Announcements WhaleShares and Music Today posts

End of WhaleShares sponsorship

As the launch of the WhaleShares site is very near, the sponsorship that @lost108 has so kindly given the @smacommunity is on pause until further notice. Maybe the sponsorship will be back, maybe not.. I personally want to thank you again @lost108 for your kind sponsoring the last weeks. Too bad quite a few people highlighted did not respond with their bts usernames, this means people are maybe not actually reading the Music Today posts. Not referring to all of you great artists though, because I've met quite a few awesome artists since I started making the Music Today for this great community.

Why some of you artists are highlighted more than once

Let me be very clear first on something, I have not regret it for a second that I started to curate the music posts on Steemit posted under the sma tag for a day. But lately it has shown to be quite difficult to find fresh artists instead of the great ones that already have been highlighted once,twice or even three times in the last couple of months. I don't highlight people because of friend circles here on Steemit, the posts that I pick are there because I feel they deserve that spot, and that's based on my personal feeling of quality content. I don't feel like highlighting a post that imo is not a great post because I need to publish three, while there is another super song online from an artist that I've already presented here before. This is not how I work. With this I don't mean to say that there are no great posts here on Steemit, because there are tons of them.

What's the problem then?

Well, when I search for the posts under the SMA tag, I see (mostly) the same artists popping up. And to be honest, when starting this I have made the agreement only to highlight those posts that are posted under this tag. And I was confident this would be find. Weeks have passed, and my conclusion is that the tag is not used as many as you would think. When you go to the SMA server on discord, you will find so many sub-channels, it's a huge community nowadays, how is it possible that so little of them post under the SMA tag? We as a community would love to support you great artists, because we know you're there, but my request is once again to please use the #sma in your post so I can actually find you.

I would love to be able to post three times a week again

Because I enjoy going through the music posts a lot, but to be honest, until I see the tag being used a lot more, I will post the Music Today when I have three great posts ready to show to Steemit. Some people know that I'm very active in several communities on Steemit, and every community has its own charmes, so does SMA, but getting the love from the community should also mean you can show your support to the community by using the tag, right? Lately there have barely even been upvotes on the posts, and I hardly get any engagement in the comment section (for those who do, I appreciate it a lot, and please don't think that I'm talking to you here!). I hope people will read this, and take a moment to think about the time and effort I put into making these posts (which I do with love). Would you be happy if you see there's barely any engagement under your posts? I hope to find more like-minded people that share their thoughts and ideas too, that's what a community is for.

Let's take a moment to think about the things said above, and see how we can make this great again for everyone! I am considering rewarding the highlighted artists again soon, but for now I hope to see things change a bit here. I have a private life too, and I'm passionate enough about Steemit to find a new healthy balance here, but only if it means people appreciate me doing so. Any comments or thoughts are welcome and appreciated!

Thank you all for reading, please keep posting your great music posts, because I love listening to them!

Much love, @anouk.nox