Digital Music News features Michael Stipe x Beatie Wolfe's Bioplastic record

Michael Stipe Releases First Commercially Available ‘BioPlastic Vinyl’

Ashley King

September 5, 2022

Will bioplastic vinyl albums become the future? R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe releases the first commercially available alternative this year.

Traditional vinyl records are pressed on polyvinyl chloride (PVC) which is considered one of the most environmentally damaging plastics. It’s a highly versatile and relatively inexpensive material, but the process to create the material uses chlorine. The music industry is seeking alternatives to vinyl for a more sustainable future and bioplastic vinyl may be the answer.

Michael Stipe’s new bioplastic 12″ was part of Bandcamp Friday promotion, limited to 500 copies. The record features two tracks, including “Future if Future” and Beatie Wolfe’s “Oh My Heart” on the flip side. The release was made possible by Evolution Music.

“I’m thrilled to be working with EarthPercent and Evolution Music on this release, imagining positive innovation through action,” says Michael Stipe about the initiative. “Simply showing that this type of solution-based project is possible opens pathways to a brighter future.”

Evolution Music says the bioplastic vinyl is made from a combination of “sugars and starches.” They previously partnered with UK-based environmental group Music Declares Emergency to debut new bioplastic vinyls in that country. That special edition release was only available to people who donated to the crowdfunding campaign, while Stipe’s record was commercially available on Bandcamp Friday.

Curious to know more about Evolution Music and the bioplastic vinyl records they’re creating? NPR’s Rachel Martin spoke with the company to discuss how the company is seeking to change the impact of vinyl now that it’s experiencing a resurgence in popularity. “I want sustainable products in a 21st century environment,” Marc Carey, CEO of Evolution Music says. “So I had to form a new company and do it myself.”

The big question here is how much does bioplastic sound like the vinyl made from PVC? Evolution Music says the sound quality is extremely high. “We believe the quality is extremely high, just about as high as vinyl. Maybe 95%,” Producer Rob Cass told CBS News about the new technology.

Blood Records Founder Craig Evans says he couldn’t believe the sound quality from the bioplastic vinyl. “The first time I heard one of those test pressings, I couldn’t believe what I was listening to was basically made of bioplastic and plant waste.”

Vinyl sales in the United States alone topped $1 billion in 2021. That’s the first time they’ve achieved that number since the 1980s before CDs made vinyl old-fashioned. Evolution Music says once it has its bioplastic production is in full swing, these albums will cost much the same as current PVC vinyl records.

Canada's Exclaim features Michael Stipe x Beatie Wolfe's Bioplastic record

Michael Stipe to Release New Eco-Friendly Bioplastic Charity Vinyl

The world's first commercially available bioplastic 12-inch record will support Brian Eno's climate emergency charity EarthPercent

By Megan LaPierre

Published Aug 31, 2022

Everybody hurts sometimes; including our planet.

Former R.E.M. bandleader Michael Stipe has announced a special split single with Beatie Wolfe in aid of Brian Eno-founded climate emergency charity EarthPercent.

Stipe's debut solo track, 2018's "Future Is Future," will be released on the world's first commercially available bioplastic 12-inch record alongside Wolfe's "Oh My Heart." Limited to 500 copies, the vinyl will be available to preorder this Friday (September 2).

"I'm thrilled to be working with EarthPercent and Evolution Music on this release, imagining positive innovation through action," Stipe said in a statement. "Simply showing that this type of solution-based project is possible opens pathways to a brighter future."

EarthPercent is an initiative dedicated to offering "simple and innovative ways for businesses and artists to donate to the most impactful organizations addressing the climate emergency."

The organization celebrated Earth Day back in April with the release of numerous exclusive tracks from artists like Stipe and Eno, Coldplay, Jarvis Cocker's JARV IS..., Anna Calvi and more. Bandcamp sales of those songs benefitted EarthPercent's five core areas of work: "greening music, energy transition, climate justice, legal and policy change, and protecting nature."

Earlier this month, Dutch vinyl company Green Vinyl Records shared news of their novel pressing technology, which uses just 10 percent of the energy required by the standard technique and foregoes polyvinyl chloride (PVC) — which has been identified as the most environmentally damaging of plastics — for polyethylene terephthalate (Pet), a less-harmful material that is equally durable and easily recyclable, suggesting that vinyl could go green by losing its namesake.

