5 Places to Visit when in Malawi

General, ,

Malawi is bordered by Zambia on the west, Mozambique on the east to south and Tanzania on the north. Fondly called as the Warm Heart of Africa because of the amiable nature of locals here. Although least discovered among the countries in southeastern Africa, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t boast the same natural beauty as its neighboring countries. Read through and discover these beautiful places in Malawi.

LAKE MALAWI

You can’t skip Lake Malawi from your list of must-sees because it is the largest freshwater lake in the country and in fact, it occupies 1/3 of the country’s area. The golden beaches are a hit especially the ones near the capital. You can also dive and snorkel here and be rewarded with an underwater beauty. Aside from the most famous tourist attraction of the country, the lake also serves as the locals’ source of sustenance.

LIKOMA ISLAND

This Malawian island in Mozambique waters is a lovely peaceful island with beautiful beaches where you can take a peaceful walk around since there is a limited number of cars in the island. A serene getaway can make you appreciate the simple ways of the locals. A cathedral was built in this island in the early 1900s and is another site to visit to. Hop in the MV Ilala on their schedule cruise if you want to explore Likoma Island.

LIWONDE NATIONAL PARK

When you say Africa, the first thing that comes in mind is, of course, the wildlife; and if you are in Malawi the grandest big game safari park is Liwonde National Park. You can take a boat or jeep safari to encounter the animals you just usually see in zoos like rhinos, elephants, crocodiles, hyenas, antelopes, hippos, leopards and many more. This time these animals are out roaming the land in their natural habitat instead of being locked in cages.

MULANJE MOUNTAIN

Scenic views await you if you decide to trek Mount Mulanje at over 3000 meters. Thyolo Road will lead you to a panoramic view of sprawling tea estates, and the highest peak is Sapitwa Peak. You can go overnight in any of the 12 camping huts fully equipped with camping and cooking equipment. Here you’ll see Mulanje Cypress that grows to a height of 45-meters and has dense leaves and cones.

CRAFT MARKETS

There are a lot of craft markets across this small country and you can shop for trinkets or wooden masks for souvenirs here. African arts and crafts are also very vivid and unique from wood carvings, paintings, and beadworks or clothing. Use your haggling skills here to shop for lovely things to bring back home.

Music Streaming Provides Repair for a Struggling Industry

Online Streaming

When Napster ravaged the music industry back in the late ‘90’s and early 2000’s, record companies tried desperately to fight back. Unfortunately, coming up with a viable sales alternative to counteract the illegal music circles growing larger and larger online proved to be more of a problem than expected.

Fortunately, a group of forward thinking individuals recognized that digital downloads and streaming, the very process that had created this problem, could be a way out of the current decrease in revenue from pirating. They realized that if people were given legal digital access to quality recordings of music, they would be willing to pay.

Founded in 2006, Spotify pioneered the concept of streaming plans, allowing people to have a monthly subscription and access to thousands of artists. It has successfully grown to more than $1.5 Billion in revenue, even with some dissension from artists, like Taylor Swift, who removed her work from the companies catalogues in 2014 because of royalty issues,

From L.A. to Calgary to New York and Beyond

Now, thanks to suppliers like Apple and Spotify, music streaming has millions of paying users providing revenue every year. According to experts, the U.S. music industry will be able to record back to back growth years in 2018. This is an event that has not happened since the decline that started in 1999 when Napster opened up shop. Bruno Mars’ label has generated its highest annual revenue in eight years.

First the IPod-Now the Smartphone

Increases in downloads are also thanks to the ability to listen on more devices than ever. Gone are the days when your handbag or backpack contained multiple bulky electronics. Does anyone even remember the Walk Man?

Now you can listen to music, take a call and send a pic, all from the palm of your hand. Smartphones, tablets and even desktop apps allow artists like Drake to send his music to fans worldwide without his label having to worry about distribution and shipping costs.

Last year the Canadian rapper’s work was streamed over 4.7 Billion times just on Spotify. Many businesses similar to dent repair Calgary that used to play the local radio station in their place of business have now turned to streaming music for their staff and visitors.

