Leisure enhancing sunscreen, local news models, the death of impulse purchases, the death of albums, and much much more!
Issue 18
Happy Sunday and happy mother’s day to all the wonderful mothers in my life and yours. In honor of mother’s day, check out Thing Testing’s article about The complicated business of delivering flowers to your front door.
Thanks as always for reading Five Moments! I will be even more grateful if you give this newsletter a quick share to someone who may find value or interest in what we are doing each week. Thanks!
Poolside.FM / Vacation Sunscreen Moment
Nostalgia-inspired, online radio station Poolside.FM unveiled their latest brand extension - Vacation Inc. sunscreen.
Meet the New “Leisure-Enhancing” Sunscreen Brand Partying Like It’s 1986
That just happens to be the next track on Poolside’s playlist: a nostalgia-laced sunscreen line called Vacation by Poolside FM. Launching by pre-order today, with a full rollout in June, the brand is a collaboration between Bell and sunscreen entrepreneurs Lach Hall and Dakota Green. The mission, as their vintage waterskiing ads make clear, is to “really make sunscreen far more than just a chore—something that can actually enhance leisure,” Hall said.
We have talked about my love for Poolside.FM previously. For the uninitiated Poolside.FM is an online radio station serving up nostaglia through pop music and vintage 1980s design.
The mission, as their vintage waterskiing ads make clear, is to “really make sunscreen far more than just a chore—something that can actually enhance leisure,” Hall said.
Much like Poolside, Vacation Inc’s website is a time-capsule to a bygone era that is worth getting lost in. Even if you have no interest in pre-ordering sunscreen - go claim your honorary role at the company.
Local News Moment
A few months ago, I highlighted some good news for local reporting:
In a stroke of good news - Axios is launching local news outposts in five American cities next week! Axios is a news organization focused on bringing people the news via newsletters. Five is a lot less than the 1800 lost newspapers, but it may offer a positive note in a chorus of otherwise bad news. You may be familiar with the unfortunate reality that local news is dying rapidly and the multitude of negative impacts for our democracy. [Local newspapers are the watchdogs that hold local and state governments to account].
In a similar vein, Substack recently launched a similar initiative Substack Local
Today, we’re announcing Substack Local, a US$1,000,000 initiative to foster and develop the local news ecosystem by helping independent writers build local news publications based on the subscription model.
While both of these are noble efforts to help try and fill the growing hole left by shuttered local outlets, there is still a demonstrable need to save existing local papers. Last week, Chicago Tribune writer Rex Huppke pleads with “anyone rich enough to buy my newspaper”, to save the 170+ year old paper, by calling upon someone’s civic desires. In this plea, there is the tacit acknowledgment that the business model for local news has long been broken and the only sustainable means for keeping it open is having a billionaire subsidize journalism.
I have long wondered if the ever growing NYTimes subscription behemoth would ever attempt to open local outfits across the country. These new attempts by Substack and Axios will be very interesting to see if they can prove out sustainable models, upon which we may see other companies flood the zone once there is proof of concept. Until such time — local papers must rely on the largess and civic responsibility of billionaires to survive (a la Jeff Bezos and Washington Post).
Death to Impulse Buys at Grocery Stores Moment
The latest casualty of the pandemic is none other than candy bars, gummy bears, and mints. Wired featured a story this week about how the pandemic has affected our shopping habits and the reduction in impulse, grocery store purchases.
STANDING IN LINE to pay at a grocery store, you’re in an optimized selling environment, carefully fashioned by marketers and retailers. That’s where the pushers put the “impulse buys”: gum, mints, chocolate bars, gummy bears, sodas, snack bars. They’re the kinds of products that, when you walk into the store, you’re not planning to buy. But stand in line for a few minutes and you feel that familiar twinge of want.
Some of the weirdest casualties of the pandemic have been gum and breath mints. North American sales of gum fell 14 percent by volume last year, and mints by 15 percent, compared with 2019, according to the market research firm Euromonitor. “It's probably the most affected area in 2020,” says Jared Koerten, a senior analyst at the firm, who observes the snacking industry. It doesn’t help the makers of breath-freshening products that less socializing with strangers means less need for fresh breath.
