indie artist
All artists bare their hearts, but none quite like Dana Margolin. Whether she’s rocking out or inward, the frontwoman and lyricist of Porridge Radio sings with an arresting, visceral intensity that never comes across as performative.
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So, it’s surprising — and heartening — to find an upbeat, almost breezy Margolin in pajamas at her London home once the Zoom cameras are turned on. The close-cropped, blond Joan of Arc hairstyle she wore in previous years is now shoulder length and brown, and she punctuates her comments with an easy laugh.
This may have something to do with Porridge Radio’s fourth album, Clouds in the Sky They Will Always Be There for Me, which Secretly Canadian will release on Oct. 18. It’s a breakthrough record for Margolin and the band, and a cathartic sequence of songs in which the former anthropology major reclaims her identity after losing her way in what she describes as the “fog” of an intense breakup, after months of touring and promotion behind the British band’s excellent last album, 2022’s Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder To The Sky, its first to hit the top 40 in the United Kingdom. “I have let go of my needs to be perfect and to be pure,” Margolin says. “I just want to have a nice life. I want to be with the people I love.”
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Clouds in the Sky finds Porridge Radio putting the hype of its 2020 Mercury Prize nomination well behind it and achieving a new level of artistry and sound. The poetry of Margolin’s lyrics has also evolved. Her songs have become more sophisticated without sacrificing the emotional wallop of her earlier work — a conscious effort on her part, and one of the subjects she discusses below with Billboard, along with the visual art she also creates and her tendency to fall in love easily.
You look very chill in pajamas right now, but on Porridge Radio’s records and at your concerts, you perform with an intensity that most humans cannot or will not approach. Do you live life outside of music like that?
You know I never really realized that not everybody experiences the world as I do until a few years ago. And it was quite shocking to me to find out that most people don’t have this kind of constant experience of their emotions.
What are the pros and cons of living with that kind of sensitivity?
It’s often very painful and exhausting to always feel like that. It’s a lot — but also, I feel that I have very strong connections with the people in my life, and I get to make music and share it, and people come towards me because of it. I always had this fear that it would push people away. It took having a really bad relationship that made me feel like I was too much. Suddenly, I was like wait, other people aren’t like this. They don’t have this intensity and why am I so weird? I’m always experiencing all the feelings of everything past and the future. Now, I’m okay with it. I think some people would kill to feel as much. Sometimes it’s incredibly difficult and painful but it’s given me a lot of love and connection and beauty, Also, I get to be in a band and go travel the world with my friends. I feel lucky even though sometimes I’m despairing.
It’s like in “God of Everything Else,” where you sing, “You always said that I’m too intense/ It’s not that I’m too much/ You just don’t have the guts.”
[Laughs.] That one is kind of cheesy. It’s so on the nose, but in a way, I was just like, right.
Porridge Radio
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These songs all started as poetry, right?
Yeah, in a way. They all started from me writing with more focus on the words. I was challenging myself to be a better writer. My songs always started as poetry in some way. With these especially, I felt that.
You refer to a swallow in some songs and in one, a sparrow. Did you have specific symbolism in mind in using this bird imagery?
I was looking for a symbol for a particular relationship that I was describing, and I was drawn to birds and the symbolism around birds. Especially with swallows, it was this idea of somebody who goes away and comes back, or somebody who is there and then they just disappear. I was thinking of migrating birds, and this idea of somebody who needs to travel because it’s in their heart. They need to go away. They need to be far away from you, but they always come back. Then I think by the time it turned into a sparrow, the idea of, I thought you were one thing — and you were something else.
You sing about you having to be someone that you aren’t.
Yeah. That’s me.
“God of Everything Else” reminds me of the Porridge Radio song “7 Seconds” in terms of the emotions that it evokes. “7 Seconds” is about a self-destructive relationship as well. Was that the same person, or do you fall in love easily because you’re so vulnerable?
You know, I do fall in love so easily, unfortunately. But no, there are multiple relationships. They’re from different periods of my life and very different people.
Dreams figure a lot into your songs. Is that a literary device for you, or do you remember and record your dreams?