More Damage Repair to Come?

Whether or not streaming is the start of a new era for music labels and their parent companies to profit from, for the music lover and obsessed fan, these days of easy access to the artists they love are a dream come true. Especially with more companies launching their own subscription services to better compete with the established companies like Google, Apple, Amazon, and Spotify.

Although streaming appears to be the industry’s latest knight on a white horse riding up to save the damsel in distress, after decades of fighting against illegal downloading and technological piracy, plus keeping up with new technology and evaporating sales, music executives know not to get overly confident about the days ahead.

According to Duncan Orrell-Jone of Slacker Radio, sooner than later having the catalogue is not going to be enough, “Five years from now the space is going to look very different.”

Tips to Help You Learn to Play Guitar

Learning to Play Guitar

Every good guitar player becomes good I’m spending a lot of time practicing. People who stick with guitar playing find that they truly enjoy it, and their family and friends tend to enjoy hearing them play. This article will give you some basic advice to get you started playing.

Practice is the most important thing you can do when trying to learn to play the guitar. Though this seems quite obvious, a lot of people tend to overlook the importance of it. Every day, you should take time to practice the guitar. Try to get in 20 to 30 minutes today. Before long, your skills will begin to improve.

When you are first trying to learn to play the guitar, find an instrument that is inexpensive for you to practice on. Once you get the hang of it, and make the decision that you want to continue playing, then you can upgrade. That way, if you decide playing the guitar is too frustrating or you do not enjoy it, you will not lose out on a lot of money.

Always be sure to practice your rhythm. Whether you know the chords or not, if your tempo is off, your music will not sound good. Use a metronome to practice. Don’t think too hard about where your fingers are. If you do, you may start to form bad habits. The main thing is to keep the right pace.

Learn to play the guitar in time. This is very important if you want to play the guitar like a professional. Even once you have the fingering down, it is still possible to have those small inaudible pauses as you switch your chords. Those pauses can affect the sound of your music greatly. Start out playing slowly and learn to play faster as you become more comfortable.

Since you now know more about getting started with playing the guitar, it’s time to get out there and get started. Whether you have just recently become interested in the guitar, or you have always wanted to play, there is no better time than now to take the first steps in learning.

A Look at the New Music Billboard

Music Billboard

The new music Billboard brings the listeners favorite Indie artist to the public to listen to their music for free. Traditional billboards look only at mainstream music, but the up-and-coming Indie artists are featured by the new user billboards.

The new music billboards feature music that is like the mainstream music but is typically called by the term Indie music. Individual or small labels market their own music to participate in the Indie music scene. With so much talent out there, it is important to showcase the unknown bands who simply lack the marketing the bigger bands have.

Indie music became widespread in the 1990s and answered the call from people looking for mainstream music alternatives. Indie music is sometimes known as underground music in like alternative was used for its genre of music before it was considered mainstream.

Indie music can be downloaded for free many places online. One of the best places to download Indie music is at New Music Billboard. There, you can search for the kind of indie music that you prefer and listen to it for free.

Typically, for someone to become involved in the scene of indie music, they are required to relocate to a town or city where there is an Indie music scene that is active. In the past, and Indie artists would have to hook up with fans and other artists in the Indie movement to build up their career as an up-and-coming artist.

Nowadays, new artist and seasoned musicians have an opportunity to record and publish their indie music from any studio. They can make income from building up their fan base and selling merchandise along with CDs and concert tickets.

On occasion, Indie record labels will pick up Indie groups. New music label is a great resource to find Indie music labels.

Indie music is considered different from the music you hear on the mainstream music scene. It is somewhere that a new artist can build their own fan base and find the marketing components they will need to use to be successful in the long term.

Finding Music for Your Wedding

Wedding Music

Every bride-to-be has their plate full when it comes to figuring out all the details of her big day. If you are engaged, you likely know about the stresses that come with planning a wedding. With so many elements and details that need to be organized, they can be hard to keep up with everything that must be done. Often, the music tends to be overlooked. Your ceremony and reception will be incomplete if you do not have a good selection of music. Performing a music search can be one of the best ways for you to find music for your wedding.

