Spotify

Subterms

    More stories

    • 113 Shares189 Views

      in Music

      Brené Brown Resumes Spotify Podcast Amid Joe Rogan Uproar

      by

      Brené Brown, who had put her podcasts on hiatus last month, returned to Spotify, expressing misgivings about Rogan but noting her contract with the service.The social psychologist Brené Brown said Tuesday that despite misgivings she would resume her two Spotify podcasts, which she had put on hiatus while considering the streaming platform’s policies and responsibilities amid accusations that its most popular podcaster, Joe Rogan, was spreading misinformation about the coronavirus.After several prominent recording artists, including Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, announced last month that they were removing their music from Spotify because they were not comfortable sharing a platform with Rogan’s show, “The Joe Rogan Experience,” Brown had announced that she was indefinitely pausing her podcasts, “Unlocking Us” and “Dare to Lead,” to learn more about Spotify’s misinformation policy.“As you may or may not know, I’m under a multiyear, exclusive contract with Spotify,” Brown explained in a message posted to her website Tuesday about her decision to resume her podcast. “Unlike some creators, I don’t have the option of pulling my work from the platform.”Brown continued to express dismay over having to share a platform with Rogan, whom she criticized for past comments, saying that he had made “dehumanizing” comments about transgender people and referring to a 2011 segment in which Rogan laughed as a visiting comedian boasted about “demanding sexual favors from young female comedians wanting to perform onstage” at a club.“If advertisers and listeners support ‘The Joe Rogan Experience’ and Spotify needs him as the cornerstone of its podcasting ambitions — that’s OK,” Brown wrote. “But sharing the table with Rogan puts me in a tremendous values conflict with very few options.”Brown is a professor at the University of Houston whose 2010 TEDx talk, “The Power of Vulnerability,” is one of the most popular in TED history; her podcasts are produced by Parcast, a studio known for true-crime and mystery shows that Spotify acquired in 2019.After Young and Mitchell removed their music, Daniel Ek, Spotify’s chief executive, published the service’s platform rules and said Spotify would add “content advisory” flags on podcast episodes about the pandemic. Over the weekend, Ek confirmed that Rogan had removed a number of episodes after meetings with Spotify executives and after “his own reflections.”Spotify removed the episodes after the musician India.Arie shared a compilation video showing Rogan using a racial slur in past episodes. That prompted an apology from Rogan, who two years ago signed an exclusive multiyear deal with Spotify reported to be worth $100 million.Brown insisted she was not attempting to censor or deplatform Rogan, but rather was concerned with herself and her own audience, and trying to understand how Spotify sees its responsibilities, adding that she thinks podcasters with a wide reach should vet and challenge their guests.“It doesn’t appear to me that ‘The Joe Rogan Experience’ takes any responsibility for the health information that it puts out in the world,” she said, “and I do believe that leads to people getting sick and even dying.”The controversy has moved into the political realm in recent days, with former President Donald J. Trump issuing a statement urging Rogan to stop apologizing.On the latest episode of his podcast, released Tuesday, Rogan called the release of the compilation video “a political hit job” but disputed the notion that comedians should never apologize. “You should apologize if you regret something,” he said. More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Music

