Month: February 2016

Getting Ahead vs. Doing Well

Getting Ahead vs. Doing Well
Jason Tate

Seth Godin with my favorite thing I’ve read today:

This is the thinking that, “First class isn’t better because of the seats, it’s better because it’s not coach.” (Several airlines have tried to launch all-first-class seating, and all of them have stumbled.)

There are two challenges here. The first is that in a connection economy, the idea that others need to be in coach for you to be in first doesn’t scale very well. When we share an idea or an experience, we both have it, it doesn’t diminish the value, it increases it.

Advertiser Threatens Financial Times

Advertiser Threatens Financial Times
Jason Tate

Lucy Kellaway, writing for the Financial Times, responds to an advertiser threatening the publication. I’ve had that happen before — I wish my response was this good.

You say the FT management should think about “unacceptable biases” and its relationship with its advertisers. My piece was not biased and I fear you misunderstand our business model. It is my editors’ steadfast refusal to consider the impact of stories on advertisers that makes us the decent newspaper we are. It is why I want to go on working here. It is why the FT goes on paying me.

Music I Liked Last Month

Jason Tate

One of the things I’d like to do more of is put together playlists. Maybe sometimes they’ll have a theme, maybe they’ll just be a bunch of music I’ve played recently, and maybe I’ll be able to bring in some guests to help out in the future. But, it’s all got to start with the first one. I’ve put together a playlist of a bunch of stuff I’ve listened to, and enjoyed, over the past month or so. The goal was to try to cover a few diverse genres and keep the length right at the hour mark. You can find the playlist on Apple Music and Spotify or via an embed if you hit read more.

Read More “Music I Liked Last Month”

Louis C.K. Responds To Five Dollar Gate

Louis CK
Jason Tate

Louis C.K. released a new show on his website last week, he charged five bucks for it, the internet reacted rationally and didn’t get mad at all about this. He’s posted a blog explaining this decision.

Now, I’m not complaining about this at all. I’m just telling you the facts. I charged five dollars because I need to recoup some of the cost in order for us to stay in production.

Also, it’s interesting. The value of any set amount of money is mercurial (I’m showing off because i just learned that word. It means it changes and shifts a lot). Some people say “Five dollars is a cup of coffee”. Some people say “Hey! Five dollars?? What the fuck!” Some people say “What are you guys talking about?” Some people say “Nothing. don’t enter a conversation in the middle”.

Anyway, I’m leaving the first episode at 5 dollars. I’m lowering the next episode to 2 dollars and the rest will be 3 dollars after that. I hope you feel that’s fair. If you don’t, please tell everyone in the world.

Behind Spotify’s “Discovery Weekly” Playlists

Jason Tate

Nikhil Sonnad, writing for Quartz, looks at the technology behind Spotify’s “Discover Weekly” playlists.

“We now have more technology than ever before to ensure that if you’re the smallest, strangest musician in the world, doing something that only 20 people in the world will dig, we can now find those 20 people and connect the dots between the artist and listeners,” Matthew Ogle, who oversees the service at Spotify, told me recently. “Discovery Weekly is just a really compelling new way to do that at a scale that’s never been done before.”

Although I am a professed album lover, I think these playlists are the best thing Spotify has been doing recently. It’s the kind of personalization that is only going to get better, and the trick of finding someone that next band they love is going to put me out of business.

Albums in Stores – Feb. 5th, 2016

Jason Tate

Ah, Friday … album release day. I’m still not really used to albums coming out on a Friday, it’s just not totally built into my bones yet. The biggest album release this week, in our corner of the world, has felt like Say Anything dropping I Don’t Think It Is. Personally, it’s not doing much for me. If you hit read more you can see all the releases we have in our calendar for the week. An open thread has been made in our forums to talk about what came out today, what albums you picked up, and to make mention of anything we may have missed. I hope everyone has a great weekend.

Read More “Albums in Stores – Feb. 5th, 2016”

Tell Your Mom About Our Show (Episode 115)

Jason Tate

This week’s episode of Encore starts with a discussion about fostering creativity and how we try to stay sharp and inspired and not fall into a rut. It’s hard. We want to be better at it. Then we look at the RIAA changing up how they certify albums, Brand New selling out MSG and announcing some kind of release this year, and looking at the difference between huge stadium like shows versus the small venues we’re used to. We then answer some questions about favorite movies about music, the idea that bands should feel obligated to play “fan favorites” on tours, favorite bands from the UK, and the first albums we ever really anticipated. This week once again (fingers crossed) has chapter marks, so if you subscribe in a podcast player that supports those you should be able to jump right to a topic you want to hear about — if you so desire.

Read More “Tell Your Mom About Our Show (Episode 115)”

The Website Obesity Crisis

Jason Tate

Maciej Cegłowski has posted up a transcript and slides from a talk he gave last year at the Web Directions conference. It looks at the “Website Obesity Crisis” and lays out an argument against the growing trend in giant, and I mean giant, homepages.

Let me start by saying that beautiful websites come in all sizes and page weights. I love big websites packed with images. I love high-resolution video. I love sprawling Javascript experiments or well-designed web apps.

This talk isn’t about any of those. It’s about mostly-text sites that, for unfathomable reasons, are growing bigger with every passing year.

While I’ll be using examples to keep the talk from getting too abstract, I’m not here to shame anyone, except some companies (Medium) that should know better and are intentionally breaking the web.

A number of websites have become almost unusable. The cruft, trackers, and garbage is packed on top of social dialog pop-ups, sinful scroll-jacking javascript, and page sizes that are bigger than mp3 files we used to share.