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Annoyed by Restaurant Playlists, a Master Musician Made His Own
- morganvachon 8y agoSakamoto is one of my all time favorite composers. If you like stripped down, bare piano music you should check out his BTTB (Back to the Basic) album. It's my go-to relaxation spin.
- code_duck 8y agoDefinitely a great musician and I don’t think most people in the US realize how influential Sakamoto and YMO were worldwide, and how famous they are in Japan. I did not know until recently. Sakomoto, Haruimi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi created not only several seminal YMO albums, but also dozens of solo albums and projects with a sound that often preceded American and European music by a few years. They are credited with laying the groundwork for techno, electro pop, and dance music. Also, Sakomoto’s influence can be heard in 8 and 16 but Japanese video game music from the 80s and 90s. I’m fact, Yuji Naka is Sega even said he started programming after being inspired by YMO’s electronic music. Ryuichi Sakomoto offering to make a playlist for your restaurant is about like having George Harrison or David Bowie offer to do it.
- code_duck 8y agoSorry about the typo cluster - I meant ‘8 and 16 bit’ and ‘In fact’, and ‘of Sega’. It’s distressing to think I proofread that.
- kevin_b_er 8y agoAlas not a single mention of if these songs required a whole different set of licenses to play. The act of changing the song list can lead down to a confusing licensing set as there's at least 4 different licensing authorities, each covering a differing set of songs.
- eric_the_read 8y agoMy understanding is that if you ever have considered playing music in a business, you pretty much have to get licenses for all of them. AFAIK, ASCAP/BMI/Whoever don't operate their own services, so you're always at risk, if you don't get licenses from everybody, that whatever service you use will play a verboten song and poof there go your profits for the last N quarters.
- mrhanks 8y agoAt least with the ones above (Soundtrack Business), all that licensing seems to be included at least in US/CA. Sounds really complicated to deal with each one otherwise...
- yellowcherry 8y agoSpotify has a service for businesses that includes all the relevant license fees. https://www.soundtrackyourbrand.com/help https://www.soundtrackyourbrand.com/help
- cm2012 8y agoUseful link!
- majos 8y agoConfused. Do restaurants have to pay to play songs?
- gowld 8y agoYes, because they are playing for a large audience, which isn't covered by the licenses that you use at home.
- TimTheTinker 8y agoIt’s not about whether the audience is large or small. Performance rights are about whether it’s public or private and the venue is paid or free. For private use where those present are by invitation only and haven’t paid to be there, I don’t think any further license is necessary, beyond simply owning a copy of the work to be performed. (IANAL; correct me if I’m wrong.)
- thehnguy 8y agoIf others agree with the author’s opinion, it makes the case for curation like Apple Music launches with and has been touting as a differentiator.
- dbt00 8y agoThe best music curation I experienced was a service called Songza, which was acquired by and absorbed into google music. I still have a subscription to google play music, even though the songza playlists had gotten hard enough to find at one point that I stopped trying. This article & discussion was enough for me to stop working briefly and go research whatever happened, and apparently Peter Asbill is still at Google and I should try again. Update: holy shit, yeah.
- acheron 8y agoI loved Songza as well. It was a sad day when Google bought them out.
- funkjunky 8y agoAny recommended playlists? I'd like to check some out, but Google music doesn't specifically tag the Songza playlists
- efm 8y agoTry random play. It'll spin up a thematic playlist.
- efm 8y agoGoogle Play music has very listenable curation now. So worth it.
- toomanybeersies 8y agoIt's not a good restaurant playlist if it doesn't have Massive Attack or Bonobo! The thing that drove me bonkers when I used to work in restaurants was the monotony of listening to the same 2-3 hour playlist on repeat all day, every day. Certain songs still trigger me if I hear them today. They're fundamentally linked to the restaurant and I always feel a flood of memories when I hear them.
- cncrnd 8y agoI often put a song on repeat for a day or two. When I hear the song later, it's linked to the place I was at and the work I was doing at the time. For example, 'Strobe' is linked to waking up early and working in a coffee shop/lounge area with black tea and a banana. I remember reading something about music being one of the last things to go for patients with dementia, I wonder if there's something related going on there.
- subpixel 8y agoI am dating myself here but there was a period of _many years_ where trendy restaurants seemed to be competing to see who could play the most tracks by the Gypsy Kings.