I’ve always had very intense dreams. It’s not even a practice of writing down my dreams. It’s just that I have so many. I enjoy leaning into this idea of a dreamlike state, where the dreams I’m having whilst I’m awake and the dreams I’m having whilst I’m asleep are blending into each other. And I’m not sure which is which. What I like about poem or song is that something can be presented as real life, and you can’t necessarily tell if it’s a dream, something that really happened, a fantasy or a daydream.
Where was your head at when you wrote these songs?
I spent a long time when I was writing these songs feeling incredibly depressed and having this extreme sense of burnout. This feeling of fog that is enveloping me as I go around my life — of being unable to distinguish myself and my surroundings from these fantasies and imagined versions of what’s happening. I really wanted to bring that feeling into the songs which I think is what I almost do. The main one that really does that is “In a Dream I’m a Painting,” which was maybe the most literal version of that.
Was the burnout you were experiencing from a heavy touring schedule and making up dates postponed during the pandemic?
Yeah, definitely. We played over a hundred shows in a year. That doesn’t include the six months before that year that we were touring. We just didn’t stop. We were touring two albums and releasing one of them in the middle of that tour, and I was so tired. I felt like I had to do everything, but this is the first time I have had this opportunity to do this. I really wanted to — had to — prove myself, and I had to do it justice. The end result of that was I said yes to everything. We were playing loads and loads of shows. I was also doing interviews all the time and doing promos, doing sessions. And we were traveling. It took everything out of me.
Then towards the end of that year, I fell in love with someone and all these feelings of intense burnout, sadness and exhaustion were tying into this excitement and potential, and it was quite confusing. Then we got home, and I suddenly had nothing to do. I was just functioning and like, who am I? I didn’t know how to do anything, like go and have a coffee or see my friends. I hadn’t been home for so long, I was like, “Hey, can you ask me to hang out?”
And traveling the world on a tour has to change you as a person?
Yeah, you become a version of yourself that is constantly in motion, that has not quite caught up with yourself.
The covers of previous Porridge Radio albums have been your artwork. The cover of Clouds in the Sky They Will Always Be There for Me, is a photograph of you looking at a birdlike sculpture. How did that come about?
I made this sculpture of a swallow, and I made it whilst I was writing these songs because I was really focused on this idea of the swallow. I’d also been doing lyric paintings that reflected the songs either in their states as poems before they became songs, or after they’d been put into songs. I had all these different images. When we were recording the album, at that point we didn’t know what it was going to be called. I remember talking to Georgie [Stott], who plays keys, about what it should be. And somehow, we both secretly arrived at this idea that it should be a photo.
I was thinking that it should be a photo of the swallow sculpture. I hadn’t finished making it, but I knew that I wanted it to be a mobile which fit into this [Centre] Pompidou show we did in April 2024, which was this huge live show my sister directed which had all these shadows and puppets. Somehow, we realized that I should be in the photo, but then because of that, I needed to find somebody who could take the photo that I had in my head.
A friend sent me the work of about 20 photographers. I saw Steve Gullick’s work, and I thought he could capture this image that I had in my head. Luckily, he followed us on Instagram. I sent him a message that just said would you be interested in doing this. He said, “Yeah, let’s have a phone call.” I described it to him and did a sketch of the album cover and showed it to him. Then we spent a whole day in my art studio playing around with the swallow. My sister was there as well giving movement direction. He managed to capture the image that I had in my head. He really brought it to life. I love this picture.
Weren’t you inspired after seeing some of Alexander Calder’s mobiles and sculptures?
It was around the release of the last record. I was in New York and went to the Whitney [Museum of American Art]. They had this video playing of Alexander Calder’s Circus, and I fell in love. It was so whimsical in such a serious way —and so beautiful. I spent a long time watching documentaries about him and thinking about mobiles and shadows. I’ve always enjoyed the way that sculpture exists and interacts with the space, the world it’s in. I think the swallow mobile I made is very close to his work.
I love your word paintings. Have you gotten a proper gallery exhibit?
Not a proper one, no. I would love to have one, actually. Very fun. I have a lot of paintings from this album that I don’t quite know what to do with.
