New Yorker – Jonathan Frei

The Rise of Twitter Bots

Jonathan Frei — Fri, 06 Dec 2013 18:12:10 +0000

The New Yorker has an interesting look at the robotic side of Twitter and the challenges the service will face as it becomes a bigger business.

As a service, Twitter’s greatest strength is that its users have total control over whom they follow and what they see. As a business, Twitter’s greatest opportunity is in violating that control with advertisements.

Adam Green: The Spectacular Thefts of Apollo Robbins, Pickpocket

Jonathan Frei — Sun, 03 Feb 2013 01:41:05 +0000

Adam Green: The Spectacular Thefts of Apollo Robbins, Pickpocket

Wow. Just wow. The opening anecdote is great, and it just gets more interesting.

Mass produced hits

Jonathan Frei — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 11:00:06 +0000

Mass produced hits

John Seabrook of the New Yorker shows how the Top 40 sausage is made.

Most of the songs played on Top Forty radio are collaborations between producers like Stargate and “top line” writers like Ester Dean. The producers compose the chord progressions, program the beats, and arrange the “synths,” or computer-made instrumental sounds; the top-liners come up with primary melodies, lyrics, and the all-important hooks, the ear-friendly musical phrases that lock you into the song. “It’s not enough to have one hook anymore,” Jay Brown, the president of Roc Nation, and Dean’s manager, told me recently. “You’ve got to have a hook in the intro, a hook in the pre-chorus, a hook in the chorus, and a hook in the bridge.” The reason, he explained, is that “people on average give a song seven seconds on the radio before they change the channel, and you got to hook them.”

It’s depressing to think that some music has become less art and more science.