Bi-Weekly-ish Newsletter #76 w/ Hyundai Harmonies 🚗🎵, Vibe Prophecies 🔮✨, AI Doom Scenarios 🤖💀, Eno's Activism 🎹⚔️, and Pizza Invites 🍕🥂
Dear reader,
Back with another edition where I balance technological optimism with existential dread, personal victories with global crises and the eternal quest to make music licensing less of a nightmare for everyone involved.
This time, we’re delving into how a simple synchronization check evolved into a collaborative symphony. We’ll discuss why everything is becoming centered around "vibes" and what that implies for human intelligence. Additionally, we’ll cover some concerning AI doom scenarios that lack positive energy. We’ll highlight Brian Eno’s brilliant approach to activism and extend an invitation to enjoy prosecco before we all head to the impending excitement of Cannes Lions.
Enjoy and thanks for reading.
1. When Sync Checks Become Symphonies
From Ringo Pricing to Original Composition
Starting with a campaign I have quite warm feelings for, mostly because I worked on the music and it helped fund some additional Ringo developments. It's the new Hyundai Palisade campaign rolling out worldwide as we speak.!
What began as a multiple-song pricing check through Ringo evolved into a full sync search, and eventually became an original composition project through our sisters-in-arms company Howl. The campaign itself explores how "lines and squares come together to shape a premium and bold experience, one that lives in both movement and stillness." Function meets form in perfect harmony, offering a space to enjoy true comfort and a soundtrack that needs to reflect that same balance. Working alongside the team at Jung von Matt NECKAR we crafted something that captures both the kinetic energy and serene moments the campaign celebrates.
People know us for Ringo and music licensing, but over the years I've probably overseen around 1,000 different music for ad productions. It's gratifying to show the full spectrum of what we can do and what's possible when technology meets artistry and when you get to work with people who get it. Watch the campaign below and decide for yourself if we managed to find the perfect soundtrack for premium comfort. Also, I wouldn't mind having one of these cars.
Wink wink nudge nudge!
This is an ad...
The Hyundai story above started with Ringo, those initial pricing checks that gave the project the budgetary reality the agency needed to make smart and fast creative decisions. That's exactly what Ringo is designed to do: make the early stages of music licensing fast and transparent.
With Ringo, you can:
Upload Spotify playlists of tracks you're considering
Get instant algorithmic pricing for different usage scenarios
Specify terms (territory, media type, duration)
Turn budget constraints into creative opportunities
We just shipped Beta 003, with over 200 active users. The process that used to take weeks of email ping-pong now happens in minutes, freeing up time and budget for the creative work that actually matters.
Visit www.thisisringo.com to join for free and see how music licensing can fuel creativity rather than kill it. Your next campaign (and your legal department) will thank you.
2. It's All a Vibe Baby: When AI Handles the Hard Thinking
The Great System Reversal is Here
Big statement incoming. It's really all gonna be vibes baby!
We're at a turning point where gradually everything in terms of process is becoming a vibe. Check back with me in 18 months about how this prophecy is panning out.
What used to require structured, deliberate planning and execution now increasingly flows from pure intuition and quick impulses, as AI starts handling the structure and planning for us. A shift perfect for our feeble goldfish-sized attention span. For instance, in AI video generation, you can prompt a scene and receive a complete film; in music creation, you can hum a melody and end up with an entire track; and in general ideation, rough concepts can be transformed into polished presentations. All in all a fundamental reversal in how humans think and create.
In Daniel Kahneman's "Thinking, Fast and Slow" framework, System 1 thinking is our automatic, intuitive, emotional brain with quick judgments and gut feelings. System 2 is our deliberate, logical, analytical brain with careful planning and structured reasoning. Historically, humans needed to engage System 2 for complex tasks such as coding, planning, and executing; activities that require substantial mental effort, but AI is flipping this completely. We now lead with System 1 vibes and gestures (the easy, intuitive part), while AI becomes our externalized System 2, doing the heavy lifting of structuring and optimizing whatever we throw at it. The slightly terrifying implication? We might stop being active thinkers altogether...
Someone who's picked up on this shift is the ultimate viber Rick Rubin, who's championing 'vibe coding,' essentially writing software by describing what you want rather than learning programming syntax. He calls it "the punk rock of coding," comparing it to how punk eliminated the need for traditional music training. He recently collaborated with Anthropic on "The Way of Code," a digital book mixing Tao Te Ching philosophy with AI-assisted programming. While I love Rubin's work (Slayer!!!!!), I'm skeptical of his approaches. His process based on mystical methods and the idea that it's all about taste doesn't necessarily translate to practical advice for mere mortals like you, me, and the other approximately 3978 readers of this newsletter.
