Bi-Weekly-ish newsletter #40 w/a LinkedIn commercial🔗🔗, a Renault commercial🚘🇫🇷🎾, an Apple commercial👓👓, Music+Ai🤖🤖, and Queen🏳️🌈👑.
Hello and Happy Friday!
Edition # 40 of the Bi-Weekly-ish newsletter on music, tech, more music, culture, and even more music.
A few commercials, something about Apple and their VR set, an op-ed I wrote on the value of music in the age of AI, and the deeper meaning of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody.
Enjoy!
1. Linkedin - Find Your In
A Choreographed Journey Through Professional Possibilities
Setting off this edition of the bi-weekly-ish newsletter with a Linkedin commercial starring a young girl at a laundromat. In the commercial, the laundromat transforms into a magical and choreographed stage where clothes take on a life of their own while the young girl tries on different outfits and dances through various career opportunities.
The spot is produced by Iconoclast, directed by Alaska and Sherrie Silver, famous for her work on Childish Gambino's "This is America," choreographed the film to Remi Wolf's "Guerilla."
"The clothes we wear are bonded to who we are, who we want to be and often where we work," Droga5 executive creative directors Toby Treyer-Evans and Laurie Howell told Adweek. This film is an exciting translation of that insight and combines it with great production and an amazing track.
2. Sonic Revolution!
How A.I. Is Redefining the Value of Music
An interesting (🤔) and fairly well-written op-ed that I 100% agree with (because I wrote it) is online now! The piece is titled": Sonic Revolution! How A.I. Is Redefining the Value of Music in Advertising (Why your favorite music houses could soon see hard times).
In the article, I outline how Generative Artificial Intelligence simplifies the music creation process with yet another step and how music's value is either "meaning" or "functional" at its core. Music is meaningful when it mirrors the human experience in a song. In contrast, music is functional when it plays a functional role, like enhancing emotion in a film or creating an atmosphere for heightened performance. I argue that GAI is becoming very well-versed in the latter while, at the same time, A.I. music in and of itself will not be able to engage people similarly in a meaningful sense.
Sounds both confusing and intriguing? That's because you should probably read the whole thing over at Muse By Clio.
Love to hear what you think in the comments!
3. Renault's Roland-Garros Film
A Clever Ode to Tennis Season
Another film that stood out this week, particularly for its clever music usage, is a Renault film celebrating the start of the French Open tennis tournament, Roland-Garros.
Again produced by Iconoclast, the film opens to the ever so familiar (but entirely out of context) sound of Andy Williams' classic X-mas tune, "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year." We see clay dust fall from the sky like winter's first snow. It also looks eerily similar to the googolplex of pollen that forces me to stay inside this period of the year (feeling sorry for my hayfever self). Anyhow, Paris and other cities across the world rally around to prepare for the best season of all: tennis season.
I love films where the music is used in a different context and, as such, either makes an interesting creative reference or juxtaposition. This film and track do both.
4. Apple's Next Big Thing
The Vision Pro AR/VR Headset
Unless you were cut off from any forms of communication these past couple of days, you must have picked up on Apple unveiling a AR/VR headset. An announcement that marks its most important product release since the Apple Watch in 2015, potentially even the iPhone 1 in 2007.
The headset, called Apple Vision Pro, promises to be a mixed-reality device that blends augmented and virtual reality, allowing users to overlay digital images and videos in the real world. Essentially, the Apple Vision Pro delivers on the promises made by other companies like Meta for a fully immersive and engaging meta-verse experience.
The Apple Vision Pro is a lewd display of chip, camera, infrared, and lidar technology power and comes at a staggering retail price of $3,499, making people witnessing the keynote gasp. When Apple CEO Tim Cook was asked about this "ambitious" retail price on Good Morning America, he dodged the question and quickly emphasized that "the engineering and the dept of engineering are mind-blowing."
While the Apple Vision Pro may seem impressive at first glance, many people online question whether they truly need such a device at such a price. Is it simply an expensive toy, or is it part of the future of digital content and human-machine interaction? Alternatively, could it be a colossal product failure that could ultimately lead to the downfall of the broader metaverse concept?
I genuinely don't know, but what I do know from my experiences with various V.R. glasses is that they are too uncomfortable and burdensome to use for extended periods of time. Right now, I don't see how this device's functional benefits will outweigh that physically uncomfortable experience, especially if you can already get most of the functionalities from other devices.
If you are one of the few people entirely in the dark about all of this, Apple created a full features intro and the launch film linked below to get you up to speed. It does get a bonus point for using the iconic track "Dreamer" by Supertramp.
There are two things that I am sure of - Apple will always get its music right, and that whatever they're selling I end up buying. The same goes for this headset; here's a Go Fund Me.
5. The Queer Genius That is Queen
Bohemian Rhapsody Deconstructed
I've written about the copyright gold rush on numerous occasions. The trend started with bond villain turned music executive Merck Mercuriadis convincing the Church of England and everyone's favorite investment firm Black Stone that music copyrights are essentially "predictable and reliable income assets like gold or oil."
This paradigm shift ushered high-value music copyrights ranging from Bob, Bieber, Boss, Blondie to Beyonce exchanging ownership for record-shattering money deals worth hundreds of Millions of dollars each. The Queen catalog is rumored to be the newest addition to the list of "predictable and reliable income assets," exchanging ownership; for a price tag estimated to surpass 1 Billion.
This news made me think of an explainer video I ran into a while ago on the geniusness that is Queen and the deeper meaning of its masterpiece of rock-meets-opera, Bohemian Rhapsody.
A lot of people will forever associate Bohemian Rhapsody with Wayne and Garth head-banging in a powder blue 1976 AMC Pacer, but the song in and of itself is a truly complex exploration of sexual identity, fear, and redemption and musical allusions to classic westerns, Italian theater, and science.
YouTube channel Polyphonic takes you in-depth into this meaning, its references, and backgrounds in an animation style reminiscent of Terry Gilliam and Monthy Python, which is worth a watch for the animation alone.
Galileo, Galileo!
Galileo, watch it be-loooow!
And fro even more context on Bohemian Rhapsody? Check out this excellent long read on Sotheby’s.
Thanks for reading.
Be kind, be sweet and enjoy your day!
Marcel