As the article lays out, there are no grocery lines or end-caps full of soda and chips to grab out attention on Instacart. It will be interesting to see how these companies attempt to replicate the impulse purchasing in an online environment that favors efficiency and accuracy. With all of the money at stake, I am confident they will find a worthy alternative to push all their delicious treats.
Death of the Album Moment
As you may have noticed, Spotify now shows you the number of times each song is played within an album. Previously, this distinction was reserved for the artist’s ten most popular tracks on their profile page.
If you need random anecdotal proof of the death of the album—the continued existence of TAYLOR SWIFT, KENDRICK LAMAR and SAULT notwithstanding—may I direct you to SPOTIFY’s version of Lamar’s 2017 album DAMN, on which, if we are to believe the numbers in front of our eyes, the lead track, “BLOOD,” is by far the least-streamed track? Yes, it’s a two-minute spoken-word track with a buried beat, but how in the world could side 1 track 1 be the least played track on any album in a world where the concept of side 1 track 1 exists? Surely there are enough Luddites out there who automatically hit the first play button they see and, therefore, start at the beginning. And yet we know users neglected “Blood,” whose 88 million plays in four years is a rounding error next to the 731 million plays enjoyed by track 2, “DNA,” thanks to Spotify’s most recent desktop update, which has moved individual track play counts out from semi-hiding to the center of the screen on every album page. It’s now impossible to look at an album and not immediately know which tracks everyone plays on repeat and which ones everyone thinks are clunkers—or, perhaps, which tracks have been elevated by Spotify’s army of curators and algorithms and which ones haven’t.
Luddite that I am, I’m not a big fan of this particular update, which all but encourages newcomers to any given album to skip the same tracks everybody else skips and play the same ones everybody else plays—regardless of the reason, algorithmic or not, for the skips and the plays. “In true jerk-Darwinian style,” writer MICHAELANGELO MATOS [tweeted
The heightened attention to play counts, which previously couldn’t be seen unless you hovered over a song title and moved your cursor to three unmarked dots on the far right of the page, is also a curious point of emphasis. The same prominent real estate could have been used for the songwriting or production credits that labels, publishers and artists have been begging services to display for years. But the credits remain hidden behind those three unmarked dots, requiring even more work to find than play counts used to. For any given song, you have to hover, click on the dots and then click on the “show credits” option on the dropdown menu that appears. If you want to know who wrote every song on a 20-track album, you have to do that 20 times, and who in the history of Spotify, besides me and possibly JACQUI LOUEZ SCHOORL
Play counts, which the service obviously has to record for royalties purposes, have their uses for music fans. They allow us to quickly see an artist’s five or 10 most popular songs, for example. That’s helpful. But most of us don’t need the granular, album-by-album, track-by-track data, and I’m reasonably sure most of us would happily trade it out for credits. Show us the writers or the producers, then let us hover or click on that to see the rest. It’s worth noting that no major service is good at this. But the takeaway here is if any of them wanted to find a place to display that information, they could find it in a heartbeat. Possibly smack in the middle of every page.
Music Moment
Stoney LaRue released a double live album - Double Live 25.
Stoney LaRue plays music that combines the roots, emotionally honest sound of country with the beer-drinking swagger of heartland rock and a dash of the moody undercurrents of the blues.
At his core, LaRue is a fantastic live performer who captivates an audience with his sound and weaves in perfectly executed covers. By far his popular release to date is his live album Live at Billy Bob’s Texas. His studio (mostly cover) album Us Time is also worth a listen.
Cutting Room Floor
Stories that are great to read but did not make it into the newsletter
The complicated business of delivering flowers to your front door | Thing testing
Mr. Beast, YouTube Star, Wants to Take Over the Business World | NYTimes
Oura Ring Raises $100M Round | Techcrunch
‘Boomer spring break’: Alaska Airlines is creating its own hype house for boomer influencers | Digiday
What was your favorite Moment this week?
Click the link to let me know which story was your favorite!
⛱ Vacation sunscreen
📰 Local News
🍫 No more candy at grocery stires
💀 Album Killer
🎵 Music
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