      Fact-Checking Joe Rogan’s Interview With Robert Malone That Caused an Uproar

      by

      Mr. Rogan, a wildly popular podcast host, and his guest, Dr. Malone, a controversial infectious-disease researcher, offered a litany of falsehoods over three hours.Spotify has been rocked in recent weeks by the controversy engulfing its most popular podcaster, Joe Rogan.Several prominent musicians and podcasters have left the streaming service to protest what they described as Mr. Rogan’s history of promoting misinformation about the coronavirus and vaccines. There have been calls for boycotts, and Mr. Rogan issued an apology for his past use of a racial slur and took down as many as 70 old episodes of his podcast, “The Joe Rogan Experience,” without explanation.The catalyst for much of the controversy was a December episode of his podcast that featured Dr. Robert Malone, a virologist and vaccine skeptic. Hundreds of public health officials and professors, citing the promotion of “several falsehoods about Covid-19 vaccines,” urged the service to take down the episode.For over three hours, Dr. Malone and Mr. Rogan discussed theories and claims about the coronavirus pandemic and vaccines. The conversation included a false equivalence between the vaccine and Nazi medical experiments, baseless conjecture that President Biden is not actually vaccinated and inaccurate interpretations of government data and guidelines.Here’s a fact check of some of their claims.What was said“Whatever was in those packages was rumored to include ivermectin. But there was a specific visit of Biden to Modi and a decision was made in the Indian government not to disclose the contents of those packages that were being deployed in Uttar Pradesh, which they’re still there, and Uttar Pradesh is flatlined right now.” — Dr. MaloneThis is misleading. Dr. Malone’s suggestion that Mr. Biden urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India to conceal the successful use of the drug ivermectin in Uttar Pradesh, the country’s most populous state, does not add up.It is not exactly a secret that Uttar Pradesh has promoted ivermectin as a prophylactic. The state issued a government notice in August 2020 recommending the prescription of the drug to those who had come into contact with Covid patients, and officials have publicly acknowledged its use throughout the pandemic. Mr. Biden and Mr. Modi met in September, and officials in Uttar Pradesh have continued to publicize the state’s use of ivermectin since, even as India stopped recommending it.Dr. Malone was also wrong that cases in Uttar Pradesh “flatlined” as the world coped with the Omicron variant. Though the case count in the state remained low during the summer and fall, it began to trend upward by late December, when Dr. Malone spoke with Mr. Rogan, and topped 23,000 daily cases in mid-January.Promoters of ivermectin often cite Uttar Pradesh’s low death toll as proof of the drug’s efficacy, but experts say there is no proof of that causal link. It is also worth noting that researchers have questioned the reliability of data from Uttar Pradesh.What was saidMr. Rogan: “But I saw the shot where Joe Biden got it on TV and they didn’t aspirate them. They just ——”Dr. Malone: “I don’t know what to say ——”Mr. Rogan: “I’ll tell you what to say — that’s not the way to do it.”Dr. Malone: “Yeah, and was that really a vaccine? Right, then we go down that whole rabbit ——”Mr. Rogan: “That’s my favorite rabbit hole because of the fake set, remember.”False. Aspiration refers to pulling back the plunger of a syringe to check that the needle was not inserted into a blood vessel. The practice and its perceived benefits are the subject of debate among medical professionals. Mr. Rogan and others have wrongly suggested that Mr. Biden has not actually received the vaccine since his shots were not aspirated. But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention does not recommend aspirating before administering any vaccines, as it could cause additional pain.Mr. Biden received his booster shot on camera in September, in front of a backdrop that looks like the White House but is actually in the South Court Auditorium in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. Some social media posts cited the use of the backdrop as evidence that Mr. Biden had not actually been vaccinated. In reality, Mr. Biden and his predecessors have used the auditorium for events for years.What was saidMr. Rogan: “So, if they had just done what Sweden had done and some other countries where they didn’t institute lockdowns and they sort of let people just live their lives and make their own choices, they were saying that millions of people would have died?”Dr. Malone: “So it would be, so it seems.”Mr. Rogan: “But time has shown that Sweden actually had a more effective take on the virus.”This is misleading. Unlike many other European countries, Sweden did not impose full-scale lockdowns, though it has enacted some restrictions, including limiting the sizes of gatherings and imposing partial travel bans and social distancing requirements. But Mr. Rogan is wrong to say that Sweden has been “more effective” in curtailing the virus.“Now, we’re two years into this and Sweden doesn’t really stand out,” Anders Tegnell, the country’s chief epidemiologist, told The Financial Times in November. “We’re not the best, but we’re definitely not the worst.”Compared with those of other countries in Europe, Sweden’s death rate and case count are indeed in the middle of the pack. Among its Scandinavian neighbors, however, Sweden has the highest death rate.What was said“Those surrounding states in the Palestinian territory does not have that level of vaccine uptake at all. The mortality in the surrounding states in the Palestinian Authority is substantially less from this virus than the mortality in Israel.” — Dr. MaloneFalse. About two-thirds of the Israeli population had been fully vaccinated by the end of December, compared with about a third of those living in the West Bank and Gaza. The case fatality rate and cumulative death rate from Covid are both higher in the occupied territories than in Israel.What was said“The C.D.C. made the determination that they were going to make a core assumption — if P.C.R. positive and you die — that is death due to Covid. And so the extreme example, just to show the absurdity: If the patient comes in with a bullet hole in the head and they do a nose swab and they come up P.C.R. positive, they’re determined to have died from Covid.” — Dr. MaloneThis is misleading. The C.D.C. has issued guidelines on certifying deaths that detail how to track the immediate cause of death, an underlying cause or a significant condition that contributed to the death. The guidelines do not require counting Covid-19 as a cause of death when someone has tested positive but died for unrelated reasons.Robert Anderson, the chief of mortality statistics at the C.D.C.’s National Center for Health Statistics, said on a podcast in January that a car crash victim who tested positive and died would not be counted as a Covid fatality in “most cases.”“Maybe the person comes in and they’ve got a very severe injury and they simply test positive for Covid and there are no symptoms that are likely to be incidental to death,” he said. “But if you had somebody who, let’s say, had chest trauma from the car accident and they were, they’re struggling to breathe already. They get Covid in the hospital and they’re showing some symptoms. There, it could contribute.”Understand the Joe Rogan-Spotify ControversyCard 1 of 5A brash personality. More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in Music

