Platforms not products. Is this a tipping point?
As we look around our vast digital landscape, we may just be witnessing some of the early seeds of the “Internet Utopian Dream” starting to mature.
Social is here. Facebook has over 800 million users. Youtube is tracking over 300 million uniques per day. Twitter is growing. Bands like the Vaccines are crowd sourcing videos through Instagram.
And now Spotify, a relative new-comer to the (US) streaming market, is moving from being just a service, to a more open “platform” allowing outside contribution and social development.
Early on, many were critical of Spotify’s lack of deep song and album filters like “Editor’s Picks”, or “Top 10 Lists” etc. This led to a natural question for streaming services as to how can anyone find great songs that resonate to them personally from a sea of millions?
Spotify has an answer. Ek and Co. announced this morning that they’re opening their system up to outside app communities. In short, 3rd party developers are going to be able to imbed their own recommendation engines and editorial content directly into Spotify.
Clearly, instead of creating this needed functionality themselves, Spotify has made the deft move to open the flood gates for others to add their own expertise, innovative models, and ultimately, ownership.
Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, the Guardian, and others are all on board. Plus, independents can create their own apps and submit them as well. Suddenly, Spotify is a group, a community, “ours”, not just a thing. Kinda cool.
This is the same approach Facebook took with integrating music into their social graph. Last month, Hypebot reported on some of the statistics currently available from music services post-Facebook integration of the Mog, Spotify, Rhapsody, etc and not surprisingly, interest in these services has skyrocketed. Steven Levy further discussed some of these points in this month’s WIRED suggesting that maybe the future starts “today” with such platforms finally allowing creagives to seamlessly produce, distribute, and share content around the world.
We like that idea, and maybe this is an idea whose time has finally come…
We’re kind of upset with @SoftubeStudios
Softube has developed an incredible and gorgeous sounding reverb, the TSAR-1 (True Stereo Algorithmic Reverb- its pronounced like “czar”).
Simply put, we love it. (Check out a nifty video demo here)
After meeting with some of their team at AES last month (a wonderfully kind, creative, and accommodating bunch of folks) we thought we’d give it a try. Now with a few weeks of daily use behind us, we’re finding it to be smother and richer than some of our other favorite alternatives. It’s the new studio “go-to” verb.
So what’s the problem you ask?
Well, with the TSAR-1 available, we might just have to go back and remix everything we’ve done since opening in 2010…
We’re building a Franken-Wurli.
It was a fateful phone call, “Hey man, I found something that says Wurlitzer, but it in a wood case…”
We screamed. Thatwould be the classic Wurlitzer Electric Piano, and its most likely a tube model- 112, 120, or a 145.
Wurlitzers have been one of the most celebrated electric pianos since their introduction in the early 1950s. Classics such as Ray Charles’s “What I Say” and Beck’s “Where Its At”, all benefited from the Wurli’s bell-like iconic vibrato.
The most common model, produced for over 20 years, is the 200 or 200A which came in a variety of eye catching black, green, red, and tan plastic enclosures.
We like the 200, and use ours regularly. Earlier tube models however, have a sound all their own. Softer, yet warmer. Finally, we found one…
But it was in rough shape. Once we opened it up, yep, “this is going to need four new tires”. Wurlitzers are notorious to tune and repair. Granted, great shops like Speak Easy Vintage Music are an invaluable parts resource, but every note on a Wurli needs to be tuned by hand- manually adding or shaving solder to each tine.
This one, in black, was beyond hope. And we were sad. Until another friend found us a 145, a beige one, in South Dakota last month.
We’re going to put them both under the knife (solder gun that is) later this week and see if we can bring one back to life.
Wish us luck…
And… we’re back.
Several years ago, a serious friend that we take seriously, reminded us that “All work and no play makes Jack a nasty so and so…”
Heeding such a dire warning, the NoWare team took a short break this fall after a marathon 9 months of projects. During the time off, we’ve had a wedding, a honeymoon, a European vacation, moved a place of residence, caught up on Breaking Bad, spoke at CMJ, attended the debut of ProTools 10 at AES, and even had a baby shower.
Needless to say, the past few weeks have been a wonderful and rejuvenating whirlwind.
That said, we’re back at it. There’s music to make, things to fix, and fun to be had.
Over the next several days, we’ll try to catch you up on the current goings on, rumors, and innuendo. But, please note, its up to you to figure out which one is which…
About Scrounge
Every musician has a story.
It is a story of exposure, inspiration, and pursuit. And invariably, this tale involves either a concert, an album, or a song that was playing during some epochal moment in childhood.
These moments can stay with us and shape us for the rest of our lives. Both pulling and pushing us towards an instrument, lyric, or a sound that we feel compelled to share with others.
And amazing still, is that these events and realizations can continue today, despite decades in the industry, with new music.
This space is dedicated to those moments. Songs, albums, and concerts that remind us why we do what we do. Some of these posts have come from friends. Others still have materialized from client-initiated music searches.
Regardless, these are the artists and sounds we want others to hear…
You have managed to find NoWare. We are a music based creative house located in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
