Algorithmic Taste

The platform economy is not just about brewing data. It transports them, directs them and redirects them into the jungle of online content thanks to these recommendations called algorithms. Faced with the overabundance of flows, the evidence seems to impose itself: the need to identify oneself creates the system that facilitates choice. Yet, far from being limited to the accompaniment of a decision, the reign of algorithms is not without consequences on cultural diversity and the construction of tastes. Algorithms orientate the people with online products to adjust them depending on all the data poured into the platforms. As they seem to know us better than we know ourselves, they direct us without asking us in the infinite amount of content. These are the perfect extensions of our ego, our image getting out there.

One figure, again one, should inspire reflection. He also comes from the United States, where 99% of the listening is mobilized on 20% of the catalog of the platform Spotify. He especially denies the prophecy of the digital “long tail”, theorized in 2004 by Chris Anderson, who wants products that are not popular, in this case cultural, to wait for their audience. “A cultural work is a good experience, whose quality can not be appreciated without approaching it,” says economist Pierre-Jean Benghozi, a specialist in digital and cultural and creative industries. “Symbolic value is as important as usage value, and you never know where and when success will come. » What about the platforms? Specialists point a paradoxical double movement in which the contents are fragmented and the markets are fragmenting, while generating concentration and the star system. “The Internet has a more structural than quantitative effect,” continues Pierre-Jean Benghozi. The channels are multiplying, through downloading and streaming. In this context, the works are fragmented and this is particularly true in music. We listen to songs and not albums. From then on, the offer is reorganized and the scale changes. The consequences of this restructuring of the offer via the Internet upset an entire sector.

Logically, publishing, or rather the “editorialization” of content by platforms, weakens traditional record majors or conventional producers. A myriad of short circuits develop where authors and artists self-publish immediately. In an increasingly fragmented market, there is the dual effect of the proliferation of offers for identical content, and at the end, what Pierre-Jean Benghozi calls the passage “from abundance to hyper-supply”. It is precisely here that algorithms intervene, without promoting the expected balance in perpetual surplus flows. Literally, algorithm is corresponding to a sequence of instructions. A mathematical instruction given upstream produces a suggestion of result downstream. In the digital world, it is from the strategic weight of the data collected that the algorithm becomes a vector of value creation. Content a priori plebiscite, and therefore profitable according to the law of the platform economy, will be all the more likely to be passed on. So we observe that less than 1% of the content is delivered in the majority of the cases. The instrument is one thing, its handling is another. Support ultimately has less than the latitude that is allowed. Are we afraid that artificial intelligence will soon come to go beyond human intelligence?

The algorithm is not that benevolent, volatile and floating adviser to painless recommendations. Programmed and intentioned, it provokes the conjunction, even the coincidence, between the quest of the user sowing his data and the interest of the prescriber – the platform – dissecting them. The process might be harmless after all as “listeners do not know what they are looking for”. The algorithm would surf at the same time on the anticipated desires and the part of indecision of the users. By encouraging the listener to listen to the highest bidder, he would entertain him in the illusion of satisfying his tastes.

 

What would remain of culture without diversity and, ultimately, with no other creation than the reproduction of models encouraged by the digital industry?

 

Halloween Scary Purpose

You’re probably thinking, “What’s the point, it’s just Halloween, will this have a real impact or lead to a ROI?” or “I don’t want to harm our reputable brand”. Halloween is the holiday that allows businesses to ‘let their hair down’ and have some fun with their brand and still keep their dignity intact.

But it’s still about business. Big business. Traditionally a holiday for kids, Halloween is already big business in the US and is now exploding through Europe. In the US alone, close to $7 billion is being spent around the holiday (that’s $74 per person) and it’s the fourth biggest holiday behind Christmas, Thanksgiving and Easter. Some brands are still scared of being associated with this time of year – but for the brave, bags of treats await! As we see the rush for branded content increasing, there will be the expected scary social media posts. But in the US there’s an estimated 158 million people planning Halloween activities this year. That’s a great opportunity for brands to get involved and enhance their spooky experience.

Halloween provides a frighteningly good platform to create an experience for your existing audience and connect with new fans. Being part of a unique experience evokes a response and stays with you. By knowing what your customers are into, you can connect with their passions and create unique memories. But you have to bear in mind that Halloween must be another opportunity to build your brand in the people’s mind – meaning, you may use this entertainment-driven occasion to continue to say something about your project. Just don’t go for fun, ‘boo’ effect without meaning. This is obviously the occasion to push the envelope a bit further, to be more provocative but still be relevant.

There are a number of marketing activities you can deploy across your platforms, each enabling you to engage with audiences, whilst also enjoying the returns on your time and creativity… definitely more ‘treat’ than ‘trick’. But nobody will remember a joke on zombies or ghosts if it does not relate to what your brand is about.