      Spotify Stands by Joe Rogan: ‘Canceling Voices Is a Slippery Slope’

      by

      Spotify is not canceling Joe Rogan.Two weeks into an evolving and far-reaching controversy over its star podcaster, who has been accused of spreading misinformation about the coronavirus, and condemned for his past use of a racial slur, Spotify has faced growing pressure to take a stronger stance about the podcasts it hosts.But in a memo to employees over the weekend, Daniel Ek, the company’s chief executive, discussed the recent removal of a number of episodes and made it clear that it would not drop Rogan’s show, “The Joe Rogan Experience.” That show has been exclusive to Spotify since 2020, when the company made a licensing deal with Rogan that has been reported to be worth $100 million or more.“I do not believe that silencing Joe is the answer,” Ek wrote in the memo, which Spotify provided to The New York Times. “We should have clear lines around content and take action when they are crossed, but canceling voices is a slippery slope.”Ek also confirmed that Spotify recently removed dozens of episodes of “The Joe Rogan Experience” after a compilation video was shared online by the singer India.Arie showing Rogan repeatedly using a racial slur on his show. In a video over the weekend, Rogan apologized and called it “the most regretful and shameful thing that I’ve ever had to talk about publicly,” though he also said that at the times he made those comments — over 12 years of his podcast, Rogan said — he had believed that they were acceptable in context. Many commentators found that apology insufficient.In his memo, Ek said that Rogan made the decision to remove the episodes, which appear to number about 70, after meetings with Spotify executives and after “his own reflections.”Ek also said that Spotify would invest $100 million for the “licensing, development and marketing” of music and other forms of audio “from historically marginalized groups.” What that would entail was not immediately clear. Spotify licenses most of its music from record labels and music distributors, and music from Black artists and other minorities are among the most popular on the platform; Spotify has also promoted minority podcasters with its “Sound Up” program, for example. Representatives of the company did not respond to a request for clarification.Since Jan. 24, when Neil Young demanded that his music be removed from Spotify, citing complaints from health professionals about Covid-19 misinformation on Rogan’s show, the company has faced a mini boycott from musicians, and constant criticism online. Joni Mitchell, Arie and Young’s sometime bandmates in Crosby, Stills and Nash, have all pulled their music. A handful of other artists, like the alternative band Failure, have followed suit, while others have staged protests of various kinds. The band Belly, for example, added a “Delete Spotify” banner to its own Spotify profile page, and explained on social media that for many artists, removing their music from the service is easier said than done.In media circles, Spotify’s stance over Rogan has also raised questions about the responsibility of online companies to police the content on their platforms. In recent years, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and others have come under frequent attack for the content they host, usually about politics or the pandemic. They have responded with a variety of measures, but tended to avoid labeling themselves as publishers.That stance has been more difficult for Spotify, given its exclusive deal with Rogan. In his memo, Ek doubled down on recent comments denying that Spotify is Rogan’s publisher. In a company town hall last week, he told employees that despite its exclusive arrangement with Rogan, Spotify did not have advance approval of his shows, and could remove his episodes only if they ran afoul of Spotify’s content guidelines. (Spotify released those platform rules for the first time last week; it was not clear whether the episodes that were removed last week violated them.)In his letter, Ek alluded to growing employee discontent about that position, and said he was “wrestling with how this perception squares with our values.”“I also want to be transparent,” he added, “in setting the expectation that in order to achieve our goal of becoming the global audio platform, these kinds of disputes will be inevitable.” More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Music

