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“The color of the wall, the texture of the furniture, the setting of the room, wasn’t good for enjoying music with darker tones.”

First world problem.

My favorite source of background music is "radiocoast.com". Not because it's that great, but because someone figured out a way to beat the music industry. He got a collection of background music records made for the Seeburg 1000 and 2000. Seeburg was a jukebox maker in Chicago. As a sideline they sold background music devices which played a big stack of special records over and over - 1000 or 2000 songs. They bought the rights to the music, and their own orchestra recorded them. So they had full content ownership. The records had a nonstandard groove width, a nonstandard diameter, and a nonstandard hole size; DRM, the early years. They were not copyrighted and predate the "no formalities" copyright law. So anyone with the records can legally distribute the music. Which "radiocoast.com" does.



> First world problem.

Why is that wrong for first-world people to tackle first-world problems? Just because you don't believe in a particular piece of psychology doesn't necessarily have to make it untrue.

Seriously, it's quite annoying to see problems dismissed just because they're "first world problems". Comfort is important and we're proven to process things subconsciously.


Nobody said it's wrong. Everyone has the right to choose the kind of problems he/she would like to solve.


Sakamoto is also passionate about his activism for the environment (anti-nuclear) and copyright law reform.


Just using the phrase "first world problem" by itself has negative or dismissive connotations. No one uses it to express that something is positive or even just neutral.


I see it as dismissive but not negative. Somebody charges you a fee to help you decide on a super car. Good for them and good for you! Yet I will decide by myself if I care or not. For sure if things do not work out the worst it can happen is that you end up with a random super car. I just can't make myself to care enough about it.


Because sometimes, good is good enough and someone being "annoyed" is just pitching themselves as a niche into the market.


Right, the problem of solving background music for wealthy people at expensive restaurants is clearly and unapologetically a first world problem.


Anything wrong with solving so-called first world problems?


No, I meant to defend it.

I totally agree with Ryuichi here, too - poorly chosen soundtracks to public life can be grating and draining. My least favorite is the same classic rock or pop songs that we’ve all heard hundreds of times.

As an international music star for decades, he appears to live a rather first world life and is simply tending to the environment around him.


Just for fun, this is a restored Seeburg 1000. Playlists, the early years.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2Y6OKy4AMc


It sounds very interesting. Unfortunately, the service seems to require to install Flash


If you click the WinAMP or iTunes link it downloads [listen.pls](http://38.107.243.222:8407/listen.pls) which can be played in any of the previously mentioned players or VLC.


The raw stream is

http://38.107.243.222:8407/;

All you need is a browser.


Plenty available on YouTube though!




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