Latest ShotsToday’s pop artists are breaking records set by some of the industry’s all-time greats like The Beatles and Michael Jackson, with the help of growing digital distribution and consumption.
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BBC Labs are running some online tests that examine your relationship with music. Being someone who has played music for most of my life, listens to it heavily and even worked in the industry, I was curious to know how I scored. Link for the test and further explanation of the results after the jump.
I suppose you could call Christopher Kirkley the audiophile’s linguist. He travels the world researching and documenting the music of largely unknown traditional cultures and their relationship with modern technology.
I’ve been reading his blog since October last year when he posted his first mixtape – one of my most exciting musical finds of 2010. He’s just posted Volume 2 of Music From Saharan Cellphones. A mixtape compiled from discarded* cellphones in Sahel region of West Africa.
Download link and more about Christopher’s latest mixtape after the jump.
The Sound Chaser is an amplified toy train with a stylus (record needle) that runs along tracks made of old vinyl records. The artist, Yuri Suzuki is an amazing dude who, for the last few years, has been leading innovation on the relationship between music and product design. Watch the video above to see a demonstration of the new music-inspired products he produced for the London Design Festival. Below are some of my favourite musical products Suzuki has created over the last few years…including a musical kettle, which looks more like a guitar than a kitchen appliance.
Here’s a selection of really interesting images from Nick Peden. Nick recently returned to Shanghai, after a research adventure through greater China, focusing on youth culture in the country’s second-tier cities. These images remind me why I love living in this part of the world.
Charles Haddon, frontman for UK electro-pop trio Ou Est Le Swimming Pool, reportedly committed suicide yesterday, following the band’s set at the Pukkelpop Festival in Belgium. To be honest, I never really listened to much of the band’s work and it’s a strange feeling to ‘discover’ them in the wake of such unfortunate and sad circumstances.
It got me thinking though about how many other people, on learning of this tragedy, felt compelled to engage with Haddon’s music. Continue Reading →
[image credit: Rasmus Weng Karlsen]
A few months ago Danish duo Reptile and Retard completed a massive and very debaucherous tour of China. Here are some of the highlights published by Vice Magazine this week.
The US Copyright Office announced today 6 groundbreaking new rules that bring Copyright Law into line with fair use of new technology. The rules below now prevent you from being prosecuted for the following common practices. However one huge omission is the music industry.
The downfall of the majority of music festivals in China is made obvious by one short quote from Suzhou International Music Festival’s Chief Coordinator, Yu Hui.
Sa Dingding (萨顶顶), a 26 year-old electronic-pop-folk artist, will be the first Chinese musical artist to ‘conquer’ the western music market.
Here are 5 reasons why:
C.Custer posted an interesting retrospective on the ChinaGeeks blog this week, discussing soft power, censorship and how the Wu-Tang Clan became unlikely ambassadors for China and its traditional culture. So what do 90s east-coast hip-hop, the Confucius Institute, a 1987 film by Steven Spielberg and an Australian electro-pop duo have in common?
The biggest challenge to discovering new music time, or lack thereof. Best friend and music marketing executive, Sophie Hirst has the solution. Her new blog, The Perfect Five –the music blog for people who don’t have time for music blogs.
The US names and shames the world’s worst piracy offenders. The release, circulating news wires around the world couldn’t come at a more opportune time for two of the main offenders. From 28 May–4 June 2010, a league of Canada’s key music industry innovators and decision makers travel to China for the mainland’s largest music industry business conference –transmitCHINA.
BBC Radio 4 correspondent, Rajan Datar, went to a recent gig at one of Beijing’s major live houses and asked a handful of Chinese youth to name their favourite bands. Their responses were varying combinations of the acts listed below.
Oasis, Joy Division, Lady Gaga, Rolling Stones, Ting Tings, Tom Waits, Blur, Johnny Thunders, Ramones, Smashing Pumpkins, Suede, Radiohead, The Doors, Iggy Pop, Sex Pistols.
Above: The making of the Hifana+Nike Music Shoe.
In August last year Converse stamped a giant Chuck Taylor star on the Chinese indie music scene with its hugely successful Converse Love Noise campaign, engineered by Shanghai agencies W+K and Split Works –and awarded Ad Age China’s Top Marketing Campaign for 2009. The campaign was centered around local artists in five key cities across China and incorporated live music, live art and a filmed documentary, featuring two of China’s buzz acts, P.K.14 and Queen Sea Big Shark.
Yesterday Google removed one of Australia’s top 5 music blogs—the best, in my humble opinion—after repeated complaints from labels and web sheriffs. On the surface, it appears Google shouldn’t be blamed for removing unlicensed material (like mp3s) and their stance on copyright infringements are clearly stated in their Blogger Terms of Service…or should they? There’s a lot more to the situation.
Wale‘s debut album, Attention Deficit (2009), has been popping up on my playlist sporadically since my good mate Dave recommended it. I relocated to Shanghai just over a month and have been helping local music company, Split Works put this together. More on that in another post.
Below is an small piece I wrote for jmag (music magazine). Look out for it in the April 2009 issue:
