(Belated) Track of the Weekend #34: Daft Punk - “Random Access Memories” Vanderway Edit
Last week was crazy. So crazy that we didn’t put anything up on the blog all week, and we even neglected to put up the Track of the Weekend. Now that might not seem like a big deal to you, but if that’s the case, then you don’t understand the importance of the Track of the Weekend.
The Track of the Weekend has been around since the beginning of Whyd itself. It represents not just the most popular track on Whyd but the one that best captures our diverse community, the ever-shifting sands of musical taste, and instills emotion like a sunset over a calm sea at the beginning of a starry night.
And more importantly, the person who posts it deserves to be commended, and in the case of last week, praised for her steady commitment to sharing amazing music all day everyday. Generous, charming, and always putting us to shame with her musical selections, Aline has given the Whyd community a snappy edit of Daft Punk’s “Random Access Memories” by Vanderway. It’s still on top of the Hot Tracks today, and you will immediately see why.
Track of the Weekend #33: Johnny Cash - “Hurt”
We have written much about how wide-ranging the styles of music added to Whyd are, in fact it’s part of the reason why our platform is named the way it is. Yet it might still seem bizarre that from a community of music lovers that produces tracks of the weekend from artists like Ryan Hemsworth and Yuksek comes this Track of the Weekend. It topped the Hot Tracks all week, and represents some of the most emotional music we’ve heard so far, digging deep into hidden skeletons buried in the recesses of all of our hearts. Few voices can penetrate further than Johnny Cash’s, that instantly recognized timbre which tames even the most-hardened soul, no matter what the lyrics express. “Hurt” is a pinnacle of sorrow, yet at the same time so beautiful that the sadness withers away.
We have Basile Petit to thank for adding it first, and if you are one of the many metal heads on Whyd, this is a dude that you definitely need to subscribe to.
Playlist of the Week: “Folks in the Wood” by Jules Texier
Down in the verdant vineyards, woods, and glens of Bordeaux there resides a chill dude by the name of Jules. Unlike a big portion of the Whyd community that posts electronic music in all of its shades and tempos, Jules has given us a little treat of lighter folky music that could be radiating from sprites and hobbits in the severed sunshine of the forest floor.
Your toes, they are a-tapping!
The Second #AperoMusicTech Sneak Peek
If you were at the first #AperoMusicTech, have we got good news for you! The second one is coming in mid-April, and we’re expanding our capacity. Longtime Whyd partner and Paris culture hub Point Ephemere has agreed to host the afterwork networking event and subsequent dance party.
All of the details to come, so keep on the lookout! In the meantime, relive the highlights from #AperoMusicTech #1:
Show Your Whyd Pride
More and more awesome music lovers are using Whyd and our playlist embed to curate tracks from around the world on their pages. Perennial Whyd powerhouses like Sodwee and Music Like Dirt entertain their fans with both curated and crowd-sourced lists, at the same time adding serious amounts of new music to Whyd. We’re proud to have everyone with us, and we want to help you get the most out of Whyd.
Today we’ve got something cool for you. In the drop down menu from your little avatar on the top menu bar on Whyd you can find your settings page, there is a new tab called “Goodies.” Follow the instructions and you can add your Whyd badge which links people to your Whyd page. Or you can add a “Subscribe to me” button which will connect existing Whyd users to you directly. You can, of course, always add both :)
If you end up adding the badge to your site, let us know (hello(@)whyd(dot)com) and we will share it out with the Whyd community!
Never stop jamming
Interview with Chamberlain: Modern Day Composer
1. Hey Chamberlain! Can you tell us a little bit about you? What are the different sides of your personality and how do they show up in your projects?
I am originally a pianist who started with classical music, and I turned towards rock and pop groups. Then I learned jazz, and worked a lot with harmony, composing and touring around Europe with my group. I am an arranger and accompanist, I produce and manage the artistic direction of singers and rappers. I’ve been composing music since the age of 10, with the idea of building, like what the director Gondry does. I’ve also acted in the theater, composed music for the stage, and for advertisements. What I am really interested in is humanity and its ability to produce emotion, and in the same breath not to characterize those emotions. I try to reconstruct their complexities. I think that my compositions are at the same time sad, happy, sweet, salty, modern, nostalgic, but I try to present them as wrapped in silk.
I work a lot with different cultures, to blur the borders between crude styles and feelings. I try to make the music coincide between wise, composed, and pop.
2. What was your first contact with music? How did you come to start making music?
My first contact with music was from movies, reggae, and the African-American music that my father listened to at home singing the melodies. Then I met my first teacher, an old lady from the countryside. She was a very educated woman, married to a farmer, who killed time on her piano in her cozy living room. She made me give my first concert at 8 years old, we shared the stage with friends who brough their old monophonic synths, and we shared the music and instruments. At the same time, I made music in my room with the old technique of “ping-pong” (recording onto a Grundig tape recorder, with a low-cost synth, folk guitar, and the upright piano).
That might also be Chamberlain, the search of my original childhood processes (and I really love the idea of chamber music).
3. “Step over the Steppe” seems to be your leitmotif: Is there a link between the semi-arid Russian plateaus and where the inspiration for your melodious products that takes us somewhere between joy and melancholy are born?
From the beginning it was an idea of a vast region, Eurasia, at the intersection of different cultures, a natural place, but lived by a great human history. But thinking about it now, there is an idea of the solitude in the face of the immensity of the world. The echo can find its proper silence, and the idea to “step” over the steppe in one motion, or to jump on a horse and go across it galloping, with the combative spirit necessary to reach the absolute and inner peace.
During the crossing, there is that multitude of feelings that we feel, the colors placed end to end that create a dramatic meaning, life in all its detours. (“We know only too well, the echo of our own silence”).
