SoundCtrl » App

Gig-It Throws Huge Launch Party

SoundCtrl — Thu, 02 May 2013 21:08:46 +0000

On Tuesday at Capitale in NYC, Gig-It threw one of the biggest, most impressive launch party we’ve ever seen for a startup. The Facebook game, which allows users to create their own virtual concerts, customizing everything from the performers, to their set lists, venues, special effects, and even their wardrobes. Gig-It took aim at the king of Facebook games, by branding the event with their hashtag, #thisaintnofarm.

Gig-It pulled out all the stops, and featured abbreviated performances from the likes of Miguel, Elle Varner, Fabolous, 2 Chainz, and Nas. DJ Khaled and LaLa took care of the hosting duties, while Miami’s DJ Irie spun between sets. Randi Zuckerberg was also on hand to lend her endorsement.

For more info on Gig-It, which officially launches this Spring, visit Mashable.

Insider Interview: Soundwave Founder, Brendan O’Driscoll

SoundCtrl — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 14:00:28 +0000

By Kira Grunenberg

Find the full review of Soundwave here.

Soundwave is a brand new music discovery and sharing app, developed by a team of creative people based in Dublin, Ireland. The app’s active use has been a long time in coming, as the company began its work in February 2012.

Recently having attended the South by Southwest Festival in Austin this past March, and having shown their hard work in action, Soundwave is now signing up users for its newest beta version and working furiously to make the app better everyday. Brendan O’Driscoll, Founder of Soundwave, chatted with me about the app inspiration, its global potential and even gave a peek into the next “wave” to come:

SoundCtrl: First of all, congratulations on the beta launch. It’s been really neat watching you and the rest of the Soundwave team evolve, even in the short time I’ve been following along prior to SXSW. Music blogger Damien Joyce deserves a nod here, as he was responsible for introducing us to one another!

While this might be one of the most obvious starting questions, I think it presents a worthwhile level of intrigue: Why is Soundwave here today? Where did this concept come from? Considering that in recent times, music discovery apps have seemed to multiply faster than users can download them, the desire to push through with something you are convinced has its own character must mean your source of inspiration is something really striking…

Brendan: We always thought that finding new music was a chore and were constantly looking for simple new ways to find new music. Apps, websites and clever recommendation engines weren’t keeping our attention either so we spent most of the time asking each other and our friends about what new songs we had recently found.

Then one day when I was working in Sweden, I was coming home from work and saw a tall, blonde Swedish girl almost walk into a tree because she was so engrossed in the song she was listening to. I immediately wondered if there was a way for me to find out what the song was- and I looked around for apps that could give me this info- but there were none.

That week, I Skyped with my cousin Aidan and discussed the idea further. After some initial validation of the idea from musicians and friends, we applied to the NDRC LaunchPad Programme in last spring with the Soundwave idea and a hunch that we were on to something quite unique in the crowded space of music discovery.

There are apps that help you identify a song playing in a club (Shazam), record your own song (SoundCloud), listen to a song on the radio (Pandora), and music subscription services (Spotify and Rdio) where you can listen to a full song. But, if you are looking to find new music based off of what your friends listen to, your current location, or even discover what the most popular hip/hop songs in Brooklyn are right now, there was no efficient method in the space.

Soundwave’s objective is to make it easy and fun to find new music in a way that provides highly relevant content to you. Its your app that shows what your friends, family and favorites (musicians, athletes ,celebs) listen to which gives you inspiration when your finding new music!

SoundCtrl: Continuing with this theme about your inspiration: The “Music Map” feature has to be my favorite aspect of Soundwave’s interface, as well one of the strongest factors to set the app apart. Are you, or the rest of the team, heavy travelers and is that what brought this feature into being?

Brendan: Yes, travel did influence the ‘Music Map’ feature. When I lived abroad in Sweden I was exposed to entirely different tastes in music, and I shared my song discoveries with friends in Ireland via Facebook and Twitter. And likewise, they kept me in the loop with music trends in Dublin. Now, with the Soundwave app, I can simply draw a circle over Texas, Amsterdam, or Sweden and see what songs are actually playing in real-time. With Soundwave, I can instantly learn what is trending in that location. No other app out there combines social, location and music discovery in such a hyper-local and relevant way- it’s the new SoLoMo- it’s SoLoMu!!

SoundCtrl: Might you share with us some thoughts on your trip to SXSW? How was the reception to Soundwave as a new service and concept?

Brendan: SXSW is the dream for a music start-up- it is the place where you literally run into the key movers and shakers in the tech/music scene- from Robert Scoble to the founders of Foursquare and SoundCloud. We are based outside of the US, so we were looking to make some headway in the US- and SXSW provided us with the perfect forum to show off the app and build a number of strategic partnerships.

SXSW was also great for trialing a marketing stunt- we asked a local dance crew to preform on 6^th street with no audible music- just with headphones on. Curious spectators could only find out what songs they were dancing to by checking out our #SXDancingGuy Twitter feed or by signing up for the app beta.

After SXSW, we rented an RV and drove across the US to Las Vegas and San Francisco for some very productive follow-up meetings. All in all, our trip to the US was quite the adventure! As you can see from the pin drops attached, it was also a great way to test the location aspect of the app. On our next trip over, we want to curate the top plays for Route 66 – how cool would that be!

SoundCtrl: As I alluded to in my full review of the app, do you think Soundwave has the potential to help reduce some of the homogeneity of music in the western world, knowing that playlists of anyone, in any part of the globe, are only a sound circle drawing away?

Brendan: Soundwave gives you the ability to ‘explore the latest music trends in New York while on the bus in London’. Music began as a community based and tribal event. Even today, each community has it’s own unique vibe and music taste. With Soundwave, you can tap into that from anywhere in the world.

SoundCtrl: Regarding some of the technical factors involved in using Soundwave: I noticed that when the app cannot retrieve a song’s metadata in order to play it back, users get routed to an internal version of YouTube to cue up an available version of that same track for listening. However, it seems international content barriers are blocking the way when it comes to hearing some of these songs in other countries. Does Soundwave plan on mitigating this issue with future releases or is this more of a deep rooted legal battle with global PROs and access limitations, with which you are not wanting to tamper?

Brendan: We did not set out to become a music player like Spotify or Rdio; Soundwave works side by side with these existing music providers as an aggregated music discovery feed. The problem we found with content providers is not that they don’t have enough content. They have too much. Spotify has a library of over 20 million songs and users often freeze when faced with this amount of choice. As a result, we wanted to position ourselves as a content discovery platform and not a content provider. As you mentioned, this means we can steer clear of any licensing issues Regarding YouTube content availability – that’s all on YouTube’s side. We’re working on a smarter results system now that only returns “available content” and also chatting daily with the team at YouTube. Regarding your questions above about “Most Liked and “Most Disliked” charts, those charts in the ‘Explore’ section of the app are compiled globally –every user of Soundwave is included in this data. The ‘Explore’ section is where we plan to put interesting content we want to feature for our users –new bands to join the app, top ten charts of popular music festivals etc. But at the moment it is where the global charts live. We plan to have more specific charts searchable by genre, groups and location down the line. Right now you can see an individual user’s Top Charts, and in the next build you will be able to see location charts when you draw a sound circle on the map.

