The Music Machinery blog alerts us to a new Spotify related application, Acrostify, which creates Spotify playlists based on “acrostics,” aka secret word messages embedded in other things. Since yesterday (Sunday, August 10) was the Russian composer Alexander Konstantinovich Glazunov’s birthday, I input “Happy Birthday Glazunov” and selected the “classical” format.
Out came this playlist:
| H | Hypnotic Canon in D Meditation Spa with Lucid Drones by Johann Pachelbel |
| A | Ave Maria by Johann Sebastian Bach/Charles Gounod |
| P | Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor, Op. 18: II. Adagio sostenuto by Sergej Rachmaninoff with The Philadelphia Orchestra, Leopold Stokowski |
| P | Pavane for a Dead Princess by Instrumental Syndicate |
| Y | Young Americans (Single Version) (2002 Digital Remaster) by David Bowie |
| B | Barcarolle by Jacques Offenbach |
| I | In Memory of Two Cats by John Tavener |
| R | Rückert-Lieder: Ich Atmet’ Einen Linden Duft by Gustav Mahler |
| T | The Planets, Op. 32: VII. Neptune, the Mystic by Adrian Leaper |
| H | Histoire du soldat Suite (The Soldier’s Tale Suite): I. The Soldier’s March by Igor Stravinsky |
| D | Dover Beach, Op. 3 by Samuel Barber |
| A | An Irish Melody, “Londonderry Air” by Frank Bridge |
| Y | You Shook Me All Night Long by AC/DC |
| G | Giordano: Fedora: Rigida e assai la sera… O grandi occhi lucenti by Umberto Giordano |
| L | Largo by Rafael Kubelik |
| A | Agnus Dei by Samuel Barber |
| Z | Zenith by Zelenka |
| U | Unaccompanied Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major, BWV 1007: Prélude by Yo-Yo Ma |
| N | Nocturne #20 In C Sharp Minor, Bi 49 by Franz Richter |
| O | On The Town: New York, New York by Cris Alexander |
| V | Valse triste, op. 44 by Jean Sibelius |
I’m not sure how Bowie and AC/DC got in there, but by and large it is a very nice playlist. Once it is done, you can save it to your Spotify account, as I did, and play it to your heart’s content.
Meanwhile, Ofcom has yet another survey of British media consumers, and this piece of it caught my eye:
“Listening to live radio is only the third most popular audio activity for 16-24s, after streaming music and listening to a personal digital music collection. Taking into account all audio-based activities, listening to live radio makes up 71%. However, for 16-24 year olds, listening to live radio comprises less than a quarter (24%) of their time spent on listening activities, with personal digital music and streamed music together accounting for 60% of their listening time.”
Other surveys have produced the same results. The question for me is this: are young people less engaged in radio because they have more time to futz around with the latest music based media applications (like Spotify/Acrostify), or is it because they represent the harbingers of new listening/using trends that will extend into their child bearing/rearing years?
Don’t look at me like that. I don’t know the answer to the question, but I did enjoy this YouTube of an electric piano accompaniment to a Pokemon video game takeover of a radio tower.
We cover social music sharing communities every Monday in our Internet DJ feature.
