Cos You Don't Wanna Miss A Thing: Twitter, music and predicting the present

If it’s good for celebrities, it’s good for you too. Endowed with mystical properties making their eyes gleam and teeth porcelain, they’re just better than us in every conceivable way. If you can convince them that Twitter’s new Music app is useful, the unwashed masses will stream it on to their tablet as if it was mana from heaven.

Maybe not.

It does raise a question in this new age of music you rent in perpetuity; what use does this new Twitter app actually have?

Having read media theorist Douglas Rushkoff’s new book Present Shock, he posits that media-as-a-culture is no longer preoccupied with “futurism” but centred on “presentism.” We’re interested more on what’s happening now than contextualising our experiences as distinct from past and future. For example, Twitter is only useful in the now (not borrowing too heavily from Eckhart Tolle) losing worth as time elapses. Furthermore, the now is such a diffuse, high-level abstraction it’s like attempting to catch a mosquito with a pin and a thimble.

Consider the mathematical equation. An equation is an expression of variables of which one is unknown. The unknown variable is found using mathematical principles flowing forward in linear time, from A to B. The solution is clear cut.

In computing and information technology, programs and hardware are thought of as panaceas for “problems” it’s not uncommon terming them “solutions.” These "problems" are not structural, i.e, the problem is not the inability to arrive at an unknown variable. The majority of problems lie in not getting it fast, cheaply or efficiently enough to stay relevant in the "now."

Simply, what problem does twitter’s music app actually solve?

It doesn’t solve anything – for the consumer. In the age of the present, app developers aren’t savvy problem solvers, they’re actually problem finders. They convince the market that there exists a problem, contend to have solved it and profit handsomely.

Apps such as Pocket or Evernote, as useful as they are, “solved” the problem of keeping track of links or writing notes previously inaccessible on one device when they were stored on another. There was nothing structurally wrong or overly inefficient with say, writing notes on pads of paper. Solutions readily existed.

Apps exist on your phone to solve problems that weren't problems until "realising" they plagued you. Not knowing the name of the song playing at the pub by Journey was never a life-threatening predicament, yet Shazam solves that problem for you. Easy.

But it cannily it does purport to have discovered a problem. Twitter is in the process of convincing us that emerging and popular trends in music are so complex and so amorphous you need an app to navigate this ever-changing terrain of current music. The problem is that you’re lagging behind what’s cool and what’s about to be cool. The solution is this app. Get it now, bask in the electronic water of fleeting musical omniscience.

Except this app wasn’t designed with you in mind. It’s another column in a vast data set powering predictive analytics. It tracks, in real-time, the influence of users and who is being influenced. What the influence channels users towards, and so on. Spotify and Rdio’s blindspots in terms of creating accurate big data sets is they don’t know who influenced what music is being played at any given time, nor to what level. No one gives a shit about your shitty indie band unless someone gives you a reason. Sometimes that reason is none other than “who” rather than “why.”

The dimension for the data set for playing Belinda Carlisle 40 times in a row is discrete and limited. Spotify will know I love Belinda Carlisle. If an external force influenced me, it has no real way of gleaning that information unless I directly clicked a link to the track from a certain page or twitter feed.

By using Twitter’s new music app, Spotify, etc. can track the locus of the influence. Music companies can make safer bets on pushing artists ahead of time. The guesswork on releasing a hit isn’t eliminated but it’s significantly reduced, again. Why sign ten acts to yield one hit when signing two or three definite winners is possible?

It does solve a very real problem, and that problem lies in the A&R departments at the major labels. The jump in music sales, the first time it’s done so in over a decade, is partially due to this new "taxi fare" or pay as the meter's running model. How does an exec fire up the sales from a simmer to roaring boil? You glean better data from more sources and tailor your strategies to the analytics.

So can this Twitter app really tell us what is really hot right now? Without the mind of Nate Silver and the processing power of CERN at my disposal, I don’t know. And neither do you.

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Read more: My post on the Spotify (counter-)revolution.

