Wednesday

Wednesday is about familiar sounds, the sounds we use to direct us to the next thing, and the sounds our products have to fake because they aren't necessary. Next, it's the sounds we crave in a live setting, and what the future looks like, and to tie it all together, we use more science to measure the stars.

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🤘We are here every day, and every minute you spend with us sends ripples of gratitude through our souls! 🤘

A podcast highlighted by us in the past called Twenty Thousand Hertz did an episode on the sounds of cars called Auto Tone. In this episode, host Dallas Taylor talks about the sound a car with a combustible engine sounds like; I'm sure the sentence produced the sound of pressing the gas pedal of a car and hearing the familiar vroom vroom! The episode details how sounds disappear as we move from combustible engines to all-electric vehicles that don't make any noise. In the short run, this could lead to dangerous outcomes since hundreds of millions of drivers know the sounds. The episode is under 30 minutes, another great listen to prompt you to consider the future.

This idea got us thinking about other sounds we no longer need to hear. The first up for us is the dial tone, which is less relevant each year, but if you still go to an office or a hotel, you might see a wired, landline phone somewhere. Well, most of those phones now use the same networks and technology as your cell phone, and there is no dial tone when you are making a call on your cell phone. A landline phone doesn't need one either; it's there, so the user won't think it doesn't work!?

We took the same idea to ChatGPT for additional items that no longer need sound, and the list is impressive.

One sound mentioned in the podcast episode and ChatGPT is the car turn signal. In old cars, the turn signal was mechanical and stayed on until the car made a turn, and as the steering wheel turned back into position, the turn signal disengaged and turned off. Like the other electronics in a modern car, the sounds are like the dial tone.

A couple others on the list included the elevator ding, the microwave beep, and the fake camera sound your phone makes when taking a picture. These sounds are unnecessary for the devices to work, although, as sheeple, we use those sounds as reminders and notifications as to what we need to do next. The elevator dings, we get on/off – the microwave beeps, our food is ready – and the camera sound tells us the phone took the picture.

We aren't that far from a silent planet, and that's a scary thought for some of us Noise Makers…

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Inflation and consumer spending are expected to fight each other over the next year. I wrote about speculation that shows live concerts could be one of the last things consumers give up as our budgets tighten up. Today on The Town, a podcast by Matt Belloni, goes deeper with his guest, Andrew Wallenstein, Variety Intelligence's chief media analyst. Walllenstein comes with the data and agrees with some of the speculation about live music's strength; Wallenstein also comes to the conversation with a few areas that may not be on as solid footing as the average ticket price 2023 ($122.84).

2023 saw a few mega tours from Taylor Swift and Beyonce, representing a huge portion of the live concert market this year. Swift will continue 2024 on her world tour, and several other mega stars will be going out in 2024; the safe bet is on mega stars and mega tours in part due to the once-in-a-lifetime status some put with attending a show like this. How far those dollars will be spent down the ticket on smaller acts in smaller venues is less predictable, but revenues have been stable in all the live concert categories.

One of the best data points is a survey question in Wallenstein’s deck. A question about favorite memories, more than 50% of respondents said attending a concert or music festival are some of their favorite memories.

As a hands-on, non-traditional learner, I tell people that math only made sense once I owned a business and someone put a dollar sign in front of a number. Then, I understood math. More to the point, math is the foundation, and accounting is the design work on top of the math. One of the teacher websites we follow gave us something similar to the dollar sign; today, they showed us how to use a triangle to measure the distance to the stars. I will stick with dollar signs, but for astronomers or math measurement fans, this is the video for you!

blink-182: The Zane Lowe Interview:

Need You Around - Smoking Popes.

Click on the Apple Music image to listen to the song on Apple Music or on the Spotify Image to listen to Spotify.

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🤘We are here every day, and every minute you spend with us sends ripples of gratitude through our souls! 🤘

With A Shout newsletter is written by Johnny Christian with the support of a thousand idea bits and the help of many people.

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