My dwelling workplace typically seems to be as if a Class 5 hurricane swept by. There are piles of magazines, teetering towers of books, data and CDs which have up to now evaded being filed, and dozens of sticky notes and scraps of paper that includes near-illegible scribbles signifying… one thing. There are additionally particular folders on three completely different computer systems crammed with bits minimize and pasted from web sites, newsletters and social media.
This group disaster is the results of 11 months of studying, researching, browsing, scrolling and in any other case sourcing out materials for all my music writing, radio exhibits, podcasts and no matter different assignments fall in my lap. Each time I run throughout one thing that I believe could be helpful, I squirrel it away in some way, finally discovering a house for the factoid someplace in my content material manufacturing unit.
Effectively, most of those bits of trivia discover a dwelling. By the tip of November, there’s loads of materials that’s orphaned and unused for any variety of causes. I might merely sweep every little thing into an enormous recycling bin, file the books, data, and CDs, and proceed to disregard these information on my computer systems. That appears flawed, although, so every December, I cobble collectively a particular Ongoing Historical past of New Music present referred to as 60 Thoughts Blowing Information About Music in 60 Minutes. It’s aired on the radio earlier than being transformed to a podcast in order that the entire world could have their minds blown.
Nevertheless, even with this stock clearance, I nonetheless haven’t used all my cool factoids for 2024. Thankfully, I’ve this house each week. Right here then are a further 10 mind-blowing gadgets about music. What you do with this info is as much as you.
1. Your headphones are filthy
My inbox is consistently clogged with surveys and polls which are cleverly disguised adverts for some firm or service. Most come from on-line casinos trying to drag folks again to their websites in hopes of seeing extra wagers. British businesses are particularly keen on this strategy.
A cloud storage firm not too long ago despatched me the outcomes of a bacterial research that claims the common set of headphones is dirtier than a typical rest room seat. On common, 1,073 micro organism colonies had been discovered on a mean pair of headphones, in contrast with 425 on a rest room seat. Laptops are additionally teaming with microbes, with a micro organism colony rely of 645. Telephones are surprisingly clear, with a mean of 187 colonies. Staphylococcus spp. and Micrococcus spp. had been the commonest bugs discovered on tech gadgets.
I gained’t be sharing headphones with anybody anymore.
2. Folks love Shazam. Loads
In 2002, Shazam began a service for British music followers. If a track got here on, you pulled out your dumbphone, dialled a quantity after which held up your telephone so it might “hear” the track you had been attempting to ID. As soon as it did, you bought a textual content message with the title and artist. Since then, it’s been become a smartphone app, purchased by Apple, and tailored for a cheapo primetime TV sport present. Earlier this month, it was introduced that Shazam has recognized 100 billion songs. The app averages about 2.6 billion tags a month and has someplace round 300 million month-to-month customers.
3. Wish to go all medieval on somebody? Musically, I imply
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Teenage Engineering is a unusual tech firm that makes some fascinating instruments, devices and instruments for the music-minded. Simply in time for Christmas, it has the EP-1320, a brand new drum machine/sampler that comes programmed with sounds from medieval instances (from 1320–geddit?). That features lyres, hurdy-gurdies, actually old-school drum sounds, and even some Gregorian chants. For US$299, you may principally create your personal Sport of Thrones soundtrack in your bed room.
4. The utterly pointless billionaire rap
One of many benefits of being a billionaire is that you are able to do no matter you need. One of many disadvantages is that there isn’t anybody to inform you “Cease it! No! Lower it out!” This was the case with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who insisted on releasing a canopy of a track referred to as Get Low (discretion suggested) with autotune grasp T-Ache. This wasn’t mandatory or welcome. After this got here out, some folks believed that Lara Trump was owed an apology.
5. This launch is much more disgusting
Earlier this 12 months, Inexperienced Day had some enjoyable celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of the Dookie album. In a unusual advertising transfer, they launched songs from the album on obscure and out of date music storage codecs, starting from an old style piano roll to an 8-track to a Sport Boy cartridge. There’s even a Massive Mouth Billy Bass (bear in mind these issues?) that can sing Basket Case for you. This vastly aggravated a thrash metallic group referred to as Belushi Velocity Ball. Through the years, they issued music in related methods and felt just a little ripped off. In response, they launched a model of their single That is the Peak on canine poop encased in epoxy. Just one copy was created and it offered on eBay.
6. Lily Allen’s toes
British singer Lily Allen revealed that she makes extra money from photographs of her toes on OnlyFans than she does along with her music. ? Solely US$10 a month. It was estimated that she’s hauling in US$8,000 a month earlier than taxes.
7. A victory towards unlawful AI music
HarmonyCloak is a brand new weapon towards unauthorized generative AI fashions. It really works by inserting “imperceptible, error-minimizing noise into compositions.” That noise can’t be heard by the human ear, however AI fashions do. It confuses the AI, making it “unlearnable.” If the track can’t be discovered, then it will possibly’t be replicated and even mimicked. All of the AI sees is a “disorganized, unlearnable dataset.” A Star Trek-style cloaking gadget for music? Yep.
8. Going for surgical procedure? Prep with the appropriate music within the restoration room
Researchers at California Northstate College School of Medication checked out 3,736 research, narrowing issues all the way down to 35 papers containing knowledge on affected person outcomes, specializing in issues like ache and anxiousness associated to surgical procedures. They discovered that simply listening to music after surgical procedure by audio system or headphones has a “noticeable impact” on ache and anxiousness ranges. Coronary heart charges dropped, as did ranges of the stress hormone cortisol. That meant much less reliance on highly effective painkillers.
9. The opera revival that had patrons working away screaming
A brand new tackle the 1922 opera Sancta Susanna debuted this fall in Stuttgart, Germany. When it first appeared, it was moderately scandalous with its exploration between lust and celibacy on this planet of Christianity. The brand new manufacturing took issues to a brand new degree with bare nuns on curler skates, bare performers showing as clappers in church bells, stay piercings, unsimulated intercourse acts and “a performer has a chunk of their very actual flesh minimize off and fried on a range.” Oh, and did I point out the dwarf dressed because the pope spinning round on some robotic contraption?
Though some viewers members reacted badly — many left, some acquired sick, and others required medical consideration — all performances had been offered out.
10. And eventually, this was chosen as one of many ’10 most arousing songs’
We’ll finish like we began with a survey pushed out by digital PR firm Reboot On-line. They did some cursory looking out by 750 songs to seek out out which boosted libido essentially the most. On the high of the chart was Sizzling to Go by Chappel Roan adopted by Flo Rida’s Good Feeling and Woman, Contact Your self by Nikki Idol. The remainder of the highest 10 was crammed with attractive pop songs. The one exception was this monitor from Canadian rock duo Black Pistol Fireplace. I used to be joyful to see them on the record, however does this do it for you?
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