SoundCtrl: Can you tell us any new capabilities or specific features you are hoping to develop in future versions of Soundwave?

Brendan: Our development team is hard at work ensuring that we will be able to pull song listens from all music players. We currently collect song listens from Google Play, Rdio and all native smartphone music players, but we plan to expand this offering in future releases.

We are also working on a groups feature- you can organize your friends into groups- ie ‘Indie Music Fans’ and specifically recommend songs to a particular subset of followers.

We also see a strong use case developing for large events and music festivals. Next year we hope that Coachella attendees can draw a Soundwave circle over Indio and see the most liked, disliked and played songs by genre in real-time. We have big plans for the future, so stay tuned!!

Currently, we are in beta collecting feedback from a growing Irish community of users. We are optimizing on both platforms, both Android and iOS and currently work on tablets too- so readers- sign up for the beta right now at www.getsoundwave.com.

Kira is an old school music nerd with a love for all things creative; always searching for music’s common ground. She graduated with an M.A. in Performing Arts Administration from New York University. Drop her a tweet @shadowmelody1

Portugal. The Man are a bunch of #mophos

SoundCtrl — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 14:34:40 +0000

By David Chaitt, SoundCtrl Board Member

Going to Ad Age Digital Conference, I had little or no understanding of photo app developer Aviary. Tobias Peggs, their CEO, was one of the most fun and informative speakers I’ve seen in a while. He gave the audience a full download on all things #mopho aka mobile photography, which is a term with which I admittedly wasn’t familiar.

Aviary powers the photo editing functionality for 3700 apps including Wallmart, Twitter, Flickr, Photobucket, and their own app. Their filters have been used on 3.5 Billion photos. Needless to say, they are experts at what they do. They know what #mophos want.

During his presentation, he also briefly alluded to a recent partnership with Atlantic Records for the launch of Portugal. The Man’s new record “Evil Friends”. All I gathered was that users could download a photo app powered by Aviary where special photo filters could allow users to create stickers inspired by the band. Take a look at the Instagram photo stream to put a visual to what this exactly means.

To get a little more context and detail to what the partnership entailed, I reached out to Atlantic and was put in touch with their Director of Digital Marketing, Thanh Nguyen. He had the following to add:

John Gourley, Portugal. The Man’s frontman, is also a visual artist. Along with his art collaborator, Austin Sellers (together known as The Fantastic The), Gourley designs all things visual for the band—album covers, photo illustrations, tour sets, and more.

The Evil Friends sticker pack with Aviary was a perfect partnership, as John was already creating images on his own by drawing on photos to correspond with the theme of the album, Evil Friends , and posting them on the band’s Instagram. Aviary’s technology allowed us to give fans a chance to create their own artwork inspired by John’s.

Because Portugal. The Man has always been so hands-on in all visual aspects of their music, a photo centric campaign just felt very natural for both the band and their fans.

Aviary has an amazing product with a large network of users, so they were the perfect partners for us. It’s often easy to have low quality photos/submissions when you’re running a UGC campaign, but with an app like Aviary and the Evil Friends sticker pack, a casual user can easily create their own images in line with the artist’s vision and aesthetic.

Whether you’re a fan of the band or not, it’s probably a good idea to download the app and try to think about how you can push the needle a little more to engage all the #mopho junkies out there.

Concert Window, The Netflix for Live Concerts

SoundCtrl — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 15:27:57 +0000

By Rip Empson via Tech Crunch

“… a platform for live concerts isn’t exactly a new idea. In fact, it’s been floating around for years, but those entering the space have been hamstrung to an over-abundance of friction stemming from royalty and licensing issues and having to convince venues to install the technology and hardware — among other things. As a result, live online music has been slow to take off…

Concert Window co-founder Dan Gurney tells us that the startup is beginning to hit its stride, having quadrupled revenue over the last five months, added a handful of employees and is now broadcasting over 100 live shows each month. The startup has been able to do by broadcasting live concerts over the Web, allowing you to listen and watch as the concert happens from the comfort of your couch. To address the friction for venues mentioned above, Concert Window attempts to take the work out of the hands of venue managers — all the venue needs is an Internet connection…

By offering a mobile experience, a relatively steady stream of concerts and allowing fans to chat with each other and leave feedback for artists, Concert Window hopes its v2.0 can give it a leg up on the competition.”

For the full story on Concert Window and more on new potential competitor EvntLive, visit www.techcrunch.com

Better Know a FlashFWD Nominee – Pheed

SoundCtrl — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 14:00:27 +0000

By Jason Epstein

VOTE FOR PHEED FOR BEST IN MOBILE & TABLET HERE

Pheed is a free social media platform that puts an emphasis on creative endeavors with content creation, monetization of one’s offerings and simple copyrighting all tied together by the ability to upload text, photos, videos and audio in a single place. Sound Ctrl writer Jason Epstein spoke with Pheed Communications Director Chrysta Olson about Pheed’s members, features and what’s coming next.

SoundCtrl- Whenever someone is faced with joining a new social media platform they ask themselves unconsciously how it will benefit them. Can you tell us how Pheed works, how it differs from competitors such as Facebook and how it benefits users?

Chrysta Olson - People are becoming overwhelmed with how many options there are for sharing content online. You have Twitter for text, Instagram for photos, Viddy or Vine for videos, Soundcloud for sound, Ustream for live broadcast. With so many options, it becomes difficult to know where to put your content, and no one wants to have a dozen apps on their phone. The idea behind Pheed is that you can share all forms of digital content in one place, in one clean and easy to use app.

The all-in-one approach is definitely one of the appeals of Pheed. We are also the first social platform that allows users to monetize their content if they wish to do so. While it is free to join Pheed, and many users choose to share their content for free, we believe it is fair to offer content creators the option to monetize their content if they feel the desire to do so. Our hope in the long run is that this will incentivize great content creation for the web.

Another big benefit to the platform is that users own and control all of their content. For creatives – photographers, artists, musicians, actors, comedians, athletes, brands, etc., this is very appealing as we live in a digital age where it’s not clear who owns what. Pheed users can actually select a ‘copyright’ button, which will encrypt a physical watermark on photos and videos with the channel holders name so that content is always linked back to its creator.

SC – Pheed’s tag line is “Express Yourself”. What kind of user does Pheed generally attract and how are they able to express their individuality?

CO - Pheed has become especially popular among creatives, entertainers and youth. Users between age 15 to 25 make up 84% of the overall user base, there are over 500 verified Twitter users on Pheed and over 700 of the top 5,000 most followed users on Instagram. Brands such as MTV, Bravo, People, Hurley, Vibe, and Nasa are also using Pheed as a social media outlet for their content.

