Tag Archives: Music

Bop to our Beats

Calvin Harris – Summer | Listen for free at bop.fm

We love music. At Canopy we are constantly searching for new and different ways to access it. Streaming services, such as Spotify and Pandora, have become increasingly more popular. But, when it comes to curating personalized playlists and sharing our music, there are some limitations.

Bop.fm, which is still in beta, is an awesome service that streamlines the process of sharing songs and playlists. Instead of signing up for each service individually, you can use Bop.fm to play music from Spotify, Beats Music, Rdio, Soundcloud and/or YouTube. Playlists can be shared through social media, and unlike other streaming services, these playlists can be enjoyed by anyone, with or without an account. The playlists are embedded into Twitter and can be played without leaving your feed.

We’re excited to announce we’ll be sharing our office playlists on social media starting this Friday, be sure to check them out!

What Sparks our Fire: An easy way to share music with our dedicated followers.

Will you share your playlists using Bop.fm?

Tapping to Music

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Next up at CES and in your smart house: blast your music with a simple tap. It’s an elegant little dial on the wall, kind of like the Nest thermostat we reviewed a while back. It’s linked with almost anything you want it to be, such as your Spotify and Apple accounts, and they call it the Bang & Olufsen BeoSound Essence.

You might be thinking “All that is great, but what’s the big deal?” Well, the big deal is this little circle doodad links via low-energy RF to the central control box which in turn links to your music source using a wi-fi connection. The whole setup is attached to speakers via proprietary Bang & Olufsen RJ-45 jacks (limiting you to only Bang & Olufsen speakers, but if you’re already dropping the $995 for the Essence, you’ll probably have the liquid assets to back that up).

The Essence uses your phone as a source, but the objective is to have you pull out your phone less and less, turning on the music the same way you’d turn on a light.

What Sparks Our Fire: Another smart elegant, kind of prohibitively expensive product from CES, but it’s a sign of where technology is headed.

Do you think listening to music needs this kind of upgrade?

This Song Is Soooo About Us

I feel like I missed out, because I never got to give my best girl a mixtape of all the Norah Jones and Counting Crows songs I felt described our relationship. Instead, we’d listen to an iPod with one earbud each, which of course is adorable, thank you, but somehow doesn’t seem to measure up.

Milktape captures the essence of giving someone music you enjoy in the modern age, in a way emailing a playlist just doesn’t. It’s just a cassette-shaped USB drive, but has the sort of retro charm vinyl records and handlebar mustaches evoke.

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What sets it apart from other USB drives is that it’s customizable and rewrite-able, so it can be both a keepsake and a shareable device, in the same way the original tape cassettes were.

What Sparks Our Fire: Revisiting old-style technology in a new-world way.

Would you give a Milktape to your significant other?

Queen Bey

On Friday, Beyonce broke the internet. Seriously, iTunes shut down due to too much traffic. Every single social news outlet was flooded with posts, tweets, statuses, and articles that all proclaimed “Beyonce released an unannounced album at midnight that is not only a collection of music but also includes 17 videos and a song featuring Blue Ivy!!” There are seven posts about it on the front page of Buzzfeed alone, and they all seem to be the authors having seizures about how awesome Beyonce is.

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However, right now we’re not going to discuss the music, or the concept of a “visual album” or how Beyonce’s hair is “OMG SO PERF. I JUST WANT TO BE HER. UGH.” as 23,000 twitter users have posted in the last twelve hours. No, we’re going to discuss the ramifications of how a product can become a resounding success with literally no lead-up or advertising.

In this instance, we are referring to Beyonce as a brand, in addition to an individual. With a single post on Facebook, this brand flexed social media muscles that most can only dream of. They don’t need to dedicate any money to advertising this album because the rest of the world is doing it for her. Without any critical review or coming attractions, the album has been labeled as “good” and “worth sharing” by default. This is because, as a brand, Beyonce has released quality, popular bodies of work. As well, Beyonce has cultivated a likeable, personable offstage personality, accentuated by her marriage to rap star Jay-Z and birth of her daughter Blue Ivy. In addition, she has remained in the public eye over the last decade, from her time in Destiny’s Child, to her solo career, up until her recent “photobomb”.

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Incidentally, not a photobomb, rather a request, but you get the point. Beyonce is well-liked, highly followable, and is a strong thought leader, which allows her the social clout and discussability to create a media storm without the need for advertising or singles or anything else that goes along with normal music releases. This is power on an extraordinary level, and we who advertise are extraordinarily jealous.

What Sparks Our Fire: The biggest positive media firestorm in recent history, caused by a quality brand suddenly releasing what is sure to be a critically acclaimed revolutionary product. It’s what we like to see in brand management.

Why do you think Beyonce has this sort of power?

Just Watch This Video

Every now and then, we come across things on the Internet that leave us speechless. We’re looking for new things on YouTube, we come across a Jason Mraz live in Korea video which leads us to…

In just four and a half minutes, 17 year old Sungha Jung turns hard rock classic “Sweet Child o’ Mine” into a beautiful, melodic, acoustic guitar journey. The technique he uses, known as fingerstyle, is notoriously difficult and takes years to master. Sungha Jung is nothing short of a prodigy who, along with his prodigious technical ability, also has an incredible artistic sense, keeping the overall structure of the song while adding his own artistic spin to the creation, achieving an almost perfect balance between Guns n’ Roses and his own musical voice.

What Sparks Our Fire: In a world of overproduced pop songs, there are still virtuosos who can inspire us.

Do you find yourself inspired by extraordinary people like Sungha Jung?