Take the most of those occasions to make something really meaningful. Halloween might be scary for marketeers as well…it has to push you to reveal some extreme and really disruptive sides of your brand. It will pay off if done carefully and not in a blood bath.

Iconic is Simple

Take a look at the Rolling Stones logo. As far as corporate branding for a rock band goes, it’s unbeatable. For over 45 years, the gaping mouth and tongue has symbolized one of the greatest rock ’n’ roll band in the world. It appeared on the rock band merch sicne almost ever.

 

The tongue-and-lips logo is obviously based on the unmistakable face of Stones front man Mick Jagger. Isn’t it? Well… not exactly. In April 1970, Jon Pasche was a 25-year-old student at the Royal College Of Art, when a call came through looking for a young artist to work on a poster for a forthcoming Rolling Stones tour. Jagger had seen Pasche’s designs at his final degree show that year, he liked it very much. Jagger commissioned Pasche to come up with a logo for the brand new company Rolling Stones Records, which was being prepared to release the band’s material after they’d left their original company Decca. Originally, the commission was for “a logo or symbol, which may be used on note paper, as a programme cover and as a cover for the press book”. Jagger’s inspiration was a newspaper cutting that he’d seen that showed the Indian goddess Kali, with a pointed tongue, hanging down. In Hindu mythology, Kali symbolises death and time, but is also a powerful feminine figure. No link with Jagger’s mouth – not consciously at least.

The logo took Pasche about two weeks to finalize and he was paid the princely sum of £50. The design first appeared on the album Sticky Fingers in April 1971, and has been used ever since. Pasche thinks the design has stood the test of time because, “It’s universal statement, I mean sticking out your tongue at something is very ant-authority, a protest really… various generations have picked that up.”

So, the biggest rock band logo ever was just a student job, inspired by an Indian Goddess illustration from a corner shop. We all have to start somewhere…do we?

Art Disruption

Banksy has played what could be one of the most audacious stunts in art history, arranging for one of his best-known works to self-destruct after being sold at auction for just over £1m. In London, Girl With Balloon was the final item in an auction at Sotheby’ its sale price equaled the artist’s previous auction record of £1.04m …by the way, would it mean something weird that it was exactly the same price tag on both auctions? What does it mean as well that the Banksy auction was the last one? As soon as the price was reached, the canvas began to pass through a shredder installed in the frame.

All the explanation in Banksy’s video

Despite all kind of stories about the stunt and its possible preparation with a supposively big team, maybe with Sotheby’s participation as wellt, we can understand that the art market about to become another world. Not less than 6 million views were accumulated to see the video on the artist’s Instagram account in less than 48 hours. This whole story is definitely symptomatic of a new era. The now famous little girl letting fly a red balloon in the shape of a heart, image of an extreme banality that has seized the British artist to spread it on a large scale, will mark the spirits forever. Banksy’s prices have just won a record that makes a lot of noise. And this story feeds all the discussions, going beyond the strict boundary of the auction universe. The artist must rub his hands. That’s what he wanted. The artist shot that embarrasses Sotheby’s is proof of a complete change of scale, mentality, relation to the artwork and its notion of value. That may give shivers to the old generation of collectors, the real ones, those who believed in their flair to buy with their eyes and not with their feelings.

Because art world is changing and Banksy is just underlining the new paradigm. Art is all about experience and not about possession anymore. That’s why it’s important to notice that few experts say that the artwork is worth more money after this media-driven event. Like many other entertainment industries, it’s not about having the object at home but to have the thrill of a specific emotion – we don’t own DVD, we just stream our favorite film; we don’t collect discs anymore while Spotify can guarantee you some good music whenever you want. Banksy just invented the new generation of art consumption. Of course, you may say that happening in art is not new…of course. But it was mostly planned and staged, like the experiences provoked by Marina Abramovic that put herself in danger or in curious situations many times.

She became even victime of her own system, creating some approximate look-a-like artists

But Banksy changed the rules entirely. He does not create his experiences from himself but from his artwork – and his identity continues to be  a ‘secret’ . Something to think about as the art world will know some further transformation.

An Algorithm in the Museum

It is undeniable that technology has a growing presence within the museum sphere. At first, audio-visual technology was harnessed by the museum to augment the museum’s exhibits and provide an enhanced user experience. However, with the universality of everyone owning a Smartphone, the museum has seen an increasing rate of technology encroachment, and not of their own making. Despite museums having the reputation of being technophobic or exceptionally slow at evolving, they have an opportunity now to be proactive in the technology realms. The rise of technology, with a focus on AR and VR in museums, has reached a significant crescendo. When one Google’s “AR & VR in Museums” there are dozens of reports, presentations, TED Talks, and academic papers and we expect to get more information. The concept of different realities in museums even made an appearance at a recent MuseumNext panel: https://www.museumnext.com/insight/how-can-museums-use-virtual-reality/. Museums are beginning to experiment with utilizing technology tools to enhance the experience within the museum, or to deliver the museum to a virtual user.

