It rained down in Cincinnati one day and somebody organized a little game of cards they was shy to man to make six and asked hi and Kari to play.
“I’m with you if you get AC and make it seven handed “says Kari.
so they got a hold of AC and we went up to Smitty’s room.
“I pretty near forgot how many you deal “says I like “it’s been a long while since I played “
oh my and Kari gave each other the wink, and sure enough, he was just as ignorant about poker as billiards. About the second hand, the pot was opened two or three ahead of him, and they was three in when it come his turn. It cost a buck, and he threw it in to.
“It’s raised, boys “somebody says.
“Gosh, that’s right, I did raise it “says Ike.
“Take out a buck if you didn’t mean to tilt her, “says Kari.
“No, “says Ike, “I’ll leave it go. “
well, it was raise back at him and then he made another mistake and raced again. They was only three left in when the draw come. Spirited open with a pair of kings and he didn’t help him. I stood Pat. The guy that raised him back was flushing and he didn’t fill. Smitty checked an Ike bet and didn’t get no call. He tossed his hand away, but I grabbed it and gave it a look. He had a king Queen Jack and 210s. Alibi IKEA must have seen me peeking, for he leaned over and whispered to me.
“I overlooked my hand, “he says. “I thought all the while it was a straight.”
“Yes, “I says. “That’s why you raise twice by mistake.”
there was another part that he came into with tens and fours.
it was tilted a couple of times and two are the strong fellas drawn ahead of AC they each dried one so I threw it away his little pair and came out with 410s and they were four trays against him Carrie looked at Eicks discards and then he says this lucky bum busted two pair
no I didn’t says ache yes you did says Carrie and showed us the two fours what do you know about that says like out of swore one was a five spot well he didn’t have no payday yet and after a while everybody except like was going shy I could see him getting restless and I was wondering how he’d make the getaway he tried to her three times I got to go buy some collars before supper he says no hurry says Smitty the stores here keep open all night in April after a minute he opened up again my uncle out in Nebraska ain’t expected to live he says I have to send a telegram would that save him ask Carrie no it sure wouldn’t says AC but I want to leave my old man know where I’m at when did you hear about your uncle says Carrie just this morning says AC who told you asked Carrie I got a wire from my old man says Ike well says Kari your old man knows you’re still here yet this afternoon if you were here this morning trains leaving Cincinnati in the middle of the day don’t carry no ball clubs
yes says like that’s true but he don’t know where I’m going to be next week ain’t he got no schedule asked Carrie.
I sent him one opening day says Ike but it takes mail a long time to get to Idaho.
I thought your old man lived in Kansas City says Carrie
he does when he’s home says Ike.
bw (“backed with” — like the b-side of a 45 rpm)
I found a 1996 Yankees press guide in a free library in front of a house around the corner and took it tinkers to Evers to chance.
I noted they were 19 Yankees in the first 90 years of the franchise that started with the letter E.
Raleigh east work stood out although he’s really a red likewise dock Ellis a pirate. There’s a John Ellis from the ‘60s but that stands out because that’s the name of my client or former client from the 20 aughts, that plays saxophone.
I noticed a Kid Eberfeld. Five foot seven I learn from my baseball encyclopedia which similarly stops time a wiles ago. Shortstop mostly. Bounced around a bit but did put several seasons together for the Yankees like 1903 to 1910. Born in Ohio died in Tennessee at age 69. The Tabasco kid only his mother called him Norman.
And1(which is a basketball term and out of season):
This is actually the nidus of the piece. There was actually a longer Version a wrote in my head, in the hour, about an hour ago but it went down the drain. And another version of this hand written in a journal. Short version: when my mom died I took stuff from the attic and went through it and either stored it or tossed it. I did walk the De Anza college flea market looking for a baseball vendor card who was supposed to be there, with some hope of unloading a trunk load of my childhood treasures. This stack I 6-4-3’d To a kid or the kid, Kid A as it were. There’s a bit of narrative here, like the pecuniary theme or monetary Don money Dave Cash. Norm cash maybe. Also and to really timely I am glad that the obituaries for Bob Watson remember that when I was 10 years old and he was in his 30s he scored the 1 millionth run in major league history. I wonder if I ever made 100 all time any league or level. Actually I was just about to write Moosie Barron of the Merc, to complain about the tech billionaires I first met him in little league. Also I spoke to David O’Such a star in my day and he mentioned the passing of two of our teammates Paul Hanley and Don Degrasse. Not sure if Kid A will guard the cards or sell them his choice really. Where have you gone, 1971 Luis Aparicio? This much I know:
Laura Veirs a singer-songwriter, mom, teacher and author in Portland, was slated to teach at Stanford April 4-5, then perform at The Mitch, April 6 — all postponed or cancelled due to the pandemic and “shelter in place”.
Laura meanwhile posted a tutorial on her Raven Marching/self-titled Youtube channel for “Galaxies” — now with nearly 2,000 views — and later nine other songs. I meanwhile, partly as a gift to Laura, and plaintiff whelp, send her prompt to some friends and family – -including other Earthwise at the Mitch performers, past and prosective.
Terry, Terry my wife, the artist and front line health care worker, Terry Acebo Davis, suggested Ben down the street. A few weeks elapsed — I had posted the six previous results — but today on our way back from not-the-farmers-market — the farmers-gray-market — we saw Ben and he appeared in rare form, the sun was just right and it was Shabbat, I thought to hit him up.
Ben L. from Palo Alto — not Ben my nephew in Daly City and not Ben in Portland who works with Laura – -and not me — ok, I do have a walk on or cameo, and I’m the camera guy, and I’m the Hal Willner of Downtown North, and a fan of the late great Mal Sharpe, “Man on the Street” — but my middle name is Ben, too, or Bennett and I briefly, when I was 8 signed my papers in Mrs. Todd’s class “Ben The Great”, with his response to Laura Veirs “Galaxies” just the barre chords, strumming pattern and first verse – -its about sadness or loss or people, and fish:
By the way I marked this one “sex” which means “gender” because Ms. Veirs is a woman, w, o, m, a, n, and “austistic” sic because the only time I’ve met her or seen her perform — half a set — was in Austin at SXSW in 2005.