- Fnoord 8y ago> It's not a good restaurant playlist if it doesn't have Massive Attack or Bonobo! Different people from different backgrounds and social status want to hear different music. How do you attract your target audience? That's the problem to tackle.
- ilamont 8y agoI would prefer that music not [be] the result of algorithmic computation. This is the problem with so many playlists, automated DJs, and the like. You get the monotonous "best hits" compendiums or ham-handed, jarring mixes with no sense of flow. This is one of the reasons why I ditched Amazon Music. Many of them seem to be programmed by algorithm ... or by people who have no idea what they are doing.
- gjstein 8y agoI've been pleasantly surprised to find that there are a number of music podcasts that satisfy my music needs on a weekly basis. A number of artists I like have weekly "radio" broadcasts that curate music that's caught their ear. (I listen to mostly electronic music though, so YMMV for other genres.)
- rainbowmverse 8y agoYou might be interested in my new weekly electronic music podcast: https://www.patreon.com/digitalscofflaw/posts?tag=Fox%20Populi https://www.patreon.com/digitalscofflaw/posts?tag=Fox%20Popu... It's all original. I create songs with lots of variations for myself in Ableton to help me focus, then hit record and let it run for ~20 minutes. People seem to like the results.
- Sukotto 8y agoYes, me too. If you're interested, my current list is: - A State of Trance with Armin Van Buuren (though recently he's started adding much more talking so I'm close to dropping it) - Club Life with Tiësto - Hardwell on Air - Corsten's Countdown - Afrojack: Jacked Radio (this one is really hit-or-miss for me. I skip maybe half the episodes) As an aside: - the "Song Exploder" podcast is a fascinating view into what goes into making music though that one falls into the "Talk" category - I love the old "Timeless Mixes" by the (now defunct) DJ River. Which are helpfully all available as a podcast, so once in a while I'll mark a few of them as unplayed so my player will download them and add them to the playlist.
- 8y ago
- sunstone 8y agoIf you're looking for sophisticated but understated dinner music you could do a lot worse than Lenny Breau's "Guitar Sounds". You probably have to torrent to get it but it's worth the effort.
- the_cat_kittles 8y agohell yea, lenny breau was an unbelievable talent. and very often forgotten when people talk about great guitarists.
- executesorder66 8y agoI can't remember the last time torrenting anything had any noticeable effort required.
- b1daly 8y agoAs an aside, I think there has been some interesting trends in the playlists used in public businesses, and mostly for the better. For example, a few years ago I noticed that Walgreens would generally have pretty good pop music playing. But what was most striking was the songs were not hits, or perhaps older hits, even though most were from major label productions. I have surmised that companies providing these playlists might be able to negotiate better deals with the publishers, directly, giving the publishers (and writers) an opportunity to monetize their back catalog.
- dingaling 8y agoIn the UK the broadcast station Virgin Radio used to use "classic album tracks" as its strap line. It was a really good way to dive deeper into the back-catalogues of bands.
- Animats 8y ago“The color of the wall, the texture of the furniture, the setting of the room, wasn’t good for enjoying music with darker tones.” First world problem. My favorite source of background music is "radiocoast.com". Not because it's that great, but because someone figured out a way to beat the music industry. He got a collection of background music records made for the Seeburg 1000 and 2000. Seeburg was a jukebox maker in Chicago. As a sideline they sold background music devices which played a big stack of special records over and over - 1000 or 2000 songs. They bought the rights to the music, and their own orchestra recorded them. So they had full content ownership. The records had a nonstandard groove width, a nonstandard diameter, and a nonstandard hole size; DRM, the early years. They were not copyrighted and predate the "no formalities" copyright law. So anyone with the records can legally distribute the music. Which "radiocoast.com" does.
- d33 8y ago> First world problem. Why is that wrong for first-world people to tackle first-world problems? Just because you don't believe in a particular piece of psychology doesn't necessarily have to make it untrue. Seriously, it's quite annoying to see problems dismissed just because they're "first world problems". Comfort is important and we're proven to process things subconsciously.
- Fnoord 8y agoBecause sometimes, good is good enough and someone being "annoyed" is just pitching themselves as a niche into the market.
- GoToRO 8y agoNobody said it's wrong. Everyone has the right to choose the kind of problems he/she would like to solve.