The main directive of a museum is to provide an environment where art, science, history and cultural objects can be displayed. Museum staff create content and curate objects to tell a story. The experience a museumgoer has, when witnessing an exhibit is meant to involve the visual (and sometimes aural sense) and leave the person changed as a result of their exposure to the exhibit. The exhibit is designed to immerse the visitor, evoke emotion, inspire new thoughts, and encourage the person to feel present. Now apply those principles to a more tech-cued experience. The senses are used to a much greater extent and immersion has increased exponentially. For example, creating a VR space mimics many of the core principles museums use to create exhibitions: creating content, curating objects and building a story centered within the space, to interact with objects. AR is layered on top of what is already physically present in museums as a way to enhance or add to what is already there.

Technology is being branded as an empathy machine. Meaning the first-person view provides with its fully immersive platform elicits a compassionate response from users. Technology both provides a greater ability to place things, events, and people within context—leading to a greater understanding. It offers a more holistic form of storytelling. Technology, of course, and to a lesser extent VR/AR, can open up museum exhibits to people unable to attend or fully engage in the physical exhibit experience. And somehow it democratizes the experience bringing more people in the museums. But the cultural places are concerned that providing a technology experience of their museum to remote users will replace the need for a physical place. We had the same issue with online capabilities when you could access the content of an exhibit from your sofa. In a majority of cases online content has only served to increase interest and attendance to a physical museum. The cost of evolving technology is still high, especially given the bespoke nature of a currently unsustainable hardware and software setup. These are still nascent technologies, especially when being considered for exhibit application. And the logistics of technology can be daunting and challenging. Though the technology is getting increasingly better, users can experience forms of nausea or anxiety, and there’s also hygiene to consider when reusing equipment that is placed on people’s heads. In many of the museum examples, exhibit hosts had to be present to help manage these issues.

Then, we tend to see another disruption where the tech brands are using arts and museums to enhance their offer, to increase their awareness but also to build a very distinctive image. We can remember the example of the Art Institute of Chicago that promoted a reproduction of Vincent Van Gogh’s room into the peer-to-peer platform. This can be another form of interaction between technology and museums, enhancing the content and the storytelling as a consumer magnet.

Museums are multiplying in their initiative to create an immersive art experience through emerging technology. In 2017, art museums are embracing tools from chatbots and augmented reality apps to digital projections and 3D printing. Some curators are beginning to use virtual reality to their collection to the public from the comfort of their own homes. Through the Wonder app—“Renwick Gallery Wonder 360,” developed by the museum’s media and technology office—viewers could experience a 360-degree, 3D-panoramic view of the nine contemporary artists showcased in the popular exhibition. “The app captures the exhibition as a moment in time and lets you carry the beauty of that experience around in your pocket, anywhere in the world. It represents a whole new way of sharing art with the public.” says Sara Snyder, one of the managers of the exhibition. More museums are partnering with Google and their augmented reality platform creator, to introduce an interactive, motion-tracking mobile tour called Lumin. Acting as a handheld tour guide, Lumin allows users to be engaged with other augmented reality overlays, 3D animations, videos, photographs, and sounds. As popular as tech-powered exhibitions have become, they also come with a level of skepticism and concern. As more museums work with interactive technology, they are discovering that digital interactions are perhaps too engaging; drawing attention away from the artwork they were designed to support. Some museum curators noticed that after viewers interacted with tech-powered kiosks, they would rarely look more closely at the artwork itself. “It might be a bit of a challenge, but we need to ensure that technology doesn’t overshadow the real art.” says a famous American curator. In their new iteration launched earlier this year, exhibitions at the Cleveland Museum of Art are organized so that physical art remains in the center of the gallery; digital lenses remain on the walls behind them. Today, the projected art images shift visitor focus from artwork to digital interpretation, back to the original artwork. “We work with stunning technology and like to see high engagement, but we want to make sure that the visit to museum is about art and not just technology.” says one art expert in US.

The question remains: are museums ready for the disruptive shift tech promise to present? It’s hard to predict where the evolution of technology will go. But we do know that technology is now actively and irrevocably shaping the future of how museum experiences will be presented and interacted with. Think about how quickly you became attached to your Smartphone. How many years did it take before your Smartphone managed or provided access to major parts of your life? Well, technology is not far away from being fundamental in our cultural experience.