Here is her tutorial: it’s actually A minor, C, G, F barre chords:
Here is the original which you will note has a very nice video and the song itself, the performance, is very well produced – -she was on Nonesuch for a while the best label for hard to categorize good music. A huge imprimatur. She found me thru Bill Frisell. I will report back if she either agrees to re-schedule – -no sooner than the fall, certainly, or officially passes. She is offering an online version of her songwriting course, or something like it.
I guess you could add “actor” to her CV:
coda:
Here is Sylvie S of SF — clip from the previously posted or published version — I called it the Earthwise Siphonophore Chorus named after a long-tailed sea creature:
Edit to add, later that day: i’ve watched Ben’s video 10 times it’s perfect; Rereading the text I realize that “plaintiff whelp” It is probably not the best I can do; I mean parentheses pleading parentheses Howl or yell or utterance parentheses maybe “Plaintive yelp” there was a dog in the scene plus a butterfly
I saw a Bong Joon Ho double feature and met the director in SF, in 2007, and then saw the movie twice and told a lot of people to go find it
Yesterday I read the Times’ preview of the TNT pilot of an adaptation of another Bong movie, “Snowpiercer” and commented that current Hollywood should do a remake of “The Host” as a comedy, with Jerry Stiller as the creature. (I had heard Terry Gross interview with Jerry Stiller in the car, especially while driving along the Alameda estuary).
Thinking of my friend Marsh McCall and a kid from Hebrew school named Ed Solomon.
Bong Joon Ho won the Academy Award of three of them for “Parasite” which I saw thrice, at Palo Alto’s Aquarius downtown. “The Host” which is a monster movie about distrust of government — in the way that “Godzilla” is about nuclear war — and it would be interesting to see it again in context of coronavirus. Which reminds me: I had posted to PAW and it was quickly deleted something that sought to link two threads, one about Tesla’s defiance of worker safety laws — separately Robert Reich was quoted as calling it “capitalism at its worst — he wants to put worker’s health sacrificed to profit” — and ramping up the testing — I suggested that all the tissue or fluid extraction was a presage to the story of “The Matrix” — how much blood do they need? I guess my suggestion would be randomized testing not billions of venipunctures.
I will try to watch “Snowpiercer” at least the pilot — I just saw the movie for the first time. The series stars Daveed Diggs of Berkeley and “Hamilton” fame. Does he get to sing? I also saw in WSJ before my wife tossed all my tear sheets, a quote from Gretchen Peters and an ad for a store in New Orleans selling Elvis’ wristwatch. Meanwhile the Chronicle had an article about Susan Skaggs founder of Different Fur, who passed at age 80; and about Stern Grove — with pictures of Pete the bluegrass activist from 1980 and Carlos Santa — Seeger — his niece Cassandra Seeger was a schoolmate — Carlos Santana rather — I meant to do a headline and its own post “Later later alligator for Tank and The Bangas and Stern Grove”.
Dig?
Seeks increase of $25 million in next budget to capture mustangs
Donald Trump (not shown — nor is the horse’s ass
The chronicle had a small wire item about wild horses in the Bureau of land management which I clipped out today. Reminds me that right before I started Earthways productions I would go to Bay area action meetings at the corner of Emerson and university in the basement of what is now west elm in fact salesforce I believe uses that basement and Bill Kimball TCV fund had recently the top floor. I believe Jim Baer arranged for Barry action to share the Ross stores site in that era 1992 through 1994 or so. And one of the project was called Pine PA NE and it had to do with supporting to get the Dann sisters western Shoshone of Nevada in their efforts to graze their horses and federal lands
I haven’t quite digested the new article or three or four things I found online other than it seems that privatization zealots are in charge of the 250,000,000 acres of Parkland they want to literally give each of us 1 acre.
it says they want to spend $1 billion to round up and maybe sell off for slaughter wild horses. In the short term they want to go from $80 million a year to manage these guys to $116 million and ramp that up to $250 million or so.
Timothy Egan has a story about the acting director of the BLM.
I sent a little note to an author and professor and activists in Laramie.
A bit too long a pull on Egan:
But you have to go pretty deep into the ranks of the Worst People to find someone equal to the man Donald Trump has now put in charge of your public lands — William Perry Pendley. This is another Onion headline that writes itself: Trump’s pick for public lands doesn’t believe in public lands.
The man now overseeing 245 million acres owned by every American citizen is a mad-dog opponent of the very idea of shared space in the great outdoors. He has spent his professional life chipping away — in court, in public forums, in statehouses — at one of the most cherished of American birthrights.
It’s easy to overlook the latest villain from this White House because the pipeline from hell just keeps churning them out. At the top, the occupant of the Oval Office never stops debasing his office: the racism, the nut-job conspiracy theories, the thumbs-up pictures with newly orphaned babies — and that was just during the last week or so.
But behind the tragicomedy of this presidency, some laser-focused opportunists have been cleaning up. Opponents of public health and safety, of clean water, open space and a chemical-free food chain have never had a better chance to run the show.
This week, it was a rollback of the Endangered Species Act, the most
BLUF: Facebook exacts threaten to pull out of silicon Valley unless they get their way which means quit it with all this democracy self governance stuff
I’m going to update this with a transcript. My recollection and paraphrase is they are saying: you don’t need public transportation because we 500 billion dollar market cap neighbor has all that covered. You don’t really need self-governance if you work for us or work with us. Democracy was only an experiment, the new thing is benevolent corporate Big Behebroth. (mixture of Big Brother and Behemoth, an old word for monster). Where do I sign up?
