What’s In This Issue?
This Week’s Main Stories
Story 01Tik Tok Asks Influencers To Tell People To Stop Using The App
Story 02The Future Of Melodies and Remixing Music
Story 03Smithsonian Offers Open Access To Over 3 Million Files
Story 04Volvo Does It Again With Their Latest Ad: "The Tower"
Story 05Cactus Leather: The New Eco-Friendly Fabric
Story 06Will Movie Theaters Survive With A Subscription Model?Tik Tok Asks Influencers To Tell People To Stop Using The App
This week Tik Tok users started seeing videos from some of their favorite influencers asking them to stop scrolling, go outside, or hang out with friends in real life. It's all part of a new @TikTokTips account meant to discourage addictive behavior on the app. Along with the platform's parental tracking features, it's yet another sign that this growing social media platform is trying to proactively help their young user base find the right balance between their phones and their real lives.
The Future Of Melodies and Remixing Music
What if there were a finite number of melodies that could encompass every song ever written? In a recently released TEDx talk, musician/technologist/lawyer Damien Riehl talks about mapping the entire melodic range, copyrighting them and then releasing them all into the public domain. In related news, the company behind popular games Rock Band and Guitar Hero announced a new game where players can remix music and mash together popular songs. It seems we are headed toward a musical future where remixing, quantified melodies and even music generated by algorithms may all become more common.
Smithsonian Offers Open Access To Over 3 Million Files
For the first time in its history, the Smithsonian is releasing open access to nearly 3 million archived pieces of art from its collection. As senior digital program offer Effie Kapsalis shares, "we can’t imagine what people are going to do with the collections. We’re prepared to be surprised.” A clue about one of those surprising uses comes from a feature on travel site Atlas Obscura about the work of an "archaeobotanist" who is using old paintings of fruit to identify plants that once existed but no longer do. Given past stories I have shared about extinct crops and the dying banana, this usage of old art to revive lost flora is just one of the unique ideas that this new open access collection might enable.
Volvo Does It Again With Their Latest Ad: "The Tower"
It is impressive just how consistently Volvo has gotten the world to pay attention to advertising for a product most of us will never buy. Rather than the narrow-minded approach taken by most B2B marketers, Volvo uses big stunts that command attention. Years ago their award winning ad "The Split" featured action star Jean Claude Van Damme doing a split between two moving trucks. Their latest ad has a "tower" of four models of Volvo's trucks stacked on top of one another to demonstrate their body strength. It is visual, interesting and has predictably gone viral.
Cactus Leather: The New Eco-Friendly Fabric
Most "vegan leather" products use plastic in their production, but now a new Mexican company called Desserto has introduced a new form of leather made from cactus plants that is getting rave reviews. As sustainable sourcing grows into a major force in the world of fashion, this type of innovation will be more commonplace and exponentially more important.
Will Movie Theaters Survive With A Subscription Model?
The AMC movie theater chain is struggling. Last year, Netflix strategically purchased a few theaters, leading some observers to predict they may purchase an entire chain. This week a team of professors from Harvard Business School discuss the future of movie theaters on their podcast and whether the new CEO of AMC and his ambitious turn around plan can really save theaters by introducing a subscription model.
