Exhibit A: Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen has a museum here in Seattle called the Experience Music Project.* The name is a shout out to local guitar legend Jimi Hendrix.
Exhibit B: Paul Allen’s own Web page. When you navigate to it, a little bar creeps across the page with the header, “The Paul Allen Experience is Loading.”
Exhibit C: Microsoft offers users a preview of Windows Vista: The Experience, one aspect of which is Experience Music.
Wouldn’t you expect some sort of tie-in to the EMP here? Microsoft…”Experience Music”…the Experience Music Project, built with Microsoft millions? There’s no way that the Vista Experience campaign was not somehow informed, influenced, or inspired by the Paul Allen “Experience” tag.
So is there a connection? Or is it just…well, a shout out?
FUN FACT: The Windows Vista Community page includes a link to Robert Scoble’s blog.
* Or as Stan Ridgway drawled during his set at the Bumbershoot music festival, “You buy up everybody’s guitars, and you put ’em all on display in a big building, like it’s your garage or somethin’, and then you charge everyone to see ’em.”
Wade Rockett 