There was a black lady, a former Obama dude, and the real estate dude, who I think lives in Palo Alto, unless I am confusing him with the Google real estae dude. Tennis. Temes, something like that.
I think I did raise my hand and give some quick feedback. Maybe that is heckling and uncouth.
I shop at this cafe and chat up the owner and in fact have produced my own events there. Art, essentially, although art is subversive in that it requires having a heart and a brain.
Meanwhile, Palo Alto Weekly announced it took a $100,000 bribe from the same people. Or they applied for a grant and got it! Also, in a not necessarily related move, the food columnist for Palo Alto Weekly announced that founder of FB donated $100,000 to each of eight restaurants . And then somehow the pr person –maybe one of the five or six pictured above, explained which 8 restaurants were so honored. I mentioned something about Veruca Salt (the rock band, Seether — see here! — but also a character in a book but not actually a type of broth for ramen ).
Follow me on Plastic Alto,
partial bibliography:
Piketty, tho I have not read, I’ve read about;
Chomsky;
Bagdikian;
Jerry Mander, Absence of the sacred;
Roger McNamee on Zooked, but why does he continue to use the function? He livestreams his band there. Also: how much did he make going in and out of that investment?
I guess Walter Isaakson on Jobs especially the parts about music.
I guess Duck Soup by Marx Brothers.
Underworld by Don Delillo mainly because it’s baseball season
I was just reading 1,200 word excerpt –all in one sentence, no period or STOP — from “Absalom, Absalom!” 1936 by Faulkner. There is a remastered tape of his famous Nobel speech and we have been wrong he actually said “Man will not only persevere, he will remain. Or ramen. He will order ramen. Rock on! Right arm!”
Ray Bradbury about burning books or memorizing them and ice cream
George Packer, various, on Orwell, or “The Unwinding” or preview for such in The New Yorker.
edit to add, an hour later: I wrote my headline first, which is typical of this medium, blogging, or wordpress, and the opposite of both newspapers – -where the headlines are written much later by editors — or academia where my teacher maybe Professor David Shapiro said that if you write a paper and cannot think of a good title that you have not written a good paper — but I checked “mansplaining” is in the lexicon but likely not in my new Webster’s Illy — but I did find Rebecca not Eisenberg but Solnit in 2012 using it. And maybe men cannot use this term. But — and I also admit there is no “black woman” in my video, just four men – – three white and one non-white, perhaps, hard to tell — but the speaker is a man and the owner of the cafe is Kathleen Daly a woman It’s named for her daughter, Zoe, who now works there but likely was away at university in June, 2018. I’m using mansplaining or “man-splaining” in the sense of tech people and millenials and people hooked up to the Brave New World talking to we the subject people, or aspiring to be such. Rebecca Solnit says she started using the term in 2008.
andand:
More importantly perhaps, I am conflating two separate nightmares; one, that FB as our overlords we will not need government by We The People, just a bunch of real time thumps up and thumbs down,as we lift the toilet seat in the a.m. then again as we place it back down for wife. But here he is saying Silicon Valley is not really Silicon Valley anymore so watch out because some indicator says we went from $100B market cap to $550B market cap slower than had been predicted by some tout early round investor and maybe there are fewer places to get really good latte in Eugene, Oregon. And I am saying “Silicon Valley” is a shibboleth on both sides of the creek and I still try to sometimes remember the name that came before “Santa Clara Valley” although that is named for a saint I don’t know — Rupa Marya has a song that awkwardly uses the Coastanoan or Ohlone name for here, I think. Or Malcolm Margolin at Press has written about this. Stanford ironically has a plaque near their knew power plant that says this was once an Ohlone world. I am suggesting that 250 years of eurocentric Catholic rule — cue Ben Gibbard, who was on Colbert last night — will be a cake walk compared to the next 200 years of rule by The BeheBroth. The Nazis had IBM, but what’s coming next will have smartphones. By the way, Jack London has The Iron Boot which imagines a 500 year struggle for socialism. Not all the cards/books/cds have been dealt, my friends. Or unfriends. Also: Murder Most Foul by Bob Dylan, which mentions — back on topic — Steve Nicks and Lindsay Buckingham, who went to Menlo-Atherton. located two miles from Cafe Zoe.
I said on this social media page that she is sort of a cross between Rupa Marya the singing physician who lives in Oakland, Joshua Shedroff Redman the Berkeley high and Harvard grad who turn down Yale Law, and Helen Wills movie, the tennis champion and art student at SF Art Institute who also posed for a bust which is at the Deyoung.
Good luck at Harvard Ms. Wikstrom.
(also reminds me of my classmate Esther Berndt a champion runner at Gunn and a teacher and also pretty mean jazz sex)
Bw
she Also, if you can believe the Internet, Has an older sister named Clarisse Wikstrom Who also ran for coach kohles at skyline, goes to UCLA and is a hip-hop dancer:
Steal your face is a Grateful Dead trope circa 1970. I don’t know, US Blues? It’s the dead head sticker on the Cadillac— someone wrote recently that Shoreline Amphitheatre is designed as a steal your face. Hadn’t noticed. Not stoned enough.
meanwhile it turns out that a startup in nearby Sunnyvale near Shoreline near Levi’s where the Dead-ish played, reports scraping data on 20 million artists or their fans with the following findings (which I haven’t actually read):
SUNNYVALE, CA (edit) — Chartmetric is working to assist artists, songwriters, and others in the music and entertainment industry to improve their well-being during this pandemic by providing analytical data on the effect COVID-19 is having on music consumption across the world.
Guest post by Rutger Ansley Rosenborg, Jason Joven, and Nuttiiya Seekhao of Chartmetric
To help address the global music industry’s concerns about the COVID-19 pandemic, US-based music analytics company Chartmetric is continuously monitoring 2M+ artists across 20+ streaming and social media data sources.
We hope our data-driven analysis of COVID-19’s effects on music-related consumption helps artists, songwriters, labels, agencies, distributors, and other entertainment-related entities sustain and improve their well-being during these unprecedented times.