I first heard “Sick of the Blues” as a single before I heard the album. I loved it then, but where it falls at the end of the album makes it all the more powerful. It functions as both culmination of a journey and the start of a new one. Was that what you were trying to accomplish with the track list?
Yeah, exactly. We were all kind of amused because we didn’t know the first single was going be “Sick of the Blues,” which, for us, was the closing piece that ties the album all together. If you start with [the album’s first track,] “Anybody,” it’s this intense introduction that takes you through everything else that you’re going to experience across the album. Then you end with “Sick of the Blues,” which is just like oh, f–k it.
“I’m going to make it. I’m going to get through this.”
Exactly. It’s like — “I don’t believe this yet, but I will at some point. I’m just going to hope for the best and go for it.” And that was why it came at the end.
In “Sick of the Blues,” you sing, “I’m sick of the blues, I’m in love with my life again/ I’m sick of the blues, I love you more than anything.” It makes the listener think, “What do you love more than anything? Life or the person you lost?” You’ve done that with other songs, like “7 Seconds” — the lyrics are open to interpretation.
I think it is important that people come to the songs with what they have and what they need from them.
Based on the song credits, it looks like you work collaboratively with your bandmates.
This was the first time that I really felt comfortable having those credits with everyone. Even though the process was very similar in that I wrote these songs on my own, I showed them to the others, and over months and months, we arranged them together. We also did the preproduction together, and we were all in the studio together recording. It was all mixed with us together.
It felt like everyone was more a part of it than they ever had been. Their input was what made the making of this album feel fresh, even though we have been a band for years. Me and Georgie and Sam have made music together and been close friends for about ten years now, but this felt like the first time in a lot of ways that it was ours, and that I was really relying on them.
When I was researching this story, a lot of the press was about Porridge Radio’s nomination for the Mercury Prize. Now that you’ve come so far from that, with this album, where do you see Porridge Radio as a unit, a group of artists?
It’s funny. We’d already been a band for about five years, and then suddenly, the industry said, “Oh, this is a hot new band.” We weren’t. It was chaotic at the beginning, with us figuring out where we were in relation to each other. And it was me kind of figuring out I had all this emotional outburst to give and found the space to do it. I was like, “Oh, no one cares about this, but this is for us.”
Suddenly we’re this hype band and I’m getting the Mercury nomination. I was like, “This is amazing, because this means that I’m going to be able to do this as a job at some point.” I also remember being almost cynical about it. Like, the music industry chooses you for a minute, and then it spits you back out again.
And then came the endless touring.
We ended up touring a really long time, and I got so completely jaded by the whole industry — by the way you’re expected to tour and live. It feels like everyone is expecting you to do everything, you’re not really making much money, and you’re supposed to be so grateful for this thing that you have that is extremely painful and physical. I’ve seen so many friends go through this kind of whirlwind and come out exhausted, disappointed and alienated.
And now with this album I think we’ve made the best thing we’ve ever made. It’s so exciting to me. I loved writing and recording these songs. I’m excited to release it and tour it. I’m like, “That’s enough, right?” My goal is to enjoy my life; to just be in it and not worry too much if anyone cares — because sometimes people care and sometimes, they don’t. I’m letting go. I’m releasing my expectations of myself.
You feel like that’s finally happening.
I think this record has allowed me to do that, and even in the process of recording it’s the first time that I felt like I could be anything that I needed to be whilst recording. I mean, I was crying for about a week of making this, and I made it. Maybe what I’ve learned from this is that I’m allowed to be intense, and I’m allowed to have peace.
The Album
Yard, out now on ANTI- Records.
The Origin
Guitarist-producer Henry Stoehr and drummer Teddy Matthews met as youngsters in a McDonald’s ball pit in their native Madison, Wis., and they’ve been playing music together almost as long. They formed a band with buddy and future Slow Pulp bassist Alex Leeds as preteens and kept making music as teens and, later, students at University of Wisconsin, Madison. That’s where they met singer-guitarist Emily Massey, who was in another band, but began writing with Stoehr for fun.
