Author: Ross Andrews

Who’s number 1? Plus an infographic

I just spent an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out who is the number 1 streaming artist on Spotify. (FYI it’s Justin Bieber). Spotify doesn’t make it very easy to find this out – I ended up getting the figure from Wikipedia. This search led me to the below chart showing how the music industry is making money again through streaming. (link)

What these figures point to is a very complex formula for ever declaring an album as “Number 1”. Gone are the straightforward days of measuring LPs sold. It is a weighted calculation, subject to bias and change over time.

Spotify itself is not making much money. For now the Company is beholden to the record companies (link) for their back catalogues (and to a lesser extent, their A&R and recording infrastructure). But one day perhaps it will break free from this like Netflix has from Hollywood.

Waste, tension, and music

The garden waste piles up each week in the corner of the property. Each time the gardener cuts the grass, sweeps up the leaves, or cuts down a branch he puts the waste into bags, and these bags pile up until a truck is organized to cart it off for composting. As the owner of the property this system can stress me out. Watching the relentless growing piles of waste sometimes feels like one of those awkward “white lie” situations – you know the one – you’ve told a little lie or made a transgression which is never confessed. The lie gets bigger and bigger, worse and worse until there is inevitably a release. Either you and your lie are found out, or you tell the truth. The pickup truck taking the waste away feels like eventually telling the truth.

Great music is just like my home’s waste management system. When a song is well written, a tension builds for the listener. The verse builds up to the chorus. The verse places bags of musical notes and dead ends in the corner of the listener’s head. Repeated phrases and hooks. A story in need of some resolution. Eventually the tension is too great and a switch to the chorus is like a clearing out of all the accumulated rubbish. The verse is the lie and the chorus is the truth.

This is most obvious for me in blues music. Think of Muddy Waters’ “Hoochie Coochie Man”. The verse is simple and repetitive to the point of ridicule. The harmonica’s five notes over and over moaning and groaning that Something huge is coming. Trust me he’s coming. Gypsy woman told my momma. Muddy is coming. Just now……Wait for it. It’s almost unbearable until Muddy grants us sweet relief with “But you know I’m here!” The chorus plays and all the rubbish in our mind is cleared away. Then the cycle starts again with verse 2. What a song.

Ants

If you poke an ant’s nest and pierce the shell, all of the soldier ants come pouring out to see what is happening and protect the nest, while the worker ants stream to the problem area to fix the breach.

Are you the one poking the nest? Or the soldier? Or the worker?

Rediscovered Kickstarter Project

I received a reminder from my own website. Kind of ‘meta’ and Sci-Fi in its own right no? But the reminder was for an old post (link) about a Kickstarter campaign. This reminded me of the prize I got for backing the project – Like so many things – I downloaded the anthology and never read it.

I now have it lined up in my queue after ‘Foundation’.

Here’s to machines talking to people, reminding them of their laziness. And here’s to reading Sci-Fi.

Mostly to reading Sci-Fi.

Foundation

I’ve started reading Isaac Asimov’s ‘Foundation’.

Well, sort of. I’ve actually started listening to it on audible. It’s great and very entertaining. I can see echoes of the story in more recent fiction.

Audible as a way to consume books is a revelation to me. It will help me to work my way through this great sci-fi list: link

Imagine a city which covers a whole planet…

Handwriting

When I was 11 years old, I changed my handwriting in an effort to be cool. I wanted to be more like my friend. He wrote with far more flair than I did. His pages had words that stood out at you. They were all in in neat rows, but they looked artistic and full of purpose. His paragraphs were all in joined up writing and each word was at an angle. His pages looked like they came from someone interesting. Mine just looked like they came from a bog standard 11 year old kid.

I remember clearly deciding to write an assignment in this new style – with my new found flair. The words were all at a painful angle across the page. It took me ages to finish because I was more interested in how it looked than what was written. I put my name on it and handed it in. I felt satisfied and liberated. My new, cooler, more angular identity was emerging.

When the teacher handed our marked papers back, he stopped when he reached me. I got a poor mark. He was disappointed with me, he said. And what on earth was wrong my handwriting? He could barely read it.

I couldn’t hide my blushes as I mumbled some sort of response. I reverted back to myself the very next class.

Happy Sunday chimps. To thine own self be true!

Power cuts

Picture my panic. It is Saturday evening, the kids are all asleep after a hard day without their mother, who’s away this weekend. Just when I thought I could relax and stream some music, the power went out. Got to love Eskom and African power utilities.

So I went into scramble mode…my phone still had battery, but no data left to download or stream anything. Dammit.

My laptop battery is dead. I was beginning to lose hope, and then I spotted the iPad.

A quick startup showed full batteries. Now was there any music? Only one album downloaded: Radiohead ‘In Rainbows’

That’ll do pig….that’ll do. My brain is heaving a sigh of relief as Thom Yorke groans in my ears.

On a side note, how does this band get away with such ridiculous music? It strikes me they are impossible to cover….They are the only band that could ever play these arrangements and sound any good.

But sound good they do!

Happy Saturday chimps.

Inputs and outputs

I set up my third (I know!) Amplifier today in the man cave. It is the only Grade A amp I own and it is now doing the LP player duties. This means my streaming amp has been relegated to an “Input AUX” on the class A amp. Audio talk, but it got me thinking about priorities.

If you have many responsibilities in your life, and you are struggling to handle all the input signals and get all the outputs you want – then maybe you need to focus on the quality / important inputs and relegate the other stuff. Sort out the important things first and only then look to do anything else.

At the moment, my life is a list of important things and little time for recreation. Being conscientious and organised about priorities is perhaps one of the hardest things for me, but when I do it, it reaps instant rewards.

In the audio analogy, I sorted out the wheat from the chaff, the high res from the low bitrate, the analogue from the digital, the good from the crap – and this means I am now experiencing the best audio source (LP’s) through the best amplifier, and the others are taking a back seat for another day.

It’s not much of an analogy, but the bigger point is that life is about options and sacrifice. You have to choose your sacrifice. Choose it wisely and complete the plan. Then reassess.

That’s the plan.

Happy Thursday chimps.