Ged Carroll

Search results for: “music”

  • Princes music + more

    I have been listening to this mix of Princes music. Prince had a diverse song book and the mix covers Princes music catalogue in some depth. It gives a great sampling of the talent we lost when Prince died

    YouTube has a cornucopia of content including this great documentary on house music interviewing a succession of insiders to tell the story of how house music became a global phenomena.

    Spoon + Tamago had an article about how public baths in Japan were providing online videos for the locked-down customers. Whilst one might not be able to enjoy a good soak, they can enjoy at least some of the ambience. It rather reminded me of the slow TV programming that Norwegian channel NRK, (if you get a chance to watch them, they are remarkably soothing). More on Japanese related topics here.

    A quick film on the Hyman Archive of magazines. Reputedly the world’s largest collection of magazines according to the Guinness Book of Records. It is more important as a source of cultural insight over time. I do feel that something is lost in the digitising of the archive. Vogue Italia or Japan isn’t only about the pictures but the overall heft and feeling that you have holding the magazine. Digitisation only gets you so far.

    A good presentation to listen to on emerging marketing trends. It calls BS on crypto. I’d have been a bit more skeptical on digital and marketing effectiveness. Terence Kawaja and Geoff Ramsey of eMarketer provides some great data points to back up their opinions on emerging marketing trends. It is refreshing to hear them shred crypto. Their approach to trends is very sensible. I always think about Robert X Cringely’s discussion of trends in terms of surfing. That if you go too early you fail to catch the wave.

  • Bose Wave Music System – throwback gadget

    It is a little disingenuous to call the Bose Wave Music System a throwback gadget, mainly because Bose still makes it. It would be reasonable to call it a design classic. There are benefits to picking up a 2006 model Bose Wave Music System, rather than paying the premium of a new device.

    BOSE　Wave music system専用iPod接続キット

    Bose Wave System timeline

    The original Bose Wave System was launched back in 1984; this was back when Sony was king due to the Walkman, digital wasn’t really on the horizon with the Discman only launching same year. The Acoustic Wave 1 (AW1) was a new take on the boom box radio that was ubiquitous in households and workplaces at that time. The AW1 featured a cassette deck and a two band radio.

    Eight years later digital finally arrived when Bose switched out the cassette for a top-loading CD player instead.

    In 1993, the Bose Wave System shrank from about the size of a medium sized boom box to something about as tall as an iPod Classic but featured radio only and was called the Wave Radio.

    Five years later a slot loading CD player was integrated. In 2004, the CD player also accepted MP3 based discs and Boselink connectivity.

    Boselink

    Boselink is unique in consumer electronics in terms of the expandability it allows. It was originally designed as a communications protocol for multi-room sound systems, but is also useful for connecting modules that extend the functionality of the basic Bose Wave System. Compatible accessories include:

    • Multi-CD drive
    • Soundlink – playback of music which is streamed to the device over Bluetooth
    • DAB module – UK-only adapter allowing reception of digital radio as well as AM and FM signals

    Bose also offered an iPod kit, which charges your iPod Classic and plays back the music. There is a replacement remote for the Bose Wave Music System which integrates basic iPod playback controls.

    Vintage over new

    The key benefit of a vintage Bose Wave System over a new device is the display. New devices have a back lit LCD display which wash out and aren’t as legible as the vintage vacuum fluorescent displays.

    VFD

    Secondly, you still enjoy the ‘big box’ sound created by the diminutive size of the Bose Wave Music System. They use use a folded waveguide, which is a series of passages from the speaker driver to the speaker grill. This attempts to replicate sound from larger systems. Bose claims the waveguide “produces full, clear stereo sound from a small enclosure by guiding air through two 26” folded wave guides.” The design of the wave guides has changed minimally over the years.

    My casual listening at home is based on two systems. A 12 year old Apple iPod Hi-Fi A1121, which works as a centre speaker for my TV when I need it. It takes audio in via TOSLink and gives a better sound than most sound bars that I’ve listened to.

    I use a Bose Wave Music System of a similar age to the iPod Hi-Fi with the DAB module connected via BoseLink and iPod adaptor as my go to radio around the house. It is the default provider of background music and up to the minute news. It provides a better sound than most of its newer BlueTooth enabled competitors. It wins out over the Apple iPod Hi-Fi, because of its ability to play digital radio and hide out of the way on book shelf.

    I then use a dedicated hi-fi for serious music listening of CDs and vinyl records.

  • Joyous Music School

    The Joyous Music School  string quartet have been playing together for  four years, they started when the lead cellist was four years old and they are awesome

    After the Joyous Music School its time to move on to another set of musical genius’ Frankie Knuckles’ loss continues to be felt. Underworld and the Junior Boys Own people have put together a cover of Baby Wants to Ride in tribute to the iconic DJ

    At the time when I got my copy of ‘Baby Wants to Ride’ it came with a tale of intrigue and skulduggery. Did Knuckles copy Principle’s track and then compromise and call it ‘Frankie Knuckles presents Jamie Principle’ or was he hard done by? A quick glance at Discogs shows how Frankie Knuckles is slowly written into the history of Baby Wants to Ride – the original FFRR pressing credits Jamie Principle but by the mid noughties we see it as Frankie Knuckles presents Jamie Principle. Although Knuckles is remembered fondly for being the godfather of house, it makes good sense not to gloss over some of the politicking and infighting that occurred back in the day.

