By Knar Bedian of Evolver.fm.
Most of us get our dose of new music on the interwebs, whether via streaming radio, blogs, blog aggregators, friends, feeds, label newsletters, or hybrids like Shuffler.fm, the online music blog curator that’s also recently joined the lineup of Spotify apps.
This one’s different.
The Turntable Kitchen Pairings Box Experience from High Beam Media
The popular site The Turntable Kitchen, part personal blog, music blog, tech blog, and recipe blog, has a neat habit of ending each post with a recipe and a song to go with it. Its Pairings Box, which the couple behind it describes as “a curated food and music discovery experience, delivered to your door,” is basically a physical music and dinner (sort of) subscription. We say “sort of” because you only get a dried ingredient for the recipe, as opposed to all of the ingredients. At least this way, you can use fresh stuff.
Subscribe for $25/month plus taxes and fees (The March edition is sold out, and the April one goes on sale on March 14), or give a gift subscription (view options), and you or your giftee will receive a box with a hand-numbered, limited edition vinyl single chosen by The Turntable Kitchen, accompanied by 1-2 dried recipe ingredients (“a special spice, flour, grain, or bean”), three recipes, and a downloadable digital mixtape, also curated by the blog (examples: Ghost Loft, NO, Save The Clocktower, Oscar Key Sung), and possibly other treats from sponsors.
We’ve seen other rumblings of niche physical music subscriptions, like Merch Box, a startup with a similar music subscription that brings music merchandise to your door, as well as artists experimenting with different ways to promote themselves with physical goods. But this pairing of food and music in a subscription concept appears to be new. [Ed. note: I've seen a restaurant do something similar with wine, but not as a subscription, so the author is right.]
I will be interested to see what this could mean for artists. Partnerships with the culinary world isn’t exactly the first thing that would come to mind in terms of music marketing and promotion, but perhaps Turntable Kitchen has discovered a niche market and a new method to reach listeners.
Also, this is happening on an “artisinal,” bespoke level suitable for people who want vinyl even if they don’t know what to get, and want dinner ideas while they’re at it. It might also be interesting to see what happens on a larger level, when big data gets involved with pairing food and music.
More: The Turntable Kitchen Pairings Box Offers "Curated Food & Music Discovery Experience"
