this guy's the same.

Andrew Oliphant  23:36
For Kyla, branding is essential for any artist to make it in today's environment and gain a following.

Kyla Ma  23:42
As new artists, you can't just be an artist, you almost have to be an influencer too. And like, everything is about brand power. And like, you can't just make good songs anymore, because everybody makes good songs. It's kind of like getting a job out of school. It's like, everybody goes to school now like everybody goes to university like that doesn't set you apart. Like you also need like, the emotional intelligence and this and that and brand that comes with you. So like, with actors and artists now it's like, what else do you bring to the table other than your music? Like, if you're an influencer on the side, it's like, damn, like, this person is gonna get us streams and like in the eyes of a label, like, that's money.

Andrew Oliphant  24:23
This branding is no different for indie artists. For Kalen and Best Friend, they want to make sure that the connection to their fans is in everything they do. So they feel like they're part of the process.

Kalen  24:34
Stacy and I both being very loud people, loud, high personality kind of people. We've sort of from the beginning really leaned into the notion that it is it's a band but it's also it's the two of us. It's it's us together. And it's just as much the two of us as it is one thing and we've intentionally tried to focus on will not focus on but really make sure that we given are giving ourselves enough space to be ourselves as individuals as well as publicly, as well as fronting as just a band. And I think taking that sort of approach has really led to more of a personalized form of sort of communication with the people who listen to us and the people who follow us on social media and stuff, which sort of lets people feel a little bit more involved. It's less of you're speaking to an entity and more of your, you're dealing to individual people. And I think there can be power in that.

Andrew Oliphant  25:29
Because Kalen lives in Toronto, Stacey lives in Vancouver, they've had to adapt to creating music remotely. But with the internet, they've been able to make it work.

Kalen  25:39
We basically speed ran getting to know each other and got down right to like vote, there's a certain level of vulnerability that you need in songwriting, which is just obvious, you're writing about yourself in your life, right. So when we started, it did not take us long at all, to get to a point where we were comfortable, kind of like just talking about absolutely whatever writing but absolutely whatever. And really getting to like the meat of what we wanted to say really quickly. And I think that wouldn't have been nearly as easy to do if we weren't speaking almost exclusively over the internet, because it's a lot easier to say something weird and sad and emotional, if you just have to press ENTER versus just like versus like sending it to someone across the room to you.

Andrew Oliphant  26:21
So their process is very iterative. It's a lot of sending things to one person tweaking it, and waiting for the other person's feedback. 

Kalen  26:29
So let's say it's like the average is Stacey bringing a couple of choruses or like a chorus and a couple of verses of a song that she might have written on acoustic guitar, I can take that and I'll flesh it out a little bit into what I think might be an appropriate song structure or what might, what might kind of work best in terms of flow. And some some sounds I'm thinking that might work with with her acoustic, given that I'm adding production. And she'll kind of vibe with it or not vibe with it. And we'll kind of pick a direction based on that. And once we feel comfortable moving forward with something we'll drive forward, and it'll be iteration after iteration like 30 to 50 tries probably of just us trying little things and sending them back and forth to each other and slowly, slowly building something that we're proud of very slowly. To get a sense of how this process works, Kalen was kind enough to share an early demo of one of their songs off their new EP, the song is called for Grace after a party. It started with Stacey sending Kailyn a rough verse of the song, here's a clip of the demo.

Clip  27:33
But hold on a second day excuse as you brush your hair to share smokers to keep a letter in my pocket just for you reading books at a stone even just a quote.

Andrew Oliphant  28:07
So that's what they had to work with. And they turn that into this.

Clip  28:21
has he? Shares three books just to quote.

Kalen  28:49
Two and a half years ago, when we started out, we had this like, we thought it was very cool that we wrote everything entirely remotely. We're like, Oh, no one's really doing this. Or we're doing this without going into a room together. We're reading from opposite sides of the country in our own homes. This is this is rare, and then the pandemic hit, and everyone had to learn how to do that. And there went our little advantage of knowing how to do that. It's, I think the pandemic really fast forward a lot of industries in terms of how people kind of talk and work together or work with each other. And yeah, the music industry is no different. It's it's really kind of showing people that like you can do sessions, you can do songwriting sessions, you can do production sessions, you can do whatever you want, really over a zoom call.