On Pheed, users can upload photos, videos, music, voice-clips, and text to their channels – with very few limits on the size or shape of the content. If you really wanted to, you could upload a feature length film on your Pheed channel. Additionally, if you feel your content is worthy of having people pay to access it, you can place a paywall on your channel, or do a live broadcast pay-per-view video. Users select the price, and as mentioned above, they always own and control the rights to their content.

SC – What’s next for Pheed?

CO - An update to the iOS app with new privacy settings and live broadcasting pay-per-view via the app (currently available via the web) will be released early April. Our Android app is also currently in development, and due for release the end of April 2013.

35 Ways Musicians and Music Brands Are Using Twitter’s Vine App

SoundCtrl — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 16:03:11 +0000

By Brian Anthony Hernandez, via Mashable

Mashable has compiled a pretty great 35-vine long list of celebrities, rising artists and music brands who are giving fans a visual and auditory glimpse into their lives with intimate 6-second, GIF-like videos. Here are the top ten… go check out all the vines on Mashable!

1. Rolling Stone Honors 5 Decades of The Beatles

2. Paul McCartney Challenges Fans to Name Song

3. Enrique Igelsias Shares Fan’s Footage

4. 30 Seconds to Mars Thanks a Fan

5. VH1 Interviews Jared Leto About Vine

6. Dido Shows Off Rehearsal in a Hotel

7. Live Nation Promotes Tickets With Video of Pink

8. Steve Aoki Curses and Air Humps in Limo

9. Jason Derulo Meets With Record Label

10. Rolling Stone Pimps Out Flaming Lips Singer’s Nails

SoundHound & Rdio Launch New Andriod Tablet App

SoundCtrl — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 16:36:14 +0000

By Josh Ong via The Next Web

“Music search company SoundHound has released a new tablet-optimized version of its Android app with a redesigned layout, improved music discovery and Rdio as a launch partner.

SoundHound, which has over 130 million users worldwide, says the app has been designed specifically with the Google’s Nexus 7 and Nexus 10 tablets, as well as the Kindle Fire and Kindle HD in mind… ‘By utilizing the tablet’s larger screen space and leveraging new tools from Google, users can much more fluidly navigate within the app and have access to more content in one location,’ VP James Hom said in a statement.”

To check out all of the SoundHound 5.3 updates and for the rest of the story, visit www.nextweb.com

App Review: DeliRadio

SoundCtrl — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 13:00:25 +0000

by Dave Mainella

Last fall, SoundCtrl discussed the idea of hyperlocalism – “creating super-niche products for a specific community”. The trend continues with DeliRadio’s app for local social radio.

DeliRadio, also accessible through its website, offers free, location-based, streaming music. The hyperlocal service gives users the opportunity to listen to emerging bands performing nearby and established artists passing through town on tour.

The app performs accurately and easily. After installing and opening the app on your iPhone or Android device, the immediate call-to-action is a simple “Quick Play,” creating a playlist based on your automatically detected geographical location. The music begins, with most of the visual space consumed by the track’s artwork. The app also displays basic information, including artist, track name, and when and where the band is playing next. A simple music player at the bottom allows pause, skip, and back-track functionality.

Tapping the info link displays a biographical write-up of the band, all upcoming shows for the next two months (powered by Songkick), and links to the band’s websites and social media outlets. There are also links to directly purchase music. DeliRadio boasts that they do not take any commission or fee out of digital sales through their app.

A glance at the entire location-generated playlist reveals an incredibly wide range of bands performing at most nearby venues over the next two days. While I’m sure the list is far from complete (New York is certainly a saturated music environment), it offers more than enough of a selection to choose from, or simply listen to. DeliRadio has 100% artist consent for streaming music.

DeliRadio also includes a database of local venues where each venue lists all of their upcoming shows, a trending and featured category, and filters by proximity, genre, and date.

Signing up for a free account grants access to additional features like bookmarking tracks and artists, creating and saving your own stations, and sharing on Facebook, Twitter, and directly from phone to phone – social aspects of the app that seem key to its sustainability and growth.

The app performs exactly as advertised, making it easy to find nearby shows and preview the music. It would be interesting (and perhaps nearly impossible) to note the effectiveness in drawing concert-goers.

The DeliRadio app is available for free at the iTunes App store and through Google Play.

Social Platform Music Apps: Facebook or Spotify?

SoundCtrl — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 20:16:40 +0000

by Carolyn Heneghan

In today’s online social landscape, apps reign king. They’re on your phone, your desktop, your tablet, and even on your social media profiles. Facebook and Spotfiy both started out as non-app platforms. But as the app technology rose in popularity, both have assimilated themselves to the trend and added its functionality to their respective services.

As a more generalized social media presence, Facebook’s apps run the gamut, but many of them are indeed geared to music—a popularly shared subject on walls across the globe. Spotify began as a free music streaming service, so its apps are all music-based. Both have partnered with developers to share the best types of music apps for their respective audiences, and both have seen certain apps and certain types of app rise above the rest.

What Can Music Apps Do for Me?

Apps for both services cover a wide range of music-related topics. The most popular apps tend to involve music discovery, connecting with artists, and creating and sharing playlists. But there are apps that help you find lyrics, create a hangout for you and like-minded listeners, stream radio stations, watch and share music videos, or receive “push” notifications for music and video releases, tour announcements, and so on. There are plenty of musician-facing apps too that allow bands and solo artists to connect with their fans in new and innovative ways.

Facebook’s Top 5 Music Apps (For Now)

The top two most-used apps are actually both band-facing, so we will skip them for the purposes of this list. They are BandPage and My Band, which both enable bands to customize a Facebook hub containing all of the information about their tours, music, pictures, Twitter and wall postings, and so on. My Band also allows fans to add and share music as well as buy tickets to a show or even music from right there in the app.

Spotify. A bit ironic, Facebook’s otherwise top used app is Spotify itself. Along with 2.2 million other users, you can connect with your Facebook friends via shared playlists that you’re currently listening to or that you’d like to share with a friend.
Music (iLike). At 1.5 million users, iLike creates a music tab on your profile that allows you to do a little of everything, including create and share playlists, receive concert notifications, discover and share new music, and even play the iLike Challenge to prove your music smarts.
Bandsintown. More than 4.2 million users use this app to keep track of when and where their favorite artists will be coming to their town, and musicians can share with their fans their tour schedule and ticket info. The service reaches over 20 million unique Facebook users per month.
YouTube Video Box. Also not a shocker, this app, used by 850,000 people, allows users to share their favorite videos to their profile and Facebook Pages. In addition to the standard YouTube share function, you can also view your friends’ favorite videos and sync your YouTube.com account. The YouTube app itself came in sixth/eighth place with 590,000 users.
iLike this Artist. In relation to the other iLike app, iLike the Artist lets musicians show off their fan count across the iLike network and add an “iLike this artist” button to their band page.

Spotify’s Top 5 Music Apps (For Now)

Spotify released its ten most popular apps of 2012 with its 2012 Spotify Review of the Year.

