Requiem of Coke Music

Like many of you, my Facebook news feed has been filled with updates on other people’s accomplishments in the game Farmville. I was a little annoyed at first then I got a closer look at the game. I stopped being so cynical and quickly became empathetic with remembrance of a game that I was heavily addicted to back in grade school days. Coke Music (also known as Coke Studios and then My Coke) was a game that revolved around socializing, creating music, and decorating rooms. Very similar to Farmville with the characters in the game, the social aspect, as well as (to a degree) the decoration aspect of Coke Music. Actually replace the decoration aspect in Farmville with organization, and the music creation of Coke Music with the time management part involved in Farmville and you have a pretty good comparison of the games.

Coke Music was really cool, an I believe maybe the precursor to how I would live, if not my entire life, then certainly the next 10 or so years of my life. The idea of Coke Music was you were a DJ in a crappy, furniture-less apartment and you had to make money by spreading your music around the world. I would spend an hour or so putting together a few tracks and then I would venture out to any one of the “global” virtual rooms and then go wait in line (with other Coke Music participants) to play my mix for everyone in the room. Then the people in the room would vote on if they liked it or not, and depending on how many likes you received from the audience, you would receive “decibels” which is basically money in the Coke Music world. And with that money you could decorate you apartment with all sorts of swag from rugs to fridges to new studio equipment, hell even a teleporter. I remember how stoked I was when I was able to afford the vintage red Coca-Cola couch.

The music creation portion of the game was relatively simple, and it did become slightly boring to hear the same samples played together over and over, but I was still quite nervous to play my mix for the room. I don’t remember if there were any faders for mixing the samples, and I’m fairly certain there were no pan pots, but it was still quite fun to see what you could come up with, especially to someone who had no training or experience in the art of mixing.

Now that I look back on it, Coke Music might have had a bigger influence on my life than I am willing to admit. I have really taken a liking to mixing and creating music and playing it for others. I really enjoy the social aspect of the internet (ie Facebook, Twitter etc…).  And I do have to admit, I do have the HGTV on from time to time.