The creative relationship blossomed and Stoehr invited Massey to join the nascent Slow Pulp. Initially, Massey explains, she “was just kind of an auxiliary member,” helping with rhythm guitar and backing vocals. But while recording 2017’s EP2, Stoehr and Leeds asked Massey to sing lead on a couple of their songs. “They were like, ‘How about you sing this song as well?’ And then we started sprinkling in the songs that we had been writing together,” Massey, now 28, recalls. “It just kind of slowly transitioned into me kind of taking the frontperson role.”
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The Sound
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“Lucinda Williams’ album Car Wheels On A Gravel Road, that’s my gold [standard], like, this is how I like music to sound, production-wise” says Stoehr, 29, who produced Slow Pulp’s debut full-length, 2020’s Moveys, and its follow-up, September’s Yard. Massey shares the affinity: She wrote some of Yard‘s songs at a cabin where Williams’ Grammy-nominated 2001 album Essence was one of the few CDs on hand. “She’s just an incredible songwriter,” says Massey, noting the “production cues that [Slow Pulp] took from that Americana world for some of the songs” on Yard.
Stoehr and Massey also gush about the soundtrack to seminal ’00s teen TV drama The O.C., explaining the impact the set of canonical alt-rock and indie-pop songs had on them as younger Millennials. “Overall, on [Yard], there’s a little more earnestness and exposed emotion. And I feel like that [O.C.] era of music was all about that.”
And when it comes to the tried-and-true “Artist A x Artist B = Artist C” equation, one could do worse than encapsulating Slow Pulp’s emotional and vibrant indie-rock than “Lucinda Williams x The O.C. soundtrack.” On Yard, the band’s upped the rootsy quotient – like on late-album standout “Broadview,” a gem laden with steel guitar, harmonica, and banjo that sounds like Slow Pulp exhumed and rerecorded a lost demo from Neil Young’s Harvest.
The Record
Like many young bands, Slow Pulp’s rise is forever linked to the pandemic. The quartet finished its debut, Moveys, in the early months of COVID; around that time, Massey says her own health issues and a serious car accident involving her parents were among the factors that forced the band to “take a breather for a second.”
Writing for Yard began in earnest in early 2022, and by February 2023 the band had submitted the record – and signed with eminent indie label ANTI-, currently home to an eclectic roster that includes Fleet Foxes, Mavis Staples, MJ Lenderman and Japandroids. “They were very down for just letting us take a lot of creative control, which is something that was really important to us,” Massey says.
As she did for Moveys, Massey tracked many of Yard‘s vocals in her musician father’s home studio – “It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows; we definitely are good at arguing,” she says with a laugh – and Stoehr ornamented tracks the band recorded with “sound candy type of stuff” to make them pop. The technical prowess helps Slow Pulp’s sharper-than-ever songwriting, chock-full of huge hooks and vivid lyrics, shine.
“Songs like ‘Broadview’ and ‘Yard’ have a different flavor than some of the music that we’ve done before,” Massey says. “And ANTI-, those were some of their favorite songs, like from the jump. That felt cool to have a label be excited about new things and new sounds that are kind of taking a risk.”
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The Breakthrough
When Slow Pulp released EP2, influential YouTuber thelazylazyme gave its closing track, “Preoccupied,” a boost by sharing it. “That was the turning point of, like, ‘Maybe we should look into taking this a little bit more seriously,’” says Massey, explaining how the recognition prompted Slow Pulp to relocate to Chicago.
In 2019, the band opened for Alex G on tour – and noticed a pronounced change in the audiences compared to other support slots it had played before. “That was the first tour we went on where the person we were opening for’s fans were pretty receptive,” Stoehr says. “People were liking it.”
And when touring opened back up following the pandemic, Slow Pulp shored up its indie-rock bona fides with coveted slots supporting Alvvays, Pixies and Death Cab For Cutie.
The Future
In early November, Slow Pulp took the stage – to Phantom Planet’s O.C. theme “California,” naturally – for a sold-out show at New York’s Bowery Ballroom, the third of three sold-out Manhattan club shows. The raucous Big Apple crowd has been the norm since Slow Pulp hit the road days after Yard’s release.
“One of our favorite shows that we played on this tour was in Minneapolis,” says Massey, recalling the band’s second stop this fall. “The album hadn’t even been out for a week, and the crowd sang every song. It was just like, ‘What?! How is this happening?’”
