Manzoku: The Ghostly Bento

From: Ghostly
Date: 29/06/10


Another beautiful release from Ghostly. One thing that strikes me about these kind of releases and their appearance in recent years is that they're as bloggable as they are collectable. The focus on these limited editions may assist with the coverage of the more basic versions and, potentially, luxurious products like this could be a loss leader to aid the marketing of a label's music. Particularly should it lead to the purchasing of downloads where there is barely any cost in terms of manufacture and distribution.

"For Ghostly International’s hundredth release (GI-100), we wanted to commemorate the occasion with something more than music, something bigger, more permanent—a humble monument to our first decade’s work and a gift to our loyal fans. With that in mind, we give you Manzoku: The Ghostly Bento.

The Ghostly Bento was inspired by Japan and its tradition of quality, service, and design—values that Ghostly has always cherished. “Manzoku” is a Japanese word that roughly translates to “satisfaction.” Thus, the Bento is an intimate celebration of satisfaction in multiple forms—tactile, visual, aural—packaged in a handcrafted wooden box, stained and etched with a stunning image by LA artist Dosa Kim.

The Ghostly Bento is extremely limited in quantity (only 50 boxes were made) and handmade by a team of artists, designers, and craftspeople working closely with Ghostly International. Typical Japanese bento boxes pair disparate flavors within one container, and The Ghostly Bento is no different: nestled in the box’s three compartments, one finds a squid-adorned edition of Horizon Line / Ghostly By Night, our era-defining double-disc compilation; a micro-fibre Ghostly tie, featuring Dosa’s design screen-printed by Cyberoptix; and a pair of wooden Ghostly chopsticks.

The result of creative collaboration, meticulous detailing, and old-fashioned hard work, Manzoku: The Ghostly Bento is a ceremonial token of satisfaction—both ours and yours."

Music industry looks beyond music sales

From: The Telegraph
Date: 03/08/10

The hard-pressed music industry has been forced to look beyond CD and MP3 track sales in order to shore up sales. British record labels collected a record £193.5m in so-called "secondary revenues", which covers income from gigs and concerts to merchandise and film, TV and advertising rights, in 2009.

The BPI, the industry body which released the figures yesterday, said income from outside traditional music sales was up 6.6pc compared to 2008.

Secondary revenues accounted for almost one-fifth of record companies total sales of £1.12m last year.

Geoff Taylor, chief executive of the BPI, said: "UK record companies have responded to tough market conditions by innovating in the digital world and developing new revenue streams from recorded music, beyond their traditional base of CD sales and the encouraging growth in digital a la carte, subscription and streaming services.

"Music companies continue to face an enormous challenge from illegal downloading, but are responding positively by transforming themselves for the future, identifying new opportunities to generate returns from the massive investments they make - hundreds of millions of pounds per year - in UK talent."

Rupert Neate

Theodore Watson - Spinning Vinyl iPhone app

Martin Skelly's Playlist Player

From: PSFK
Date: 10/05/10
Link: Press release


UK based digital product designer, Martin Skelly has created the Playlist Player which plays back digital files by mimicking the classic revolving ritual of a vinyl LP.

Martin explains its design and working:

There are two parts to the design: the player, and the record box containing five different colored covers. Once the playlists are chosen and synced to the player with a memory stick, the user customizes the outside of the sleeve with artwork of their choice. It could be photos of a memorable night or person or typed and hand drawn tracklists. Once the record is placed on the player, the music begins and the outer ring of lights illuminates. As the playlists plays rings of light visible through the translucent record move towards the centre of the disc, like a needle tracking on a record. These lights represent time and not the number of tracks, meaning your music must be enjoyed from start to finish with no distractions like the temptation to skip tracks, fast forward or rewind.

Martin says that nowadays, people tend to rush and skip through their digital music; his Playlist Player brings back the old charm of listening to the whole music album without having the distraction to skip tracks.

The influence of one's personal investment

"While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially I consider it an impossibility, a development of which we need waste little time dreaming."

Lee De Forest - US inventor and 'father of the radio' - on commercial television, 1926.

Arcade Fire's Synchronised Artwork

From: CR Blog (and forwarded by Amy)
Date: 11/08/10


Back in 2007, director Vincent Morisset reinvented the music video online, with his interactive promo for Arcade Fire track Neon Bible. For the band's latest album, The Suburbs, Morisset has now turned his attention to how digital music files could be more visually exciting...