Social Media Fame

All glossy magazine superstar covers may look the same from a distance, but inside, you’re never quite sure what you’ll find. Paul McCartney has leaned on familiar Beatles anecdotes, but then over the course of several long conversations, he revealed himself to be unstudied and less preoccupied with the sanctity of his own image than you might think. The story worked in two ways: For the reader and fan, it was appealingly revealing; fo McCartney, who’s been famous so long he is more sculpture than human, it was a welcome softening. This took a willingness to answer questions, to submit to the give and take that comes with a profile of that scale. But not all big stories demand such transparency of their subjects. Beyoncé and the article “Beyoncé in Her Own Words” was sloightly different — not a profile, but a collection of brief, only-occasionally-revealing commentaries on a range of topics: motherhood and family, body acceptance, touring. Anna Wintour refers to the story in her editor’s letter as a “powerful essay” that “Beyoncé herself writes,” as if that were an asset, not a liability. There was a journalist in the room at some point in the process — the piece has an “as told to” credit at the end — but outside perspectives have effectively been erased. For devotees, this might not matter, but for many, it’s not an isolated event. In pop music especially, plenty of the most famous performers essentially eschew the press: Taylor Swift hasn’t given a substantive interview and access to a print publication for at least two years. For Drake, it’s been about a year. And the list is longer. What’s replaced it isn’t satisfying: either outright silence, or more often, unidirectional narratives offered through social media. Monologue, not dialogue. It threatens to upend the role of the celebrity press.

Since the 1960s, in-depth interviews have been a crucial part of the star-making process, but also a regular feature of high-level celebrity maintenance — artists didn’t abandon their obligations to the media just because they had reached fame. Answering questions was part of the job. It was the way that the people making the most interesting culture explained themselves. It was illuminating to fans, but also something of a badge of honor for the famous, especially when the conversations were adversarial. Stars like Ice Cube and Madonna used to thrive in those circumstances — the interviews revealed them to be thoughtful, unafraid of being challenged and alive to the creation of their image.

But that was in a climate in which print publications had a disproportionate amount of leverage, and the internet and TMZ hadn’t wrested away narrative control. When stars’ comings and goings began to be documented on a minute-by-minute basis, those changes triggered celebrity reticence. On its own, that wouldn’t signal the death knell of celebrity journalism as it’s been practiced for decades. But the pressure being applied to celebrity journalism from the top might pale in comparison to the threat surging from below, where a new generation of celebrities — YouTube stars, SoundCloud rappers, and various other earnest young people — share extensively on social media on their own terms, moving quickly and decisively (and messily) with no need for the patience and pushback they might encounter in an interview setting.

This generation is one of all-access hyper documentation, making the promise of celebrity journalism — emphasizing intimate perspective and behind-the-scenes access — largely irrelevant. Sometimes, social media posts take the place of what was once the preserve of the tell-all interview: Ariana Grande mourned her ex-boyfriend, Mac Miller, in an Instagram post; the rapper XXXTentacion replied to allegations of sexual assault on his Instagram Story; the YouTube star Logan Paul used his usual platform to apologize for a video in which he filmed a dead body. These are one-sided stories, with no scrutiny beyond the comments section. And so they’ve be come highly visible safe spaces for young celebrities, especially in an era when one’s direct social media audience — via Instagram, Twitter and more — can far exceed the reach of even the most prestigious or popular publication, and in a way that’s laser-targeted to supporters. All of which leaves celebrity journalism in a likely unsolvable topic. The most famous have effectively dispensed with it, and the newly famous have grown up in an age where it was largely irrelevant. Over time, the middle space may well be squeezed into nothingness.

 

What’s more, creation of content has been diversified — for the casual consumer; it can be difficult to tell the difference between original reporting and aggregation, content created by journalistic outlets and content created by brands. These blurriness incentives the famous away from traditional media, where they don’t control the final product. And as old-media extinction looms, the new ecosystem is often used as a corrective — or loud distraction. Selena Gomez is on the cover of Elle this month, and the accompanying story is relatively innocuous. But when it appeared online, she replied with along Insta post expressing frustration. “Speaking from my heart for over an hour to someone who puts those thoughts into paid words can be hard for me,” she wrote. “The older I get the more I want my voice to be mine.” She then listed the specific things she sought to promote in the interview, and lamented that other things — namely, her personal life, and her church — were given too much attention. And so as the power dynamic tilts in favor of the famous over the press, publications — weakened, desperate, financially fragile — have been forced to find ever more contorted ways to trade, at minimum, the feeling of control in exchange for precious access.