      Joe Rogan Apologizes for ‘Shameful’ Past Use of Racial Slur

      by

      His apology came as listeners said that as many as 70 episodes of “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast had been quietly taken off Spotify; the company has yet to comment on the reported removals.As pressure has intensified on Spotify and its star podcaster Joe Rogan, listeners reported that the company had quietly removed dozens of episodes of his show, while Rogan apologized early Saturday for his use of a racial slur in past episodes.In an Instagram video, Rogan — whose talk show, “The Joe Rogan Experience,” is Spotify’s most popular podcast, and has been available there exclusively for more than a year — addressed what he called “the most regretful and shameful thing that I’ve ever had to talk about publicly.” A compilation video showed Rogan using the slur numerous times in past episodes of his show; it had been shared by the singer India.Arie, who has removed her catalog from Spotify in protest of what she called Rogan’s “language around race.”Rogan said the compilation was drawn from “12 years of conversations” on his show, and that it looked “horrible, even to me.” The clips, he said, had been taken out of context, which he said included discussions about how it had been used by comedians like Richard Pryor and Redd Foxx, who were Black, and Lenny Bruce, who was white.When posting the clip compilation, Arie said that Rogan “shouldn’t even be uttering the word. Don’t say it, under any context.” In his video, Rogan said that he had come to agree with that view. “It’s not my word to use,” he said. “I’m well aware of that now.” He added that he had not spoken the slur “in years.”This week, Arie joined a small but influential boycott of Spotify led by the musicians Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, who cited complaints by health professionals that guests on Rogan’s show had spread misinformation about the coronavirus.In his latest video, Rogan also discussed a clip from another podcast episode, which he said he had deleted, in which he described seeing “Planet of the Apes” at a theater in a Black neighborhood in Philadelphia. “I was trying to make the story entertaining and I said it was like we got out and we were in Africa. It’s like we were in ‘Planet of the Apes,’” he said, adding that it was an “idiotic” thing to say that “looks terrible even in context.”Listeners noticed that as many as 70 episodes of “The Joe Rogan Experience” had been quietly removed in recent days by Spotify. Neither Rogan nor Spotify has given an explanation, and representatives of the company did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday. Commenters on Reddit speculated that some of the missing episodes may have contained the slur, although that was unclear.Understand the Joe Rogan-Spotify ControversyCard 1 of 5A brash personality. More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Music

      Spotify Defends Handling of Joe Rogan Controversy Amid Uproar

      by

      The company released earnings figures a week after Neil Young and others pulled their music to protest what they called vaccine misinformation on Rogan’s podcast.As Spotify released an earnings report Wednesday underscoring the importance of podcasts to its business model, company officials said that they did not expect their subscriber numbers to be affected by the uproar over accusations that its most popular podcaster, Joe Rogan, had spread misinformation about Covid-19 and vaccines.The company has been embroiled in controversy since Neil Young removed his music from the streaming platform last week, citing Rogan’s podcast and calling Spotify “the home of life- threatening Covid misinformation.” Joni Mitchell and several other artists and podcasters followed suit amid widespread calls on social media to boycott the company. Officials responded by publishing the service’s platform rules and saying that Spotify would begin adding content advisories to podcasts about the coronavirus.But in an earnings call on Wednesday afternoon, Daniel Ek, Spotify’s chief executive and co-founder, said that the company’s expectations of premium users in the current quarter did not anticipate “churn” caused by the controversy over “The Joe Rogan Experience.”“In general, what I would say is, it’s too early to know what the impact may be,” Ek said in the call. “And usually when we’ve had controversies in the past, those are measured in months and not days. But I feel good about where we are in relation to that and obviously top line trends looks very healthy still.”Ek defended the measures the streaming service is taking to combat misinformation, and spoke of “supporting greater expression while balancing it with the safety of our users.”“I think the important part here is that we don’t change our policies based on one creator nor do we change it based on any media cycle, or calls from anyone else,” he said. “Our policies have been carefully written with the input from numbers of internal and external experts in this space. And I do believe they’re right for our platform. And while Joe has a massive audience — he is actually the number one podcast in more than 90 markets — he also has to abide by those policies.”Spotify has been facing pressure over Rogan’s podcast since late December, when a coalition of 270 medical professionals published an open letter criticizing an episode featuring an interview with Dr. Robert Malone, who had been previously banned from Twitter for repeatedly posting misinformation about Covid-19. The letter said Rogan had a history of propagating “false and societally harmful assertions” about the virus, including discouraging vaccination among young people and promoting an unproven treatment for the virus, and called on Spotify to “establish a clear and public policy to moderate misinformation.”The situation reached a boiling point when Young announced he would be removing his catalog, leading several artists to follow, including Mitchell and the guitarist Nils Lofgren. The R&B artist India Arie said Tuesday that she, too, would be pulling her music from the service, citing Rogan’s comments on race. And on Wednesday several of Young’s former bandmates, David Crosby, Graham Nash, and Stephen Stills, asked their record labels to remove their recordings from Spotify.Pushback also came from several of the company’s other high-profile podcast hosts. On Saturday, Brené Brown, the influential author and host of the Spotify exclusive podcasts “Unlocking Us” and “Dare to Lead,” said she would pause releasing new episodes. On Monday, another popular Spotify podcast, “Science Vs.,” said it would cease publishing new episodes other than those meant to “counteract misinformation being spread on Spotify.” In recent days, the podcast hosts Mary L. Trump, Roxane Gay and Scott Galloway have also said they would either remove their shows from the platform or cease publishing.The company reported strong performance overall in the fourth quarter of 2021, including year-over-year growth in both paid subscribers — up 16 percent for a total of 180 million — and monthly active users — up 18 percent for a total of 406 million. It also said revenue from advertisements had reached a record 15 percent of total revenue. Podcasts — Spotify says there are now over 3.6 million episodes on its platform — have been an important part of its revenue strategy.Whether that trajectory will continue is uncertain. The company’s stock dropped in after-hours trading.“Obviously, it’s been a few notable days here at Spotify,” Ek said during the call. He added that “there’s no doubt that the last several weeks have presented a number of learning opportunities.” More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in Music

