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

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

The split single, also featuring Beatie Wolfe, will come on the world's first commercially available bioplastic 12" record

By Tom Skinner

31st August 2022

Michael Stipe has announced a special split single with Beatie Wolfe in aid of climate emergency 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”.

The organisation marked EarthDay this April by releasing numerous exclusive tracks that had been donated by such artists as Stipe, Coldplay, Eno, Anna Calvi and Jarvis Cocker‘s JARV IS… via Bandcamp.

Proceeds from sales of those songs went towards funding EarthPercent’s five core areas of work: “greening music, energy transition, climate justice, legal and policy change, and protecting nature”.

Today (August 31), it’s been confirmed that the former R.E.M. frontman will release ‘Future, If Future’ – his debut solo track, which originally arrived 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 to pre-order here from this Friday (September 2). It’ll 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.”

Michael Stipe collaborated with Brian Eno on ‘Future, If Future’. Speaking about the song earlier this year, the latter musician explained: “I’m very pleased with the way it’s gone. It’s a very good song, a very Stipe song. Beautiful lyrics, extraordinary piece.”

Last month saw Eno deliver another climate warning with his single ‘There Were Bells’. It’ll appear on his 22nd studio album, ‘FOREVERANDEVERNOMORE’, which is out on October 14.

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

Greener records are here: Michael Stipe and Beatie Wolfe featured on first bioplastic vinyl

RUSTY BLAZENHOFF 4:55 AM FRI SEP 2, 2022

Musicians have a greener way to make their records now that Evolution Music is offering non-PVC, bioplastic pressings. Michael Stipe and Beatie Wolfe are the first two artists to release music on this non-fossil fuel vinyl option. The 12" record features two tracks: Stipe's "Future If Future" (which Brian Eno produced) and Wolfe's (absolutely lovely) "Oh My Heart." Sales are limited to 500 copies and support EarthPercent.

Beatie Wolfe awaits the first pressings / image: Ross Harris

Michael Stipe: "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."

Beatie Wolfe: "It's been fantastic to join forces with EarthPercent on the environmental front and for this very special release with Michael Stipe. 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."

Photos: Beatie Wolfe and Ross Harris (used with permission)

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."