If those options aren’t available, magazines can simply assign a friend of the celebrity to conduct the interview. In Elle, Jennifer Lawrence interviewed Emma Stone. Blake Lively conducted Gigi Hadid’s Harper’s Bazaar May cover interview. The friend doesn’t even have to be famous – like Sia in Rolling Stone. These stories trade on the perceived intimacy of friendships as a proxy for actual insight, abdicating the role of an objective press in the process. The covenant implicit in celebrity profiles is that the journalist is a proxy for the reader, not the subject. But in the thirst for exclusive access — ethics become inconvenient. Friendship should be a disqualifier, not a prerequisite.

 

That is a disservice to fans, who miss out on what happens when someone in the room is pushing back, not merely taking dictation. But rather than engage on those terms, these stars have become hermetic. It’s a shame: We’ll never know the answers to the questions that aren’t asked. When it comes to brands, we can ask ourselves the same question. Which voice do you want to have, how far do you want to play with transparency or control…think accuretaly because it may not give the same to your consumers.

Bands as Brands

We all testified something this year that we could not imagine few years ago – the rock band Guns’n’Roses on stages all over the world. But, there is a feeling that this incredible event was not really about watching bands performs and more like engaging with well established rock brands. Guns N’ Roses’ shows, billed as a reunion of the band that reinvigorated metal 30 years ago, are no such thing. It’s no longer Axl Rose plus hired hands; it’s Axl Rose plus Slash plus Duff McKagan plus hired hands. In particular, there’s no Izzy Stradlin, viewed by many fans as just as important as Rose and Slash to the dynamic of the original lineup. Northing is perfect. With hard rock, it rarely matters who’s in the band as long as the brand is healthy. If the songs are played well, if the performances are dynamic, if the crowds are behind the group, it can be one original member plus five people recruited from TV shows and it can still be terrific. That’s a lesson we learned not a long time ago, with AC/DC living some enforced departures of Malcolm Young and Brian Johnson; Axl Rose came as a front man – and that was spectacular Perhaps even better than they had been with Johnson (hmmm…)

There are plenty of other examples of bands who’ve rotated members with alacrity: Deep Purple, Iron Maiden, Whitesnake, Thin Lizzy, Def Leppard and many others. Metal and hard rock are unusually good at subsuming band to brand. It’s hard, for example, to imagine U2 being really U2, even with Bono in place, if there were three rotating replacements behind him. Kraftwerk have managed it – Ralf Hutter is the only member predating 1990 – largely because they had dispensed with the notion of the individual long before the other members of the classic quartet began to depart. Why, though, are hard rock and metal fans so willing to embrace the brand over its human components? We tend to believe in a very intense tribal loyalty and sense of us against them that heavy rock engenders. That’s the loyalty that still leads people, 40 or so years after the habit first became commonplace, to sew band patches all over their denim.

Those patches on the jackets contain another crucial element of the brand identity: the logos. More than any other style of music, metal celebrates the logo. It’s noticeable that, since reviving Rainbow, Ritchie Blackmore has used none of the nondescript typography of most Rainbow records, choosing instead the memorable gothic script that featured on only three albums but which most fans think of as the classic Rainbow logo from the classic Rainbow lineup. However, there’s a third element to all of this. You’ll often hear heavy bands talking about their bond with their audience, about everyone being family, and how they are a people’s band. It doesn’t matter whether or not the bands themselves believe that; what’s important is that the fans believe it. A great rock gig is as much about the communion of the fans, the sense of gathering and unity, as it is about what’s happening on stage. That’s why the metal festivals in many places in Europe are considered some sort of sacred pilgrimage by bands and fans.

Once the band is no more important than its fans, it’s a short step to realizing that whoever happens to be on stage playing an instrument is not crucial to the success of the group. It is obvious that the brand is bigger than the band. There will be some Guns’n’Roses whatever the line-up might be.

(extract from the article from Michael Mann in The Guardian)

Let the Music Play

Most of the companies, any kind of companies, are claiming that success goes from the desire and the purpose to satisfy deeply their clients. It seems that the new economy is again challenging this fact…as they have to be also careful to those who are making their platform successful. Well, in reality, all the AirBnB or other Uber, they exist because of an efficient rounde3d eco system. Spotify is learning at the moment.

For the first time since a couple of decades, music executives are expressing an emotion long forgotten – optimism. That’s because the music industry recently saw its first gains. This can almost entirely be attributed to the rise of streaming apps like Spotify. According to the Recording Industry Association of America, music revenue increased by 16,5% in 2017, with music streaming services representing 70% of overall revenue. But we have to be slightly careful. The industry isn’t simply reverting to its pre-2000 what the labels would consider the golden age. The subscription-based approach that’s been adopted by most streaming services has not only led to a change in music consumption habits, but it’s also impacted how music is produced and distributed.