      Joni Mitchell Plans to Follow Neil Young Off Spotify, Citing ‘Lies’

      by

      Joni Mitchell said Friday that she would remove her music from Spotify, joining Neil Young in his protest against the streaming service over its role in giving a platform to Covid-19 vaccine misinformation.Mitchell, an esteemed singer-songwriter of songs like “Big Yellow Taxi,” and whose landmark album “Blue” just had its 50th anniversary, posted a brief statement on her website Friday saying that she would remove her music from the streaming service. “Irresponsible people are spreading lies that are costing people their lives,” she wrote. “I stand in solidarity with Neil Young and the global scientific and medical communities on this issue.”Her statement adds fuel to a small but growing revolt over Spotify, with few major artists speaking out but fans commenting widely on social media. The debate has also brought into relief questions about how much power artists wield to control distribution of their work, and the perennially thorny issue of free speech online.Spotify took Young’s music down on Wednesday, two days after he posted an open letter calling for its removal as a protest against “The Joe Rogan Experience,” Spotify’s most popular podcast, which has been criticized for spreading misinformation about the coronavirus and vaccines.He did so after a group of hundreds of scientists, professors and public health experts had asked Spotify to take down an episode of Rogan’s show from Dec. 31 that had featured Dr. Robert Malone, an infectious-disease expert. The scientists wrote in a public letter that the program promoted “several falsehoods about Covid-19 vaccines.”Mitchell is the first major artist to follow Young, after a couple of days of speculation and rumors on social media.Young and Mitchell have a deep history together. Both are Canadians who helped lead the singer-songwriter revolution in Southern California in the late 1960s and 1970s.On Spotify, Mitchell is listed as having 3.7 million monthly listeners, with two of her songs — “Big Yellow Taxi” and “A Case of You” — getting over 100 million streams.While few other major artists have spoken out so far, Young’s stance has resonated widely with fans. Twitter was dotted with the announcements of listeners saying they were canceling their subscriptions, and screenshots from Spotify’s app showed a message from its customer support team saying that it was “getting a lot of contacts so may be slow to respond.” Spotify has not said how many customers canceled their subscriptions.Tech rivals have also pounced on the controversy, with SiriusXM restarting a Neil Young channel and Apple Music calling itself “the home of Neil Young.”In a statement on his website on Friday, Young reiterated his objections to Rogan’s podcast and took a swipe at Spotify’s sound quality. He also said he supported free speech.“I support free speech. I have never been in favor of censorship,” it said. “Private companies have the right to choose what they profit from, just as I can choose not to have my music support a platform that disseminates harmful information.” More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Music