South Korea: Top 100 Artist YouTube consumption tended to have an inverse relationship with both coronavirus cases and web interest, indicating Koreans traded music for information as infections peaked. However, as a result of effective testing and tracing, the country rebounded quickly to normalcy on all fronts.
Italy: Daily videos views for the Top 100 Italian artists dropped as infections increased but quickly rebounded with quarantine, generally following the infection curve from there.
United States: The US Top 100 YouTube artists surged during lockdown, but as daily infections continued to rise, that demand failed to keep pace, perhaps because consumers turned to other non-music content or other sources of entertainment as the reality of sheltering in place indefinitely started to set in.
South Africa: Web- and YouTube-based interest in coronavirus correlated with a late-March spike for both daily infections and also daily Top 100 Artist YouTube views. Unlike other countries, for South Africa, music and information seemed to go hand in hand on YouTube during COVID-19.
Brazil: Once the celebratory period of Carnival died down for Brazil, the coronavirus crisis started to become real for the country, and Top 100 Artist YouTube consumption started increasing, followed by a slow decline for the next month — a decline, unfortunately, that’s not mirrored by daily infections, which numbered close to 6K by the end of April.
India: There was a striking decline in Top 100 Artist YouTube consumption here, perhaps a result of national school closures — or maybe because of over-the-top (OTT) mediums and news taking attention away from the YouTube platform altogether.
What we found was that global quarantine and social distancing measures appeared to be widening listenership for Classical, Ambient, and Children’s; narrowing listenership for Latin, Rap, Rock; and having less of an effect on Pop, Country, and Dance. The inflection point for these changes seemed to be happening around mid-March, correlating with a global peak in interest in “coronavirus” and lockdown orders going into effect in major markets like the United States.
Yet despite the success of audio-based streaming, Google’s video-sharing website YouTube stands as the second most visited website in the world, and one of the world’s primary sources for music consumption. According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), on-demand video streaming, of which YouTube makes up the vast majority, accounted for 47 percent of global on-demand music streaming. Premium audio-based streaming accounted for 37 percent, and free audio-based streaming accounted for just 15 percent.
As if that weren’t enough, YouTube’s market share is likely increasing even more as a result of quarantined consumers shifting their attention toward mediums that require multisensory engagement.
YouTube Consumption by Country During COVID-19
To better understand YouTube music consumption during COVID-19, our strategy was to look at a diverse subset of countries, both in terms of their representativeness of a certain region and also how differently COVID-19 lockdowns affected each in March and April.
Search portal Google and its subsidiary YouTube established themselves as the 1st and 2nd most visited websites in the world in 2018. (Source: Data Is Beautiful)
To select the group of artists we wanted to examine from each country, we recorded the Top 100 artists, in terms of YouTube video views during the week of Feb. 28-March 5, 2020, for each of the six markets we chose: South Korea, Italy, United States, South Africa, Brazil, and India. We attempted to focus on an international collection of music markets that also presented an assorted set of lockdown stories.
We then analyzed how their daily video views changed from the beginning of Jan 2020 to the beginning of April in order to get a better understanding of how different COVID-19 timelines and different cultural considerations impacted consumption behavior on YouTube for each country. We used the same “normalized average” calculation to best detect the YouTube music trends of each market, you can read our explanation of that trend-focused methodology in Part 1. (Note: Where applicable, we removed seasonality for the “weekend bump” in views that most music content experiences on YouTube to focus on the overall trend.)
Combining this data with coronavirus infection data from the World Health Organization, we found a diverse set of music market stories.
South Korea (No National Lockdown)
South Korea has been lauded for being one of the only countries in the world to effectively “flatten the curve,” or to level off the exponential infection rate of COVID-19. According to The Guardian, South Korea’s first case of infection was reported on Jan. 20, 2020, and for the next month or so, daily infections stayed in the single digits. By the end of February, infections ramped up to a daily peak of around 900; however, by mid-March, infections were already down to a daily range of 100-200. By mid-to-late April, the daily infection rate had gone back down to single digits.
South Korea’s testing and contact tracing are to be credited for the turnaround, though there were certainly some data privacy tradeoffs involved with this strategy, as much of the tracing data was generated through personal mobile devices.
This makes the East Asian country a particularly interesting — you might even say, shining — example to examine with regard to the effects of COVID-19 on music consumption behavior, because in theory, South Korea should exhibit the least dramatic changes in consumption trends … or maybe not.
South Korea’s YouTube interest for coronavirus peaked on Jan 28, 2020.
Judging by YouTube-specific topic searches of “coronavirus,” interest seemed to peak in late January. In other words, interest in the pandemic on YouTube was at its height for South Korea during the height of the crisis.
So, how does this track with the way South Koreans consumed their Top 100 artists on YouTube?
South Korea’s Top 100 Artist YouTube Views trend compared to WHO’s Confirmed Daily Infections.
At the end of January, when the first cases of COVID-19 were being recorded in South Korea, we see a decline in daily video views for the Top 100 South Korean artists on YouTube, potentially as a result of Koreans favoring information over these Top 100 artists during a time of uncertainty. If we look back to our Google Trends graph for coronavirus-related YouTube searches during this time period, there seems to be an inverse relationship between daily video views for South Korea’s Top 100 artists and daily COVID-19 queries on YouTube, suggesting that South Koreans, to some extent, traded music for information on the platform during the crisis.
However, daily infection rates do remain low from late January to early-to-mid February, so daily YouTube consumption appears to rebound to about 60-70 percent of where it started in mid-January. However, once daily infections begin to rise exponentially, daily videos views fall dramatically once again.
Just after South Korea’s late February daily infection peak, daily video views for these Top 100 artists reach a four-month low by early-to-mid March. It’s at this point when testing and contact tracing start to flatten the curve for South Korea, and both daily infections and also a considerable YouTube rebound after mid-March indicate the country’s return to normalcy.