The band’s wrapping the year with a European tour – and is already booked for Spain’s Primavera Sound and the Netherlands’ Best Kept Secret in June 2024. Says Massey: “It feels like this big dream is coming true.”
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The Piece of Studio Equipment They Cannot Live Without
Stoehr: “The AKG C414 [microphone]. The gold and black one.”Massey: “My MacBook.”
The Artist They Believe Deserves More Attention
Massey: “Ratboys. They could be huge. The record they put out this year is really so, so cool.”Stoehr: “They’re an amazing band. There’s this other small band from Madison called She’s Green that I think are really sick.”
The Advice Every Indie Artist Needs to Hear
Massey: “Have fun. That’s something that we like have to remind ourselves of sometimes. I’ve had a really hard time letting myself just fail and make things that are horrible. That’s OK! Make stuff that’s really bad. Make bad songs and it gets you to the good ones. Don’t be so hard on yourself.”
The Most Surprising Thing About the Music Industry So Far
Massey: [long pause] “People listen to our music.” [laughs]Stoehr: “Yeah, probably that.”Massey: “That’s pretty surprising, always.”
The Thing They Hope Fans Take Away From Their Album
Massey: “Letting yourself have a certain compassion for yourself. That’s the big takeaway. We all have moments of a lot of self-doubt; there are a lot of things that we’re so hard on ourselves for. And to be able to work towards finding the places where you feel you’re able to care for yourself, outside of all the things that are happening. A lot of this record is about gratitude and reflecting on relationships and things that get you to the place you are now.”
The Album
The Window, out August 25 on Topshelf
The Origin
For Ratboys’ Julia Steiner and Dave Sagan, college started paying off before taking a single class. “Dave and I met during freshman orientation” at Notre Dame, Steiner tells Billboard. “We were both music nerds in a sea of – in a student body that isn’t full of music nerds. We showed up to college and neither of us had plans to start a band or to seek out people to play music with. We just kind of found each other really quickly.”
Before long, Steiner and Sagan were posting their recordings online and playing regional DIY shows. “The first community that we found ourselves in was in the south suburbs of Chicago, which is where Dave and [bassist] Sean [Neumann] grew up,” Steiner says. “I immediately got welcomed into this community of bands and music freaks down there that loved every type of music and were really passionate about having house shows with a million different types of bands.”
In the mid-’10s, Ratboys went from Chicago upstarts to Windy City rock fixtures, cementing their reputation with Topshelf releases AOID in 2015 and GN in 2017. That year, the quartet solidified its current lineup with the additions of Nuemann and drummer Marcus Nuccio; all four played on Printer’s Devil, Ratboys’ critical breakthrough that arrived just before the pandemic in early 2020.
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The Sound
Years ago, Steiner referred to Ratboys as “post-country” – riffing on an inside joke with Sagan about the vagueness of terms like “post-hardcore” and “post-rock” – and the descriptor has followed the project, thanks to its vivid lyricism and natural fusion of sounds. Sagan’s description today is more direct: “We’re like Tom Petty,” he says. “We’re just a tight rock band.” (Steiner chimes in, “How humble of you, Dave!”)
Tongue-in-cheek or not, Steiner’s description has proven prescient for both Ratboys and their peers. “I think you were kind of ahead of your time there a little, Julia,” Nuccio says. “I mean, look at the landscape of indie-rock right now. So many bands, like Big Thief and Wednesday and Florry and all amazing bands, it kind of is like post-country, right? In the way that post-rock or post-hardcore is taking a genre and then adding a little modern twist to it.”
“Some of the tunes that we make are within – or at least paying homage to – that country tradition,” Steiner concludes.
The Record
While on tour with Foxing in 2018, Ratboys met Chris Walla, who had produced their tourmates’ acclaimed album Nearer My God out of his Seattle recording studio. In 2021, with a stable of new songs penned in quarantine, Ratboys cold-called Walla, best known for his time in Death Cab For Cutie, to helm the boards for what would become The Window.
