Burning virtual crops, great gigs in the digital sky, Amazonian exploration, tone transfers, and writer$
October 2, 2020 Edition
Hi everyone, and welcome to October. In honor of fall, this week, I decided to rake the vast and varied population of leaves and needles adorning my yard. I dedicated every fiber of my being to this sacred ritual: imagine Jiro Dreams of Sushi-level commitment and focus, if Jiro had prioritized foliage over fugu. Of course, after a 30-second water break, I reemerged to find my dog rolling spastically in my geometrically perfect leaf piles, while maintaining cold-blooded eye contact with me as she reduced my efforts to naught. I’ve chosen not to read into this incident on a symbolic level, but I’m shaken.
“I think the universe is trying to tell me something”
Source: Liz Montague, New Yorker, October 2020
2020 extends its rampage to digital crops
Absolutely heartbreaking news from Camp Zynga this week, as the firm announced the imminent demise of its legendary social game: FarmVille (Input). As of December 31, 2020, the game will shut down, bringing an end to a storied 11 year run of people spending real money to establish themselves as virtual agriculture barons. I remember meeting with marketers at Zynga in 2010 at the beginning of the social gaming “movement,” and realizing that I had absolutely no mental model for why people would spend their hard-earned currency in such a way. Needless to say, 83M users (monthly, at FarmVille’s peak) disagreed with me and voted with their wallets. RIP, FarmVille, I will not miss you, but someone else might.
Source: Input
Maxing and Robloxing
Elsewhere in the gaming universe, Roblox hosted pop star Ava Max’s “immersive album launch party and virtual fan meetup.” (Verge) The music-goes-metaverse trend is something we’ve talked about a lot in past editions, particularly earlier in the pandemic when artists were open to any and all types of creative experiments. I confess that I’ve never listened to Ava Max—and don’t plan to start now—but I do find it interesting to see yet another well-publicized example of an artist using a popular video game as a foundation for a new type of performance.
To me, this reinforces the belief that certain creator behaviors will persist beyond the pandemic, as games become an alternative to traditional stages. Max’s event included a Q&A, performance of new songs, a merch store (which is an intriguing instance of an artist exploring a new vector for digital commerce), and in-game quests (unclear…) Photos of the “sky-high” dance floor and merch store are below, in case you had inflexible conflicting plans the night of the show and regrettably weren’t able to attend.
Digidancing in the moonlight
Another pandemic-inspired creator trend that has intrigued me is the proliferation of livestreamed DJ sets and virtual clubs. In the spring, there were many stories about new types of online “clubs” built as standalone destinations on the open web, or within containers provided by videogames like Minecraft. One dominant mode of livestreamed performance was the “acoustic/elastic waistbands only” variety; another was the “electronic/DJ set/bring your own psychedelics” camp. It seems that the former has waned—perhaps as artists have grown tired of doing stripped down renditions of their catalogues—while the latter has continued to grow and evolve.
One question to which I return frequently is: which of our pandemic-originated behaviors will continue (and deepen) even once the virus itself is less present? I think it’s safe to say that, the longer creators and consumers are forced to experiment with different modes of production and content consumption, the more likely it is that some of these digitally-oriented experiments will become status quo, whether it’s an Ava Max-type event in Roblox or a digital DJ set that you pay to join from home.
Shawn Reynaldo—who writes First Floor, a Substack about electronic music—recently wrote a good piece on virtual clubbing, highlighting a new player called techno-club.net. The site has 10 different rooms, with new programming each weekend and a healthy talent roster already signed up. Interestingly, you have to pay a digital “cover” (starting at 5 euros) to enter the rooms. The site uses a “Pay Per Minute” system, such that those 5 euros will get you 300 minutes of access to content, with the access lasting for one week from purchase. It’s a cool model, with 70% of the revenue going to each “room” to compensate DJs, pay for music licensing, and so forth. If you’re interested in learning more, check out this interview that Reynaldo conducted with the site’s founder.
While you’re bathing in the digital river
In my capacity as your unwanted but persistent digital tour guide, I am delighted to present an immersive, virtual reality experience inspired by Alice in Wonderland. Produced jointly by the V&A and HTC Vice Arts, the program launches tonight (October 2nd) as part of the Alice: Curious and Curiouser exhibition and can be accessed here. It looks wild. Clearly, the “killer app” for virtual reality is simply being able to “touch trippy mushrooms, sneak down rabbit holes, interact with flamingos, reach for massive cards, follow the White Rabbit’s glove, and more.” (Input) Sounds like an average Tuesday at my house.
