Category Archives: Snippets

A short post of a quick snippet, like a link

Music for this Friday evening: The Big Moon, Live

OK, not just for this Friday evening, but for any evening really. First watched it / listened to it a few days ago and I’m certain I will watch and listen to is many times again. An absolutely stunning performance by The Big Moon with three songs from their latest album “Here Is Everything”:

The Big Moon – The Big Moon: Live

I hope they do more like that. While I think their videos to the studio recordings are among the best if not the best this might be even better.

Bass Drum of Death – Get Found

The song is over a decade old, but I only came across it a few weeks ago. It’s been on heavy rotation ever since and probably will be for quite some time. I love the “dirty” sound, the guitar riff, the banging drums, the pounding bass. And the band name is pretty cool as well.

Bass Drum of Death – “Get Found” (Official Video)

What do you think, do you like it?

PS: I probably should write a Bands New To Me entry about them, they have a few more nice tunes…

Yay, a new Skating Polly song!

It’s loud, it’s noisy, it has guitar, is has bass, it has drums. And a fun video. All is good.

Skating Polly – Hickey King (Official Video)

Unfortunately never wrote a Bands New To Me post about them (I started that series later), so can’t link to more from them (yet). Have to think about a series Bands I Discovered A While Ago series. And catch up on 2022.

Social media digging its own grave by prioritising paid customers?

A few days ago I was reading a Bloomberg Tech Newsletter with the title Meta, Twitter Subscription Plans Risk Turning Off Everyday Users. Twitter had its paid subscription for some time, since the Elon Musk take over that’s been accelerated. Meta (Facebook) is implementing a similar plan now. Both apparently driven by shrinking advertising revenue. So far, so understandable. What I’m wondering about is hidden in these two paragraphs:

Still, what I find most telling about these subscription offerings is that the platforms will soon prioritize content from paying users over others. It’s a reminder that social networks have evolved away from the original premise of being a place to see mostly posts from your “friends and family.” They are instead focusing on attracting a certain kind of person – the creator – who makes fun skits or videos or blog posts.

Professional creators seeking more eyeballs have historically had to pay for advertising. Now, there’s another way — and the content that rises to the top because it was made by subscribers may not actually be as entertaining or interesting.

Meta, Twitter Subscription Plans Risk Turning Off Everyday Users

Both Facebook and Twitter are already full with advertising (or as they call them, “sponsored posts”), often of very dubious quality. If to that the algorithms will add the posts of paying users, or as they call it, will prioritise that content, will that not make the timeline of the average non-paying user even more unappealing as the updates from their friends will almost disappear?

What are the chances of this turning off the average non-paying users? Which in turn would mean the paying users hoping to get more impressions not getting what they are hoping for as well as the advertisers not getting their ad views, further reducing advertising revenue for the social media companies.

Are they hoping to convert more non-paying users to paying users in order to improve their timeline? I doubt that, considering they have been conditioned to “free” for many years, even decades. So could this make average users to reduce their social media time? Which in turn could also turn off the above mentioned paying users as their prioritised posts are reaching fewer people? Making the social media companies losing even more revenue?

Will be interesting to see how this develops over the coming years I think.

Wide Eyes – The Big Moon

Two years ago I mentioned The Big Moon in my Bands New To Me series. They are obviously not new to me any more, but I still love them just as much as when I discovered them, if not more. Their third album is about to be released and even though the topic of it isn’t something I can relate to I love the first single from it:

The Big Moon – Wide Eyes

The Guardian has a great interview with them, a very interesting read I think (explaining why I can’t relate to the topic of Wide Eyes). The first two singles released from it (Trouble is the second one) make me look forward to the album release in October.

PS: if you were to ask me for my favourite artist for their videos, The Big Moon is most likely to at least be among the top 3, more likely the winner. It is mentioned in the interview, the video to Take A Piece I think is brilliant. But there are plenty other brilliant videos by them. Don’t know how they do it, but they just continue to deliver as far as I’m concerned.