Searching for wedding music can sometimes overwhelm a bride, but it doesn’t have to. There are so many places to search for music, but I suggest that the future bride goes through her own personal CD collection first. In my case, I had hung on to them for years and they were all neatly tucked away in my Fort Saskatchewan storage unit. The CD’s the bride owns represents the music they love, so going through those to pick out music will guarantee the bride has great tunes she enjoys. The bride will likely find many songs they have not heard in years that will be perfect for either the wedding ceremony for to use at the reception to dance to.

Is the CD’s owned by the bride does not give enough options, the next step is to search through the CD’s of family and close friends. This will help the bride to find music that others in her party already know and listen to. Most people do not enjoy going to a wedding reception and not knowing any of the music. Putting the resources from friends and family together, you can almost guarantee to find lots of good music for your wedding.

If looking through CD’s does not give you enough music for your wedding, the next best thing is to do a search online for wedding music. There are a lot of great sites where you can listen to music and purchase the songs you choose for a small fee. Your wedding music collection can grow in leaps and bounds researching for wedding music online.

The main thing is to take your time to find the music you love for your wedding. By doing so, you and your guests will be able to better enjoy your wedding.

A Look at Online Music Stores

Getting Online

The music industry likely did not consider the impact in the Internet to bring music to people all over the world when music was first put online. People have been given the opportunity to listen to music anywhere they are now that music stores allow them to purchase the music and listen to it on any device.

These music stores not only give customers the opportunity to hear live performances of their favorite songs, but they are also able to learn about artist that may be struggling to get their own career started. Over the years, music categories have not changed, but the people who created the music have become historical markers of a time in music that is often repeated by other artists, though never quite the same as the original artist sang it.

With the online resources and music, new artists can study the music artists of the past to learn how they reached stardom. This information can help inspire them in their creation of new music in their attempt to have a successful career in the music industry. They can learn what it takes to build up an online fan base since the fans are the ones responsible for making any artist a star.

A huge benefit of purchasing music online is that consumers can listen to music before they purchase it. Of course, many reputable music stores allow customers to listen to music before purchasing as well, but the Internet provides more options for customers to hear the same song sung by many different artists around the world. This is a huge difference between buying music online are going to a stick and brick store to purchase music.

There are many people who choose to collect every song and artist puts out over the span of their career. Through using an online music store, a customer can search for the artist they want and quickly find every song that artist has written. To do this in a stick and brick store, the customer would likely have to pay extra money. Using an online music store, people simply must go to their home computer to create files full of their favorite music.

Building Your Music Library

The Collection

Do you desire to build a music library that is amazing? Do you like to collect songs by bands that have been forgotten? Or do you prefer to listen to the latest hits? Regardless of the kind of music you love, you can always find what you like online. If you need tips about downloading the music you love, this article is for you.

If you like to find inexpensive music to download, you need to follow the feeds from some of the more popular music sites. Sites like iTunes and Amazon regularly offer music downloads that are free. All you must do is type “free music” in the search bar to see what they are currently offering.

If you’re wanting to download music, a great tip to remember is to preview the entire album you are considering before you purchase it. You should never buy an entire album just for the sake of one song that you know. There’s a chance that you may not like the rest of the songs. Besides, most places will allow you to download a single song at a time.

Before you try to download music from a website that is unfamiliar to you, be sure to read the reviews. While looking at the reviews, focus mostly on the download quality and the safety of the site. If the site does not have any reviews listed, it is best to avoid them.

If you regularly download music, but are concerned about staying within your budget, you should consider a site that offers a subscription fee instead of charging for each download. That way, you can budget exactly how much you want to spend on downloads monthly without going over it.

Be sure to always backup your music library. Odds are, you will be investing a lot of time and money downloading your favorite songs. You don’t want to risk losing all your music files. Creating a backup of your music on an external hard drive or online is best.

Downloading your music online is a wonderful way to listen to your old favorites or find new songs. If you are not familiar with a music site, though, it may be tricky to navigate it. If you use the tips in this article, you will be on track to build yourself a great music library today.