PSFK Author:
Colin Nagy

Our friends at Coolhunting have an excellent interview with Ghostly’s Sam Valenti, where he describes the label’s recent collaboration with Adult Swim: a 19-song compilation available for free download. And, in a playful example of brand synergy, a few Ghostly mascots — BoyCatBird — make their animated debut on Adult Swim. Following is an excerpt of the interview, available in its entirety here:

CH: As an indie label owner, you’ve obviously taken some unique steps towards enhancing your brand. Ghostly is one of the only companies taking a lifestyle approach to the music label. What guides your choices in brand enhancements such as the new BoyCatBird/Adult Swim project?

SV4: We get in the sandbox with other creative companies whenever it makes sense. We obviously love Adult Swim as do a lot of our fans, so it was a no-brainer. We were allowed a lot of creative latitude to represent the brand both musically and visually.

On the visual tip, it made sense that our mascots, BoyCatBird, would be front and center. They were created by our good friend, Detroit-artist Michael Segal and have been a visual part of the label since our first release “Hands Up For Detroit” by Matthew Dear and it was a chance to give them the spotlight.

Don’t miss the Osbourne cut, “Wait a Minute,” which features a hand-built vocoder, ripped from the Frampton Comes Alive! playbook.

Coolhunting: Ghostly Swim: Interview with Sam Valenti

Service cuts on domestic U.S. airlines are all too familiar. In 2005, US Airways cut pretzel packets to the tune of $1 million in annual savings, and American Airlines cut $30 million out of their costs by eliminating free food in economy. Many others followed suit. It’s gotten so bad that Continental actually bases an entire advertising campaign about how they actually feed customers and haven’t taken away pillows. Now, as the cost of jet fuel has skyrocketed approximately 60-70 percent in the past year, BusinessWeek reports that some airlines are trying to combat the load on each flight. This has been done in the past with baggage surcharges, but now some carriers are resorting to tactics typically reserved for summiting Mount Everest.

According to BusinessWeek:

Japan Airlines has cut more than 260 pounds from the average weight of each Boeing 747 in its fleet by introducing lighter forks and thinner porcelain dishware. (The airline is also putting slimmer toothbrushes in its passenger amenity kits.) U.S. discount carrier JetBlue, meanwhile, has jettisoned bulkier snacks on long-haul flights in favor of extra-thin chips and similar fare.Those little changes add up: JetBlue reckons its featherweight nibbles are saving it more than $800,000 a year in fuel costs.

BusinessWeek

Today, online music hub Pitchfork Media announced the upcoming launch of their new music-oriented online TV channel, Pitchfork.tv, set to go live on April 7.  Pitchfork has already established itself as a respected source for independent music news, reporting and commentary across several genres, and now they’re branching out with some compelling video content — on their terms.

As stated by Pitchfork:

As a visual extension of the music coverage Pitchfork has provided for more than a decade, and a means of updating and advancing the music television format, the online channel will bring you closer to the artists you love, through original mini-documentaries, secret rooftop and basement sessions, full concerts, exclusive interviews, and the most carefully curated selection of music videos online. In addition, Pitchfork.tv will become the first online video channel to screen full-length feature films, vintage concerts, and music DVDs free of charge. From the Pixies’ 2004 reunion tour film LoudQuietLoud and Todd Phillips’ notorious GG Allin documentaryHated, to Jimmy Joe Roche & Dan Deacon’s acid-drenched visual art piece Ultimate Reality, Pitchfork.tv will highlight a different film each week in its entirety.

The announcement emphasizes the fact that Pitchfork is privately owned, with no outside investment or special interests. In their words, “We’ve waited decades for a music channel that respects our intelligence and reflects our ideals. Now that the technology is here, we’re finally able to do it the way that people who really care about music have always wanted to see it done.”

Pitchfork Media

We’ve noticed a lot of chatter in the clued-in dance music community about the continued rise of UK bassline house. In essence, the sound is not unlike late 90’s two-step, with 4/4 beats, poppy, sped-up vocals and copious amounts of wobbly digital bass.

Just as a lot of female dancers fled the late 90’s drum and bass scene when it got self indulgent, excessively dark and testosterone-addled, some are now calling the pop side of the bassline sound a reaction to the recent, sometimes overly masculine dub-step and grime scenes.

English critic Simon Reynolds, author of Generation Ecstasy, sums it up nicely:

…Meanwhile, the other strand of bassline–the poptastic R&B hyperdiva strand, now that is actually the drastic pendulum swing from yang to yin, testosterone to oestrogen, that I had always imagined would happen in reaction to grime, except it took so long to happen I gave up on it and just forgot. But here it is: the return to dance energy, groove, amorous vibes, “girls like this/this one’s for the ladies massive/feminine pressure”. I’d imagined it would happen as a some kind of resurgence of 2step. Well, on the rhythmic substructure level bassline is 4/4, but its whole upper chassis pretty much is 2step.