 

Case in point: while industry revenue is on the rise, songwriters are feeling the squeeze. A famous case is the story of Andre Lindal, a songwriter who composed “As Long as You Love Me,” a pop song that was performed by Justin Bieber and subsequently hit №3 on Billboard’s Top 40 rankings. Streaming numbers were Lindal’s friends that year, at least until he got paid. When he did, he found that the 34 million YouTube views had earned him $218, and the 38 million Pandora streams had netted him only $278. He then decided to stop his long-time songwriting career and started a firm that develops artists as musicians and brands, which he called “a necessity, given what the songwriter income is.” It turns out that royalty rates for songwriters were established in the beginning of the last century, back when the radio was still a burgeoning medium and long before the establishment of the current music landscape. While 75 cents of every dollar Spotify generates goes to music royalties, a small portion of this flows toward the songwriters themselves. This means that songwriters are only 90$ for 1 million streams on Spotify. That is fairly impossible to run a career. Streaming apps are also changing how new music is discovered. For several decades, whether a song became a hit was almost entirely dependent on it being discovered and played by radios. But with the consolidation of radio station ownership came the homogenization of radio playlists. Once-independent DJs who had been accustomed to choosing their own song lineups were given corporate-approved titles to play instead. Playlist song overlap between stations owned by the same company is as high as 76%. The golden years are definitely gone.

Spotify wants to claim they are changing and they really try to have a balanced eco-system. “We’re not just a streaming music company anymore,” said CEO Daniel Ek, who envisioned Spotify more as a two-sided marketplace serving both creators and fans than as simply a uni-directional consumption platform. “We’re building a vibrant ecosystem, creating new opportunities in both micro & macro markets globally, for artists at any level of fame … this puts us on a growth trajectory of generational proportions.” Part of this growth will involve extending Spotify’s visibility into both offline and non-audio real estate. For instance, CMO Seth Farbman described RapCaviar not just as a playlist, but as “a virtual gathering place for the global hip-hop community” and “a lifestyle brand with video content, live experiences and a targeted marketing plan.” But Spotify’s chief R&D officer Gustav Söderström revealed an even more compelling tenet of the service’s growth strategy, one that draws inspiration from the likes of Uber, Google and Tesla in its ambitions to dominate the personalization market: “self-driving music.” It is just a flashy substitution for “automated” and “context-aware”: using advanced, always-on data analysis to mold the discovery experience autonomously to an individual user’s tastes and behavior, across multiple devices and environments. Indeed, the amount of data Spotify collects on both ends of its “two-sided marketplace” is significant. On one end, there are now over three million artists on the service who release 20,000 new pieces of content every day on average. On the other end, the typical Spotify user clocks in 49 minutes a day on the service, increasing to 80 minutes for Premium users; multiply this by 159 million monthly active users across 65 markets, and that engagement generates three billion music-related events every day, including an average of over 330 million daily “discoveries” (i.e. listening to a certain track or artist for the very first time). In total, Spotify works with over 200 petabytes of data behind the scenes – incredible amount of data— to develop a superior personalization product.

Beyond this music strategy at large will be a platform approach that meets users where they are already active. According to its investor deck, not only does Spotify currently have over 250 integration partners, but 75 percent of Premium subscribers also use the service across multiple devices, and those who use Spotify on more than one device demonstrate lower churn and higher lifetime value for the company. But will a “self-driving” music discovery mechanism really serve the artist community, in terms of connecting meaningfully with fans? In the past, artists have expressed fear and criticism of Spotify’s over-quantification and productization of users’ listening habits, creating a different sort of gatekeeping mechanism in the industry; writer Liz Pelly described this phenomenon as “the automation of selling out.”

There is a concern is the accelerating growth of mood-driven, lean-back listening experiences over artist-focused ones. A recent survey found that Spotify’s context-driven playlists (i.e. those defined around a specific activity, such as running, or around a time-specific event, such as Women’s History Month) have significantly higher median follower counts than content-driven playlists (those focused more on specific genres, languages or geographies). Year-over-year follower gain for context-based playlists also outpaced content-driven ones at 84.6 percent versus 62.3 percent, respectively. “Self-driving music” sounds like the most extreme case of a context-driven music industry: one where lean-back consumers and tech platforms dictate the journey, while artists and rights holders sit shotgun but have little control over the steering wheel.

According to head of creator marketplace Charlie Hellman, Spotify has seen a 28 percent growth in the number of artists it considers “top-tier,” from 16,000 to 22,000 artists, and strives to continue expanding this cohort into the “hundreds of thousands.”

