With ers Without You

An interesting piece from Ted Gioia where he highlights something I’d missed, that music, and music reporting, as turned from being fresh and new, to nostalgic and old.

Six days to Mexico.

“We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”

• Scholar, Joseph Campbell

50 ways to be ridiculously generous—and feel ridiculously good by Alexandra Franzen.

38. If you have a colleague who is self-employed, encourage them to charge more. Tell them, “You provide incredible value. You deserve to be paid what you’re worth. I think you should raise your rates. If that’s something you want to do—I’d love to help you do it.” If they’re open to it, help them brainstorm, strategize, and figure out a plan to roll out the new (higher) pricing.

Becoming a dad shrinks your brain. I’m not mad, I’m just stupid.

Andrzej Stasiuk:

“It is good to come to a country you know practically nothing about.

Your thoughts grow still, useless.

In a country you know nothing about, there is no reference point. You struggle to associate colors, smells, dim memories.

You live a little like a child, or an animal.”

I don’t know who needs to hear this, but despite their ads this week, Optus wasn’t attacked.

They left the front door open and unlocked and a thief took the personal identity information of thousands of Australians.

The most horrible hotel in the world featured in Tone Knob by Nick Parker:

Then in 1996 they asked the new-kids-on-the-block agency KesselsKramer2 to help them sharpen things up – Which they did not by improving the hotel or doing a fancy re-brand, but by keeping everything exactly the same and proudly embracing how crap it all was. They started calling themselves ’the most horrible hotel in town'.

My reading device of choice has been a Kindle Oasis (2nd model) I picked up at a Best Buy in Vegas in December 2017. It fast became my favourite little gadget. The Oasis was last updated in July 2019 - and Britt owns that model. It’s got a warmth setting and a smidge larger battery, but it’s basically the same.

So I’ve been waiting patiently for an Oasis upgrade or replacement. In the meantime I just have to recharge my Kindle every two days instead of every two months, no big deal ya know.

New Amazon product of the month, the Kindle Scribe, has been drawing lots of Remarkable 2 comparisons, and avid readers of this blog might remember I was a big fan of my Remarkable.

Since that review a few things have changed:

• I sold my iPad Pro because the Apple Silicon MacBooks married with a Remarkable 2 was a happier solution.
• I’ve now sold my Remarkable tablet because I’ve been downsizing in preparation for living in Mexico and travelling around.
• My Kindle Oasis remains unchanged, but desperate for replacement.
• I’ve also bought an iPad Mini because size - but it’s a terribly underpowered machine so that’s being relegated to “TV on airplanes and buses” duty with my kids.

So does the Scribe fit the Remarkable-loving, iPad-replacing, Oasis-upgrading dream I’ve been looking for?

It seems to be a really close fit, with one exception. The Oasis would have been one of the largest Kindles produced at 7", but the Scribe is a 10.2" device, almost matching the Remarkable, and I think that’s too big to lay in bed reading a book from.

So we wait.

Ted Gioia’s predictions of the music industry in 2032:

“A legitimate musical counterculture will arise, with a cadre of new artists achieving superstar status while rejecting the roles of influencer and content provider. The motto “music comes first” will be a key part of their marketing message. The movement will have a name, but that word doesn’t exist yet.”

“Individuals who can identify rising talent will set up their web channels, and fill the role once played by the A&R department at a record label. But there’s one big difference: they can do everything themselves without a huge corporation behind them. If these talent scouts have a web channel with a few million subscribers, they will have more clout than Sony (which, by the way, currently has a pathetic 40 thousand subscribers to its YouTube channel) or most other labels. They can sign artists, showcase them online, and build their audience—acting as sole operators, but with the influence of a big business.”

Cam Wilson in Web Cam on crime reporting:

“There’s a lot of good criticism of crime reporting. It fosters systemic racism. Crimes are reported on because of the novelty factor rather than merit. A lack of follow-ups means articles rarely show the full story of a crime (including if charges are dropped). It tends to uncritically share the narrative of police, even though they are unreliable narrators. And above all else, it publicises one of the lowest moments of someone’s life and probably makes it harder for them to right the ship.”

Andrew Greene reporting on the Optus data thief (they like to call the person a hacker):

WARNING - do not click on latest link from alleged Optus hacker. IT security experts confirm it “tries to use drive-by and explicit download techniques to install executable files - this appears to be an attempt to capitalise on the publicity from the hack to setup a future hack”

Optus’ lack of leadership in this data crisis will be its legacy.

Larry Miller, NYU, in The Future of Music podcast on The Verge hosted by Ariel Shapiro:

“The magnitude of most hits is smaller.”

“We’ve also noticed that the amount of music being uploaded and the vast majority of the new music is never listened to.”

“The streaming services, including TikTok, are great at breaking a track. They’re less great at breaking an artist and a career.”

Music has been such a shared experience - shared joys, shared sorrows - it’s such a valuable part of our cultural fabric that I wonder what the current state of music means for the fabric yet to be spun.

If I’m by myself I rarely listen to music, but with friends in the car, at concerts, or even sharing links to songs amongst us is where the songs make sense.

Is the divestment of the collective music experience another pointer towards a divided people?

Zane Lowe with Stevie Nicks is an beautiful podcast conversation not only about Fleetwood Mac, but also about Tom Petty, Prince, Harry Styles, Neil Finn, Miley Cyrus and The Gorillaz. The entire Zane Lowe interview series is a great show for music lovers.