The breakout single so far is T2’s (pictured above) single “Heartbroken” on Universal records, which reached as high as number 2 in the UK singles charts.

Fact Magazine: Bassline House and The Return of the ‘Feminine Pressure’

Last weekend’s Financial Times examined the global trend of temporary, pop-up spaces for galleries and retailers. The writer credits the first example to Rei Kawakubo of fashion label Comme des Garçons:

…she set up a temporary retail outlet in a disused, dilapidated building in an unlikely neighbourhood of Berlin. The space was cleaned up – just enough – and equipped with rails of clothes, some design objects and a cash register. It was an instant success. Customers who found it felt they were in on something edgy, secret and slightly illicit: something that was hardly a business at all.

Other retailers have since followed suit, including Uniqlo and Target all the way down to smaller designers and curators.

The article also highlights the rising popularity of these temporary spaces in China due to various factors, including the high cost of traditional retail:

In China, pop-up retailing is quickly becoming an essential tool for the young experimental crowd as well as larger commercial brands looking for a new angle, says PT Black, the Shanghai-based partner of Jigsaw, the consumer lifestyle research house.

“Rogue shows or pop-up spaces appear all the time now,” he says. “Retail is still quite chaotic in China and therefore the smaller, less established designers and retailers setting up have a better chance. Beijing is arguably more accessible for pop-ups as there are more informal retail spaces, while Shanghai retail is incredibly expensive. And the art and design scene is blossoming in China so there’s no shortage of domestic and international interest.”

Financial Times: Edgy, secret and slightly illicit

It often takes years for the academic world to catch up to the breakneck pace of technology. But a new study from Center and American University’s Washington College of Law recently examined the issue of copyright and creativity and came to some interesting – and surely controversial – conclusions.

The report, entitled “Recut, Reframe, Recycle: Quoting Copyrighted Material in User-Generated Video,” finds:

…many uses of copyrighted material in today’s online videos are eligible for fair use consideration. The study points to a wide variety of practices—satire, parody, negative and positive commentary, discussion-triggers, illustration, diaries, archiving and of course, pastiche or collage (remixes and mashups)—all of which could be legal in some circumstances.

Fair use is the part of copyright law that permits new makers, in some situations, to quote copyrighted material without asking permission or paying the owners. The courts tell us that fair use should be “transformative”—adding value to what they take and using it for a purpose different from the original work.

The idea here is that a new twist on a song or a video can constitute a “value-add” and that by re-contextualizing something, it constitutes fair and legal use. However, this would appear to leave quite a bit of gray area as to what exactly these “additions” constitute.

With such a large volume of user-generated content being created, the conflict with existing copyright laws has been inevitable. Large content companies have gone on the offensive, suing user-generated sites, making hasty content agreements, and backing their own vehicles (Veoh, etc) for disseminating sanctioned content.

But will they find a peaceful medium between illegal piracy and these “transformational” situations? Is the grey area too large?

The study goes on to recommend the “development of a blue-ribbon committee of scholars, makers and lawyers to develop best-practices principles” to help navigate this going forward.

A complete copy of the report is available here.

Center for Social Media: Recut, Reframe, Recycle

We’re swinging through Copenhagen late next week, and staying through the weekend. Know of anything great going  on? Fancy a coffee? Email colin *at* psfk.com 

Twitter, Facebook’s status updates and newsfeeds, Tumblr, and a variety of other sites are creating a soft, ambient haze of social activity akin to leaving the television on in the background.

Though sometimes pithy, pointless or irreverent, these updates and short dispatches fill in the gaps about what you know about your friends, colleagues, and acquaintances. In fact, you get to know them in a different way. This, combined with the voyeuristic effect of it all, has undoubtedly created a new social dynamic. How will people’s “passive activity” be turned into valuable data? Who’s doing it?

Pali Research analyst Richard Greenfield cut his rating on the Warner Music stock to Sell from Neutral.

His reasoning?

“No matter how many people the RIAA sues, no matter how many times music executives point to the growth of digital music, we believe an increasing majority of worldwide consumers simply view recorded music as free,” he asserted in a research report Thursday morning. “A new model for music consumption must emerge and that model most likely involves DRM-free downloadable music at no cost to consumers, fully supported by advertising.” But as Greenfield notes, “the music industry is not ready to endorse such a move at this point, and even if it was, the economic model transition will be incredibly painful.”

Industry executives frequently cite the rise of digital tracks. But these sales are still far from offsetting the decline in physical sales. Add rampant piracy into the mix, and it’s clear that some new, creative models must be employed. In 2008, it seems an aggressive approach to licensing, and advertising rev-share models with free, DRM-free music seem to be the way forward.

[via SeekingAlpha]