“The first step in realizing your dream is to not be afraid of any challenge,” Liu Wa from Bejing Chaoyang Kaiwen Academy said.

This July, when Liu was informed that the music festival her band was attending had some trouble and was about to be cancelled, she decided to take over the job of hosting it. “I thought to myself, how hard could hosting be?” What’s more, she turned this festival into a charity event by raising money for a stray dog rescue station in Anhui province.

Liu became a volunteer for the station by coincidence two years ago. “I realized how much money it could take to save those dogs. This music festival is exactly the opportunity I need to raise people’s awareness of protecting stray dogs and donate money for them,” Liu said.

Liu and her two friends, who are also members of the band needed to find sponsorships, set up the venue and contact bands of high schools in Beijing to perform within two weeks. “Negotiating with sponsors was tricky sometimes as we needed to figure out what they wanted and trade with resources we had,”Liu recalled. They managed to cooperate with companies such as a study abroad agency to cover the expense as much as possible. Many parents also “sponsored” them with their homemade food.

The weather forecast had said that the day of the music festival, Aug 6, was going to be rainy. “We were so worried at first. But then a miracle happened: It only rained a little toward the end, helping us to sell the umbrellas we had prepared,” Liu said.

Audiences were mainly friends, parents and students. “Because of the pandemic, the audiences were limited to no more than 200 people, which also pushed us to come up with ways of earning money other than tickets,” Liu explained. Eventually, they managed to raise 50,000 yuan from rain gear, food, and accessories they had designed.

Having been looked down upon many times by professional bands in Beijing, Liu also sees this festival as a way of telling the world that high school bands are just as good. “I want to run our own music channel on Bilibili. Our love for music will never stop,” Liu said.

As you move out of your teens and into your 20s and 30s, your musical tastes start to solidify and you likely quit keeping up with popular music. Now, research has found the average age at which your music library is unlikely to change: 33.

The study's author reached this conclusion by analyzing data on U. S. Spotify users and comparing it to artist popularity data from music intelligence company The Echo Nest.

To determine the age at which we stop seeking out new tunes, the author gathered self-reported age data from Spotify and looked at users' ^" Taste Profiles," which tracks how many times listeners have streamed individual artists. These artists were then matched to their popularity rank on The Echo Nest.

The average teen listens almost only to music among the Billboard, the 200 highest-ranking albums in the country, but this music represents a smaller part of their streaming as they age. In their teens, they listen to a lot of the same music, over and over again. Frank T. McAndrew, a professor of psychology at Knox College, explains that's the "mere exposure effect" at work, and it basically means, the more we're exposed to something, the more we like it.

There are many reasons why a person may stop streaming the current top musical hits, and the author looked into one by identifying Spotify listeners with large amounts of children's music and nursery rhymes in their libraries. In other words, when users may have become parents.

But the study concludes with some good news for parents: “If you're getting older and can't find yourself staying as relevant as you used to, have no fear — just wait for your kids to become teenagers, and you'll get exposed to all the popular music of the day once again!”

When Joel Bueno informed his parents that he wanted to play music just like his elder twin brothers, the couple were shocked. It seemed an impossible wish to satisfy their adorable boy. But then they found Eye Harp—a gaze-activated digital instrument that their son, diagnosed with cerebral palsy (大脑性瘫痪), could play. Sitting in a hotel lobby about to go on stage, Joel says the Eye Harp—the name of the instrument as well as the company—brings him joy. But more than that, it enables him to express a range of emotions with others.

Zacharias Vamvakousis is the creative force behind Eye Harp. In 2008, he began looking into ways for disabled people to play music when a friend of his had a motorcycle accident that threatened his ability to play the guitar. It set him on a path that integrated his musical passion with his computer science skills.

Eye Harp became a mission. For many people with severe disabilities, expressing basic thoughts and feelings—let alone intentional creative expression—can be a challenge. But Dr. Vamvakousis’ combination of art and technology enables users to communicate from their soul by translating the smallest movements into musical notes on digital instruments of their choice. He created the not-for-profit Eye Harp Association in 2019, with the goal of making musical expression available to all.

The Eye Harp is in its fifth version. Now he’s focused on making the instrument as user-friendly as possible for music teachers and therapists (治疗师).“Playing music is a process that requires studying and having music classes,”he notes.“So if we want it to reach many people, we have to reach first the music teachers.”

Globally, around 50 million people could benefit from augmented (增强的) and alternative communication technology, Dr. Vamvakousis estimates. Currently, he says, fewer than 2% are so equipped. So far, around 650 people are using either the basic or advanced versions of Eye Harp.