Evolution Music CEO Marc Carey has a similar theory: he's spent the last four years working on an eco-friendly secret recipe (including sugars and starches) to make vinyl out of bioplastic, which doesn't create any toxic waste [via CBS News].

Producer Rob Cass told the news outlet that the quality of the bioplastic records Carey's company is creating was comparable to the industry standard: "We believe the quality is extremely high, just about as high as vinyl," he said. "Maybe 95 percent."

That's one imitation of life we could definitely stand to implement at the combination vinyl boom-climate emergency.

Far Out Magazine features Michael Stipe x Beatie Wolfe's Bioplastic record for EarthPercent

Michael Stipe to release new climate-friendly vinyl in aid of EarthPercent

Jordan Potter

WED 31ST AUG 2022 18.23 BST

Former R.E.M. frontman, Michael Stipe, has announced a special collaborative single with Beatie Wolfe in aid of climate protection charity EarthPercent.

Founded by Brian Eno in 2021, EarthPercent aims “to offer simple and innovative ways for businesses and artists to donate to the most impactful organisations addressing the climate emergency”.

Eno’s organisation has already started to gain traction with the backing of countless bigwigs in the music business. Back in April, the organisation celebrated EarthDay by releasing numerous exclusive tracks donated by such artists as Stipe, Coldplay, Eno, Anna Calvi, and Jarvis Cocker‘s JARV IS, via Bandcamp.

Proceeds from all sales of these songs were donated to the EarthPercent fund, which focuses on five core areas of development: “greening music, energy transition, climate justice, legal and policy change, and protecting nature.”

Today, it’s been confirmed that the former R.E.M. frontman will release ‘Future, If Future’, his debut solo single initially released in 2018, on the world’s first commercially available bioplastic 12″ vinyl.

The record also features ‘Oh My Heart’ by Beatie Wolfe and will be available for pre-order here from Friday, September 2nd. The run will be limited to 500 copies.

EarthPercent has teamed up with Evolution Music for the release, marking a “genuinely revolutionary moment for both the music industry and record collectors, offering a non-fossil fuel future for vinyl recordings”.

In a statement, Stipe said: “I’m thrilled to be working with EarthPercent and Evolution Music on this release, imagining positive innovation through action. Simply showing that this type of solution-based project is possible opens pathways to a brighter future.”

Wolfe added: “I’m constantly thinking about how we can take the best of the old and best of the new, bridge the tangible and digital, and reclaim as much as we innovate, and this new eco vinyl feels like a perfect embodiment of this.

“I wrote ‘Oh My Heart’ as a cry for the planet and humanity, and it was recently encoded in glass and included in the Global Music Vault in Svalbard to be preserved for 10,000 years. So I couldn’t think of a better way to have it tangibly out in the world now.”

Eno, who collaborated with Stipe on ‘Future, If Future’, also spoke of the record earlier this year. “I’m very pleased with the way it’s gone. It’s a very good song, a very Stipe song. Beautiful lyrics, extraordinary piece.”

Stereogum features Michael Stipe x Beatie Wolfe's Bioplastic record for EarthPercent

Michael Stipe Releases New Single On First Commercially Available Bioplastic Vinyl

NEWS SEPTEMBER 2, 2022 9:23 AM BY CHRIS DEVILLE11

Way back in 2018, former R.E.M. singer Michael Stipe shared a snippet of his first-ever solo song, “Future If Future,” in support of the March For Our Lives. It’s a song about how people have the power to affect positive change on the world, and today it’s being sold on a new eco-friendly form of record designed to counteract the negative environmental impact of vinyl.

As Billboard reports, the skittering, synth-driven “Future If Future” is the first commercially available Bioplastic 12″. It’s a split featuring Beatie Wolfe’s “Oh My Heart” on the B-side. “Future If Future” was produced by Brian Eno, whose environmental charity EarthPercent sold out of a limited run of 500 copies today via Bandcamp.

The British music sustainability organization Evolution Music designed the bioplastic vinyl, which does not include fossil fuels. Specifically, it omits polyvinyl chloride, which Greenpeace calls the “most environmentally damaging” plastic, but can be manufactured on the same presses used for conventional vinyl. “I’m thrilled to be working with EarthPercent and Evolution Music on this release, imagining positive innovation through action,” said Stipe in a statement. “Simply showing that this type of solution-based project is possible opens pathways to a brighter future.”

