§ Field Notes · journal
Something to read.
What behaviour shows that surveys miss: the patterns in what a market plays, watches and searches. Field Notes are the read; News is where we announce what’s new.
0005 Field Note France has left the cost-of-living chapter. The rest of Europe is still reading it. Across eight markets, cost-of-living is a top-three rising theme in seven. France is the exception, and that makes it a leading indicator. 0004 Field Note Germany’s news has never sounded so grim. Its music has never sounded so bright. Germany has Europe’s second-most-negative news tone and its most brightening domestic music. That gap is the whole case for reading culture alongside the numbers. 0003 Field Note Europe is trading down to discount groceries. Here’s the map, market by market. One continent-wide behaviour, eight local battlegrounds: the discounter taking search share from the national mainstream grocer. 0002 Field Note The neobank wave breaks differently in every market. Where the local champions hold. Revolut is rising across Europe. Where it wins and where the home challenger holds is the read a single national dashboard cannot give. 0001 Field Note We backtested our own product four times and published every failure. Here’s why. We pre-registered whether music predicts demand and tested it four times. Every test failed. So we changed the product, not the data.