When a tour later that year took Ratboys through Seattle, the band met with Walla; he asked them about their vision for their next album during on a walk back from a grocery store in the pouring rain. “We immediately dove into the details as if we’d known each other forever,” Steiner says. “He’s just a very easy person to spend time with.”
Soon, the band was sending demos to Walla for creative guidance, and in early 2022, Ratboys returned to Seattle to for a month to record, marking their first sessions outside of Chicago. Neumann says Ratboys cherished the opportunity to immerse and “make a record without thinking about the outside world,” comparing the sessions to staying over at a friend’s house. “There was one couch in there, and everybody had their preferred spot on the couch,” Sagan adds. “By the end of it, everybody had their own, like, perfectly formed butt groove.” (“That was the provisional title of the record, actually,” Steiner quips.)
Walla helped the band record live-to-tape for the first time, and also proved an empathetic sounding board for The Window‘s lyrical content. “I told him, ‘A lot of the songs are more personal, more real, more honest than some of the things we’ve made before – like, I just want it to be very real, unflinchingly so,’” Steiner recalls. “He was game for that. We really looked at everything in the face and [were] full-steam ahead with some of these ideas.”
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The Breakthrough
In January 2020, Ratboys received an unlikely boost. Organizers for the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign contacted the band to open for one of the senator’s Iowa rallies, and Steiner and Sagan braved a blizzard to play the gig. When Sanders took the stage for his speech, he thanked Ratboys – but Steiner’s phone died as she tried to film the moment for posterity.
“I was like, ‘Well, bummer, I guess I’ll never get to share that with anyone,’” she says. Luckily, a friend captured the moment – and endearing footage of Sanders saying “Let me thank the Ratboys for their music” went viral.
The episode dovetailed with the rollout for Printer’s Devil, Ratboys’ most accomplished set of songs yet, which arrived that February to rave reviews. The pandemic disrupted the band’s planned headline tour, which was to begin March 14, 2020, but Ratboys made lemonade from lemons, diving into livestreaming and writing. To celebrate its 10th anniversary, Ratboys re-recorded several early songs – and a new one, the instant quarantine classic “Go Outside” – for the 2021 full-length Happy Birthday, Ratboy!; the project coincided with Ratboys’ first overtures to Walla.
Two years after Happy Birthday, Ratboys returned with the longest song of its career, the eight-and-half-minute “Black Earth, WI.” The expansive rocker – along with other new singles “It’s Alive!,” “The Window,” “Crossed That Line,” and “Morning Zoo” (out today) – flashed the band’s recent lyrical and musical growth.
The Future
Ratboys co-headlined a tour with Wild Pink in 2021, but the band is excited to finally make good on its nixed 2020 touring plans and head out on a headline run of its own next month. “We’ve never had the opportunity to do a real, ticketed headline tour,” Steiner says with excitement. “It’s finally happening!”
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The Piece of Studio Equipment They Cannot Live Without
Steiner: “A roll of gaffe tape. Very useful to have around, not just for cymbal-dampening purposes – which I know nothing about, that’s like black magic to me – but I found a very, very important lesson while vocal tracking on this record: sometimes in order to unlock the best vocal performance, you need some sort of physical object to interact with while you’re singing. At one point, I grabbed this heavy-ass roll of gaffe tape that we had and just the weight of it in my hands, I was able to sing better. That was indispensable to me throughout the session.”
The Artist They Believe Deserves More Attention
Neumann cites Chicago pal Nnamdï, and Nuccio teases “a secret Nnamdï surprise coming in the Ratboys world, for any of the vinyl heads out there” who buy The Window on wax.
The Advice Every Indie Artist Needs to Hear
Sagan: “Play a show before you start thinking about any Spotify listeners. Don’t worry about how people receive your music – just play it first.”
The Thing That Needs to Change in the Music Industry
Steiner: “The music industry today kind of treats music like a public utility, and I really fear that there’s no way to go back from that entirely. The value of a song, the value of an artistic idea has kind of been washed away. If there’s some way that we could reframe the way we look at music… honestly, we’ve talked about this in the band: Spotify should be $100 a month. It’s so cheap. It’s just a matter of finding that tipping point where people will agree that this has value and be willing to pay more for it.”
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