Falling Walls Art and Sciences Finalist 2022

La Verdad Noticias in Mexico follow Beatie Wolfe's latest collab

Microsoft plans to preserve music for 10,000 years with glass

A new vault for music could protect one of our greatest art forms for future generations. This is Microsoft 's plan to achieve it.

by ErickPeraza

June 03, 2022 12:15 p.m.

Tech company plans to preserve music for 10,000 years with glass

Nothing is forever. According to Microsoft 's estimate , hard drives protect data for five years before they fail.

Tape lasts about a decade, while CDs and DVDs can last up to 15 years before their content risks becoming unreadable.

While it seems we live in an age of progress, the iPhone can store thousands of songs in your pocket and stream countless more from the cloud, even in the best of circumstances those songs will deteriorate millennia before the hieroglyphs carved in stone by the ancients. Egyptians.

This is the core challenge behind Global Music Vault. Located in Norway, it is part of a cold storage facility drilled into the same mountain as the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.

The Arctic Vault seeks to preserve content and technology for future generations.

While the seed vault protects the earth's cache of seeds, the Global Music Vault aims to preserve the sound arts for generations to come.

“Here, irreplaceable master music files and music data must be preserved in music capsules, protected in the vault, and remembered for eternity,” the company explains.

Technically, a venture called Elire Group is overseeing the vault, while a partnership with Microsoft is testing a new glass-based storage medium to make this vision possible.

While seeds are biological organisms, evolving over billions of years to protect their DNA, our man-made storage solutions are far more delicate.

A single blow from a magnet can wipe a hard drive clean, while a CD's plastic coating can simply rot away.

Nowhere was the fragility of our recordings more clear than in 2008, when a fire swept through a Universal Studios Hollywood backlot, destroying as many as 175,000 master recordings.

Microsoft advances in cloud storage

As Microsoft has moved more and more of its business to the cloud, the company has been investigating more reliable and information-dense ways to store data than on hard drives.

(After all, the cloud is just a bunch of servers, and servers are full of hard drives that usually crash.)

One such solution that the company has developed is now being tested with Global Music Vault. Dubbed Project Silica, it could oversimplify the technology as something akin to a glass hard drive that reads like a CD.

It's a 3-by-3-inch platter that can hold 100GB of digital data, or roughly 20,000 songs, practically forever.

Microsoft starts with quartz glass, a high-quality glass that features a symmetrical molecular structure, making it much more resistant to high temperatures and pressures than the glass in your home windows (and, like all glass, immune to to the electromagnetic encoding of nuclear weapons).

Then, using a femtosecond laser, a laser that can be fired for a billionth of a second, Microsoft etches information as 3D patterns into the glass.

Once this data is stored, another laser reads the quartz, as machine learning algorithms convert the pattern into music, movies, or any other digital information.

"The goal is to be able to store cloud-scale archival and preservation data in glass," says Ant Rowstron, distinguished engineer and deputy lab manager at Microsoft Research in Cambridge.

That's a business goal for Microsoft, but also a practical goal to protect the future of music and other data.

I imagine this vision as something like an Internet that is immune to digital rot.

The hope is that Project Silica will eventually be able to store "tens of petabytes" of music a year (a petabyte is 1,000 terabytes and a terabyte is 1,000 gigabytes), while Microsoft estimates its platters can last up to 10,000 years.

At this time, Global Music Vault has not committed to exclusively using Microsoft technology.

It is running a proof of concept, which appears to be more of a promotional and fundraising measure than a functional test, by placing plates in its storage with recordings from the Polar Music Prize, the National Library of New Zealand , and the International Library of African Music. .

Alongside them, mixed-media musician Beatie Wolfe will include a small selection of tracks, including From Green to Red, which she wrote as a teenager in response to the climate crisis.

As Wolfe explains, the vault feels appropriate given the uncertainty of our environmental and political future, but its very permanence also addresses the more practical concerns of musicians around the world, who feel devalued in the Internet age and fear that their contributions vanish.

"I think the music industry really created a worthless appreciation of music," says Wolfe.

