replace spaces with dash and remove prefix from string
<p>Im using this to remove spaces and special characters and convert characters to lowercase:</p>

<pre><code>''.join(e for e in artistName if e.isalnum()).lower()
</code></pre>

<p>• i want to replace spaces with: '-'</p>

<p>• if the string starts with the word: 'the' remove 'the'</p>

<p>so: The beatles music!</p>

<p>would be: beatles-music</p>

<p>any help is much appreciated</p>

<p>thanks
J</p>
