grant is extant

I’ve recently learned that paintings which include holy figures typically have the angle of their tilted heads equal to angle of the earth’s tilt.  I had to mock up the above in photoshop to really see for myself. 

Oh look, is that the north star on the Holy Mother’s left shoulder?

Happening right this moment is a global open source renaissance! I challenge the music industry - but more really myself - to do something about it. Let’s build and release some awesome stuff, let’s give it away, let’s build a platform - I’ve got some ideas.

**➹ **Verdant Sprite- Open framework and toolkit for the delivery of content to service providers

 ⨳ Azimuth : Open Schema / Data Virtualization - A graph or bigtable master metadata reference store that is human readble and performant at scale.

The past 8 weeks have been a ridiculous rollercoaster of immense learning, exploration, and discovery. I feel as though I’ve spun up a new cluster of Server-as-a-Self.

The internet (and the bulk of my world) has managed to again and pick up speed and create a sense of awe and wonder in me that I’ve not had in a while. 

Fuck the talk about AI, it’s not about artificial intelligence. That’s done, been done. The applications and developments of technology are beyond what anyone could imagine.  For less than £150 and in a matter of part-time weeks I had my entire gene sequenced, analyzed, uploaded to my own server clusters, and have taught bots to let me know about new research that applies to my genetic variants.   

This is crazy! This is crazy that people are building things that are building themselves - and doing it faster and more cheaper than ever. Build a network, throw it away, build another. I’ve done that dozens of times in the past few weeks. For next to no cost.

Increased competition between online infrastructure giants has optimized price + speed to a level that allows anyone to build anything. Developers are building frameworks that use other frameworks that depend on other frameworks. Even more meta are those developers building the frameworks to connect the frameworks. The levels of abstraction become infinite on this course until it all reaches a point where there no longer needs to be a framework because it just works. Is that where quantum computing sets in? Is the next level up of database/platform/infrastructure abstraction the human element? Who are the most ______ humans? 

things are moving right along nicely in my grand scheme. some interesting observations lately.

Technology is changing (again). This time I’m not referring to the rapid changes in the applications of technology like Artificial Intelligence or even the utilities to deliver the applications like Amazon Web Services. 

While everyone (and me) are excited about the resurgence of AI, invisible apps, microservices, messaging, and devops, i’ve noticed there is a very curious ‘meta-level’ movement happening underneath it all. The big platform companies  (amazon, google, ibm, microsoft) are all approaching it with a businesses-as-the-consumer by using an open sourced and accessible product as a hook, then letting yourself become more intrenched int he technology. Hadoop and Dynamo and Bigquery (and all their sub applications) are just nodes in a web.

The companies that are going to succeed, the next Google, will be those companies that are making meta-level and agile dynamic management of the extremely fragments sub technologies/frameworks .

I woke up really early (511am) this morning and wondered if there was any correlation on Twitter on people’s wake up time.

Some of the things I talked about (or wanted to talk about) this year!

- Balancing the 'day one' marketing splurge and the ongoing awareness required for streaming; where do you put the marketing focus: on the short-term money (physical, week one) or on the duration (streaming)?

It is definitely a balance and always depends on the artist, the album, and it’s audience. A goal with a large push in the beginning captures awareness through streaming charts and the social functions and network effect inside the the various platforms. A huge goal for duration is for our artist's music to be added to personal playlists and saved for later.

- Is streaming worth much more than promotion? Especially YouTube and Soundcloud... and Spotify's freemium tier.

So, I approach it with a very very simple equation. Promotion = Revenue. The two should not be mutually exclusive. If it goes on soundcloud and youtube it will always be on streaming. We use monetized platforms to promote so our Artists’ get paid. We can’t ignore the tremendous audience and engaged reach that YouTube & Vevo (monetized correctly) and SoundCloud have but we need to make sure that the fans can make it ‘portable’ on monetized platforms and save to their various library’s on their many devices 

- Global Release Day: Godsend for global premieres or pain in the ar*se?

From a purely digital perspective the global release date seems like it will be very effective move. We successfully released an Aphex Twin ep everywhere on a Friday back in January. It was successful in that we didn't need to split messaging and had a unified front across channels. I am a bit worried, though, that the new rules may have an adverse effect on indie artists’ ability to chart.

- Leaks! How do you respond?

We take a proactive role at the beginning stages of every campaign with stringent policies and workflows to reduce the exposure of the album beyond those that need to have it. If leaks happen we will take them in stride and address each on a case by case basis. I can't think of any catastrophic leaks in my tenure at warp.

- Is Spotify getting shared enough? I still habitually turn to YouTube or Soundcloud on social media. Guilty!

Spotify (or any other Streaming Service) is not being share enough by media. As I see it, the media is missing a trick on this, they should be using these platforms to build an awareness of their own!  The media have such an amazing knack at curation and all of the monetized streaming platforms offer them an easy and effective way at building their own brands WHILE supporting the rights holders.

We try to always share direct links to streaming, artist profiles, and embed links with our PRs. It would be tremendous if, as we do with youtube or soundcloud playlists, media would be able to share an embed of an artist's playlist in their write ups. 

- Playlists and the growing presence of major-owned brands on Spotify, Deezer etc,

It's not unlike Record Label’s owning Record Stores, distribution networks, and radio stations. Ideally our music should be so infectious that it’s able to stand in it’s own right but we’re not naive to the glut of content being produced all the time. Spotify’s owned playlists still remain on top and we actively pitch our artist’s inclusion. What I tend to look for (in addition to building our own label & artist profiles) are those key niche playlists with HIGH engagement and very selective curation. Those types of playlists really have the potential for fan building.

- YouTube, Music Key & increasing role of visual material

Warp have a long history with visual media and most of our artists consider it a direct extension of their art. In setting up a record we look at the traditional format of the packshot and try to design specific art for all of the channels! Aphex Twin's minipops on YouTube is a prime example, we took the aesthetic of the packshot and made a youtube specific version that shared Aphex’s data in the player - a very specific extension of the Transparency concept through out the rest of the campaign.

YouTube is the largest music streaming service in the world. It should never be considered just promotional platform, it’s a streaming platform with the additional artistic benefit of visual content. The indie community via Merlin and AIM have done an amazing job at working together and supporting rightsholders so it’s our job to make sure we’re taking advantage of it