There have been several cases in which a previously unknown artist has been catapulted onto the Billboard charts after getting prime placement on one of them. This has led to more song diversity among the top hits. An engineer named Michael Tauberg performed an analysis comparing the Billboard charts in the eight years leading up to the launch of Spotify to the eight subsequent years. “In the pre-Spotify era of the 2000s, there were a total of only 3,092 songs on the Hot-100“. In the same amount of time from 2009–2018, there were 3,933 songs on the chart, an increase of 27%.” Songs spent less time, on average, on the list, but that meant more artists had a shot at breaking out into the mainstream. Of course, this hasn’t eliminated all problems pertaining to music diversity. Because a song needs to make it onto multiple influential playlists in order to achieve virality, songwriters are composing songs that can fit within several categories at once, a trend that some would argue leads to bland compositions that don’t take chances or break out of already-established genres.

So yes, the music industry is on the upswing, but this renaissance brings with it a paradigm shift for how music gets made and how the consumers discover it. Streaming just may well save the music business, but it’s important to stay mindful of those who, without the proper interventions, could end up getting left behind.

 

Nike BackFire

Nike was not taken by surprise by the reactions of thousands of Americans after releasing the Colin Kaepernick’s campaign on its 30th anniversary; stating the following big thought, “Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything”. Nike was totally prepared for the backlash that would inevitably come when it incorporated one of the most polarizing celebrities in US at the moment. The NFL football player became a national figure when he decided to kneel during the United States national anthem to protest the racial injustice he believed had overtaken his country. We know that this is something in the core of the conversations since Trump’s election at the White House. People insulted Kaepernick on social media, walked out of stadiums during the national anthem, and refused to come to games. Eventually, Kaepernick opted out of his contract with the San Francisco 49ers, only to find that no other team would hire him. Beside being the main sponsor of the NFL, Nike continued to stand by Kaepernick and knew how to wait to make the maximum impact out of him – and his story obviously. It was all calculated. They even understood the negative part that may create their announcement. The backlash came quickly and furiously, from the viral videos of people torching their Nike sneakers and cutting the logo from their socks – let’s be honest, the videos seem a bit pathetic bullshit overall. The hashtag #BoycottNike and #JustBurnIt were trending a big part of the week.

We tend to believe that Nike is on the right side of history with this move – and that ultimately, this will be even positive for business. Because Nike understood since a while that culture and street credibility does not come from White Generation X people buying Nike to go for a run on Sunday morning. Nike finally understood that a brand should not fight to please everybody but to communicate and focus on the people that can definitely become your hardcore fans and obviously your advocates. And the young black people or minorities will easily take this role in the next few decades. Most business and brand observers said Nike did the right thing for their customers who are primarily young, diverse urbanites who are more likely to be ‘belief-driven’ buyers.

And this move from Nike reveals how weak and prompted became the fate of the brands nowadays. Desperate to be everyone’s friend, brands have compromised the very reason why we should still care about them. Typically they have drifted away from their deeper principles, even when the roots of their success were clearly driven by a noble purpose. The brands should be careful to come back to their heritage and meaning, not to be forgotten in the black hole of ‘all the same shit’. One of Nike’s values is to ‘stand for what you believe in’. In this campaign, it is celebrated it brilliantly. In this precise idea to voice your opinion, it makes it clear that Colin Kaepernick was the perfect ambassador for the brand. But the other brands are probably fading into obscurity. Brands need to regain the courage they once had, parade the edge people love, encourage heated discussions, and, yes, be daring enough to even make enemies along the way. You have to forget about compromise. If you don’t expose yourself, your brand will be forgotten. But if you choose a path in which you understand that playing with fire can have both up-and downside, you may discover how your message begins turn conversations than ever before. Nike’s move is just perfect. It reconnects the brand’s voice to its core beliefs and reinvigorates a highly familiar brand caught in the haze of normality. Brands are to embrace the challenge and to get them out there – whatever the risks are. And this is the follow up with the TV commercial to make it even a bigger and clearer for everybody – including some other sports celebrities.

 

And more…

Just read that today on Facebook, I thought it would be interesting to understand better the back story:

‘Aug 14, 2016- Colin Kaepernick sits for the national anthem…..and no one noticed.

Aug 20th, 2016- Colin again sits, and again, no one noticed.

Aug 26th, 2016- Colin sits and this time he is met with a level of vitriol unseen against an athlete. Even the future President of the United States took shots at him while on the campaign trail. Colin went on to explain his protest had NOTHING to with the military, but he felt it hard to stand for a flag that didn’t treat people of color fairly.

Then on on Aug 30th, 2016 Nate Boyer, a former Army Green Beret turned NFL long snapper, penned an open letter to Colin in the Army Times. In it he expressed how Colin’s sitting affected him.

Then a strange thing happened. Colin was able to do what most Americans to date have not… He listened.

