22 tracks – Music Curators Extraordinaire

As Charlotte and I expand our listening habits, it never ceases to amaze me just how much new music there is “out there,” and not just new music, but new and easy ways to listen to it. 

I’m listening to a perfect track called Natural Tune by Efterklang – it’s laid back – chilled and perfect stuff to write this post to.  Oh and you can listen to it too – go to 22tracks and select the Relax category – right here.

This is brilliant – it’s just like radio – if radio didn’t have the ads and was programmed by music lovers rather than accountants.  There are22 different playlists from Contemporary to Latin, Dubstep to Worldgrooves – each area has a curator who selects 22 tracks and you just click and listen.  Each track has a link out to the artist’s website and a purchase link – genius.

The more I look at this model the more it makes sense.  There’s been much discussion about having an algorithmic approach to music selection – one of my favorite music writers Bruce Warila, is at the forefront of that (to my ears) quixotic charge.  For me - I’d much rather have a human being act as my filter; someone who really is passionate about music – who lives and breathes it – who writes about it and works with it and who spends hours of their time listening to and feeling it.  I’m not saying that one day the Kurzweilian utopia won’t appear but I’m guessing it’s a while away – until then I’ll let Venz curate my relax music and my hip hop too!

The Duel 2007

In music2work2’s The Duel, the piano and strings almost seem to be in a competition themselves. The rhythm of the strings is much faster than the slower tempo of the piano. The competition is not mean or one of anger, it seems that in this piece, each voice is more “doing its own thing” although occurring at the same time, in a harmonious way.

It makes me think of the conflict that goes on in human beings between good and evil, or doing what is the right thing as opposed to doing the easy thing. I think this is a common struggle, seen in practically all areas of ones life. It may be easier to give up when times get rough but commitment and integrity or courage keeps you fighting. It may be easier to do a job half-way but honor and pride push you to doing your best and giving your all. Listening to The Duel, the prominence of the piano at the end  and ending on the high notes, indicates to me that the good or right is victorious in the struggle. Hopefully that is the result in most cases.

Decisions, decisions

The controversy surrounding Microsofts' Zune player continues. It still seems to be a major topic of discussion at every digital music summit and forum across the country. According to October 5 Digital Music News, Daily Snapshot, the discord has spread to Microsoft's longtime partners, such as Napster. Being new to the digital music and media scene, I wonder if all this controversy is actually based on interoperability concerns or just competition. Does this happen every time a new product comes on the scene or is the dislike of Microsoft by many and the opinion of their being out of touch with the market a big part of the problem.

Knowing as little as I do about all this, I do understand that if major technical problems will be associated with Zune, the inability of the software design to operate with existing PlayForSure stores and players, that is indeed a concern.

I think it will be interesting to see if the public will purchase the player when it hits the market, just because of the novelty of it or if they will forsee the limitations and prefer to spend their money on more conventional players.