In case you prefer actual reality (accessed digitally)
Well, I have good news for you! Amazon has announced a new service called Explore that “allows customers to book live, virtual experiences led by local experts.” (Tech Crunch) The offering is highly reminiscent of Airbnb’s “Experiences” product, and is yet another example of a sort of alternate “web creator” behavior that has been accelerated and popularized thanks to Covid-19. In pre-pandemic times, Airbnb curated a marketplace of local experts in many cities and facilitated the consumer discovery and booking of these experts and their offerings (e.g., attending a flamenco performance in Seville). These days, Airbnb Experiences are online. I can assure you that it’s substantially less magical to attend a flamenco concert from your living room, unless your living room already happens to be in Seville. Nonetheless, the word on the street is that many Airbnb experts are making good money by offering these virtual experiences. I suppose it’s better than nothing.
Some of Amazon’s 86 beta experiences include: virtual wine tasting in Argentina, making smoked fish tacos in Mexico, and a number of virtual tours (Peru, Tokyo, etc). The sessions are designed as one-on-ones between host and viewer, with one-way video but two-way audio so that you can scream rolling instructions at your sushi-sculpting chaperone to your heart’s content. One interesting feature is integrated commerce functionality (this being Amazon, after all), meaning that you can visit local stores and, presumably, click through to purchase certain items within the video experience. Points if you try to get a smoked tilapia taco delivered to you from Mexico via Prime within 24 hours. I’ll foot the bill.
Just indulge me
I’ve written in the past about Google’s music-related AI/ML research under the Google Brain/Magenta research program. Today, Revolutionary Reader RD reminded me of a new-ish Google experiment called Tone Transfer that has been released publicly (and for your boundless enjoyment). Tone Transfer essentially uses ML models to transform any recorded sound into a musical instrument. Some of the outputs are still pretty raw and depend heavily on the quality of the input, but the experience is cool and indicative of the ML+musician world of the future. Take it for a spin and send me any particularly cool mixes (👀👀 at Reader BNH and Reader PK). In return, I will send you a flawless, Segovia-level clip that I produced by playing a Spanish guitar into my laptop mic (with two fans and an air filter operating at full blast), pitching the signal down an octave, and turning it into saxophone and violin snippets. Majestic.
(Sub)stackin’ this paper
Works on a lot of levels 👏👏👏. I had to include this recent NYT piece by Marc Tracy on the Substack boom. Aside from being an initially unwitting participant in this movement (thanks, Reader MP), I continue to find this sort of mainstream coverage of the “micro media company” and “direct-to-fan” model interesting to follow. I do think that more consumers are becoming comfortable with the idea of paying real money—perhaps on a recurring basis—directly to a producer of content that they love. How mainstream this phenomenon will become is yet to be seen; however, the mass-market adoption of micropayments for content in China suggests that there is no inherent ceiling for this trend.
I am particularly curious to see how Substack evolves its (relatively) bare-bones offering beyond the simple text publishing platform and audio beta that exist today. As Tracy notes, the site is starting to experiment with “publisher-like” offerings, including offering “editing help, health insurance, and access to Getty Images photographs to some writers.” [Ed: not this writer, though I don’t take it (too) personally.] The question becomes: how many writers can get this treatment without undermining Substack’s business model of taking a cut of the recurring transactions for paid newsletters? And, will there come a time when the core value proposition of “one-to-one relationships” between writer and reader—delivered in an inbox that we all check many times a day—starts to buckle under the weight of too damn many Substacks?
For your ears only
In honor of my ancestral homeland, this week’s music selection takes us to Beirut via a compilation called Nisf Madeena. The album was released on September 4th by Ma3azef (an Arabic-language music magazine) and features names that you might know (Nicolas Jaar, Fatima al Qadiri) and others that you might not. All proceeds from album sales go to local initiatives and organizations that are raising funds for artists who were impacted by the devastating August 4th chemical explosion in Beirut.
The songs cover a lot of stylistic ground, with many of them coming out of the electronic/dance music scene in Beirut. You will doubtless enjoy some far more than others, but the entire thing is well worth a listen (and perhaps some simoleons). Enjoy!
See you all next week.
N