© Renowned 2023
Many moons ago, back in the era of Cassette tapes, a young Ben Paul would spend his Sundays recording the chat show, cutting out the chat between shows to end up with a musical mix of the day’s songs. He would then dub (duplicate) the cassette and hand them out to my friends at school, who could also enjoy listening to the big hits of that time with no adverts or interruptions.
Fast forward to the era of CDs, and my friendship group was mostly made up of passionate music diggers. And we’d all make our ‘best of the week’ mixes and swap them around with each other; it was such an exciting time for Music in the UK, as you had the smouldering pot of Electronic Music, which was informing and progressing new sounds and styles that were previously uncharted. Then you also had the now infamous Golden Era of UK hip-hop.
Moving into the digital era, searching for new music has changed significantly. I always catalogued my monthly discoveries and, since 2007, have been creating regular playlists across various platforms.
Music has always had an impact on mood and tone; whilst growing up, I was aware of which sort of music would help me focus, keep me productive, or if need to hype me up for a Sporting contest or physical activity. It has incredible ways of altering perspective, and this was another reason I created these lists; parts are designed for focus, inspiration, and drive.
Although this playlist is currently only available on Spotify, the plan is to expand this into a platform where artists feel better supported. Or at least have links to purchase if available. The music industry is still in flux, and the recording artists are not seeing the returns you’d expect from the hard work of their creations. There are many places to purchase music from. Personally, music discovery through a platform like Bandcamp is excellent; you can also buy a lot of physical records and limited edition merch.
Until recently, the playlist was called Friday Fire, and we would usually play it in the studio on a Friday Lunchtime. The music was manually curated to take us from lunchtime to the end of the day and into the weekend, continuously growing in vibrancy as you moved through the music.
We wanted to align Renowned and Friday Fire more closely, so we have rebranded it, and now it’s to be known as ‘Resonate’, the updated bi-monthly playlist.
There are three key points to note with the playlist.
Turn on ‘Crossfade Songs’ under playback in the settings menu. Set it to 6 seconds to ensure you have a continuous stream of music.
