Planet Home was a three-day conference, festival, and pop-up village inside of San Francisco’s historic Palace of Fine Arts. It got people together to talk about and show the progress of potential solutions to our world’s biggest environmental challenges, along with musical performances to close out each night. Notable speakers & performers included Edward Norton, Bill Nye, Chet Faker, Snoop Dogg, and Wyclef Jean.
The festival and village were open to all, but there was a special track, known as Visions, which opened up panels, workshops, and talks with experts in the future of our planet. However, unlike most festivals that offer VIP upgrades for three-times the ticket price, to get into Visions was a different story.
First off, there was an application process, which appears to gauge if applicants already work on these challenges or simply bring new ideas with a “solutionist” approach. I’m not sure what made up the rest of the process, but based on the people I met at Visions, it was a pleasant change over the VIP bros and made for some meaningful conversations.
Last month I gave a quick tip to musicians pitching blogs. To treat it as much of an art as they did their music. But most need some help and it can be a bitch to find someone who knows how.
Two years ago I found out about Jake Udell and his TH3RD BRAIN artist management at SF MusicTech. What intrigued me was that he managed Zhu. I’m as impressed with Zhu’s rollout of NightDay as the actual music. Since then the team has signed Gallant and most recently NoMBe with their new Accelerator program. When you see a management group develop multiple artists so well that it makes their name as reputable as their artists, you want to send people their way.
TH3RD BRAIN’s Accelerator program opens the doors for musicians and their management to learn from experts of the emerging music industry. Treating the program like a traditional accelerator found in startups might sound like a gimmick at first, but their approach sounds promising, which you can take a glipse at.
I do think they should expose a lot more of what they do there. Opening the doors to TH3RD BRAIN’s knowledge and expertise to everyone could help out a lot of musicians. Because, trust me, they need it. More importantly for TH3RD BRAIN, it will attract the artists they want next. As much as they’ve channelled some of the best so far, it never guarantees what’s next.
— In other words, Jake needs to bring back his podcast —
A few days ago I had the bright idea of making this list to hold us over until Frank Ocean dropped his album. That day it did.
The reason I love Frank so much, and why I’m overshadowing all these other artists for him, is because there’s a difference between him and them, for me. All of these singers have at least one good song, but it’s the song, not their singing, that I love. With Frank it’s different. I just love hearing his voice. On anything. Few other singers do that for me.
Not to discredit any of these artists. All of them have that potential, especially Breezy Lovejoy. Now known as Anderson .Paak. It took me two years to come out with another list of favorite male singers. Still got a lot of catching up to do compared to my favorite females.
Up until a few days ago, I knew starRo for his relaxing tunes, California & Seduction. I did like House Party when it came out, but the SoundCloud ad in front ruined it for me – and I annoyed the shit out of starRo about it.
Going through his entire SoundCloud catalogue and explore.fm, I see where he’s taking his sound and I love it, every which way. I don’t see many (hardly any) producers do as well with one sound as starRo has done with a few of his […]
The amount of music going on in a few small areas around Austin, supported by all the music tech that’s trying to help it flourish, makes SXSW the place where my two loves come together. Quite literally this year with my job and this blog. Both helped me find places to go and people to do it with, but SXSW could’ve helped a lot more.
The SXSW Go app could have better helped with both finding and keeping track of events throughout the night and day, as well as finding the people to spend it with – it’s where the future of live music is going. I did find a handful of good performances and the same amount of not so good, but mostly because of the people in Austin and their recommendations. Some seriously nice people.
Here are a few stories I had with them.
We anti-Valentined last year with our Hip Hop + Heartbreak, thanks to the help of mimb, and this year we’re covering everything but (hip hop).
Most of heartbroke (as fuck) is some sort of soul music along the electronic scale, leaning heavy on electronic near the end.
If you’re in for a lonely Valentine’s this year, I hope this makes for a good background soundtrack.
2015 was the year of live music for us. We covered eight festivals. I don’t think I’ve been to that many before in my life.
Hip hop seemed to make a return on here. That’s what we started on, but hit a major dip from 2010 to 2013. It started back up in 2014 with Kendrick Lamar, and predecessors have been poppin’ up all over the place since. Some with possibly more potential than Kendrick himself. One at the top of this list.
Other genres in electronic dominated the year even more. We got out a good amount of Kawaii in the first half, but future & trap took over the second. And of course house has been most dominate. Going from the deeper, heavier side and splitting into future & chill house near the end, as well as the funkier side of house music to jack to.
The amount of new singers seems to have dipped compared to past years, but the quality hasn’t. Anderson Paak, Madelyn Grant, Liz Vice & Joey Dosik to name out of the dozen others with clear personalities in their voices.
We’ve collected 29 tracks in total and a list of our 12 musicians with the most potential. Plus our biggest accomplishments of the year below that, the playlists. We put together 35 in total! That’s up from 25 last year.
I first met Lauren in 2011 on Twitter because of a Facebook Ad I was running about a SoundCloud initiative I was doing for Silence at the time (I love how convoluted that sounds). As many people as I’ve talked to on Twitter over the years, I’ve never met someone so honest about her love for music. Someone without another agenda. And I see her dedication every day.
I usually don’t start my daily SoundCloud listening until later on in the day, but this girl is up at the butt crack of dawn listening to the shit out of it (she seriously wakes up too early) and she always gets in the comment or reshare before I do. The one thing I’ve given her shit about is what she’s doing to contribute in music, but she’s been doing something about it […]
I only heard about CRSSD fest for the first time last week (actually second, long story) and booking a hotel in San Diego isn’t cheap. Plus flights are ungodly now, so Road Trip! I would’ve given up on this much hassle a long time ago (a week), but look at this lineup.
I’ve gone to a half dozen festivals this year and all of ’em combined don’t add up to what CRSSD has got. Zhu and Bonobo right there makes me there. It’s not really an option after that.
But if you’re not convinced of the lineup yet, check out the playlist we put together. That’s a lot of artists to see in two days. And I usually don’t go to festivals for the music.
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I’ll be driving down from San Francisco Friday afternoon, so if anyone needs a ride hit me up!
We were so close to putting Zhu at the top of our 2014 R&B list. And even though he didn’t make the cut, he did help us distinguish the difference between today’s R&B and electro soul.
Before, the most notable difference the two was whether it was vocal or producer based, respectively. Where as R&B is focused on the soulful voices of today, electro soul generally cuts & chops memorable voices from the past and blends in heavy electro influences. Zhu is really the perfect intersection between the two, but we eventually came to the conclusion that his deep house influence was more fit for electro soul than the more traditional R&B (“traditional” in loose terms).
Also, keep in mind that even the musicians featured here are still electronically influenced in some way. Most music is nowadays. However, they play much more of a balancing act than their counterparts in electro soul. Hear for yourself and let us know your thoughts on today’s soul music and how you define it.
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