I'm not really supposed to do self-promotion here... but I was featured on What's in my NOW? if you care to give it a gander.
Kevin Kortum
225 postsPosts by Kevin Kortum
š§» I hate the Pantone color of the year
designIn fashion language, white suggests luxury, like, you donāt have to work, because if you worked, youād wear a more practical color that wonāt get stained within 5 minutes. Staying clean is a privilege ā the aristocracy keeps their hands clean and the working class gets dirty for them.
Iām going to go out on a limb and play the contrarian: I kinda like the color of the year. But I do think they are on to something here when it comes to privilege, white nationalism, etc. Especially as the class gap continues to grow and people with abhorrent views continue to show their true colors.
š¼ Quitting Spotify, ethics, and pay per stream
musicI donāt think itās ethical to use Apple Music, but I DO think itās unethical to use Spotify. I donāt think the āHow to quit Spotifyā article made any point other than finding a more ethical alternative to Spotify, which isnāt hardā¦ and yes, pay per stream has to be a part of that equation.
Related to the previous entry on pay-per-stream, in typical Crucial Tracks fashion, Jason nails everything here, including why Spotify isnāt a great place to be and why you canāt just shrug off the pay-per-stream part of the discussion. Just because thereās no ethical consumption under capitalism, doesnāt mean you canāt tryāespecially when you can do so for the exact same price.
š¤ Inside the Creation of Tilly Norwood, the AI Actress Freaking Out Hollywood
aiOver the next six months, Van der Velden toiled with her 15-person team to nail down the look of her leading lady, creating 2,000 iterations of an actress unbound by the limits of physical ability, age or talent.
In recent weeks, she has signed about 60 nondisclosure agreements for hybrid movies (with real actors), full AI films and Tilly-specific projects, most of them in the $10 million to $50 million range.
This is so embarrassing. It took a 15-person team to ānail down the lookā??? There are thousands (if not millions) of individual artists who can draw a person with any detail and look you desire. And why would someone pay a human actor $5 million when you can pay an AI actor $50 million. What on earth are we doing here???
šŖæ Will Geese Redeem Noisy, Lawless Rock and Roll?
musicIn the months since Geese released its third studio album, āGetting Killed,ā the band has been rhapsodically heralded as the redeemer of a certain kind of noisy, lawless rock and roll.
Spoiler alert: Getting Killed is making my top ten albums of the year. Easily. I wasnāt a huge fan of their last album, but singer Cameron Winter released his debut solo album, Heavy Metal, which made my top ten last year, and theyāve done a great job of combining the sounds and styles to make something thatās absolutely wonderful.
šµ Pay per stream is a messy metric
musicSo Iāll ask again, would you rather have had your music listened to by more people and you earned more money, or would you like to have had fewer people listen and make less money?
Iām sorry, but this is nonsense. The whole point of the conversation is to move people off of Spotify and to other places. If more people move to other streamers, those streamers will start paying the artists moreā¦ So if an artist had a choice of where theyād prefer people listen to their music, theyād choose the one that pays more per stream every day. This is even before getting into the real ethical issues with Spotify when it comes to how they do business and the actions of their leadership. Plus, if you have only now heard of Qobuz, then itās clear this isnāt actually a topic youāve spent much time on or cared about beforeā¦ (For the record, I use Apple Music because we pay for Apple One as a family.)