Italy (National Lockdown: March 9)
After China, Italy was really the next global epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic. According to the Los Angeles Times, things really got serious, especially for the northwestern administrative region of Lombardy (home to Milan and Bergamo) in early March, with a region-specific lockdown going into effect on March 7. Sadly, by then, it was far too late.
Looking at Johns Hopkins University’s COVID-19 Map, daily infections had broken a thousand by March 7, increasing almost every day until Italy hit its daily peak of 6.6K on March 21. At the time of writing, the country’s daily infection count has yet to dip below 2K, and its total count is 203.6K.
Italy’s YouTube interest in coronavirus peaked on March 10, 2020.
Examining Italy’s YouTube searches for coronavirus, interest seems to suggest a before and after effect, whereby YouTube interest aligns with the point in time at which lockdown measures went into effect for the entire country on March 9. In other words, the day after Italians were forced to stay home, interest in the pandemic on YouTube peaked, likely as a result of two factors, 1) many residents spending more time on the internet doing what anyone does during uncertainty: seeking out information, and 2) people turning to a more engaging platform for that information.
Italy’s Top 100 Artist YouTube Views trend compared to WHO’s Confirmed Daily Infections.
Similar to South Korea, as YouTube interest in coronavirus-queries peaked on YouTube, daily video views for Italy’s Top 100 artists tanked. It was at this point in time that daily infections accelerated rapidly, reaching their peak in late March. Interestingly, however, YouTube consumption for this Top 100 cohort of artists rebounded quickly, nearly reaching its mid-February high and then surpassing it by early April.
With daily infections still in the thousands for Italy by late April, the country hadn’t reached the same sort of normalcy that South Korea had; however, the country’s demand for its top viewed artists seemed to increase following its daily infection peak, perhaps because Italians were sheltered in place — measures that Koreans weren’t subjected to by legal mandate — and streaming their favorite artists on YouTube for comfort.
United States (State-Level Lockdowns: March 19-24)
As tragedy continued to sweep Italy in March, daily infections in the United States were beginning to climb from the low hundreds in early-to-mid March to 34.1K on April 9. As we discussed in Part 1, mid-March was really the inflection point for the country, as social distancing recommendations and lockdown measures went into effect in New York City, which was soon to become the new global epicenter.
At the time of writing, the US has around 1.1 million confirmed cases of COVID-19, making it far and away the biggest global source of COVID-19 infections and giving the country an outsized effect on the global pandemic curve, global interest in the crisis itself, and behavioral changes in music consumption.
United States’ YouTube interest in coronavirus peaked on March 12, 2020.
As far as US-based interest is concerned, American shelter-in-place measures followed peak Google Trends interest, as YouTube searches reached their apex on March 12, likely in anticipation of what states like New York knew was coming.
But in addition to being the biggest global source of COVID-19 infections, the US is also the biggest global source of YouTube consumption. According to Alexa, in the last 30 days, the US accounted for 15.4 percent of global YouTube traffic, while India was close behind at 9.6 percent, and Japan rounded out the Top 3 with 4.7 percent. Within the US, according to Pew Research, 73 percent of American adults use the video streaming platform, as of early 2019, and much of that usage goes toward music — especially during the height of the pandemic.
United States’ Top 100 Artist YouTube Views trend compared to WHO’s Confirmed Daily Infections.
Similar to South Korea and Italy, YouTube consumption for the United States’ Top 100 artists hit its low in early-to-mid March, right around the time that YouTube-based interest in coronavirus started peaking, offering more credence to the idea of there being a global inflection point for consumption around then. And one that was inversely correlated with the search for information.
From there, for the US, daily video views grew alongside daily infections, much as they did in Italy; however, where Italy’s infections taper off somewhat from late March to mid-April, American infections continue to reach new highs throughout April as Top 100 YouTube consumption drops back to its early February levels.
In other words, as lockdown measures were enacted in major metropolitan areas across the country, YouTube consumption for America’s Top 100 artists surged, but as daily infections continued to rise, that demand failed to keep pace, perhaps because consumers turned to other genres or other sources of entertainment as the reality of sheltering in place indefinitely started to set in.
South Africa (National Lockdown: March 26-27)
By late March, South Africa had quickly become the African continent’s COVID-19 epicenter, “with more than 1K confirmed cases across the country’s nine provinces,” according to the New York Times. By April 30, that number had increased to a total of 5.4K, with a record daily infection count happening that day (potentially as a result of ramped up testing).
Relatively speaking, South Africa’s infection rate has been low, thanks in large part to some of the strictest lockdown measures in the world, with regulations banning jogging, dog-walking, park-going, and alcohol and cigarette retail for its population of roughly 59 million. Those restrictions were implemented on March 26 or March 27, depending who you ask.
South Africa’s YouTube interest in coronavirus peaked on March 23, 2020.
Judging by South African YouTube search trends on Google, interest was slightly ahead of strict lockdown guidelines going into effect at the day-level but pretty much in line at the week-level, likely because President Cyril Ramaphosa announced the measures on March 23, and South Africans knew what was happening around the world would likely start to happen there too.
According to Business Insider South Africa, YouTube is the second most active social media platform, with 84 percent of South African internet users depending upon it, making peak coronavirus interest on the platform on the date of President Ramaphosa’s lockdown announcement particularly interesting as a correlate to the music being streamed on YouTube at that point in time.
South Africa’s Top 100 Artist YouTube Views trend compared to WHO’s Confirmed Daily Infections.
Perhaps more than any of the other countries we’ve examined so far, peak consumption for South Africa’s Top 100 artists on YouTube just about coincides with the country’s peak daily infections in late march. From there, however, consumption declines to early March levels as daily infections rise but remain notably low compared to every other country we’ve examined.
Interestingly, it also seems, in the case of South Africa, that YouTube-based interest in coronavirus correlates with that late-March spike for both daily infections and also daily YouTube views. Unlike other countries, for South Africa, it looks like music and information go hand in hand on YouTube during COVID-19.
