what a day that was: 2013.10

2013-10-26

David Bowie Is...

Sennheiser page for the audio guides used in the AGO exhibition. Hey, I might even get around to reviewing the damn thing! Have to go again first, though.

2013-10-18

Girl Talk's All Day Samples Increased Sales of Songs, Study Shows

The Shining - 8 Bit Cinema

[via]

2013-10-17

Avril Lavigne - Let Me Go ft. Chad Kroeger

Here it is: Canadian Culture ca. 2013:

This pairing would have been inconceivable ten years ago. Inconceivable!

Continues the trend of awkwardly jammed in product placement too (see that Avicii video I posted the other day). The first thing I did was check the record label... yup. Sony.

Long tail: a rebuttal to Lefsetz

The Man vs. The Myth: Lefsetz and The Long Tail

Response to the post I linked to earlier.

The Growth of the Network Media Economy in Canada, 1984-2012

Excellent read for anyone interested in the economics of the Canadian media industry. It's a long read with outstanding analysis. More must-read work from Mr. Winseck.

Quick takeaways:

-Newspapers and landlines are the only segments of the industry that are really in decline.

-Music industry is on its way up

-All this nonsense about cord-cutting is way overblown. Instead of Netflix and others taking a chunk out of the existing pie, the pie simply got bigger. A lot bigger.

The Most Important Thing You Will Read All Day

via the Lefsetz Letter, a really interesting look at how the music industry has become a blockbuster oriented business. So much for the Long Tail.

The numbers certainly do not come close to the trusted ’80/20 rule’ that many managers live by, which supposes that 80 percent of the sales tend to come from 20 percent of the products on offer. For music albums, it is close to an 80/1 rule – if we can speak about a rule at all. Even if we take a conservative estimate of what would be on offer in a bricks-and-mortar store at any given point in time, Anderson’s predictions that long-tail sales will rival those in the head are far off.

2013-10-11

Prince - Breakfast Can Wait

New Prince tune that has nothing to do with Dave Chappelle.

2013-10-07

Avicii - Wake Me Up

This one is going straight to #1 on the Billboard chart for sure. Catchy as hell, your kids will love it.

Viral bullshit as the new classifieds

Interesting piece from Jeff Jarvis. It also led me to this link: The soul of a new machine: Gawker struggles with the slippery slope between viral and true

Basically, unverified viral crap supplements journalism the way classified sections supplemented newspapers in ye olden days.

Raises some interesting questions about the sensationalism surrounding that whole crack-mayor thing. Page views are more important than accuracy under the Gawker/BuzzFeed/et al business model.

Arcade Fire - Here Comes the Night

Awesome tv special that aired after SNL two Saturdays ago. This album is going to be great. The band is in full Talking Heads mode at points during these songs