“Music has become so devalued in this age of streaming, even more than in the age of iTunes, and the music industry has become so focused on commodifying this art form, that having a project like this reminds us of the value long-term of music for our species".

"Really preserving that is very much in line with what I believe in."

New Zealand's RNZ features Beatie Wolfe x GMV project

The hidden vault where music lives forever

10:53 am on 27 June 2022

By Lauren Crimp

Deep inside an arctic mountain, samples of the world's collection of crops are preserved in the Global Seed Vault - also known as the doomsday vault.

'Project silica' etches music data on thin glass slides the size of coasters. Photo: Supplied / GMV

It is now set to safeguard music for eternity too, and some New Zealand works have made the cut for the first deposit.

The Global Music Vault uses groundbreaking Microsoft technology, dubbed "Project Silica," to etch music data on thin glass slides the size of coasters.

Each can hold 100 gigabytes of data, with layers of tiny engravings which can be read by artificial intelligence algorithms. They will be preserved in the vault on Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago.

Kiwi music licensing consultant Nathan Graves is on the Global Music Vault board and compared the technology to something slightly more antique.

"A little bit like a floppy disc back in the day, it would read the information and then pull it up to an interface.

"Then you can stream it, download it, do whatever you want with it."

Graves said right now, the world's music remains at the mercy of the elements.

"There are lots of master tapes that were sitting in basements or places where they were getting mouldy, in some cases there have been fires, and preservation of those precious items has been lost."

The virtually indestructible slides will solve that problem. They can withstand being baked, boiled, scoured, flooded and subjected to electromagnetic pulses.

There are benefits for the climate, too. The vault is a cold storage solution - and not just because it neighbours the North Pole.

The glass doesn't need any energy, because the data is written into its atomic structure, making it a sustainable alternative to power-hungry data centres.

"It's a fantastic idea, it's a little bit sci-fi, but it's also an amazing new format," Graves said.

The first slide is a proof of concept and hasn't yet been filled.

Michael Brown, music curator at the Alexander Turnbull Library, among the music collection holdings at the National Library. Photo: Mark Beatty / National Library of New Zealand

But thanks to Graves, New Zealand has already secured its spot with six pieces from composer Douglas Lilburn, regarded as the grandfather of New Zealand music.

It includes the iconic Overture: Aotearoa which was written in 1940 for the New Zealand Centenary.

Alexander Turnbull Library music curator Michael Brown helped pick the works, and said Lilburn was an obvious choice.

"Lilburn is one of our most iconic composers.

"Really we're trying to put something culturally significant in there as our initial deposit, and Lilburn has that level of national significance."

Brown said Lilburn was also a pioneer for music archiving in New Zealand.

Douglas Lilburn. Photo: Supplied / Chris Black

He said Māori and Pasifika music will be among the first considered for the next entry, but there is no date set for that.

Brown is keen to work with other libraries, universities, rights owners and kaitiaki to make further selections.

"There are many areas of NZ music to explore.

"Our popular music history is now quite long, a vast array of artists and music groups have been recorded over the years which mean a lot to people."

Alongside Lilburn's music on the first glass slide will be pieces from the United Kingdom's Beatie Wolfe, the international Polar Music Prize, the International Library of African Music, Argentina's Orchestra of Indigenous Instruments and New Technologies, the Fayha Choir from Lebanon, and Kenya's Ketebul Music.

ExtreamTech feature Beatie Wolfe x Global Music Vault project

Microsoft to Store World’s Music Collection on Quartz Wafers

• By Josh Norem on June 16, 2022 at 9:30 am

(Photo: Daniel Kivle)Everyone knows that if the apocalypse ever arrives, we will need to keep certain items safe for future generations. We’ve already taken care of our collections of plant species with the Global Seed Vault, aka the Doomsday Vault. That currently holds 1,145,693 backup copies of the world’s seed varieties. They will soon be joined by a new vault, which will attempt to backup the world’s music collection. It’ll be called the Global Music Vault, and it will join the seed collection in Svalbard, Norway.