Beyond being one of the most COVID-ravaged countries in Latin America, Brazil is also one of the most digitally engaged, with an average of 9.5 hours spent on the internet by users aged 16 to 64 … every single day. Much of that internet usage goes to YouTube, which is, again, the No. 2 most trafficked website in the nation, next to Google itself.
Brazil’s YouTube interest in coronavirus peaked on March 17, 2020.
As far as “coronavirus” interest goes on Brazil’s No. 2 most trafficked website, there seems to be a clear correlational peak from March 15 to March 21. Like the US, Brazil is a democratic federal republic composed of many different autonomous states operating under the purview of a central executive, i.e., the president, so pinpointing one moment of national lockdown is complicated by President Bolsonaro’s reticence to acknowledge the pandemic.
That said, Brazil’s southernmost states, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande Do Sul, were some of the country’s first to institute quarantine and social distancing directives, and that happened on March 17 and March 19, respectively. Meanwhile, Brazil’s largest state, São Paulo, enacted a shutdown on March 24, which was announced on March 21. Both of these key lockdown dates more or less coincide with the nation’s peak week of interest, but unfortunately, not with peak daily infections, which have continued to climb exponentially, reaching 7.5K on April 30.
With some Brazilians staying home in late March and well into April, but others living in a state of uncertainty, YouTube consumption for the country should, theoretically, show somewhat of a delayed trend, relative to other countries.
Brazil’s Top 100 Artist YouTube Views trend compared to WHO’s Confirmed Daily Infections.
By and large, Brazil’s consumption of its Top 100 artists on YouTube actually looks quite similar to the other countries’ trends, with a fall, a rebound, and another fall. However, Brazil’s biggest decline happens in late February, before any confirmed infections are reported and long before the pandemic begins to have a measurable effect on the country.
The starting pattern here is somewhat of a mystery, as the first confirmed case of COVID-19 doesn’t occur until Feb. 25 (after the decline starts), coronavirus-related information searches on Google and YouTube don’t reach any notable peaks until mid-March, and only some state-level lockdowns happen in Brazil at all — and not until mid-to-late March. It’s worth noting, however, that Brazil’s Carnival, arguably the largest festival in the world, took place Feb. 21-26 this year, lining up almost exactly with this decline in Top 100 consumption and offering a potential cultural explanation for the anomaly: Brazilians were out celebrating during that five day stretch and not at home streaming music on YouTube.
Once the celebratory period dies down for Brazil, the coronavirus crisis starts to become real for the country, however, and Top 100 YouTube consumption begins its incline, followed by a slow decline for the next month — a decline that is, unfortunately, not mirrored by daily infections, which continue to climb at the end of April.
India (National Lockdown: March 24)
India, a world encompassing 1.38 billion people (4x the US population), is hard to conceive of as just a “country.” Second only to China in population size, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi enforced the country’s first-ever national lockdown on March 24, asking all 28 states and eight union territories to remain in quarantine until May 18.
Regarding its Internet use, India’s reliance on Google and YouTube would be an understatement. More than 98 percent of the country’s internet-connected population relies on Google for its search needs (more than the US at 88 percent), while 93 percent of its digital video viewers prefer YouTube over other providers.
India’s YouTube interest in coronavirus peaked on March 21, 2020.
India’s love of YouTube is further reflected in the fact that coronavirus-related YouTube searches peaked several days before the country’s March 24 lockdown but had been ramping up since late February, remaining relatively substantial well into early April.
Regarding its YouTube music presence, India simply dwarfs any Western conception of music streaming consumption: Famous Indian playback singer Alka Yagnik earned 240 million YouTube views (No. 1 in India) across her entire catalog in one week (April 17-23). American rapper YoungBoy Never Broke Again was No. 1 in the United States in the same week and earned less than a quarter of that amount (54 million). Bad Bunny (No. 5 in the US) did 13 percent of that, and Billie Eilish (No. 16 in the US) did 8 percent. On YouTube, Bollywood singers don’t just top the West’s biggest stars: They are in their own league altogether.
India’s Top 100 Artist YouTube Views trend compared to WHO’s Confirmed Daily Infections.
Looking at India’s averaged YouTube Views of its Top 100 artists, we see movement that is most likely correlated with the country’s COVID-19 lockdown: A stark 75 percent drop in views from the top of March until the end of April. But the seemingly “early” YouTube consumption drop proves that national lockdown (March 24) isn’t the only major factor to consider.
Coronavirus-related travel screenings, visa restrictions, and Bombay Stock Exchange reflections likely kicked up public awareness in early March, contributing to the initial decrease in market YouTube views for music content. But beginning around March 16 and ending around March 27, we see the largest fallout (around 60 percent) so far in 2020.
Our initial guess to this 11-day phenomenon was India’s nationwide closure of all schools and universities on March 16. With many of India’s young adults likely dispersing from university city campuses to their family’s homes, this could contribute to the initial change in music-related YouTube behavior (e.g., social distancing equals less get-togethers with music.)
However, now that upstart telecommunications provider Jio Reliance has shaken up the Indian mobile data scene since 2016 with nearly-free 4G access, the issue may actually be more related to over-the-top (OTT) mediums and news taking attention away from the YouTube platform altogether. Publicis Groupe India reported a 34 percent increase in “entertainment and OTT” within the first three weeks of March, which would make sense with everyone at home spending more time with their smart TVs, gaming consoles and other streaming devices. True to the news trends in other countries we’ve discussed, it additionally reported a 61 percent increase to “mainline” online news content between March 16-22, and a 50 percent increase in regional news content, both compared to a month earlier.
(Thanks to Aniket Rajgarhia at Outdustry for the local insight.)
Lockdown Blues Are Somehow in Lockstep
Knowing how each country’s lockdown narrative has played out, comparing their YouTube consumption trends, based on an average of their Top 100 artists, reveals an unexpectedly conformed set of trends.