Are we Goebbels' stepchildren? (and other journalistic conjectures)

When the ethical standards of the media slip we expose ourselves to ruin. So we're told. In Melbourne on February 12, inventor of the World Wide Web (W3) Sir Tim Berners-Lee alarmed us to the fact a tweet can travel faster than an earthquake. Someone in the epicentre of a seismic shift underfoot can alert others faster than the quake can travel itself. If you have five followers under an eggy avatar with a handle of @ahzzzopll001 and you offer nothing but FREE BEATS BY DRE then your tweets aren’t going to have much impact. But if you have thousands, millions of followers and may broadcast your message through airwaves, optic fibre and print to countless more one's noblesse oblige on integrity increases exponentially. Have we learned anything from Goebbels’ media manipulation in the electronic media’s infancy or have we all become his stepchildren? (Oooh, how deliciously evil)

Have Lies, Will Travel

Goebbels' once wrote that “[t]he English follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous.” The big lie today is that the internet is so vast and interconnected the transmission of big lies would be caught, debunked and refuted before their virus’ deadly payloads had a chance to inflict any real damage. We’re thinking in what McLuhan termed the rear-view mirror with little inclination to look forward. But are reporters really lying?

In 2010, American Apparel marketing director and media strategist Ryan Holiday fell victim to this new craze of divesting oneself of accusations of unethical conduct by reporting in a time-honored yet disingenuous way.

Feminist website Jezebel, a masthead of Gawker Media, posted a claim by staff blogger Irin Carmon that American Apparel’s new nail polish contained hazardous material. Holiday was asked for comment after the post was live. His company’s official refutation was published as an addendum once “dozens of other blogs were already parroting her claims.” Despite Gawker Media's shoulders aching from the ideological barrow they push, their conduct insofar as it pertains to ethics finds itself in a strange loop.

The email contained in the report – that nail polish ought to be removed from shelves and that someone (in management? Operations? It’s unclear) mentioned the product could be considered ‘hazardous material’ in a conference call – is the report. Ms. Carmon could argue that the public was unaware of said email and Ms. Carmon was bringing it to light. On higher level of abstraction, not reporting the leaked email may have caused more harm than running it without attempting to confirm the presence of hazardous material (not the contents of the email, which are self-validating, provided it was not doctored.) Fact checking may have unreasonably delayed disposal of the product, leading users into harm. So which approach was ethical? One, the other, both and neither. It’s like Schrodinger meets William Randolph Hearst.

We can take rightful umbrage if this story was incomplete - that is, if it they were reporting one level up on Hayakawa's abstraction ladder, i.e., that the nail polish indeed contained hazardous material. Jezebel and Gawker Media could have conducted a chemical analysis, consulted with experts, interviewed manufacturers or actually waited for a response from American Apparel before running the piece. But none of this was ethically necessary insofar the scope of the report is concerned. In terms of reporting this story – the wider publication of a "damning" email and what may have been said in a conference call – their obligations to ethics were mind-bogglingly internally consistent. However, the entire head-scratching episode superficially resembles a variant of investigative reporting instead of “blogging” (which I will expound upon later.) The former relies on external sources to confirm or refute claims. This so-old-it's-new style is akin to what I term publicity driven journalism, as opposed to 'traditional' news journalism.

The ethical functions in publicity driven journalism

Any form of journalism that does not rely on the independent verification of more than one source to make a substantive claim could be reliably dubbed as publicity driven journalism. Publicity driven journalism is usually publisher-backed, industry recognised and profit-driven. As broad categories, these include but are not limited to entertainment, sports, technology, lifestyle, Gonzo, opinion and criticism. Opinion and criticism do not ethically require sources to make claims. Entertainment journalism such as music journalism may blur the distinction between opinion and fact; however pieces such as interviews only require one reliable source (i.e., the interview subject) to which their own conjecture is reported as the fact. (“It’s the most accessible yet heavy record we’ve ever done”, “We’re going to take it one day at a time, but we’ll definitely trounce our rivals.”)

