tiger vs jay-z

how will magazines adapt to life in a digital world?

Mag+ from Bonnier on Vimeo.

2000 - 2010: splintering scenes and technology

Panda Bear - Person Pitch, the surprise choice in Pitchforks top 10 albums of the decade

Just reading this Guardian piece debating whether Pitchforks 200 albums of the decade is a significant list that we should take note of. The answer for me from both a music fan and cultural observer angle is yes definitely. Those guys went beyond the guitar based music with the odd exception mindset that the NME and Q had to one where any album, whether it was from a Norwegian disco producer or Brooklyn 4 piece was listened to and assessed on a level playing field.

I've got to be thankful to them for some of my musical highlights: Clipse, Portishead, Grizzly Bear, Hercules and Love Affair, Mark Pritchards incredible 'feel the spirit' folk comp. Their level of music geekery is both completely impartial and unrivalled. They are the guys who spent sunday afternoon making mixtapes with the kind of attention to detail an ipod user wouldn't ever understand.

More intriguing than the who is in/out/massively overrated is the effect technology has had on what we've listened to. There seems to have been a splintering of tastes towards the second half of the decade as the information via digital platforms becase more accessible. This was the decade that the music industry changed from tour to promote cd to recorded music to promote tour and artist as a brand. As it became easier to find out about music beyond mainstream media channels (remember MTV anyone?) people went onto the web and explored - they came across sites like myspace and pitchfork and never looked back. The long tail theory for music at least has most certainly happened. This article in the Economist makes the point much better than I ever could, we've all seen the Kings of Leon reach world domination and know that bands no longer need a deal to get themselves out there, it's now the ones in the middle that face the biggest challenge in a splintering world.

This quote sums it up...

So what was so intriguingly odd about their top 10 albums of the noughties? I was immediately struck by the fact that seven of the albums were from 2000 and 2001, with one other record from 2002 and another from 2004. The only album from after the mid-decade point was Panda Bear's Person Pitch. Now what significance can be derived from this dense clustering (eight of the ten) of "greatest albums" in the first three years of the decade? You could interpret it two ways: firstly, music deteriorated as the noughties went on, or secondly, it grew harder and harder for people to reach consensus about which groups mattered, what records were important. The first scenario seems unlikely, so I'd have to go with the second. It resonates with how the decade actually felt: diasporic, scenes splintering into sub-scenes, taste bunkers forming, the question "Have you heard X?" increasingly likely to meet a shake of the head or a look of incomprehension


So there will always be the big hit making stadium touring mega stars. There is a human need to be part of something with other people and not all of us are prepared to spend hours geeking out online to find that swedish skiffle band to then go and check out in Mile End. We want human interaction, an excuse to be social and something that gives us an identity but there is a limit to the time and effort that we're prepared to put into it.

The big stars deserve every penny they get for holding onto their audience in a time when technology has created a profound change beyond 'the hit' - there is now a massive part of the market made up of splintering sub cultures, niches and groups all of whom can survive with very little corporate involvement of any kind.

Not a great time to be an A&R man, an incredible time to be someone with a good idea and a nack of communicating well with people.

Google Goggles

keep it simple

courtesy of raxraxrax

public spaces, interactivity and post digital ramblings

This use of redundant street space is great. Phone boxes are part of our heritage yet if you see someone in one now you're convinced they're either cheating on their wife, plotting a terrorist attack or looking for some shrapnel in the rejected coins hole. It's definitely time for brands / the powers that be to reclaim the street and show they understand how technology has changed the we way we use these public spaces.




So how can we bring these iconic structures back to life, create usefulness and genuine value? The opportunities seem endless given their ubiquity, cosyness and the public affection for them. The recent resurgence in pop up shops looks like one avenue that could be explored.



I think the lesson here is that interactivity isn't exclusively digital, it's potential lies everywhere. This is a medium that is at it's best when it's two way communication rather than dictatorial and one way. I guess the risk summed up in that question: what if no one interacts? the answer to this is simple. It's a field of communication where aside from thorough research and intuitive planning, it must be understood that putting an idea into the public sphere involves the 'r' word. A great example of a campaign that nailed it was CP&B's Shocking Barack.



Here was Alex Bogusky's take on why the idea flew:

That’s the thing about this that’s so fundamentally different than anything that has even a tiny media buy connected. With media you know you’ll get something but here, there is a very real chance that absolutely nothing happens. Yet we were also confident that what we were doing mattered and that, maybe when something matters, it has a chance to get noticed.

Mark Earls nails it when he talked about lighting fires, don't get obsessed with the one big sexy idea, try stuff out, see what resonates and what doesn't and learn from it. Following this appraoch allows for a greater understanding of people like about you and what they don't, more importantly, it frees you from the shackles of focus groups, one way mirrors and bad sandwiches.

charging up the digital world

If the world becomes increasingly reliant on digital and the number of devices in the house increase then we'd better find a way of understanding how we're going to power charge our lives.