What does make this digital book brilliant is its marketing value for Anthropic. This is pure Cannes Golden Lion territory, a cultural project that makes AI accessible while positioning Claude as the creative partner of choice and worth experiencing for 7 minutes and 7 seconds just to understand how human-AI collaboration feels and to appreciate some world-class brand storytelling. Check it out here and an interview with Mister Good Vibes Only on the project below.
3. Not-So-Viby AI: When Doom Scenarios Keep You Up at Night
We're Racing Toward Something We Don't Understand
So much for vibes. While the idea of AI handling our System 2 thinking is all nice and cute and mentally relaxing, there's some decidedly un-viby news going around. AI doom scenarios are flooding research circles and the latest data suggests we might be vibing ourselves straight into an existential crisis we fundamentally don't understand.
A recent YouTube video broke down internal research showing that AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) is reportedly 94% complete, with 8 major AI milestones achieved in just the last 60 days. These include breakthroughs like recursive hardware self-improvement (AI designing better AI chips), recursive code self-optimization (AI rewriting its own code to be more efficient), major new mathematical proofs being discovered, and entirely new theoretical concepts being generated. The pace represents exponential acceleration toward what researchers call "the Singularity," the theoretical point where AI becomes superintelligent and starts improving itself at a pace we can't comprehend or control.
Here's what terrifies me: we have no idea what this actually means. The research suggests this could happen this year, not in some distant sci-fi future, yet we're stumbling toward it like we understand the implications. We don't. Nobody does. We're potentially months away from creating something that could render human intelligence obsolete, and we're treating it like just another tech upgrade. Watch the video below where an AI researcher breaks down these scenarios and timelines. It's a sobering reminder that we might be unleashing something we're completely unprepared for and honestly, it should keep you up at night too.
4. When Startup Sounds Become Statements
Brian Eno Weaponizes Windows 95 for Gaza
What's happening in Gaza is an atrocity and needs to stop. This is obvious and people with a heart will agree. We've seen so many people speak out against this, so many words but so little action. Enter Brian Eno, who's found a way to make his activism visible where it hurts. The legendary composer has written an open letter challenging Microsoft's partnership with the Israeli Ministry of Defense, specifically their provision of AI technology and cloud services used in military operations. But here's the brilliant part - Eno is leveraging his historical connection to Microsoft by pledging the fees he received for composing the Windows 95 startup sound to victims of Gaza attacks.
"Today, I'm compelled to speak, not as a composer this time, but as a citizen alarmed by the role Microsoft is playing in a very different kind of composition: one that leads to surveillance, violence, and destruction in Palestine," Eno wrote. He's calling out Microsoft's "complicity" in providing services to what he describes as "systematic ethnic cleansing," pointing to technologies with names like "Where's Daddy?" used for tracking Palestinians. What makes this particularly strategic is how Eno is using his decades-old business relationship with Microsoft as leverage for current activism. It's not just another celebrity statement , it's targeted pressure using existing connections.
I think this approach is brilliant because Eno takes a moral stand and makes it visible where it hurts most in Microsoft's corporate conscience and public image. He's turning a piece of cultural history (that startup chime was just inducted into the Library of Congress) into an activism tool. The only good thing about Windows has always been that startup sound, and now it's being weaponized for a cause. Listen to the startup sound below, I'm assuming YouTube will find a way to pay Eno and Gaza victims through this as well.
5. Pizza & Prosecco-Palooza V
Ending on a Lighter Note Before the Lions
Ending on a lighter note. Before embarking to Cannes, the rumbling volcano where the advertising industry gets together for the Lions, we thought it would be a great idea to organize a very unofficial pre-party with optional dancing on our local volcano called "the office."
It's Pizza & Prosecco-Palooza number 5! This is a come-one-come-all kind of event, so bring your colleagues, clients, creatives, crushes, cousins - you name it. Seeing as how you're on this list, please consider yourself invited.
To make sure the drinks don't run dry, please RSVP: marcel@thisisringo.com.
🍕 PIZZA & PROSECCO-PALOOZA
The Very (Un)Official Cannes Lions Pre Party 🍕
📅 Thursday, June 12th, 2025
🕕 18:00 – 23:00
📍 Audentity, Blankenstraat 404-406, Amsterdam
That's it for this edition.
See you in Amsterdam on June 12th, in Cannes, or in the next newsletter if you can't make any of it.
Until then, keep your music licensed and your algorithms ethical.
Bisous!
Marcel