Category Archives: Think Tank

Giorgio Moroder’s Red Bull Music Academy Lecture

One of the true greats of disco and electronic music at the 2013 Red Bull Music Academy in New York. Although Italian by upbringing, Giorgio Moroder did most of his work in Munich and the influence of Düsseldorf’s Kraftwerk can … Continue reading

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Pandora Limits Free Listening. Paying Subscribers Jump 114%

From Digital Music News: After recently capping free listening hours on the heaviest mobile users to reduce royalties, something strange happened: listeners actually started paying.   In fact, Pandora gained more than 700,000 new paying subscribers in just three months.  Instead of $0, these … Continue reading

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Google Music Chief On What Makes Google Play Music All Access Different

From Hypebot: Eliot Van Buskirk, editor, Evolver.fm: One criticism that could be made of any on-demand digital music subscription is that it’s essentially the same set of songs and rules on each one. What does Google see as the keys … Continue reading

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Are Apostrophes Necessary? Not really, no.

From Slate: For several decades, writers, scholars, and language rabble-rousers have been suggesting that apostrophes are perhaps less necessary than we might suspect. Such thinking is anathema to the surprisingly large (and unsurprisingly vocal) subset of the population that gets … Continue reading

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Billy Joel describes writing pop songs

From The New York Times: Andrew Goldman: You’ve written almost no pop songs since your last album, 1993’s “River of Dreams.” Why did you stop? Billy Joel: I never stopped writing music. I’m still writing music — piano pieces, orchestral … Continue reading

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What the Kindle’s most-highlighted passages tell us about the soul of the American reader

From The New Republic: Amazon keeps track of which passages Kindle readers highlight most, which means the company can offer a new version of the old serendipitous experience. Only this one is data-driven: The company also keeps a running list … Continue reading

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The future of TV (marketing) might be on Twitter

From The Verge: Twitter CEO Dick Costolo took the stage in Manhattan this morning to talk with a crowd of the biggest advertisers and brands from Madison Avenue. He brought up a slide of a recent tweet, featuring a picture … Continue reading

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Mitch Hurwitz Explains His Arrested Development Rules: Watch New Episodes in Order, and Not All at Once

From Vulture: Originally, the new episodes of Arrested Development were conceived as something of a “Choose Your Own Adventure” series for fans: Creator Mitch Hurwitz said we’d be able to watch the new episodes on Netflix any which way we … Continue reading

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Hashtag Music: Do Twitter-Friendly Song Titles Make a #Difference?

From Billboard: When artists create a hashtag song, it’s not just a stunt to become a trending topic on Twitter; rather, it’s a neat trick to get their content into the multiple online feeds that their fans may digest on … Continue reading

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The NY Times on the subject of modern celebrity

From The New York Times: Our age is lousy with celebrities. They can be found in every sector of society, including ones that seem less than glamorous. We have celebrity bankers (Jamie Dimon), computer engineers (Sergey Brin), real estate developers/conspiracy … Continue reading

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