September 22nd, 2007, 3 Comments »
I happened to hear on the CBC today that Diana Krall has a new compilation album out called The Very Best of Diana Krall. I’m not a fan, but it got me thinking about ‘best of’ albums, why they’re made and how they’re marketed.
I didn’t think for very long, because I decided that I know almost nothing about the subject. Presumably these albums aren’t targeted at dedicated fans, because they already own almost all the tracks from their original releases.
Just Some Demos I Recorded in My Basement
I say ‘almost’ because the compilation album usually includes one or two token ‘previously unreleased’ songs, which are obviously there entice the loyal fan who wants to own everything by their favourite artists (I’m reminded of an old Barenaked Ladies song). iTunes, PureTracks et al have changed this practice, enabling fans to only purchase the 10% of the music that they don’t already own. That said, I’m guessing that most Diana Krall fans will still be buying CDs as opposed to downloading music.
One way to get fans to buy compilation CDs is to pair them with another whole CD of previously unreleased material. I remember that the 10,000 Maniacs did this, and I bought in. Did I get real value for my money? Probably not, but I was pleased to hear 14 new songs (or versions of songs) that I hadn’t heard before.
Assuming it isn’t existing fans, who buys compilations? I’m so out of tune with the music buying patterns of the average adult that I have very little idea. How do people over thirty buy music these days? Do they go to HMV or Walmart with particular CDs in mind? Do they decide ‘I’m going to buy a CD today’, and then peruse the store aisles for something that strikes their fancy? Do they usually visit the artist’s website first?
How do you shop for music? Do you buy compilations? I’m less interested to hear from the iTunes and Music users of the world, and more keen to hear from people who walk into bricks and mortar stores and walk out with shiny plastic discs.
On a vaguely related note, while watching season one of “Heroes”, I was reminded once again of how Ms. Krall and Ali Larter were separated at birth.
3 Comments »
August 1st, 2007, 3 Comments »
Over on Travis’s blog, I read about Simplify Media. Crap name, good product. From Travis:
There’s a cool program, for Mac and PC, that lets you see my iTunes library and listen to songs from it. It’s called Simplify Media.
With it, you can share your music with up to 30 friends. So far, I have about five friends (not in life, I mean with this iTunes sharing). And as long as my computer’s on and SM is running, you can browse and play my music, and I can do the same with yours.
I’m currently listening to Aerosmith’s “Sweet Emotion” courtesy of Travis’s crapload of music. I have no right to judge anybody’s taste in music, but All Saints? The whole album? Really?
Anyhow, I thought it’d be fun to connect with other users who are Simplify users, or want to try it. We could all ‘invite’ each other, and form an ad hoc network of our iTunes libraries. I’ve only got a subset of my library on my laptop (Simplify Media, how about an API that MP3Tunes can talk to?), but I’m glad to let others listen.
My user name is ‘dbarefoot’, and Travis’s is ‘nep’.
Hmm…I’m having some network buffering issues. Don’t know if that’s Malta Cable’s fault, or Simplify Media’s?
3 Comments »
June 12th, 2007, 4 Comments »
Last month I was at my friend’s place in France, doing some laundry. Her washing machine lit up like a cheap stereo, which struck me as awesomely French.
There was a dial on her washing machine with big numbers like 3000, 6000 and 1200. I believe these were measures of ‘tr/min’ (as per this photo of a washing machine brand called ‘Malice’). Is that ‘tour’, the French word for ‘turn’? It doesn’t really matter–I assumed it referred to revolutions per minute.
I was baffled as to what to set the machine for, and craved some less specific settings like “linen”, “wool” or “super-wash”. I’ve been doing laundry for over 20 years, and have no idea what speed the average washer barrel revolves at.
Is Five Right for Chicken?
Fast-forward to our villa here in Gozo. We’ve got a great gas range. Here are the controls for the oven:
That’s a timer on the left, and the temperature setting on the right. As you can see, you set the oven to a temperature between 1 and 8.
Here I have the reverse problem. I want less abstraction–I just want to set the damn thing to 375° to bake some chicken.
Set It to Totally Awesome, Please
The lesson is that my (and possible other’s) preferences change from device to device. I want more abstraction in my washing machine than my stove.
This is also true of software. iTunes has this hilarious setting called ‘Sound Enhancer’. It’s on a slider, and the online help says I can use this setting to “add depth and enliven the quality of your music”.
Why would anybody set this to ‘Low’? Why even bother with something called a ’sound enhancer’? Why not just set it to ‘Totally Awesome’ under the hood and get rid of the user setting altogether?
On the other hand, I want really granular control when converting WAV to MP3–probably more control than iTunes offers out of the box.
The right approach, I think, is to organize the settings in noob-journeyman-expert groups, enabling users to remove layers of abstraction if they want. That’s easy enough in software, but far trickier in the kitchen and laundry room.
4 Comments »
