A FEW THOUGHTS

On a couple of occasions I have wondered whether I am about to turn into a “real old geezer”… Now, don’t go saying “I knew that”.. I am not! But I was a bit unsure for a bit. It seems like I, over some time, have developed an intolerance for noise. Which really is a bit early, and strange. I am turning 36 (not that old really, and for any stray 20 year old visiting.. “you will know what I mean when you hit 35″), and I am still just as found of music as I have been before. And it is not just the volume being set wrong or my ears being a more sensible before. I did a test –  just to make sure – you see Though parts of it was outside my preference in music I  managed to go through huge parts of the “News-section” of both iTunes and Spotify listening to new Pop, Rock, R&B, Electronic, Alternative, Indie, Techno, House etc… and loud ! My ears behaved perfectly normal, and though there were parts of it I found rather weird I sat there listened to great music for hours acknowledging my love for good music. Thank G.. !

So where does the feeling come from? I’ll tell you. TV and Radio!
I think I have massivly reduced my TV-watching over the last couple of years, but I still enjoy a couple of good sit-coms, entertainment shows or documentaries. So occasionally I sit down to watch one of my favorite shows, for let’s say an hour. What used to be an hour of quality TV has now turned into 40 minutes of what I want to watch – and 20 minutes of advertisements for future shows of some kind, weird noises, clutter, bad jingles with noises made to peak  any audio frequency – not just dogs, shouting, screaming and some more weird noises.  And turning on the radio – it’s exactly the same only they not having visual images to support their message so they have to make a bit more noise. Oh my g.. !

So, what’s the issue here. I have a suspicion that this is something that slowly has increased a s a problem in parallel as the internet services have advanced (and this is really no surprise for any of you ..I know). “Old medias” like TV and Radio need to evolve to keep track with online music services, social media, online chat, video on demand and other great services with advanced user interfaces. These are known facts. But is their approach really to bomb us with this kind of noise, clutter and jingles for the next fifty years? If so, I’ll cut the cable today.

This reminds me of a couple of advertisements I actually have enjoyed. One of them is for “Spotify” where one of the voices breaking through my free spotify subscribtion from time to time says something like “This extraordinary Spotify moment was ruined/spoiled by…. ” OK. The voice is a bit intrusive and bothers me, but at least they signal the value of their Premium accounts with a sense of humour I think. The another one I can’t remember what was for but it was a radio commercial where they actually muted everything into silence for maybe 20 seconds, following with a brief message saying something like ” we think you should have some more quality time in your everyday life…” and then a smart angle for their product. But the ad-spot was delightful and enjoyable for me at that time as it gave a break in the rest of the commercials. This leads me to one of my points here;

Do media and advertisement think they can win me over with peaking audio frequencies like they do today? Will they continue till my head explodes? Will they beat me on stamina? I think I rather will buy that product that from time to time actually brings me some silence on the frequency rather than just clutter. I will buy the detergent that, during a short break, actually serves me Chopin, Satie, Clapton, Nickelback or Metallica – without annoying clutter or noises ! And this is really not just related to the commercials. The way television shows are produced these days are really a lot of the same way; it is supposed to be fast, catchy and  attract young people. But does it have to be noisy and bad quality? What happened to good journalism and the spoken word? Listen to me.. Here I go on like the “old geezer” again…

But seriously; I hope for, and really feel that it is need for, media to change their angle and approach to attract viewers, listeners and subscribers. One of the things that the new era of internet has taught consumers is that assortment of different services is massive and that you can find both high quality and low quality stuff out there. I hope the era of on-demand services teach us to avoid the noise and clutter where we can and instead enjoy quality TV, movies and music. I am sure the advertisers will find ways of attracting buyers. They could try with moments of silence, a poem or some nice music perhaps, and let us instead choose what kind of noise we want to listen to on our own.

As I have firmly stated before.. “Enjoy The Silence”.