TuneWiki. This app allows you to sync lyrics and auto-scroll through them. You can use it to sing along to all of your favorite songs, matching the words as you listen through it.
Soundrop. Soundrop presents a series of themed chat rooms based on the genres, music, and artists you want to talk about with fellow music lovers.
We Are Hunted. This music discovery app places emphasis on “cool” and emerging artists. Based on what you listen to, the app recommends playlists in tune with what other users are listening to.
Last.fm. Last.fm offers personalized recommendations based on the music that you choose. It was Spotify before Spotify existed, but it is moving more toward being a social network for music.
Pitchfork. Brought to you by the magazine of the same name, this indie-lover’s Bible is the “Essential Guide to Independent Music & Beyond” and a companion to the Pitchfork website.

Facebook’s Top 5 vs Spotify’s Top 5

Besides Spotify and YouTube, Facebook’s top apps are generally there to link bands and fans, allowing them to share music and information between them. Facebook is the more social platform of the two and encourages sharing with friends and fans at every turn. So it should come as no surprise that this is the primary function for all of the top 5 (top 7 including the skipped two) Facebook apps.

Spotify is a bit more single user-focused, and most of the service’s top apps are geared toward that individual user’s ability to discover new music, with the exception of Soundrop. As Spotify is still a music streaming service at its core, it also comes as no surprise that its top apps would mostly deal with music discovery and personalized playlists.

Both services are free, and both offer a different selection of apps that meet different needs. Based on your personal and social preferences, either of these platforms may have just the right app to enhance your music experience.

App Review: Radio Cloud Lite

SoundCtrl — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 05:15:11 +0000

By Steven Zeisler

Radio Cloud Lite, developed by Giles Chanot, is a free, interactive radio app for all iOS devices that allows you user access to nearly 200 of the very best, most popular radio stations from the UK, USA, Canada, Australia, and Spain.

Working through a Wi-Fi or 3G / LTE connection, the app constantly streams music from a variety of stations that are set up on a stunning 3D user interface that hovers in front of your eyes amidst – yes, a background of clouds – either in landscape or portrait mode.

As soon as the app fires up, it’s streaming music from a random radio station around the world. With a simple swipe of the finger, you can delegate which station to turn to, and what’s awesome is that the current radio station fades out as another smoothly fades in, without interruption in listening. From classic rock to talk radio to sports broadcasting, the Radio Cloud Lite doesn’t miss a beat. It is intuitive, natural, and just plain smooth. Plus, you can pause and resume any radio station at any time. Radio Cloud Lite even supports multitasking because it can run in the background if you get out of the app.

Upgrade to Radio Cloud for just $0.99, and you have a number of added on features including the ability to:

Filter by country and genre
Uninterrupted listening because of no ads
Airplay to wireless speakers, AppleTV, etc.

There are, however, some crucial features missing. This includes the ability to save your favorite stations and the stations do not provide artist / title information for each song. Hopefully this will eventually change with added improvements.

So if you’re looking for a simple music app to zone out to, Radio Cloud Lite is a good music companion.

Focus@will music streaming service aims to boost productivity

SoundCtrl — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 17:27:15 +0000

By Kira Grunenberg

Ask almost any college student if they listen to music while studying or doing homework and the response given will most likely be a resounding “yes,” followed by an explanation of the kind of music involved. Decisions about what to listen to while doing any sort of serious work requiring undivided attention can vary from listening to tracks that inspire a certain level of energy based on tempo, (e.g. faster songs to motivate during an all-nighter), to quieter and possibly lyric-less pieces of a more classical nature to fill a void but not clash with words an individual is already in the midst of reading.

Some might argue having noticeable music in the background helps to keep their minds from drifting and/or getting bored, which could lead to glossing over notes rather than genuinely keeping them in one’s memory bank. Still, this whole scenario rides on subjectivity and personal benefit. Controlled studies have been performed to analyze what works “best” when it comes to the brain and music, but everyone has a method and it is not always based on anything remotely empirical.

Focus@will is a new music service with a one-of-a-kind objective to foster strong sessions of productivity –particularly for studying, writing and reading.

The streaming service, which has been in development since “late 2009,” as stated in CEO, William Henshall’s Linkedin background, announced the launch of its private beta period in a fresh press release. Thus far, Henshall’s disclosure of information is somewhat limited but here’s what we’ve been able to discern:

Focus@will is currently running as a cross-platform HTML5 web application and mobile versions are on the way for iOS/Android.
The service’s music is provided through a cloud managed audio engine.
The platform’s musical content is described as “exclusively tailored…to improve productivity,” using a “custom-built focus genome sequencer” that analyzes qualities like: intensity, musical arrangement, tonal key, recording style and emotional value.

The overall aim for Focus@will comes across similar to audio recordings or systems that are intended to promote healthy and substantial sleep. Sleep operates in REM and NREM cycles and the human body moves through stages of these cycles in fairly consistent increments, given adequate time and lack of provocation. Part of the research conducted for the creation of Focus@will was determining how the human brain operates during periods of continuous work or study.

Researchers observed over the last few years, that, “most people can only effectively concentrate for a maximum of about 100 continuous minutes before needing to take a quick break and starting another session. “ Focus@will’s content supposedly helps to steer the user toward a “concentration flow state and then [toward] sustaining focus during habituation phases.” While presently, there is no additional scientific elaboration on how Focus@will’s researchers conjured these playlists of productivity-supportive songs, an entire collegiate market could be coming after invites if private beta testing bodes well.

Anyone can request to be part of the private beta by filling out the form here.

Video: “Reactable Gui Boratto” interactive album app

SoundCtrl — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 17:17:12 +0000

By Brian Kecskemety

This summer, we highlighted The Reactable table-slash-instrument, which players control by moving and arranging blocks on the table’s surface. Now, Brazilian producer Gui Boratto has teamed up with Reactable Systems, along with his label Kompakt, to create “Reactable Gui Boratto.”

This album app allows you to listen to his music, while enabling users to create their own version of each track. Tracks can also be combined together to create something new.

According to a press release, users can “actually see how the track is being played and step in to add effects, change loops, change anything you want, just like if they were performing Gui’s tracks along with him.”

“Reactable Gui Boratto” is available now via the App Store for $1.99, and will be available on the 17th via Google Play. For more information, visit Reactable.com.

Check out a video below of “Reactable Gui Boratto” in action:

Musicplayr finally goes mobile for iOS

SoundCtrl — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 16:49:03 +0000

By Kira Grunenberg

We have been following the exploits of German-founded music sharing startup Musicplayr, since the summer when they started to get the ball rolling on awareness in the United States. Back in October, momentum hit a big high for the company after a €500,000 funding boom came into Musicplayr’s possession. Summing things up for those who may be hearing this company name for the first time, Musicplayr is a free service centered around the idea of sharing the music one loves –via existing outlets like SoundCloud, YouTube and Vimeo– and the company doesn’t stray far from this mantra.