In order to accomplish this behemoth storage-related task, the organization running the effort has tapped Microsoft as a partner. Together they are embarking on a trial to achieve resilient long-term archival storage. They will be using Microsoft’s Project Silica, and working on a proof of concept to see if it will work for music storage. It uses wafers of quartz as the storage medium. The group’s press release notes that while tape is still the preferred way to archive data, it’s not as resilient as silica. Not only is silica inert, but it can withstand almost any type of environmental punishment. Referring to the concept of a glass platter, the PR notes, “It can be baked, boiled, scoured, flooded, subjected to EMP and in other ways attempted to be tampered with, without degradation of the data written in the glass.” The mountain in Norway where it’s located is also considered the safest location on earth due to a mixture of geological and geopolitical stability.

This rendering shows what the global music vault will look like when it begins accepting its first mixtapes, sometime in 2023. (Image: Global Music Vault)

Each quartz wafer (top) will be the size of a drink coaster, at 75 x 75mm and 2mm thick. Each plate will be able to store 100GB of data. Data is added to the wafers via a laser that creates “three-dimensional nanoscale gratings and deformations.” To retrieve the data, a polarized light is used to shine through the glass. From there a machine learning algorithm can decode it. The group says the proof of concept should allow data to be preserved for “many thousands of years.” Project Silica has been in the works for several years now. Back in 2019 Microsoft successfully encoded and decoded the original Superman movie on behalf of Warner Brothers. Glass as a storage medium has also been touted recently by a project involving a 5D disk that could hold data for over 13 billion years.

The first music to be added to the vault will be a “variety of musical expressions from all around the world.” It will include UK artist Beatie Wolfe, songs from Polar Music Prize from Sweden, Alexander Turnbull Library from New Zealand, and the International Library of African Music. Though this isn’t a huge data dump, the group envisions it will eventually add tens of petabytes a year. The first contribution to the vault is expected in 2023. More information can be found on the organization’s website.

The Independent Newspaper Scoops Beatie Wolfe recent collaboration

New Zealand Music Safeguarded In Global Music Vault

Monday, 13 June 2022, 12:25 pm
Press Release: Department Of Internal Affairs

Works by New Zealand composer Douglas Lilburn will be the Alexander Turnbull Library’s first deposit to a new archiving initiative the Global Music Vault.

Based in Wellington, New Zealand, the Alexander Turnbull Library holds the heritage collections of the National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa.

“The Turnbull Library is one of the foremost institutional collectors of New Zealand music,” says Alexander Turnbull Library Curator Music Michael Brown.

“The Global Music Vault is an exciting opportunity to be involved in innovative solutions for the long-term preservation of our musical taonga.”

The Global Music Vault will be an offline facility located underground on Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Circle. Using cutting-edge ‘Project Silica’ technology developed by Microsoft, digital copies of music will be stored on glass tablets that can survive thousands of years. The Global Music Vault will have a fraction of the carbon footprint of a standard data centre.

The Lilburn works will be in the form of recordings of electroacoustic works and images of original scores. Also contributing to the Global Music Vault are music and audio/visual material from the likes of pioneering innovator and artist Beatie Wolfe (UK), International music award Polar Music Prize (Sweden), and International Library of African Music (ILAM) (South Africa).

The International Music Council (IMC), one of the Global Music Vault’s founding partners, has also facilitated the inclusion of material by two Music Rights Awards laureates, the Orchestra of Indigenous Instruments and New Technologies (Argentina) and Fayha Choir (Lebanon), as well as from Ketebul Music, a Kenyan organisation led by IMC Music Rights Champion Tabu Osusa.

“While the Library has its own digital preservation programme, the Global Music Vault will provide even more backup for some of our most iconic music,” says Brown.

“It’s great for New Zealand music to be included in this international collaboration. Over time, we hope to add more New Zealand music to the Global Music Vault in consultation with donors, kaitiaki, and rights-holders.”

The Alexander Turnbull Library began systematically collecting New Zealand music in the 1960s and now holds over 55,000 published music recordings. In 1974, the Archive of New Zealand Music (ANZM) was established to preserve unpublished material at the suggestion of Douglas Lilburn. It includes unique collections of material created by New Zealand musicians, composers and songwriters, and the archives of record labels and other musical organisations and companies.

“Music offers an incredible glimpse into the history, culture and mood of a country on a unique and expressive level. Being part of the Global Music Vault will add to a greater understanding of what makes New Zealand and Pacific peoples tick.”

The Global Music Vault is the initiative of the Norwegian company Elire MG, with support from UNESCO’s International Music Council and the Arctic World Archive.

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