- code_duck 8y agoSakamoto is also passionate about his activism for the environment (anti-nuclear) and copyright law reform.
- donquichotte 8y agoThis reminds me of a bar I used to frequent that had an electronic jukebox. It was quite the redneck place, and the music was accordingly heavy. Every once in a while my friends and I would go to the jukebox and select a full length record of Concierto de Aranjuez that lasted like 25 minutes. It toned down the raunchy atmosphere and made the place quite enjoyable.
- modells 8y agoSpotify needs a location-based check-in system where an users’ tastes vote for piped music play, and/or some way to vote on the next song: like a distributed, semi/automated what was turntable.fm.
- bochoh 8y agoCheck out Rockbot. My gym uses it to crowdsource the next few songs. If you're not at a location that uses it you can tune into their HQ and play music for their employees presumably. Unfortunately you can hear it yourself.
- paulie_a 8y agoThat would be a very interesting, I love Spotify in combination with SoundHound for creating playlists. But being able to cross reference/get better suggestions that way would be neat.
- the_dege 8y agoThis is a copy of the playlist made by the nytimes: https://open.spotify.com/user/nytimes/playlist/2YY3rAwm9tldNhlBmuMqgY https://open.spotify.com/user/nytimes/playlist/2YY3rAwm9tldN...
- archi42 8y agoI always would love to have a curated playlist by someone like Ayreon to "just listen to great music", and not those boring playlists on spotify. Back when I in my teens and the golden age of MP3 was upon us I had more time to do this myself, but nowadays I am getting a bit lost on it all (not enough time to "just discover"). Nice to see this guy tackled the issue (even if for another setting).
- code_duck 8y agoMusic selection is a big deal for spaces where people plan to spend social time. I think the reason a lot of places get it wrong is because they are simply not operated by people with good musical taste who understand how important it is to other people. Starbucks employs music curators: https://www.fastcompany.com/3067250/meet-the-music-nerds-behind-the-tunes-you-hear-at-starbucks https://www.fastcompany.com/3067250/meet-the-music-nerds-beh... I saw an article recently which told a tale of trendy coffee shops featuring where obscure but desirable music selected by expert hipster curators. Supposedly, some ask employees to track the number of people they see using Shazam, that being considered a sign of success. I have spent a lot of time in coffee shops while traveling, and I do recall hearing a few songs which stuck with me that I couldn’t find any trace of on the Internet, even after asking in the specific subreddits for the bands related (a unique cover of the Cure, for instance). That certainly doesn’t happen at Dunkin Donuts. Unfortunately I’ve been unable to locate this article.
- ruslanmsv 8y agoWhy is this on hacker news?
- bpicolo 8y ago> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
- woodrowbarlow 8y ago(somewhat off-topic) in school, i took a wonderful class about computer music, taught by the eccentric composer and charismatic professor Dr. Rodney Waschka III. he dedicated one class to the topic of royalties and the three major artist guilds. we learned that any business that wants to play the radio will usually just pay subscriptions to all three guilds rather than keeping track of royalties owed to individual artists. when Waschka organized campus concerts in this niche and highly academic field of art, these concerts would naturally be performances of pieces written by himself and his colleagues from other universities... so the university paid royalties to Waschka and his colleagues, who would then use the money to commission each other to compose new pieces.
- chasingthewind 8y agoI expect to be a lonely voice saying that I actually dislike music playing in the background anywhere I go. I'd rather hear white noise or just the background noise that's present. This will sound a bit nutty, but I've always felt that music is trying to "tell me how to feel" in a sense...as if it's trying to hack my brain and influence my mood. (I'm personifying the music...or perhaps mistrustful of the motives of those playing it?) If a "happy" piece of music is playing then I feel like I'm being influenced to feel happy. If sad/melancholy music is playing I feel like there's an outside influence that's trying to induce me to feel sad. Long story short I find background music to be incredibly distracting and somewhat frustrating.
- kelnos 8y agoI agree, but I think more in just a noise level sense. If I'm among the first few to arrive at a restaurant or bar, and it's nearly silent, I don't find that desirable, so some music is nice (or, as you suggest, some white noise, though that might be weird). But once there are enough people in a space to achieve a comfortable background din, the music should just be shut off.