That focus may sound one-dimensional against the rest of the social media community and every other multi-functional platform out there, but founding partners Thorsten Lüttger and Stefan Vosskötter have made it clear for a long time, even devoting an entire blog post to explaining their stance, that they want to cut away from the excess of chatter and overstimulation so Musicplayr can stay true to what its name implies: a place to play, share, and express your favorite musical tastes.

One of the most anticipated aspects of Musicplayr’s development and march forward in the worlds of music and communication is the arrival of its iOS mobile app. Both Lüttger and Vosskötter have known when this piece of the puzzle finally got put into place, that they would become a much stronger contender in the field. Over the past few months, Musicplayr has been steadily adjusting and fine tuning its main web interface, taking user feedback –both from their initial private beta period and after going public– into constant consideration and sometimes implementing changes to the interface directly in response to an expressed concern or suggestion of something to improve user experiences.

One example, was the later addition of a bookmarking tab. Despite knowing Musicplayr had no app to this point, the founders wanted to make it as easy as possible for users to integrate Musicplayr into their everyday internet routines and not feel incumbered by having to specifically type in the web address and login for each song a person wants to share. After a person has created a profile, there is also a keyboard shortcut menu available to help streamline use even more. In this way, users were being prepped as much as possible for the mobile experience and accompanying interface that would ultimately make sharing favorite songs as easy as pushing “Like” on Facebook.

Now, for the mobile interface itself:

If a person has no Musicplayr profile prior to downloading the app, they can create one right after downloading and do so just as they would on a regular browser; via Facebook or a separate email address. If one wants to explore before signing up, there is a “Discovery” option that brings up a tile-like display of many existing profiles showing a user’s photo, their username and the first few of their listed preferred genres. One can then tap any of these profiles and see what songs a person has on their public playlists.

After signing up and getting a profile of one’s own, what one will see is an interface that is clean, runs smoothly and gives easy access to the core features of Musicplayr. At the bottom of the screen, a fixed option bar has buttons for the following:

Home screen or main music stream: Think of this like a newsfeed of the music posted by those you follow.

Individual Profile: This displays much like the web browser with one’s public playlists in view. To view a person’s profile text, tap the username and their followers and description appear.

The Discovery Menu: The same as what’s described above, tapping this will bring up others’ profiles for browsing and following or just liking individual songs to your profile that others have posted.

Tagging Screen: This seems to be the newest and most unique feature to the mobile app versus web access. Tapping this brings users to a screen with the Musicplayr mascot and a simple instruction to just give a single tap or shake of your phone to start a quick recording of whatever music that is playing around you. Following the sampling, the player will come back with the artist, title and album name of the specific track, as well as displaying videos circulating the web that feature the same artist. Having tested this element against music off a distantly playing, low volume television and active iTunes in a semi-noisy environment, the recorder and results given showed themselves to be very quick and accurate.

Overall, Musicplayr’s new app absolutely delivers, in spades, what Vosskötter and Lüttger have been working toward since they began. It wouldn’t be a surprise if Musicplayr forges ahead even faster now, than the speed it is already traveling with an app this solid. If the company continues listening to their users with such a high degree of immediate and serious response, that customer service factor can help set them apart as grounded and extremely likable, even if Musicplayr eventually rockets to the corporate stratosphere of social media.

Musicplayr can now be downloaded worldwide, free from the iTunes Store.

New SessionBand app sets the tone for chord based music making

SoundCtrl — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 21:19:34 +0000

By Kira Grunenberg

Composing takes practice and a gradually developed talent for finding and connecting aurally appealing patterns to make a piece. There are entire conservatories made for this endeavor and rigorous methods meant to hone a person’s songwriting ability. All the same, what does that mean for the individual that might just start humming a unique melody while walking down the street and wanting to do something with it? Are they not thinking of composing in some capacity, despite a lack of formal training?

SessionBand is one new app out of London’s UK Music Apps that is just the tool to embody this scenario and give anyone a place to put together their inspiration through a non-intimidating musical experience. Just released to the iTunes store on December 8, (for iPod Touch/Phone and iPad), this is being pushed as “the world’s only chord based audio loop app,” according to this morning’s press release. Right away, there is highly attractive potential for both the seasoned songwriter and the young experimenter to use SessionsBand to make an enjoyable track meant to be shared.

A few elements up front, that make nice differentiators:

Loops have been recorded by professional musicians and session players, so the chord “building blocks” one is tinkering with are of clean cut, high quality.

The interface crosses knowledge levels well: friendly enough for non-musicians to use (chords are displayed as labeled blocks, not in their traditional staff notation) but formally trained individuals won’t be completely compromising what they know because the labels given are still chord markings used in real lead sheets. (e.g. Dmaj, Asus, F7, etc.)

No internet connection is needed after the initial download to access and work with the app’s chord and style databases. Music can be created anywhere.

Styles offered for chord alteration span from 71 different general labels like Acoustic to more niche sub-genres like Deep House or Texas Blues. Initial purchase provides 16 for iPhone/iPod and 20 for iPad. Additional style packs can be purchased, and for the next three days, there is a 60% discount promo on the extra packs.

If anyone is wondering, none of the 80,000 loops in SessionBand are under copyright and are open to free, limitless use.

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In addition, if one has completely finished creating and has a complete track ready to share to their social media, before doing so, the whole track can instantaneously be “flipped” to a different musical style with the tap of one button. A single song could be heard, transformed and saved in every other style SessionBand has to offer.

SessionsBand hits upon a universal mentality that connects the most intense of aficionados with everyone else: if it sounds good, it’s good to someone. More advanced songwriters who work with added elements of lyrics and more complex orchestration can easily use this app to aid their composition time; bringing efficiency to the beginning parts of a work, which for some, is the chord foundation. At the park with no guitar or piano on hand, but a developing idea and a manuscript pad? This backing band in your pocket will help to keep that idea from getting away.

SessionBand is available for £1.99 ($0.99) for iPhone/iPod Touch and £4.99 ($2.99) for iPad here. More information can be found on their website.

Below is an introductory tutorial/demo video of SessionBand:

Audiobus could drive mobile music recording in a new direction

SoundCtrl — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 20:28:26 +0000

By Kira Grunenberg

When studying any kind of music tech or audio-focused major in college, it is crucial to have an unwavering understanding of how sound gets from the microphone to the tape deck and to understand the mechanics in between those points before one dives into the modern digital tools of the present.

A new app launched today, called Audiobus, created via a collaboration of independent software development company, A Tasty Pixel and Audanika, a company of digital instrument inventors, touches on these fundamental lessons. The app further supports the idea that older tech and basics are important, despite the relatively young existence of the music app market. A mixing board has a type of component, referred to as a “bus,” which in the most minimal of terms, functions as a path for signals to move through. They can condense the number of signals to give simultaneous control while mixing or route audio to outside effects or devices, (among other functions) depending on the type of bus being utilized.

