The other day trumpeter Yazz Ahmed gave a concert for the relatively new in London’s Jazz Cafe magazine Jazzed, a mixture of magazine, video channel, streaming service and concert platform that is currently redefining the concept of the music magazine. For the four on stage, just under an hour was a breakthrough. They hadn’t played together for a year, so they rehearsed a lot before the gig. You could tell that in them. The exuberant joy of finally being back on stage together was channeled with maximum discipline into an airy sound image of trumpet, vibraphone, electric bass and drums. It was all very modern in every detail, starting with the post-national figure of the band leader, who spent her childhood in her father’s Bahraini homeland and her youth in her mother’s London homeland, and like so many contemporary London jazz musicians, such influences and much more from this ultra-cosmopolitan metropolis processed in their music. The first piece played with Arabic scales and was dedicated to the suffragettes, the following pieces were Saudi Arabia’s first filmmaker Haifaa al-Mansour and the American civil rights activist Rosa Parks.
Above all, it was very modern because the audience was still not allowed to be there, but could watch and hear via the magazine’s app. Which brings you to the actual topic because Jazzed is the future. The advantage of the internet as a location becomes apparent very quickly. Curated playlists and entire albums in stream, videos, documentaries, interviews as text or video, news, articles. You will find what you are looking for even if you, as a fan, have already peeked at YouTube and overstimulated the algorithm of the large streaming service so much that it always plays the same pieces because you get on your nerves with your curiosity. Right there sets Jazzed because it is not based on the principle of the artificial intelligence-driven grooming that wants to hold you in the filter bubble of your own taste. The basic principle is “serendipity”, as it is called in English, which is defined in the dictionary as “the gift of making happy and unexpected discoveries by chance”. There used to be record stores, radio stations, magazines and friends for this. But you can also pack this into an app. Is working.
It all began in London: The money for the start-up came from English jazz fans
The project started last year in London. That’s where the money comes from. “VC money”, as it should be for a start-up. But not from the usual money rolls in search of the next “unicorn”. So-called angel investors, who are less interested in returns than, in this case, jazz fans. That’s why the app also has German user guidance, but mostly English content.
The editor-in-chief is Götz Bühler, Hamburg office. He’s got the magazine Jazzthing Co-founded, made radio for WDR, curated jazz streams for Byte.fm. In the nineties he once had a record label, Soulciety, when the Weissenfeldt brothers, who were not yet so world-famous at the time, appeared with their various groups, James Brown companion Bobby Byrd and the jazz radio Afro-topists Oneness of Juju. There are also the roots of the stylistic matrix, which is much more contemporary, but also more popular than the jazz magazines on the kiosk, on the radio and on television. The framework goes as far as funk and northern soul, including (if you briefly scan the playlist titles) classic modern jazz from New York labels such as Blue Note and Prestige, the currently formative spiritual jazz, blues, jazz from Scandinavia, Japan, Brazil , Sals, lots of young scenes from London and Germany.
Bühler describes it on the call: “We do this for people who like jazz but don’t know it yet.” Right. On the one hand. The entry threshold is not that high, there is no presumption of authority, no purism. But it also works as a central organ for long-time jazz listeners, although the top of the avant-garde is missing. But you had to look for them in niches in the past.
Streams will probably also remain a business model for institutions in the future
Bühler is currently busy negotiating with clubs in Germany, London, New York and Tokyo. They take him very seriously. During the pandemic, most of them upgraded their technology. Streams will probably remain a business model in the future. But even institutions such as the Village Vanguard or the Blue Note have a peak of around 800 with such an Internet transmission, but sometimes even 32 on lazy days, who pay online and watch. A platform like Jazzed is more likely to deliver a global audience than a club, which the locals tend to come across on site.
There have already been four concerts. Yussef Dayes, Bill Laurance and Yazz Ahmed in London, Nils Wülker from the jazz club of the Hotel Bayerischer Hof in Munich. All very up to date. In addition, there is the transmission quality, which at Jazzed is much better than the usual streams that run on Youtube or Vimeo via the clubs’ websites. At the moment there are also concerts for subscribers. If that goes right, you will get the basic version for the previous 5.99 euros and the luxury version for double that amount. Virtual tickets have always existed. The artists also earn directly from it.
The enthusiasm is contagious. And, no, there are no reviews. More like recommendations, like a column of the ten new albums that are important in each month. The videos also include some that the record companies produced themselves. Which is not a problem without the claim of cultural criticism, because these are usually interviews, documentaries or reports from the studio. There are still magazines for digging deep into the niches and critical discussion, as just mentioned Jazzthing, for which Bühler also writes. Or the legendary Jazz podium. This has been published since 1952 and has a new editor-in-chief, Adam Olschewski, who has brought the paper into the present in terms of content and appearance. Hook? Only that with Jazzed nor a rabbit hole in the net that you can lose yourself in. And if it is the playlist for the day at the Isar (Elbe, Rhine, Main, Spree) beach in this weather.