Caption: A interactive, international comparison of each market’s averaged Top 100 artists (by YouTube views) from January to April 2020.
The obvious outlier here is India, which tracks with most of the group until experiencing a precipitous decline starting around March 16. Though peaking at the beginning of March, India’s Top 100 consumption dropped to 25 percent of that peak by the end of April. (Note: These are normalized trends, and not total consumption. India still more than doubles the US’ Top 100 artists’ views at 3 billion vs. 1.3 billion, respectively.)
It’s worth mentioning that the Indian music industry is a different animal than most Western markets. Indie has been tightly bound to the production of Bollywood films and the “playback” singers that voice the lead actors who lip sync in the movies themselves.
Though the rise of what’s called “non-film” music has begun to evolve the Indian music scene past its Bollywood origins, playback singers still rule the roost on YouTube, with the most recent Top 10 artists (totaling 1.1 billion views that week) all being playback singers. Unfortunately, Mumbai’s movie machine has ground to a complete halt, cutting off the pipeline of films and, as a result, its music work. So, while university students may be one reason for India’s March 16 decline, its April 18 decrease may correlate with a lag in the production of new content.
Save for perhaps Brazil’s likely Carnival-fueled decline in late February, generally speaking, the other five markets we examined are surprisingly in lockstep with one another, with an early-to-mid March dip in consumption followed by a rebound to normalcy. Each country might be experiencing — and reacting to — the COVID-19 pandemic in its own way, but its effect on all aspects of our lives is truly global.
(Methodology note: Each country’s Top 100 chart was different at the beginning of 2020 and potentially even more varied by the end of April. While this opens up the possibility for viral outliers and chart volatility, it also allows us to better track pre-coronavirus and post-coronavirus trends for the same 100 artists in each country.)
Stay tuned for our analysis of artist-level live-streaming in Part 3. You can subscribe to have it delivered to your inbox when
some people gather what another guy spills…
edit to add, later that night: ok I’ll bite. I do A & R artist and repertoire to the extent I’ve promoted 500 acts and artists and am always evaluating roughly 5,000 possible future headliners to work with. But these guys track 20 million acts. Wowee. Here’s how they do it :
Why Music Analytics Tools Matter for A&R Teams
Finding and developing new artists is really the backbone of the recording side of the music industry, but these days, discovery is less about stumbling across an unknown singer at an underground club and more about tracking the digital buzz on a hot, new track.
Historically, data hasn’t been much of a consideration for A&R teams, many of whom have relied on gut instinct, experience, and, well, taste. The difference today is the sheer amount of artists and music instantly available worldwide through DSPs (Digital Service Providers or Digital Streaming Platforms, depending who you ask). And while relying on only old methods in a new world may work, we think combining them is the best way forward.
Brief History of A&R
A&R, or Artists and Repertoire, really came into its own with the development of the recording industry. As the commercialization of the phonographramped up during the mid-20th century, the music industry was splitting from two sectors into three sectors: publishing, performing, and now, recording.
The technological disruption of recorded music at scale expanded the artist pool, because it opened up a whole other world of song interpretation and, consequently, consumption. The recording artist was born, and A&Rs were positioned to help them succeed.
Originally, the A&R role was tasked with matching artists to the right song and/or songwriter. Before the Beatles, after all, commercially viable artists who wrote their own material were pretty much unheard of.
As the album format reached full maturity with ‘60s/‘70s Rock, A&Rs were increasingly involved, in varying degrees, with every aspect of an artist’s development, from discovery to production, creative direction to career trajectory.
A&Rs weren’t just song pickers or talent scouts: They were the business-minded angels on artists’ shoulders, the bridge between the artist’s wildest creative impulses and the record label’s most stringent budgetary concerns.
But the digital revolution started to change the A&R landscape in two major ways:
Discovery wasn’t necessarily happening by chance in an underground club or through some random demo dropped in the mail. Discovery was increasingly happening on the internet through a groundswell of support from networked communities.
Development wasn’t all coming top-down from label to artist. Development could happen from the bottom-up, with artists having more opportunities to determine the trajectories of their own creative output, branding, and careers.
But as data becomes increasingly important as a supplement to gut instinct, some things have always remained consistent in A&R:
Predicting what will resonate with an audience.
Getting there first.
What A&R Looks Like Today
Today’s A&Rs are swimming in a sea of artists and an ocean of data. And that can be really discouraging, especially for a role that has traditionally privileged gut instinct over anything else.
Fortunately, being able to consume data in digestible bites can actually empower — rather than overpower — gut. In many ways, A&Rs are the creative life force of the business side of music, which is precisely what makes data analytics tools so important for A&R teams navigating the choppy waters of this new data-driven music environment.
From indie labels to major labels, A&R teams trawl this vast digital music seascape, hoping the right streaming playlist, social media platform, or music blog will catch them a couple of promising acts … out of the millions and millions of artists out there. It can be overwhelming.
How Chartmetric Can Help
In today’s music business, data analytics works really well for A&R teams as a fine mesh, filtering that sea of artists into small, observable tide pools that get you closer to the talent you were looking for all along.
Say, for example, you’re looking for an unsigned artist or band, in the Rock space, preferably from the U.S., since that’s where you’re based.
You can visit the Prediction Model within our A&R Dashboard to find more than 500 artists we’re predicting will reach varying levels of popularity on Spotify in the next week. If that seems like there’s a bit too much to go through with the 30 minutes you have for discovery today, then you can filter down to just the Rock, Punk & Metal genre, reducing this list of buzzing acts to just 152.
Uh oh, your boss just gave you a fire to put out … guess you only have 15 minutes now. Use the United States filter to whittle your list down to just five acts. Now, it’s time to listen to some fresh music while you check out each of these Artist Pages. There, you can dig into more detailed analytics to give you a comprehensive view of each artist’s story. How engaged are their listeners? What is their playlist reach to follower ratio? Are they really well in particular regions, with particular age groups, or on particular platforms? Do they need your help to diversify? In the end, hopefully you’ve uncovered an unsigned band worth reaching out to!