A functional, tool based app, the appropriately named Audiobus similarly connects other music tool apps for simultaneous use in mobile recording on iOS devices. Summed up on their homepage, the app lets you, “Send audio from [one] app, filter it through another [and] receive it in [a third.] Live.” The greatest noticeable advantage to Audiobus’s concept, is the widened, cumulative pool of features that will become available to users from every individual app they connect.

Initially, Apple only permits about 100 individuals to beta-test apps working toward official release. Therefore, although anticipated and somewhat buzzed among industry folk for many months, Audiobus’s slots were set aside for developers, since the overall potential and use of the app is affected by how many others are on board with Audiobus’s software.

Explained well on the Audiobus Tumblr account, Audiobus is unlike, and drastically more intricate than, other API, because there is so much app combination potential:

Let’s compare it to the SoundCloud API for example. Any app that supports the SoundCloud API will have the ability to upload its audio output to SoundCloud. It can also receive streaming audio from SoundCloud and deal with the meta information that every SoundCloud track has.Every app that supports it interacts with the SoundCloud servers. Audiobus on the other hand makes apps interact with each other. The amount of complexity added by this is enormous. That apps can be arranged in a variety of ways, and perform a variety of roles – inputs, effects and outputs – within the Audiobus connection graph complicates matters even further. Another level of complexity is added by the fact that audio must be low-latency and in sync with other streams, or musicians will complain — and rightfully so. At the same time, audio recorded from the system has to be flawless and glitch-free, because users won’t accept artefacts in the final renderings of their recordings.

An older Tumblr update from September 3 saw that 250 developers had already signed up to work with Audiobus’s software development kit and more have been requesting to sync as time goes on. Apps that are in full, functional use with Audiobus now, are listed on the main website and separated into categories for “Input,” “Effects” and “Output” based function. Currently the list is far lower than 250, at only 12 but many demo videos have already surfaced, showcasing ambitious musicians using Audiobus as is and the results have excited many a DIY individual. A few of the apps listed include:

FunkBox Drum Machine
Loopy (HD) (Also developed by A Tasty Pixel)
JamUp XT
Multitrack

The amount of care and meticulous integration time given to every developer who wants to be part of Audiobus, means that the number of usable apps might only rise slowly for now. However, support from both Audiobus and the integrated app developers are being pushed as a valued priority and consumer feedback is encouraged; either through community forum discussion or even direct contact with the company. The Audiobus team is relying on a more long-term product appreciation, indicating increased app power over time and isn’t looking to get initial attention with a large collaborative list before their cohorts are ready. When Audiobus starts to gain momentum, mobile recording could see a serious boom in both frequency and quality thereof.

Audiobus is available for $9.99 in the iTunes Store.

Below is one of the various user demos of Audiobus.

EDIT, 12/10/12, 8:31PM EST: This article originally stated that Audiobus was a sole creation of the independent software development company, A Tasty Pixel and should have mentioned the digital instrument developer Audanika, which is a co-creator to Audiobus and has been edited to reflect such.

App Review: Turntable’s Piki App for Social Music Sharing

SoundCtrl — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 15:49:11 +0000

by Dave Mainella

The creators of Turntable.fm are at it again, bringing us the newest addition to the online world of social music discovery. Introduced earlier this week, Piki combines several elements of online radio and powerful social features to present a platform that continues to emphasize Turntable.fm’s belief in the interpersonal component of the music listening experience.

The concept of Piki is to provide an online and mobile-based radio app that relies on human involvement and personality rather than Pandora-like algorithms. “There’s still demand to listen to music that’s powered by other people,” Billy Chasen, Piki co-founder and CEO of Turntable, explained via TechCrunch. Rather than investing users with a real-time, virtual listening space like at Turntable.fm, Piki is a simple and “laid-back” experience. Users start the app and press play without having to browse and search for music.

Upon joining the app, users are automatically following a short list of people (including the co-founder) so that hitting the play button means Piki immediately begins to stream music hand-picked by these “friends.”

The stream is impressive, browsing through songs “picked” by friends you follow. It filters out genres that you don’t want to listen to, courtesy of an easily-accessed “genres playing” feature that includes an amazing collection of musical styles – everything from Celtic Rock to Psychobilly.

Sharing a similarity with Pandora, Piki allows users to fast-forward to the next track but does not allow for the on-demand playing of specific songs. You’ll have to use a different platform for that. “If I want to listen to a single album on repeat, I’ll use Spotify,” Chasen explains.

But this doesn’t leave a listener to the mercy of the computer. Rather, it’s the collective Piki social network that determines the quality of music. The Twitter-esque social features mean that everyone contributes and shares tracks they like, either by searching and “picking” a song or by “repicking” a song that others share. Users can leave a comment with a “pick” or “repick” for others to read, and they can label a song with a “reaction” that best identifies with the music e.g. rock, fist pump, jam, love.

Piki makes it easy to “pick” songs from YouTube, Rdio, Pandora, or other music sites by offering a bookmarklet to install in your bookmarks bar. When you hear a song you like, clicking the bookmarklet automatically identifies the track, “picks” it, and posts it to your Piki profile. A user’s profile and Piki identity is made up of recently liked songs via “picks” and “repicks.”

Piki is currently only available as an invite-only beta for desktop, and co-founder Billy Chasen emphasizes that “Piki is for mobile.” Keep and eye out for the iOS app, available in the App Store in the next month or so. It’s easy to imagine this human-powered radio app catching fire in a mainstream social music marketplace.

Watch the demo video for Piki below, and head over to their website to request an invite.

App Review: TinyVox Update Helps Improve The Memo-taking of the Future

SoundCtrl — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 16:17:01 +0000

By Lisa Bernier

Originally released in November of 2010 by creator Srini Kumar, TinyVox took voice memos to a whole new level. Instead of long texts, or a call that goes to voicemail, (because really, who picks up their phone anymore?), TinyVox allows users to record a voice memo, and then send it to a friend. The app allows you to send messages via email, Facebook and also Twitter, as well as record memos as mp3s to use for yourself.

The newest version of the app (updated at the end of November), features a brand new, easier interface for the iPhone 5. Upon launching, it is immediately apparent that this is a voice-recording app: the interface is literally a tape recorder. You have the option to type text that will record into a voice message, or record a file yourself (using the buttons at the bottom). The home screen also gives you the option to send it various ways: email, Twitter, chat, Facebook, and YouTube.

Once you record the sound and are ready to send it, the screen gets much busier. Looking a little bit like a ‘90s Internet pop-up, the app allows you to send the sound as a link, or as a YouTube “talking picture.”

The “talking picture” is basically the choice to send a photo with the audio file via YouTube. You can either take a picture of yourself, or use photos from the Library.

Although this feature is cute, it doesn’t seem particularly useful. More useful is the transcription use of the app, which allows you to take (or type) a standard voice memo and play it back—and then, if needed, share it with friends, colleagues, or classmates. The integration of social media certainly gives this app a boost up over other standard video recording apps.

What is also useful is the ability to title files. Instead of audio 1, 2, or 3, you can label exactly what the memo is about. Then, you can also share directly via social media: most usefully, you can tweet an audio link to a person by typing in their Twitter handle.