Andrew Oliphant  29:38
The pandemic created a new environment where studio sessions don't have to be done with everyone in the same room. And for Kyla and universal. They've noticed this too.

Kyla Ma  29:47
I feel like it's cool because you get to coat labyrinth in new ways. It's definitely difficult because there is an energy about being in a studio together. But I do think It's cool that now. We didn't. I feel like it was considered before. But it was just kind of like, no, we'll like go out and meet these people in studio. But I think now it's more normal to be like, let's just bring everyone into a room. And if they can't be there, we can zoom them. And I think it's even more opportunity now to work with more different people.

Andrew Oliphant  30:18
But the pandemic has also pushed the demand for even more content to be created.

Kyla Ma  30:23
During the pandemic, when everything was locked down. It was like, how do we stay interesting without being on tour without having all these photoshoots and music videos to put out because we're stuck inside we can't do these things. And we were actually more busy because we were creating, we had to be more creative with what we could do. Like putting out more visual assets of like, animated videos, finding more illustrators and like how do you do a quarantine video without being cheesy and like all this stuff, we were actually creating more content because there was less life to live.

Andrew Oliphant  30:58
Kyla says that the pandemic has reduced the perfectionism that was around in the industry, and it has allowed people to just try new things. And for Kyla, it doesn't look like the artist influencer is going anywhere anytime soon.

Kyla Ma  31:11
I think now you get to try like you get to make that weird video of you playing a random soundbite on Tik Tok and then asking people like, Yo, do you like this and if it blows up, then make the song. Like, right now is such a great time for trial and error because there's there doesn't need to be any ego about it. And you could blow up or you could flop and nobody will see it if it flops. And that's fine. I mean, I don't think the artist influencer is going away anytime soon. I think if anything, it's it's still growing, and it's going to continue to grow. There's examples of new artists that are discovered that way every day, and they're on the top 40s or on the radio. I think now is the best time to be a new artist and to to shoot for it. If you're going to do it, you might as well do it now and learn how to use these tools to your advantage. But I do I do worry about the value of an album. You know, like I don't know where that's gonna go. And I think that we are living in like a single or EP world now because the attention spans are just getting shorter and shorter. I think that we're gonna continue to see quick rising stars and hopefully they don't fall off and hopefully they know how to continue to ride the wave. But it's, it's gonna be interesting. I think we're gonna see a lot of new stars that come out of nowhere. But if you're on Tik Tok, you know that they're going.

Andrew Oliphant  32:52
So try away. For Kyla, now's the time to take the leap. Because you never know, your song might end up being the next big thing on tick tock.

Kalen  33:02
It makes it a lot easier to do the thing that everyone likes to do, which is be the first one of a group of your friends who knows of and everyone loves to be that person, like the little one who lets people in on a little bit of a secret. And ultimately, that's almost what the whole industry is doing right now trying to just be the first person when you know about a little secret. And that sort of just cascades down and the curators do it and then it gets on the playlist and then it's on the playlist and you hear it and then you do it to your friends and then your friends tell them you're like haha, I showed you that band and it's it's a whole thing.

Andrew Oliphant  33:35
Cool. 

Kalen  33:36
Yeah. 

Andrew Oliphant  33:37
So that's it. With everything in our world today, the push the digital has intensified the high risk high reward nature of the music industry. Looks like for the time being playlists and tick tock aren't going anywhere. So maybe that's bad news if you're an album lover, or if you like to listen to your Walkman staring at glow in the dark stars on the ceiling. All I know is that for me, I just hope that interesting creative people continue to make great music. My name is Andrew and thanks for listening. Take care.

Afua Mfodwo  34:49
This episode of unraveled was produced by Andrew Oliphant. Our associate producer is Talha Hashmani and our executive producer is Elena De Luigi. Special thanks to John Powers for composing our theme music, and Ben Shelley for creating our podcast artwork. Our professor is Amanda Cupido and special thanks to Lindsay Hanna and Angela Glover.








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