I mean, I have similar images from my early days as a DJ, just not with Beyoncé looking incredulous, but with other, rather unknown people.

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Yes, it’s nonsense, I know. Compared to him, I was probably a bit lazier. I put less effort into getting new records and gigs. That’s how I’d sum it up after reading the book…

Mark Ronson wasn’t really on my radar. Sure, Amy Winehouse, Bruno Mars… I was aware of all that. Not my kind of music. But I also found the memoirs of Carl Cox and Harold Heath very interesting, if only because of my proximity to the subject. So picking up this book wasn’t a stretch.

Of the lot, I actually think Mark Ronson’s is the best. I like his writing, some of the scenes are incredibly quirky and entertaining (no spoilers: Robin Williams), and the music scene the book covers mirrors a time when I was tuned into much of what he describes.

Long story short: please get the book, it’s good!

The official playlist for the book is available on Spotify, with a copy also available on Deezer.

This post is part of my reading page.

I started with what I hold in my hand almost every day, my Kindle. Again, Amazon does a few things right that others can’t or don’t do as well. Apart from DRM, not much really bothered me about Amazon’s books until then, and you hardly have to worry about DRM if you stay in the Kindle world. I’ll come back to that another time.

Now I wanted as much contrast as possible. Instead of funding a space phallus, I wanted to put the money I was spending on books to better use. And, surprisingly, the selection of alternative bookshops that spend part of their turnover on charitable causes is not so small.

Most often, buch7 is mentioned as a fair alternative to Amazon. buch7 claims to put 75% of its profits towards supporting social, cultural and environmental projects. Two things about buch7 didn’t quite add up for me, though. I mainly read e-books and their e-book selection is rather limited. And the statement “75% of our profits…” is considered non-transparent by the German Central Institute for Social Issues. Depending on how you calculate your profit, that figure could easily amount to nothing.

fairbuch.de, for example, does it better, donating 2% of the purchase value to Kindernothilfe.

fairbuch.de uses the white-label solution from Libri. This means that the online shop and the logistics behind it come from Libri, and fairbuch.de slaps their own branding on it and handles the marketing. As a customer, this gives me a comprehensive range of e-books, the option of using a Tolino with these e-books and, of course, the physical book catalogue.

By the way, ecobookstore.de does the same thing and is another often-mentioned alternative. Since they’re in the same ecosystem, you can shop at both with a single account. So sometimes I support the rainforest and sometimes Kindernothilfe.

But what about local bookshops? Some of you may be wondering. As I wrote at the beginning, for me it’s about having a good digital experience that matches how I actually use books. The discussion about whether printed books or e-book readers are better is absurd. There’s no single right way to consume a medium – it’s about the content.

But since there are still plenty of cookery books and photography books, like the excellent Hamburg Cityscapes by Milan Horacek, the local bookshop still sees me from time to time.

For anyone interested, Seitenflügel has a great write-up on what it’s like dealing with the book trade as a small publisher, and Kaffeehaussitzer explains why he doesn’t buy books from Amazon (both in German).

This post is part of my reading page.

Much of it was not new to me, which is to be expected in my line of work. But in its condensed form it sent even more shivers down my spine. When you then consider that the book was written in 2017, that Schlecky was already processing Cambridge Analytica in it, but that the wider world only started paying attention last year, you shake your head even more.

Why we should all use our smartphones less, maybe not install some apps at all, and why it is essential to look beyond your own bubble is not only described by Schlecky in the book. As far as I can tell, an association he has co-initiated is on the verge of being established to educate people about the dangers described in the book.

Far from light reading, the book is well worth a recommendation.

This post is part of my reading page.

Tim Renner caught my attention at some point with some clever and controversial statements on copyright, and I was impressed, among other things, because he made these statements as an employee of a music publisher. If you bite the hand that feeds you, you’d better have balls – or know what you’re talking about. That was my quick conclusion.

Renner served as State Secretary for Cultural Affairs in Berlin until the end of 2016, wasn’t always met with approval there, and still likes to comment on the truly farcical music industry, as he does in “Wir hatten Sex in den Trümmern und träumten”.

One of the reasons I’m so enthusiastic about the book is that the topics and arguments are entirely in line with my own thinking. The music industry doesn’t just have an outdated system that exploits artists (unless you’re a few sizes bigger) and customers alike. It also keeps missing the boat when it comes to properly marketing its product!

In the previous sentence alone, with all the discussions about music, you can let the two words “product” and “marketing” melt on your tongue.

A Gorny is forever preaching that artists are being robbed and that you can’t just make their work freely available – where “freely” refers solely to alleged copyright infringements. All the other “the internet is rubbish because everything gets nicked” preachers follow suit, and recently Spotify, for example, has been dragged through the mud because artists are supposedly being exploited there. And nobody questions this!

There’s a calculation by occasional radio presenter Jan Böhmermann (I’m afraid I can’t find the interview again), in which he compares the figures: an artist receives roughly 30 euros for a single play of one of their songs on a radio station! If a comparable number of listeners (it was around 1.6 or 1.8 million) were to stream the same song, that would come to just over 3,000 euros.

This example is one of many, and both the pro-internet camp and the Gornys of this world have an astonishing number of them. The overlap between both positions is probably closest to reality, and part of that overlap is, for me, in this book.

But it’s not just about marketing and the merits or absurdities of the industry – it’s also about the stories of how artists became who they are now, and regardless of where you stand, you can have a proper laugh about these stories.

The book is available at the bookseller of your choice, but only in German.

About Tim Renner

This post is part of my reading page.