Hi, I’m Roel van der Ven. I’m a Senior Product Manager at Spotify with 20+ years of experience across media, music, and platform technology. I write about product management, technology, bread baking, and life in Berlin.

Recent

ALB + Blogotheque + a drone = a music video in 1 take

Technology and music are two of the most important things that keep me inspired. The people behind Blogotheque have been my heroes for a long time, but no they made a leap into the future by filming the band ALB with a drone. The whole video is shot in 1 take, which reduces the chance of “catching your breath”. Without switching context your brain keeps processing what it sees, thus keeping you on edge for the whole length of the video. Here you go, hope you enjoy it as much as I did:

Run River North - Excuses

I haven’t been able to post anything lately because of a new and interesting adventure. I’ve joined http://tape.tv, more about that later. This post is about Run River North, who released an amazing music video with their new song called Excuses. Every once and a while you see and/or hear something what makes you think: “Yes. This is it”. Well, this is it. The video combines a lot of ideas that have been applied and tried out in film and other music videos, but here everything seems to come together in this incredible funny, creative story. Enjoy. Run River North “Excuses” from Nettwerk Music Group on Vimeo.

NPL Acoustics

After a splendid Music Hack Day London in 2011 we were lucky to be invited to a small tour in the National Physical Laboratory of London. Ian Butterworth was so kind to show us around and illustrate the impressive effects of the acoustic chambers they use for testing. These recordings have been sitting around on my SoundCloud account for ages and I am finally posting them here for you to enjoy. The quality is not great since I recorded these with an iPad, but you should be able to get a pretty good impression.

Atoms for Peace - Before your very Eyes

Yesterday Atoms for Peace released the music video for their track “Before your very Eyes”. Mister Thom Yorke can be a music industry defeatist all he wants, but I’ll be inspired by his works forever. Enjoy.

Good reads: Product Management

A while ago I selected a bunch of articles that have impressed or inspired me and I thought would be useful sharing. At that time I figured I could regularly post an article with resourceful or inspiring articles but I didn’t realise I needed the time to read them all myself and let them sink in so I could think about the actual value. Starting with this post I want to theme this series with a certain topic, which helps me to maintain the quality of this series but also enables me to create a valuable resource of knowledge and learnings that will hopefully be useful for you as well.