✖️ Identifying musical works, the making of Billie Eilish, AirPods are a tragedy 🎭
Hi everyone!
Thank you so much for the positive response last week. It’s encouraged me to kick MxTxF back up properly on a weekly basis for now. 🎉
👉 I am still looking for new opportunities in product leadership, digital strategy, or adjacent. I’m looking to work from Berlin (LinkedIn). If you’d like to help, share this update on LinkedIn.
As for someone US-based: have a look at Chuck Fishman, who’s a seasoned music tech specialist and has a great track record in digital media business development (Profile).
I’m used to sending these out on Mondays… and by now most of your weeks have definitely kicked off already. Regardless: have a great week everyone! 🐣
Love,
Bas
Highlight
Music industry advice you wish you’d received
Sammy Andrews created an excellent Twitter thread about what people in music wish they’d been told. I took some of my favourite bits and added comment.
The Twitter thread was in preparation of a talk Sammy was doing at BBC Music Introducing LIVE, from which she’s shared great outtakes on Twitter too.
Industry
Consolidating musical works registrations with graph matching
I make sure to have some downtime during conferences, so I can walk the conference floor, meet startups, etc. At Midem this year, I received a demo by Phil Barry of his startup Blokur. It looked great, and has now left beta. This article explains more of what they do and how it works.
How streaming killed underground micro-labels
The title sounds like something negative, but it comes with a lot of positives too: bands can do more themselves and specifically hire the services they need, without signing their rights away. An interesting story about the ever changing music business landscape. Personally, I enjoy reading stories about things that existed in the past, in order to imagine what analogues could exist in a mature streaming landscape.
Billie Eilish: the exception that proves the rule
Penny Fractions’ David Turner explains the sudden ‘grassroots’ success of Billie Eilish and tells a story of music blogs being run by major labels’ interns, and Eilish being part of a major tech company’s story. I agree with David: it doesn’t discredit her music, but it does help manage expectations. Success does not happen overnight. It’s the result of work, building connections, and a bit of luck. Uploading a song to a music platform and all success following from there: false narrative. Don’t bet on it.
Technology
What does it mean for a machine to “understand”?
We don’t “understand” what it means to understand, and we certainly don’t agree on any definition of it - the debate dates back to Aristotle. This has important implications for artificial intelligence and what it means for machines to learn, and understand, what they’re trained to; including music.
Apple claims that AirPods are building a “wireless future.” Many people think they’re a symbol of disposable wealth. The truth is bleaker.
Arena
Spotify listening patterns by gender
A cool daily-updating ‘microsite’ which keeps track of gender on Spotify, and how it breaks down for editorial playlists, personalized playlists, and direct personal choices. Thanks for showing me this, Rasmus Rex Pedersen.
Privacy and music marketing: ‘Common sense should prevail’
Not a huge fan of the assigned title, as that’s also the rhetoric that allowed for things such as the Cambridge Analytica scandal to happen. Happy to hear important debates like these are being held at conferences though, and reported on.
The above piece reminded me of Liz Pelly’s article about Spotify and the ‘platformization’ of music; what it means for the fans, and for music itself.
Fun
See photos of Sydney's rave scene in the 90s
Interview with Simon Burstall about the Sydney rave scene around ‘93, accompanied by some excellent photos of those early days.
❤️ twitter - musicxtechxfuture.com
Regular insights about the future of music, media & tech. Written & composed by @basgras.
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