4. Your track T-ISA was praised by the Why’d community, and was finally selected Track of the Weekend. Tell us what you felt!
Full of pride! That gives me wings, and more confidence in myself to advance, and produce even more must, and the confirmation of a constant today accepted by everyone: the web can mix big fish and the smaller ones. This promotes creation! (which expands the size of the forest too, so you can lose, but sometimes it’s exciting to lose!)
5. From the point of view of an artist, how do you use Whyd today and how would you like to see the service evolve?
Whyd lets one get lost in the forest of musical creations, but with a map! It’s exciting to lose yourself, but to always know where you are!
The idea to create a synthesis of all the other streaming media in one place is excellent. Plus when we find a playlist from someone else, we discover new connections with even more music, we listen to more types of music, but with intelligence, we enlarge our capacity to feel new music! I appreciate the simplicity of use, I am not a specialist in web development, maybe with deeper integration to other social media, Whyd could surpass Deezer or Spotify.
Everyone must know Whyd. Whyd proposes an more ever-expanding offering — in the end infinite — than the other platforms that are market only. That’s the creative spirit!
Subscribe to Chamberlain on Whyd, Like his Facebook Page, Follow him on Twitter and keep a look our for some new music due out at the end of this week!!
Track of the Vampire Weekend #32: “Step”
A gigantic week for Whyd is coming to a close after our new Discover section launched on Monday, TechCrunch wrote about it, and new King of the World Whyd Ranking Alan Henry wrote a great piece about us on Lifehacker that came out last night. It’s been hectic, sleep-deprived, and one of the most invigorating times of our lives. A big welcome to everyone new! Fitting then that the track which spent the week among the top of the Hot Tracks is the calming, worldly, and dreamy sounds of a new Vampire Weekend single that signals the coming of their new album, scheduled for release in early May.
“Step” is a hypnotic lullaby that is quiet enough to be missed if you don’t listen hard enough. Full of New York and Classic references that will please most lofty Vampire Weekend fans, it was first added to Whyd by Caracole and then propelled to the epic heights of the Hot Tracks by one of Whyd’s most faithful and dedicated music lovers: Aline. It is exactly the track we need to repose into the weekend.
Follow Aline and Caracole on Whyd, and please, never stop jamming!
The World Whyd Rankings: Explained
This week’s major development in Whyd has been widely praised by the community for spurring action and subscriptions from everyone who utilized the Discover section to find trending, influential, and similar music lovers. The similar people, featured, and friends sections are fairly straightforward, and you can read more about the entire release in this post from earlier in the week. But what needs more explanation is the World Whyd Ranking, how it works, and what you can do to see yourself there!
The World Whyd Ranking reflects the most influential music lovers on Whyd right now. It is based on recent activity, generally measured over the past week — and although the people with the most subscribers generally have more influence, there are ways for new music lovers to make themselves known and rise into the top rankings. So if you want to see yourself there, here are some things you can do:
1. Use Facebook connect: if you connect with Facebook you can see your friends who are already on the platform and interact with them, usually leading to new subscribers for you. You then also have the ability to invite your other friends to join Whyd via Facebook, and those people will be automatically subscribed to you.
2. Interact with other people’s music: re-adding and liking tracks means that people will receive notifications that you enjoy their music. If you enjoy their music, they will be likely to come and check out your music!
3. Invite invite invite: the more people that subscribe to you the better. If you use a custom invite code everyone who comes onto Whyd with it will be automatically subscribed to you! Email us hello(at)whyd(dot)com to get your custom invite code, and share it to your Facebook or Twitter and watch your number of subscribers grow!
And yes, a big congratulations to our blonde music ninja Laurène for her impressive position at the top; followed closely by Playlist of the Year 2012 winners One One Six at # 2; and the elusive, sweet, and jumpy Coup du Lapin at #3.
Sodwee Needs Your Five Tracks
Attention music lovers! Whyd partner and fellow new music addict and blogger Sodwee needs your help. He has created a form on his amazing blog asking his readers (and now you too!!) to add your best songs for different situations ranging from making love to traveling to sleeping.
In reality, he is looking for your top five favorite tracks of all time, “tracks that made a difference in your existence.” It is an interesting experiment that should lead to some pretty epic playlists, which of course will be shared on Whyd too!
All you need to do is go to this page, and fill out the form (takes only a few minutes).
You should subscribe to Sodwee on Whyd as he adds people’s choices to different playlists. You can read his Whyd interview to learn more about him, and make sure you like his Facebook page and follow him on Twitter too.
Looking forward to seeing the results!
Just a little buzzed
No, we’re not referring to Adrien and Tony before the workday is finished. And no, we’re not talking about Jie after sipping half a shot, we’re talking about Whyd and the launch of the Discover tab yesterday!
In seeking to spread the word to music lovers around the world, Whyd broke the exclusive of the story to TechCrunch’s Steve O’Hear, who helped us to differentiate ourselves from some of the other great services that, on a surface level, operate in a very similar way from Whyd. It is important to know that we are building a filter of the best of the newest music put online by emerging artists everyday, and the only way we can do that is socially. The Discover section is the first step to truly socialize the collective experience on Whyd, and create new and lasting connections between music lovers.
As a result, Complex Magazine called us “the music streaming app you’ve always wanted.” And the Green Room Sessions said “we couldn’t recommend you more to ask for an invite to Whyd.”
Aw gee, thanks guys! It’s only going to get better, so stick with us, let us know what you think, and never, EVER stop jamming!
(Editor’s Note: The excellent image above was created by Green Room Sessions and before you ask, no, there is not a mobile app for Whyd, yet!)