Morisset has worked with designer Caroline Robert to create a digital artwork that appears when the album is played on mp3 players like the iPod or iPhone. The work deliberately echoes the pleasures of old vinyl record sleeves, where the song lyrics were often written out in full. Each track on the album has an individual image that appears on the iPod screen when it is played, with the lyrics of the song then appearing on the screen as they are sung.

"Win [Butler, Arcade Fire's lead singer], wanted to create a version of the artwork that would be relevant in the digital world," explains Morisset on his website. "Most of us now buy, share and listen to music through computers and portable devices. It seems absurd that it is still a single jpg that is attached to an album in 2010."

"I thought about the relation we have with the vinyl cardboard cover or the paper booklet while listening to the songs. Flipping through the lyrics, looking at a band picture or a cool drawing related to a song while listening to it. With the mp3 player, we lost that. I wanted to find a way to get closer to that experience again."

As with his Neon Bible video, part of the success of the Synchronised Artwork is its simplicity. Explaining how it works, Morisset says, "Tightly sync a series of images with specific moments in a song using the m4a format. Like some podcasters do, but with micro chapters for each line of the lyrics. In addition to that, we were able to add good old hyperlinks also synchonised to the song. This gives the possiblity for the band to add, at any moment, all kinds of references related to each song. They plan to change and update those links occasionally."

The handwritten presentation of the lyrics on the screen works perfectly with the artwork that Caroline Robert designed for the album, which includes photographs shot by Gabriel Jones in the suburbs of Houston. To experience the Synchronised Artwork for yourself, head online to arcadefire.com, where it is included with the purchase of any digital download of the album.

Niklas Roy & Jari Suominen - Laser Cut Phono Record

"We used a vector program to draw the record. With different line colours, we could modulate the laser’s intensity. We also experimented with different depths of the groove within one loop (track 6). Track 2 was something like a random noise experiment where the needle would jump in a different way over the grooves, each time the track is played. So every track has a different idea."

(Excellent use of Youtube as an interactive device too.)

Eulogy for the Compact Disc

From: PSFK
Date: 30/08/10


Last Friday was the 25th anniversary of the Compact Disc. Rather than a celebration, however, I think a Eulogy is in order. In only 25 short years, the format is on the verge of extinction. You know the culprit.

The first commercial CD rolled off the production line on August 17, 1982 in a Phillips factory near Hanover, Germany. It took almost six years for CDs to begin outselling vinyl records, but the format would only shine for around a decade more, with the launch of Napster in 1999 signaling a change in the future of music consumption. According to CNN, sales of CDs peaked in 2001 and have declined nearly 22% to date.

Perhaps the fate of the cassette tape can offer some insight into where CD sales will stand in 10 years. According to the LATimes, sales of cassette tapes dwindled from 442 million in 1990 to 700,000 last year. I know what you’re thinking… who in the heck bought those 700,000 cassette tapes this year?

Why not embrace the death of the CD? Certainly all those compact discs being thrown away can’t be good for the environment. With the growth of hard drive capacity and online storage, we don’t need them anyways. The automotive industry seems to share this opinion. According to a Detroit News article from June 17th of this year, CDs may be gone from the dashboard as early as 2012. In fact, DaimlerChrysler already introduced MyGiG in 2006, a system that allows you to save your music on a 20GB hard drive. Countless other auto manufacturers are allowing portable music players to integrate with stereo systems.

Soon enough, we will file away the memory of the compact disc with the likes of the LP and the cassette tape. Until then, we’ll just have to let them take up space.

Jeff Mills - 'The Occurrence'

Before vinyl enthusiasts started bitching about MP3s, CDs were often cited as a bugbear.

Techno deity Jeff Mills may be a turntable maverick, yet he recently united the two formats in one product. 'The Occurrence' - a CD/Vinyl hybrid released as part of his 'Sleeper Wakes' series - has two playable sides to appease both analogue and digital fans.

Music stamps

The Royal Mail stamps unveiled at the beginning of the year received a significant amount of coverage. These depicted the artwork from ten British albums released between 1969 to 2002 and featured a vinyl disc slipping out from each cover.

This might seem particularly contemporary [even despite featuring Coldplay] yet these pale against the stamps pictured at the bottom which were issued in Bhutan. These miniature flexidisc stamps from 1972 could actually be peeled off a letter by its receiver and played on a record player. You can hear a sample of a recording via this link.

I'm referencing it here as an example of the difference between music as the medium and the album artwork working as the revered means of communication.