Its ethical obligation is to not misquote or misrepresent the conjecture–bearer as a matter of public record. This is constrained by the tripartite model as described before – publishers will not come into disrepute by disseminating copy riddled with falsity, the industry will delegitimise any publication that does so and profit margins will decline as advertisers and the subjects of the copy (artists, products, etc.) withdraw their business. We now live in an age where conjecture-as-fact, not event-true-to-fact is the standard for what's reasonably assumed as ‘credible’ journalism online. (See what I did there?)

Gone Bloggin’

Blogs, short for weblog are part of an amateur journalist or diarist tradition. Even the first blogs or “webdiaries” had no ethical constraints placed on them; conjecture-as-fact informs its process and output. For example, the Drudge Report could reasonably print a headline “Is Obama a Maniac?” in which one of his opponents described him as “a maniac.” Moreover, tabloid magazines print stories which might appear “patently untrue” such as “Is Prince Harry of Wales a Nazi?” – The story itself might be a “source” overhearing a conversation in which Prince Harry of Wales is alleged to have uttered Nazi sentiments. “Is Kate Middleton an alien from outer space?” and etc. The fact itself is derived from the initial conjecture. (Even though the headline sure as shit isn’t.)

When mastheads such as The Times or Daily Mail manoeuvre themselves to drive up pageviews, drawing on their reputation as event-true-to-fact tellers using this new online conjecture-as-fact model, the entire ethical framework for truth in reporting be it amateur or professional ought to be called into question. But if we’re bombarded by tweets and blogs generating 2.5 quintiillion bytes of new information each day, who has the time to say “Hang on a minute?” It's precisely what we must ask ourselves now when we read almost anything online. The unadorned truth does not go viral, not any more.

Facts aren’t being discounted; they’re just being reframed, and most of real reporting isn’t actually reporting in the traditional sense. Is it ethical? Technically yes. Does it make us prone to manipulation, as if we were sired by propaganda and popular enlightenment? If we look backwards to look forwards, we may as well be.

Updated: Go Australia! Here's an example from national broadsheet The Australian, half consumer panic and half free publicity regarding one (one!) software developer's claim Google Play might be passing on user details to vendors after app purchases

The Top 10 Metal of 2012 #1: Katatonia - Dead End Kings

We hurtle down towards a hellish Earth to take our throne at the Dead End...

#1

Katatonia - Dead End Kings

Katatonia have reached the apotheosis of doom metal. Ten years ago, Viva Emptiness wiped the canvas clean, thumbing its nose at musty genre trappings. They boldly cauterized the powdered wig and opera hall romanticism from doom. Inspiration was found amongst grubby neon dance halls or the back streets of an ultra-modern, concrete-skied Stockholm frozen in perpetual winter within the ruined hearts of these men. Apprehensive, sinister and desolate doom metal flows black from the strings and keys and throat of this elegant Swedish confederacy of mourners. Their music is penned by those who subsist on a belly full of hope; always empty and forever wanting. Blasting riffs rest on one's heart like concrete. Strings are streaked with shuffling electro beats as tradition meets the modern. Guitars in trepidation wind melodies around Renske's longing baritone, lancing through the world's happiness like a dagger of ice. Each cut feels inspired and compelling and every note drips with despair. Such is our humanity on our cold distant journey, racing toward the throne at the dead end.

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The Crushtor.net Top 10 of Metal 2012

#1 - Katatonia - Dead End Kings

#2 - Anathema - Weather Systems
#3 - Deftones - Koi No Yokan
#4 - Woods of Ypres - Woods 5: Grey Skies and Electric Light
#5 - Killing Joke - MMXII
#6 - The Faceless - Autotheism
#7 - Be'lakor - Of Breath and Bone
#8 - Baroness - Yellow & Green
#9 - Rush - Clockwork Angels
#10 - Barren Earth - The Devil's Resolve
The Honorable Mentions