Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

David Bowie Has Died

hollywoodreporter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 312 posts

Re: David Bowie Has Died

#221

Post by cookiecaper »

cageface wrote: post #208
matwood wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your premise is that if it is music that you do not want to hear, it must be the labels pushing it? In no way could that music be on the radio because it is actually popular?

It's popular in the same way McDonald's or Coca Cola are popular. It's a product of no substance riding massive marketing budgets.

McD's and Coke are popular because people really want what they sell. It's not just a psychological thing, like everyone is a mindless zombie brainwashed by Ronald McDonald. They don't like it because they've been told to like it (if anything, it's the opposite these days), they like it because it's convenient and it has a ton of sugar and other addictive additives in it. People like both convenience and sugar; that's not a secret.

It's the same thing musically (though admittedly there is a bit more, not a huge amount more, of cultural influence here); there is a formula for music that most people find really satisfying. The record companies have software that analyzes songs and scores against the common patterns that produce hits. Of course, the business of music is about more than just the music, it's about the whole package.

Re: David Bowie Has Died

#223

Post by hospes »

nashashmi wrote: post #218
eropple wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just #1. Right now, it has 863 upvotes; that's a ton for a story that broke in the middle of the night on a Sunday. The next highest has 347, and has been around for a day-plus. This pretty clearly hits home for a lot of people, and I really, really hate the faux-above-it-all "I don't see what this is doing on HN" mini-modding. It's here because people believe it should be here. (edit: 899 points, 18 minutes late…

I am just hearing about him now that he has died. I don't see why it is SO relevant to HN community. I don't see any similarities here whatsoever. Nor do I see a hacker theme. Would appreciate if someone would enlighten me on this.

The fact that you did not know about his existence does not change his impact on music and culture or undermines his significance. There are a lot of people that you do not know that had huge impact on different aspects of culture.

>>Nor do I see a hacker theme.

I am not sure who defines what is "hacker theme" and what is not. Number of up-votes shows that people on HN want to see this topic here. If person of huge cultural significance dies, that impacts all subcultures, including "hackers".

Re: David Bowie Has Died

#224

Post by toomuchtodo »

lmm wrote: post #190
rayiner wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's so funny how people construct narratives. I'm listening to Bloomberg Business on the radio and they're talking about how David Bowie was a pioneer in monetizing future copyright cashflows to finance music production.

If you believed that copyright was going to go away in ten years, surely selling off future copyright cashflows is exactly what you would want to do.

Brilliant. Cash out now before the music became a stranded asset.

Re: David Bowie Has Died

#225

Post by CWuestefeld »

arnvald wrote: post #171
cageface wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in Southeast Asia it's Maroon 5 and Katy Perry everywhere you go.

Is it? Maybe in shopping malls and bars, then I agree. I live in Singapore and a lot of Singaporeans who I meet listen mostly to either Chinese or Indian music. It might be different though in Thailand or Malaysia. Remember though, that SEA is just part of Asia. China and India are huge music markets. Additionally, Japan and Korea have very strong, local music scene as well.

Last I was in Shanghai, about 3 years ago, there were Maroon 5 posters all over the subway.

Re: David Bowie Has Died

#226

Post by reitanqild »

ikt wrote: post #166
reitanqild wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Here are some differences: sports fans don't think that their team is capable of supernatural feats. I don't think I've ever seen a fan of one team try to convince a fan of another to change allegiance, or proselytizing on a street corner. thinking that something is capable of supernatural feats is not required for something to become a religion. Quite on the contrary I present you exhibit A: "forum atheists", non-…

> Quite on the contrary I present you exhibit A: "forum atheists", non-believers that believe so strongly in the non-existence of anything they haven't personally seen that they will hijack any thread that is remotely near using any religious word. --- What does this have to do with the supernatural? Secondly what does this have to do with religion. If religion was 'people who feel strongly about something' then the…

That would be a bad definition, yes.

But I will still argue that whenever I see people proselyting atheism because "big bang, stupid" and it is clear they haven't studied to much of neither physics or biology, then we have:

* proselytizing

* stronger belief than many Christians and Muslims

and I will argue that they qualify as religious even if they don't have a deity.

Re: David Bowie Has Died

#227

Post by reinhardt »

nashashmi wrote: post #218
eropple wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just #1. Right now, it has 863 upvotes; that's a ton for a story that broke in the middle of the night on a Sunday. The next highest has 347, and has been around for a day-plus. This pretty clearly hits home for a lot of people, and I really, really hate the faux-above-it-all "I don't see what this is doing on HN" mini-modding. It's here because people believe it should be here. (edit: 899 points, 18 minutes late…

I am just hearing about him now that he has died. I don't see why it is SO relevant to HN community. I don't see any similarities here whatsoever. Nor do I see a hacker theme. Would appreciate if someone would enlighten me on this.

I like to think of such "strange" highly voted posts as revealing a hidden correlation. Yes, there may not be any obvious prior reason to expect that people who frequent HN find David Bowie or his death significant. And yet they do. There doesn't have to be a cause-and-effect or "logical" explanation. It is what it is.

Re: David Bowie Has Died

#228

Post by CWuestefeld »

zardo wrote: post #192
cageface wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been traveling all over the world and all I hear everywhere I go is crap American top 40 pop music. Like I said there's a ton of interesting stuff going on outside their purview but they control the conversation right now.

You can always turn the tap on one of the music as running water services, and start listening to whatever the collaborative filter thinks you like best.

The current UI trend in these services seems designed to thwart this. It seems they're going to a model of having the user to select music to list to when I [exercise|drive|relax|study|...]. That's wholly unhelpful, I don't understand why they'd think that my preferences for what to listen to when exercising would coincided with anybody else's, other than maybe an activity being facilitated within a range of BPM counts.

Re: David Bowie Has Died

#229

Post by api »

oldmanjay wrote: post #219
cageface wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's popular in the same way McDonald's or Coca Cola are popular. It's a product of no substance riding massive marketing budgets.

You understand that your taste, despite subjectively feeling more "real" than the tastes of others, actually isn't, right?

so if i rite like this my riting stile is no diffrent r better than urz, rite?!? lol

Re: David Bowie Has Died

#230

Post by vixen99 »

vox_mollis wrote: post #215
jokoon wrote: post #203

Is it me, or there are too many articles about celebrities dying?

No need to complain. Just flag and move on. You and I don't understand why celebrities deserve coverage, but clearly plenty of others do.

Of course you understand. The media are businesses. As such they provide what the customers want and what they know about. As a personal view, it isn't until one looks at alternative news coverage (which I'll define as 'that which is not one's usual bill of fare') that the partiality of journalists and media empires becomes apparent.
Post reply on HN