The biggest update to the app was actually the version before this one, in which Facebook was fully integrated. It allowed you to directly post or chat an audio link/file to someone’s profile. It also adjusted the toggle buttons and improved the quality of the audio sharing, as well as the audio file itself.

This latest update seems more aesthetic than anything else. Of course, there is no doubt that a cleaner, easier interface makes a better app. The simpler anything is to use, the better and more effective it works. The UX quality has also been improved, and continual improvements to the quality of the social media tools within the app certainly give it an edge over the competition. Since it is more than just a voice memo tool, having a way to share memos with others beyond just putting it on a physical drive is clever. Therefore, this particular update where the Facebook and Twitter were made more readily available and faster was definitely an improvement overall.

While the concept of TinyVox is exciting, the execution can be a little confusing. However, if the maker continues to improve the social media integration, and cleans up the screen even more, it will definitely become a useful tool for not just sharing funny jokes with your friends, but for studying (as it suggests), work, and even day-to-day activities. Although the app still has room for improvement, the continual updates show promise.

Will you jump in the SongBooth for a recording contract?

SoundCtrl — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 16:06:03 +0000

By Kira Grunenberg

Yesterday, a neophyte app called SongBooth, announced what comes across as a combination ‘formal app release’ and new reality television show of the musical talent variety. The app received its newest update only the day before on December 4 and is looking to gain consumer awareness, active use and serious momentum in time for the first quarter of next year. Sure, any app developer would want a large attraction to and download boom of their product, so one might ask what makes SongBooth so special and why the first three months of 2013 are so important.

SongBooth is a social music video-making app for the iOS and is compatible with all iDevices, with few generational exceptions listed on the app’s iTunes page. Developed by Lowe Key Media, a mobile technology agency, whose specialities are listed on their official Facebook as services that include: “full spectrum campaigns, digital advertising, mobile, social media, brand development, website design, and application development,” SongBooth is just one of many undertakings from this company.

Some of what SongBooth promotes within the internet’s social universe is much of the same. Terms such as “Like,” “Follow,” “Share,” and “Comment” are expectantly present, as they are nearly obligatory options for any kind of genuine success. The majority of what users are prompted to do is create their own music videos from song source material that can originate from one of three places. There are instrumental tracks built in the app for use after download, more tracks can be acquired through in-app purchasing or users can utilize the music already present in their own iTunes music collections to sing along with and record. Downloaders are given the option to register via Facebook or email but must create an account to dig through the app, even as an attempt to explore. Though not surprising, the idea of browsing functions and popular usage without giving your identity to someone can be a nice plus and denying this can be a slight turn off.

Regardless, once past this detail, the app does prompt some serious intrigue because it goes beyond “make something and show it off in an app-confined community.” Not everyone can get on The X Factor, The Voice, America’s Got Talent, or American Idol but what those four shows all have in common is their inevitable gift of exposure to anyone who does manage, even if they don’t make it to the winner’s circle. SongBooth is giving ambitious individuals the opportunity to get exposure and fans through a medium that has shifted places in the last decade with the decline of music-centric channels, and the exposure doesn’t stop within the app’s user base. “Project Songbooth,” an extension of the app, as described in the press release, is a…

…global contest [that] will take place and users will have a chance to submit their music video, whereby the video with the most likes over a set period of time will receive a recording contract with a major label or music executive. The first contest will take place in March 2013, with the winner announced in August 2013.

The details of what label is putting themselves out there in partnership with SongBooth or what the main stipulations of said contract are, are kept unrevealed at the moment. However, according to the press release, Gregory Lowe, the CEO of Lowe Key Media, has put in plenty of dues with the music business and gained acclaim high profile enough to warrant a good amount of credibility and having an even better amount of excitement about this contest and reward; if a contract is what one is aspiring toward. Recognition from entities like Microsoft, business collaborations with artists like Ne-Yo and buzz from publications like Jet Magazine mean that even in choosing to withhold specifics for now, there’s reason to give SongBooth a real try and see its potential exactly for what it’s promising in the future.

SongBooth is free and available now for download from the iTunes Store.

GoMusic is bringing two business opposites together

SoundCtrl — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 20:27:19 +0000

By Kira Grunenberg

The rivalry between Android and iPhone is notable. Subsequently, these phone brands and their inner programs provide users with their amenities, (e.g. apps, music, books), through the also opposing iTunes Store and Google Play Store.

Apps to cross these services are not new to the mobile scene, though apps that are official, safe, and openly recognized by a competing company, usually do not jump to the foreground. When it comes to the of music, Dimitry Sokol of Sokolware LLC, has proven such apps can come to exist, as Sokol has connected the Apple iOS with Google Music through his app GoMusic, which was recently updated late last month. This app was first introduced to the world last year but has gone through several incarnations and updates to perfect its purposes, currently at v. 2.8.

The main features of GoMusic are essentially those of Google Music but attained through an iPhone or iPad. As stated above, when brought up in a user’s iTunes player, the full description for GoMusic emphasizes first and foremost that it is, “The only app with real Google authentication!!!!” Syncing is the primary function involved but GoMusic extends beyond a one-dimensional connection to successfully integrate other Apple hardware functions like AirPlay and Apple TV and have the two work well together for more options to stream using one’s iOS device.

The other main set of features include:

Playlists – Create new, delete old, edit, and access auto-playlists generated from actions like purchasing music, recently played or Google’s version of the Genius function: Instant Mix.

Multi-Tasking Usage – Some music apps aren’t able to play if you want to minimize the program to use something else. Some are able to do this but are not able to integrate the album artwork like the i-device’s native player. GoMusic does both and works with the same background or shortcut play controls users access in between apps.

Secure Data – The mixing of two major services and devices might cause unease about user data but GoMusic has two-step authentication and is always using a HTTPS connection with encryption by default.

Music Transfer – Any tracks a user wants to hear while without a wi-fi or network connection can be downloaded to their device for offline playback.

Music Search – Just like in the Google Play Store and Apple’s native music app, users can search within their many tracks by artist, album or individual song.

Pandora-Style Rating – Each track that plays can be given a “Thumbs Up” or “Thumbs Down” and the collection of tracks a user gives the former will automatically become another available playlist.

As a complete app, GoMusic appears to have conquered the technical schism dividing Google and Apple’s music stores, while not drastically altering what i-device users are accustomed to with their existing native apps and accompanying fluid functionality. The idea of having the best of both worlds might make GoMusic sound too good to be true but Sokol seems determined to provide a quality app, by evidence of the fact that he requests direct emails if customers have feedback to give or problems to address. The only quandary that sticks out among GoMusic is the question of how big a consumer base there is for this app. Google Play isn’t the primary music provider for i-devices, so how many iPhone or iPad users might there be with an extra Google Music account with which to extract and access music? The two stores have their differences in interface and perhaps in the occasional pricing but those factors are irrelevant to the part where customers already have music to listen to and simply want another branch of compatible access.

