Dit mag je niet missen!

1. Niet te missen

Je moet onder een steen hebben geleefd als je onderstaande video nog niet voorbij hebt zien komen in je timeline of inbox. Volkomen terechte hype: briljante clip, geweldige song. Zó goed dat-ie niet mag ontbreken in deze nieuwsbrief, inclusief context & duiding:

Dankzij de fascinerende nieuwe video neemt iedereen Childish Gambino serieus.

Childish Gambino's "This Is America" is successful in the way all art should be: its meaning wraps around each listener differently, a beautiful, nebulous showpiece with a thousand implications.

2. Missen als kiespijn

Je kent het fenomeen: zo'n liedje dat maar niet uit je kop wil. Irritant! Gelukkig zet Quartz de feiten & onderzoeken op een rij. Tof (via Ferry):

You’re in a loop, haunted by a tune, and there’s no escape. Your brain just keeps playing one catchy song over and over and over and over and over again. You’ve been infected by an earworm.

3. Misser!

Oei, als dit waar blijkt, heeft grootaandeelhouder Jay-Z weinig te lachen:

Norwegian newspaper Dagens Næringsliv: ‘Beyoncé’s and Kanye West’s listener numbers on TIDAL have been manipulated to the tune of several hundred million false plays, which has generated massive royalty payouts at the expense of other artists.’

4. Soms weet je niet wat je mist...

...totdat iemand het uitvindt. De creatieven bij Ticketmaster, Spotify, Instagram en YouTube zitten niet stil en blijven opvallende, nuttige, leuke, verrassende, spannende of ogenschijnlijk onzinnige toepassingen van hun platform of dienst in combinatie met muziek bedenken.

De laatste samenwerking in onderstaand rijtje laat zien hoe stapsgewijs Spotify z'n aandacht verbreedt en zo ook mogelijkheden voor andere industrieën (in dit geval uitgevers) creëert:

In the not-so-distant future you might be able to walk into a concert venue without waiting in line for your ticket to be scanned. Instead, the venue will automatically scan and identify your face. That’s the experience Live Nation and Ticketmaster suggested they’ll try to develop last week, when announcing an investment in Blink Identity. Blink is a brand new company that claims to be able to identify people walking by in “half a second,” even if they aren’t looking straight at a camera.

At its core, Rival is building enterprise software to help teams and venue owners get better at two things: “Their two biggest concerns right now are how do I better monetize my fans and how do I keep them safer,” Hubbard says. To accomplish both goals, Rival believes teams need to know the identity of the person who actually uses the ticket — an increasingly difficult task in an era where secondary ticket sales on platforms like StubHub and SeatGeek continue to grow. So Rival’s software has to play a role from start to finish.

“Music stickers” could let you search for and add a song to your posts, thanks to licensing deals with the major record labels recently struck by Facebook. Instagram is also testing a way to automatically detect a song you’re listening to and display the artist and song title as just a visual label.

They will include a new ‘Trending’ chart, as well as what YouTube says are “improved” rankings for the top songs, videos and artists on its platform in 44 countries.

Another user with Friends Weekly shared a screencap with a separate group dedicated to friends’ Discover Playlists.

The "variety of formats" mentioned in the deal announcement is a little vague. Will Spotify be selling hardcopies of the audiobooks? Will it incorporate the albums being discussed themselves into 33 1/3 audiobooks, as a form of mixed media? This last option is perhaps the most likely: a combination album/book might alternate between album tracks and audiobook chapters. Purists may object, but many hoping to deepen their understanding of their favorite album would jump at the chance to listen.

Heb ik iets gemist? Laat het me weten! Tot volgende week.

Groet,

Niels