    Nike Football have put together a beautifully made movie about football fans in Mexico City. It avoids using stars or technical features of their products to show a grassroots love of the beautiful game. I suspect that the football moves were choreographed but the film is none-the-worse for it

    Ogilvy and Mather Singapore have played a blinder with this video highlighting the workload and contribution of domestic helpers in Singapore. The clip looks to get Singaporean parents to give maids their legal minimum one day a week off.

    Finally Funny or Die annihilate Dove’s latest campaign, its almost like it was done for a prank by the Axe (Lynx to UK readers) marketing team

    And here is the original…

    Whilst the Dove programme is interesting because it is trying to ‘deprogramme’ women from the media messages about beauty and the marketing messages put out (including other brands in the Unilever portfolio), it starts to sound like Lake Wobegon (from Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion).

    Welcome to Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average. – Garrison Keillor

    The Lake Wobegon Effect is described in Wikipedia

    The Lake Wobegon effect, where all or nearly all of a group claim to be above average, has been observed in high school students’ appraisal of their leadership, drivers’ assessments of their driving skill, and cancer patients’ expectations of survival.

    Is it wise for brands to replace one kind of delusion with another? More on branding related issues here.

  • Google Music China

    I spent some time in Shenzhen and tried the Google Music China service. It was unlike anything else I have seen and was designed especially for consumers in mainland China.

    Google Music China

    Google Music China is impressive in terms of the size of its catalogue and ease-of-use. You have a mix of western artists and Chinese artists on the service. There didn’t seem to be a lot of censorship going on. You could download the full expletive riven Eminem experience. The music is downloaded into your computer as MP3 files and doesn’t have any DRM on it. I put it into my iTunes library. The service is powered by a Chinese partner for Google, which becomes apparent when you look at the URL on the page for an individual track.

    There didn’t seem to be a restriction on the amount of music that you could download. I got a mix of material from jazz to techno including a number of albums by The Jazz Messengers.

    Much of the music seems to have been licensed through the US right holders of the music; such as this Astralwerks license for a Fat Boy Slim track below.

    The service is free, in that I didn’t have to pay per track, or pay a subscription. Instead the music is ad funded with display ads as shown below.

    Google Music banner ad

    I do wonder what the click through rates are on the adverts that periodically get vended on the service?  More China-related content here.

  • Dance Music Industry

     Many dance music labels have closed down, particularly those owned by the majors like Strictly Rhythm and Credence. Cream runs festivals and restaurants rather than clubs and looks to Latin America and Eastern Europe for growth, Home is looking to be let out as retail space and the giant screen on the side of the building sits there in darkness

    – Young people are listening to rock now, yes they are but they also have varied taste – which is why dance music festivals are doing well

    – People want live music, the amount of live music venues in the UK dropped way below what it should have done and it is good to see it come back

    – People want R&B, R&B has always been popular

    – The dance music scene has stagnated, much of it has and UK record labels have been guilty of churning out more rubbish than most. The mash-up is a classic sign of creative bankruptcy in the industry and Hoxton’s tastes do not play well thoughout the rest of the UK. I cannot remember the last record I bought from a UK label, I suspect it was probably this time last year. I have however, kept buying imported records from the US and Europe

    – US labels like Nervous, Guidance or even going back to Trax Records and DJ International, survived in a hostile home market by selling abroad, why can’t the UK labels

    -US labels on the west coast are surviving an onslaught on to their scene by police using draconian crack house laws to shut the parties down and send organisers to jail for ten years, they are still making good music and selling records worldwide successfully

    – Young people are drinking and not doing drugs: that’s why cocaine seizures are up, MDMA is plentiful and cheap

    There are labels that are thriving: Defected is licensing American content from the likes of Miguel Migs. While there is much of the input like Junior Jack that is not my cup of tea you have to hand it Simon Dunmore that he is managing to walk the line between quality and commercial success for his label

    AATW – all around the world. A label based in Blackburn, Lancs that realised what Pete Waterman discovered twenty years ago. You can run a record label on single sales. Like Pete Waterman the records are well produced tat that know their target market really well. They are down market and the listeners are disparaged as ‘Northern Pill Monkeys‘ by London based record executives, and their acts are criticised as ‘a plumber with a tired lap dancer’ but they are getting out there and buying the singles.

    I personally don’t believe that you have to provide customers with a ‘crap’ product, that a well crafted one will sell, but you have to know your marketplace. Many of the tastemakers within the industry have lost sight of that and need to move on.

    One person that seems to have it right (all be it on a small scale) is my friend Nick Lawrence’s label Altered Vibes that has gone from strength to strength by not compromising on quality and developing its artists. Something that is hard to do when the majors like EMI are dropping 30 per cent of their rostered artists in one fell swoop and putting less and less each year into development. More media industry related posts here.

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