In his letter, Mr. Boyer writes:
“I’m not judging you for standing up for what you believe in. It’s your inalienable right. What you are doing takes a lot of courage, and I’d be lying if I said I knew what it was like to walk around in your shoes. I’ve never had to deal with prejudice because of the color of my skin, and for me to say I can relate to what you’ve gone through is as ignorant as someone who’s never been in a combat zone telling me they understand what it’s like to go to war. Even though my initial reaction to your protest was one of anger, I’m trying to listen to what you’re saying and why you’re doing it.”

Mr. Boyer goes on to write “There are already plenty people fighting fire with fire, and it’s just not helping anyone or anything. So I’m just going to keep listening, with an open mind. I look forward to the day you’re inspired to once again stand during our national anthem. I’ll be standing right there next to you.”

Empathy and understanding was shown by Mr. Boyer………and Mr. Kaepernick reciprocated. Colin invited Nate to San Diego where the two had a 90-minute discussion and Nate proposed Colin kneel instead of sit.

But why kneel? In a military funeral, after the flag is taken off the casket of the fallen military member, it is smartly folded 13 times and then presented to the parents, spouse or child of the fallen member by a fellow service member while KNEELING. The two decided that kneeling for the flag would symbolize his reverence for those that paid the ultimate sacrifice while still allowing Colin to peacefully protest the injustices he saw.

Empathy, not zealotry under the guise of patriotism, is the only way meaningful discussion can be had. Mr. Kaepernick listened to all of you that say he disrespects the military and extended an olive branch to find a peace.

When will America listen to him?’

Tesla Hip

These are lots of celebrities who drive a Tesla: Morgan Freeman, Ben Affleck, Cameron Diaz, Matt Damon, Jay Leno, Steven Spielberg, Stephen Colbert, the list goes on. Pro skateboarder Tony Hawk tricked out his Tesla with black-satin-wrapped chrome and 1,200 watt speakers. Electronic DJ Deadmau5 had his painted Ninja Turtle-green – yes, that exists. Teachers in San Francisco preschools say their students, who can barely hold a conversation, look up and shout, “Tesla, Tesla” when one drives by. Elon Musk’s marketing has captured the world.

Yet hip-hop artists, generally speaking, aren’t too impressed. Cars crown their lyrics, but Teslas are hardly around. In the Rap Genius database, Tesla sputters behind nearly every model except Toyota despite being one of the world’s top automotive brands. How is Honda lapping one of the world’s hottest carmakers? One reason is electric cars just aren’t that popular yet. Sales of electric cars amount to less than 1% of the US market. Even in New York, only 1% of cars sold in the states were electric in 2017. (California is the outlier, with electric cars capturing 5% of the market last year). And Tesla has been around just 15 years. Benz and Bentley, which top the list of most-reference car brands in rap lyrics, have a century or more of automotive heritage. Tesla’s clientele at the time were the bourgeois bohemians of Silicon Valley. This is not too cool, let’s be honest. Few, if any, of its customers are ever likely to have heard Chance the Rapper.

But Tesla does have its fans among hip hop musicians.. Jaden Smith’s “Icon” music video is shot entirely in front of his Tesla Model X. 2 Chainz posts videos of his Tesla driving himself all the time. Random rappers name check Tesla often in their lyrics including Dr. Dre, Young Thug, 2 Chainz, Tyler the Creator, Jaden Smith and Gucci Mane. And, long-established hip hop stars like Snoop Dogg and Jay-Z also drive a Tesla. Kendrick Lamar says ‘You can not test no King in a Tesla’ and Tyler, The Creator traded up for a Tesla after crashing his McLaren. Both are from Los Angeles. Meanwhile, Florida-based Kodak Black sings, “I like the Tesla better when it drive me,” and the chorus to Travis Scott and Quavo’s “Black & Chinese,” calls out Tesla’s self-driving feature as “lit!”

 

 

Maybe Tesla isn’t fully cool yet. It’s not surprising. Silicon Valley’s creations are not dissimilar from Crocs in the fashion world: absolutely not cool outside their clique at first, then beloved by millions. Sometimes brands like Apple breakthrough and define the mainstream. Yet there is one Valley company that already has street credibility. Among automobiles brands idolized by hip-hop artists, it’s fast overtaking Benz and Bentley. And they don’t make a single car.

The unicorn Uber is ascendant. It appears 61 times per million words in Rap Genius, comparing favorably to 71.2 times for Bentley and 105 for Benz. No other way to get around is growing as fast. Tesla is on the rise.

(extracts from ‘Tesla is not Cool, just ask Hip Hop and R&B’ from Michael J. Coren and Dan Kopf in Quartzy, ‘Why rappers have embraced Tesla as the Hot New Car of Hip Hop’ from  Galileo Russel on evannex.com)