✖️ Why music startups often fail 💥 Better streaming services for DJS 🎛️ Music promo is going meme-first 🔑
Hi everyone,
Some unexpected travel this week, so I didn’t have much time to write. However, sometimes I’ll write a piece, decide it’s not good enough, leave it in drafts, and write something else.
I revisited one of the pieces, edited it, and now it’s published. Enjoy! Have a nice week.
Love,
Bas
From me, for you
What music startup founders often get wrong
Doing a consumer facing music startup is hard. Especially if you don’t understand what gives music value. Bit of a rant this week - needed to get some things off my chest, I guess. 😅
www.musicxtechxfuture.com • Share
Streaming music
How streaming music services could be better for DJs
When I switched from downloading to streaming and becoming a Spotify subscriber many years ago, it really messed with my creative process as a DJ. Suddenly I had to dig in a different way, because the music was no longer on my hard drive, so I couldn’t test it out as easily. I imagined this would get resolved sooner or later, but nearly 10 years later and we still see people wishing for the same things in articles like this.
Quick take: Spotify and Hulu partner in the US
Mark Mulligan has always been a strong believer of music & video bundled into streaming services, so don’t miss his take on this partnership. It’s an exceptionally good deal for listeners & watchers: Spotify + Hulu for $4.99 (normally: $7.99 + $9.99).
musicindustryblog.wordpress.com • Share
BandLab Technologies acquires Chew.tv, a video streaming service for DJs
Congrats to Chew.tv – whom I interviewed last year. It will be interesting to see what BandLab, an online platform for making music & collaboration, will do with it exactly.
Beyond streaming
From French Montana to Katy Perry, the meme-first reality of today's music promotion game
French Montana’s latest single is just the latest in a long line of songs that rode an Instagram dance challenge to the top.
Musical.ly has lots of users, not much ad traction
Musical.ly is another great example of ‘music as memes’. It’s become as easy to remix music, in this case through the medium of video, as it is to alter image macros or send GIFs to friends. Teens nowadays are not discovering music through MTV, but by seeing a video of their friend playbacking or dancing to the song and becoming part of the narrative of the music itself. Now that’s remix culture.
(Music licenses for video, which Facebook is seeking, would let the social giant do the same thing to Musical.ly as what they did to Snapchat through Instagram Stories).
The clubbing map: What has happened to London nightlife?
Nice interactive map of London’s nightlife landscape. Created to inform the night-time economy debate. Good analysis in there too. Great work by John Davies and Antonio Lima at Nesta.
Wide view
When computer predictions end up shaping the future
“What if, like autocomplete, the text is almost what you thought? What if your brain, an incredibly adaptable tool, reshapes its thinking to better suit the algorithm, and you find yourself thinking in Facebook, like you dreamed in French for a few weeks before the big Advanced Placement exam? Now the futures you can think about are shaped by somebody else’s code.”
The end of a world of nation-states may be upon us
“Nation-states are unlikely to collapse overnight. There are no barbarians at the gate. But it evolved during a time of industrialisation… and national loyalty. Modern technology tends in the opposite direction. The future…looks far brighter for the modern, connected agile city.”
Therapy is gangsta: hip-hop's views on mental health are evolving
Though the idea of therapy has generally been shunned for decades within the world of rap, artists including Jay-Z and Logic are now espousing its benefits.
(seriously, if you’re struggling, please talk about it. phone support is always available)
Fun
How to design a record cover in 1977
An archive text, from 1977, in which the late Storm Thorgerson explains the creation of 10cc’s album artwork for Deceptive Bends.
www.creativereview.co.uk • Share
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📰 Last week: The next 3 interfaces for music 📻 Hiphop, coding, and algoraves 💻 Funding by VCs overtaken by ICOs 💸
Regular insights about the future of music, media & tech. Written & composed by @basgras.
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