      Spotify Removes Neil Young's Music After Complaints About Joe Rogan

      by

      Neil Young wasn’t bluffing.Spotify said on Wednesday that it had begun removing the singer’s music from the streaming service, two days after he briefly posted a public letter calling on Spotify to choose between him and Joe Rogan, the star podcast host who has been accused of spreading misinformation about the coronavirus and vaccines.Young’s challenge to Spotify has become a high-profile, if unexpected, flash point in the battle over misinformation and free speech online. It also raised questions about the power of performing artists to control where their work is heard.In a statement posted to his website on Wednesday, Young called Spotify “the home of life threatening Covid misinformation.” He added: “Lies being sold for money.”His criticism of Rogan — a comedian and actor who has become Spotify’s most popular podcast host, sometimes speaking at great length with controversial figures — came after a group of hundreds of scientists, professors and public health experts asked Spotify to take down an episode of Rogan’s show from Dec. 31. That episode, featuring Dr. Robert Malone, an infectious-disease expert, promoted “several falsehoods about Covid-19 vaccines,” according to the group’s public letter, which was issued on Jan. 10.Spotify said in a statement on Wednesday: “We want all the world’s music and audio content to be available to Spotify users. With that comes great responsibility in balancing both safety for listeners and freedom for creators. We have detailed content policies in place and we’ve removed over 20,000 podcast episodes related to Covid since the start of the pandemic.”“We regret Neil’s decision to remove his music from Spotify,” the service added, “but hope to welcome him back soon.”Young’s most popular songs, like “Heart of Gold,” “Harvest Moon” and “Old Man,” have been radio staples for decades, and have attracted hundreds of millions of streams on Spotify. In his statement on Wednesday, Young said that Spotify represented 60 percent of the streams of his music around the world.Young’s music was expected to be fully removed from Spotify within hours. The news that the service was removing his songs was earlier reported by The Wall Street Journal.In his original letter, which Young addressed to his label, Warner Records, and his manager, he said: “Spotify has a responsibility to mitigate the spread of misinformation on its platform. I want you to let Spotify know immediately TODAY that I want all my music off their platform.”He added: “They can have Rogan or Young. Not both.”That letter was removed from Young’s website soon after it was posted, though it drew wide news media attention.The Coronavirus Pandemic: Key Things to KnowCard 1 of 4Omicron in retreat. More

    • 100 Shares159 Views

      in Music

      Wallice, an Indie Pop Sensation from Los Angeles

      by

      Her 2020 song “Punching Bag” was anointed by an influential Spotify playlist.Name: WalliceAge: 23Hometown: Los AngelesCurrently Lives: In a three-bedroom bungalow house in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles with her longtime boyfriend, Callaghan Kevany, and a friend.Claim to Fame: Wallice (whose full name is Wallice Hana Watanabe) is a singer-songwriter best known for “Punching Bag,” a song about self-deception in toxic relationships; her follow-up hit, “23,” about the perils of living with her mother during the pandemic, has had three million streams on Spotify. Sample lyric: “I’m terrified of the future/ Scared that I’ll still be a loser.” “I credit the pandemic to be able to find an audience, because I think a lot of people had time to listen to music and find new artists,” Wallice said.Big Break: In 2020, shortly after Wallice released “Punching Bag,” Spotify decided to feature the song on its Lorem playlist — an influential list that showcases new artists and now has more than 900,000 followers. “A lot of my friends are indie artists that are coming up in the scene,” she said. “They kept reposting the song, and that’s how I got Spotify’s attention.” The song took off from there and has been streamed more than four million times.Latest Project: In October, Wallice signed with Dirty Hit, an independent record label in London that’s also home to the 1975, an English boy band. In November she released the single “Wisdom Tooth,” a bubbly pop tune that was written the night before she went to the dentist. “I was so nervous,” she said. “I had a recording session that day and was like, ‘There’s no way I can write about anything else.’”Carlos Jaramillo for The New York TimesNext Thing: In the new year, she’ll join the band Still Woozy on tour. “I’m really excited about going on tour, especially since my bandmates are my best friends,” she said. “My boyfriend is our guitar player, and my bass player I’ve known forever.”What’s in a Name?: Wallice went without a name at birth because her parents thought they were having a boy. A few days later, her father named her after Wallis Simpson, the American socialite who later became the wife of Prince Edward, after he abdicated the British throne to marry her. “I really like my name, and I love how it is unique,” Wallice said. More