Who is Chartmetric?
We are a small, highly skilled team with members from diverse backgrounds, and that diversity is celebrated just as much as our work is. We’re talented solo artists, but we’re a much better band. We are as much music data rockstars as we are music superfans, and we thrive as a bridge between music and technology, data and creativity.
Sign up for a free account at chartmetric.com, dive deeper into our features at blog.chartmetric.com, and check them out for yourself. We can’t wait to see what you create.
Ed Solomon was in my Hebrew school car pool in 1973 when I was 8 and he was 11. There were a total of six of us in the car pool. Our mother’s drove. Ed made a sign that he held to the back window of the station wagon for the other driver’s to see: HONK IF YOU’RE HORNY. We had no idea what it meant but it sure was funny. Ed later did stand-up while at UCLA and then wrote “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” and “Men In Black”.
Meanwhile. I just posted 6 times at PAW about Mark Zuckerberg giving money to restauarants.
Posted by Mark Weiss, a resident of Downtown North,
1 hour ago
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I bought $45 takeout from that same Chef Chu’s and left a $5 tip. As a percentage of my actual cash on hand, this would be equivalent to Zuckerberg giving away $100m.
The Covid-19 could be a deal-breaker for capitalism. Revolution, crime or LLCs to DAF’s and a pledge — your call, RichieRichieRichieRichie Rich.
comment Posted by Mark Weiss, a resident of Downtown North,
1 hour ago
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There could be a dish named for him at the ramen place called Veruca Salt.
this comment Posted by Mark Weiss, a resident of Downtown North,
59 minutes ago
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You see, there are five types of broth at Dohatsuten: Soy, Salt, Spicy Miso, Tonkotsu, Vegetarian Soy.
Whereas Veruca Salt, before it was an indie band, was a bratty rich girl in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” movie.
So I’m riffing on two or three pop references and calling Zuck a brat, ok?
I have a yolk about Oompa Loompas but it’s too rich for these pages.
Seether.
comment Posted by Mark Weiss, a resident of Downtown North,
48 minutes ago
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I heard that one of the PayPaly mafia just gave a bilion dollars to Bird Dog Restaurant, the former Mandarin Gourmet the former El Dorado Mexican although it will be paid out in avocados from a special tree, one avocado per year for 125 million years — it’s an $8 avocado.
Posted by bentrick, a resident of Charleston Meadows,
41 minutes ago
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The Cinderella Solution is a weight loss program design specifically for women that reveals to you a simple 2 step ritual that will help you achieve weight loss. Web Link
Posted by Mark Weiss, a resident of Downtown North,
34 minutes ago
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You know for that same $800,000 he could have turned Dan Gordon’s into a comedy club and gotten Jo Koy to play his “grand opening”
Posted by Mark Weiss, a resident of Downtown North,
29 minutes ago
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O Brother Where Arf Thou?
(I’m riffing on my two prevoius jokes, about the ramen place and Bird Dog — “arf” is the sound a dog makes; “broth” is a play on “brother” and also a movie, two movies, one by the Coen Brothers and one by Preston Sturges. Ok?)
Posted by Mark Weiss, a resident of Downtown North,
22 minutes ago
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Which reminds me: it was five years ago to the day that EK bid adieu to Jacquetta Lannan, who ran an upscale hot dog stand in the site of the former Know Knew Books, which i wanted her to call A Confederacy of Dunces but was actually called Chez Franc.
Coinkydinky, when I was an undergrad at Dartmouth, a wee bit before Jacquetta’s time, we used to have a yearly contest called The Smith College Weiner Queen.
Web Link
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19 minutes ago
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Not only am I calling Zuck a brat, he is the wurst type.
edit to add: I have to admit that I did not just jump from Mark Zuckerberg as a bratwurst to Ed Solomon Honk if You’re Horny, but I stopped at Sean Penn as Jeff Spicoli calling Mr Hand “dick”
andand:
Actually I went to Peet’s for the first time in months, and that was 12 hours ago — -and then on my own blog I was recalling that the guy who wrote Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure was in my Hebrew School Carpool….I actually met Zuckerberg on the night that he commissoned David Choe to paint a mural on his first office space, above Jing Jing. I gave Choe $20 for a calendar of his art work — years later it was revealed that Choe was offered $20K cash for the mural or FB stock options which he took and made him a millonaire but I reckon that if I hadn’t come along with that $20 he might have took the cash from Zuck and shorted himself the stock options.
Meanwhile, when I tried to fact check my own story Choe had posted that the coda of the story is that the City of Palo alto had sent FB a fix-it letter claiming that FB was liable for the damages caused by Choe dripping paint on the sidewalk — so rather than Palo Alto being an incubator of tech somehow, which we sometimes claim to be, we were actually a nuisance to FB.
But I don’t use that social media — don’t want to give the broth the satisfaction of my data — and I know the difference between a 501c3 and a Donor Advised Fund via a LLC. The reason the article says that it was a gift from his personal account and not from his ZCI fund is that that fund is subject to audit, and restricted to 501c3s.
If these billionaires gave away their entire fortunes except their primary residence and tried to get by just on their wits, their contacts and their good name, I’d be impressed. But i’m not impressed with giving away a billion dollar if you got a billion dollar hole card, so to speak. hot dog!
Some one once said “I’d rather be lucky than good” — I say “I’d rather be funny than good lucking”
Try the veal.
This is an Ellington song made famous for Mahalia Jackson version:
I haven’t quite digested the new article or three or four things I found online other than it seems that privatization zealots are in charge of the 250,000,000 acres of Parkland they want to literally give each of us 1 acre.
Try:
Plastic Alto with Mark Weiss 