✖️ Music's most important metric, music needs a Disney+, what climate change sounds like 🌪️
Hi everyone!
Small request: I’m trying to get deeper into the topic of sustainability and the music industry (and industries that interface with it a lot). I’m aware of some great organisations, but I’m looking for good blogs, Twitter accounts, and newsletters to follow on the topic.
Know something? Hit reply or @ me on Twitter: basgras. Cheers!
Love,
Bas
From me, for you
⏲️ The listening time trap: the one metric that matters
Online entertainment services focusing on getting people to listen and watch more content. Why? What decision making is involved in getting users to do that? What’s the effect on music?
www.musicxtechxfuture.com • Share
Streaming music
Highlighted this in the newsletter a few weeks ago. Now the Paperchain team have produced a detailed guide to how they managed to accomplish it. Worth the read. 🤓
📊 The state of music-tech startups, through the lens of its top investors
Cherie Hu about the current landscape and the panel she moderated at Music Tectonics, with Zach Katz (CEO, Raised in Space), Rishi Patel (managing partner, Plus Eight Equity), Larry Marcus (co-founder and managing director, Marcy Venture Partners) and the aforementioned Virginie Berger (founder, DBTH Capital Ventures).
🐭 Why music streaming could really do with a Disney+
Mark Mulligan: “Rights holders need to protect their assets and their commercial value in the marketplace. They inherently skew towards sustaining innovations, i.e. incremental changes that sustain existing products. New tech companies looking to build market share, however, favour disruptive innovations that create new markets. Asking an incumbent to aggressively back disruptive innovation is a bit like asking someone to set fire to their own house. But most often it is the disruptive change that really drives markets forward.”
musicindustryblog.wordpress.com • Share
Looking back
🏴☠️ An oral history of LimeWire: the little app that changed the music industry forever
At its peak, LimeWire was responsible for 80 percent of all illegally downloaded music in the U.S. Millennials had their first taste of infinite on-demand entertainment, and they were hooked.
💾 MIDI files: the soundtrack of the early web
How the professional-minded MIDI format, for an incredibly short but memorable period of time, became the primary way music was shared on the internet.
Looking forward
🌬️ This is what climate change sounds like
Scientists and artists hope the emotional power of music will help move people to act on the climate crisis. If you want to skip NYT’s article + paywall and hop straight to the project: ClimateMusic.
Concerned? Here’s simple things you can do to reduce your footprint.
A machine-learning model quantified the uncertainty and surprise of pop song chords. Chords with low uncertainty and high surprise, and vice versa, evoked high pleasure.
🌿 The urgent need for a sustainable music industry – and the innovations that make it possible
I’m revisiting this piece I wrote a few years ago, and would like tips on what to read, interesting developments in recent years, good sources / blogs of up to date information on this topic in music and similar domains. Hit reply and let me know or ping me on Twitter: @basgras
www.musicxtechxfuture.com • Share
Arena
Liz Pelly takes on Sofar Sounds, which is now headed up by The Echo Nest’s former CEO. Can’t say I agree with the piece in full, however it provides a great critique on the way it influences our culture. For instance:
“It’s the lean-back listening of live music, where everything from the aesthetic of the space to the sound of the music is flattened in order to create the most seamless, frictionless experience possible. Similarly, you don’t have to select an artist on Spotify to listen to; you can choose from playlists like Chill Vibes or Mellow Dinner. With the “secret shows” being offered by Sofar and other tech companies, users don’t look for an artist to see on a Friday night; instead, they select “Indie Pop in an Underground Speakeasy” or “Hip-Hop Night in Dumbo.””
👩💻 How Duolingo achieved a 50:50 gender ratio for new software engineer hires
The tech industry’s gender balance can be just as bad as music’s, or worse. Here’s how one company managed to get to a 50:50 ratio.
Fun
😂 Why Ableton's Operator is better than Serum (for FM)
One of my favourite YouTube channels is You Suck at Producing, and now that I’m getting back into producing music (and suck), it’s become even more valuable to me. As I was trying to figure out how to create a particular bass sound this weekend, I stumbled upon this video. Worth the watch. Most entertaining music production lessons: hands down.
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Regular insights about the future of music, media & tech. Written & composed by @basgras.
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