GoMusic is available for $0.99 in the iTunes Store.

Songful: With Your iPad, Air Guitar Like a Pro

SoundCtrl — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 16:28:11 +0000

By Carolyn Heneghan

Tech-savvy air guitarsmiths will get a kick out of the latest mobile guitar simulator, Songful, which transforms your iPad into a musical instrument you can really strum. This song-based app will have you playing along with your favorite tunes in no time—no matter what your musical experience level might be.

The app draws from Tel Aviv-based music apps developer instruMagic’s latest gesture-controlled technology and Ultimate Guitar, the largest community of guitarists and largest database of chords and lyrics. Even if you have never picked up a guitar, this app will make you feel like a virtuoso within minutes. And with such an expansive music catalog available, you should be able to find all or most of your favorite songs to jam out to—whether by yourself or surrounded by a group of friends.

Songful’s clean and user-friendly opening page displays some of the digital library’s top songs against a light wooden background resembling the body of an acoustic guitar. Simply click a song to load it into the app.

The first time you load up the app, you’ll receive instructions that detail how to use the virtual guitar. Close the instructions if you’ve already figured out what you’re doing. If you ever need to access the tutorial again, click the Help icon at the bottom of the main screen.

While you’re playing, you’ll strum along by swiping across the screen, and you’ll tap the arrow button in the top right-hand corner to switch to the next chord. After the chord is changed, continue swiping to hear that next chord played aloud, and you’re all set to play the full song. There are even different versions of the chords with ratings for their accuracy that you can choose between by selecting Versions from the bottom of the screen.

Note that there is no single string capability, only the strumming of entire chords. You can also click the back arrow button underneath the chord changer to switch back to the previous chord.

The music itself doesn’t play along from within the app—though you certainly could play it in the background yourself—so you can strum the chords at your own pace. This could also help intermediate to professional players practice the chords of a song to play on the own guitars once they’ve learned it on the app.

The chords are written above the lyrics to demonstrate when the appropriate time is to switch chords, so feel free to sing along to help you keep the beat. You can also switch between guitar and ukulele for a wider range of accompaniment sounds.

The Hit the Deck option allows you to toss in some taps on the body of the app guitar, which increases the utility and breadth of sounds possible with the app. You can even play with vibrato by simply shaking the iPad after strumming the chord.

In terms of song selection, the music catalog contains up to 200,000 songs for you to choose from with unlimited access provided by Ultimate-Guitar.com. You can add songs to your Favorites list to make them available to play even when you don’t have an Internet connection. The Top 100 list, displayed on the opening screen, is also always accessible, even offline.

The songs are listed with the name of the song, artist, and level of difficulty—easy, medium, and hard. You’ll learn how to switch more quickly between chords while you strum to be able to learn and play the more difficult songs as you go along.

You can toggle between the lists of Featured apps, your Recent selections, and your Favorites using the top toolbar of the main page. There is also a search box so you can search directly for the tunes you want to play rather than browsing.

The app is a unique approach to tablature as well as a simple and fun way to make air guitar even more seamless and realistic—and now even technologically savvy. It allows you to not only learn and play along with an entire catalog of songs, but it also allows you to add your own voice and expression to the music itself.

Songful is available for download from the App Store for $2.99.

App Review: Shake up music sharing and discovery with Mixtape

SoundCtrl — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 20:54:18 +0000

By Kira Grunenberg

Nostalgia and ‘old school’ have been the name the game in music tech for while now. Tangible hardware and apps on our digital devices both have tried in many ways, to bring back either the function or aesthetic memory of tech from decades past. This strategy has so far, managed to nestle itself in a positive place among consumers. Endeavors like the Air Cassette and Cassette to iPod Converter are two examples that come across as clear throwbacks to the playback entity of the 1980s, each managing to gain a worthwhile consumer base.

A new addition to this marketing angle has recently been released and has just enough uniqueness to nudge its ‘niche neighbors’ aside for a spot of its very own.

Mixtape, the name of a new (currently iOS exclusive) app that was first launched about a month back on November 8, was announced formally last Friday. One of many minds that conjured up the app, is that of Jeff Theimer. Theimer is a well regarded member of the music industry, as Mixtape is hardly his first venture of widespread proportions. The New Noise and Music Foundation and Festival is a major, annual event, run under Theimer’s direction.

The experience Theimer has garnered over the years though projects like the one above, make it no surprise that he and the rest of the principal Mixtape team know the ‘what’s what’ of existing music app interest and popularity. Mixtape works together with the selection and sharing power of Spotify and Rdio to give users of either service, the ability to browse for, craft, personalize and share their special mixes with anyone within their reach via users’ Facebook and Twitter accounts. Expressing intent of sharing is as quick as painless as tagging a friend using their name or Twitter handle.

Where crafting the mixes themselves is concerned, if there isn’t a hard and fast list already at the back of a person’s mind ready to select and send to someone, as described in the press release, “…mixes can be conveniently pulled directly from the tracks recently scrobbled on Last.fm or the bands and performers a person likes on Facebook.” Quoted also from the release, Mixtape’s CEO, co-founder (Nick Long), designer, co-founder (Darien Edwards), and another of the four co-founders (Michael Gaertner), respectively, sum up what they would like Mixtape to become –both in practical terms and in terms of how it represents the undefinable emotions of the music industry for musicians and listeners alike.

“We want to become the place where users can share music and engage with each other regardless of what music service they pay for.”
– Nick Long

“As digital music has become more prevalent and accessible, we’ve become somewhat dissociated with it. It used to take hours to put together a cassette mix. Meaning is lost when you hit randomize or a friend shoots you an email that links to a 500 song playlist they found online. We want to change that and make the mixes personal again, for the creator and the recipient.”
– Darien Edwards

”By sharing mixes of their own tracks or the music they personally like and listen to, we see a great opportunity for music professionals and artists to expand their connection with their fans…Services like Twitter and Instagram have allowed artists to build their brands by offering an intimate snapshot of their personal lives. We think sharing personal music tastes offers another great avenue for artists to connect with and grow their fan base.”
–Michael Gaertner

Mixtape is hoping to grow largely from the participation and frequent sharing of mixes by its most active users; both average consumers and featured musicians. This is a move similar to the user-inspired beginnings of Musicplayr, which displays profiles of popular users as suggestions for connecting, so newcomers have an easier time integrating the service into their regular cyber routine. The only downside is that without a Spotify premium account or Rdio account, half minute samples are all that one can access from a given playlist. However, to expand compatibility, Deezer and MOG are in the works of being integrated as well.

Available as a free app, Mixtape can be downloaded now from the iTunes Store.

See Mixtape in action below, soundtracked by a song that sounds suspiciously like The Black Keys’ – “Howlin’ For You”:

App Review: Music Buzz Improved In The Newest Version of Hype Machine

SoundCtrl — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 15:47:05 +0000

By Lisa Bernier

If you’re into music, you’re probably already familiar with Hype Machine (either the blog or the app). The newest version of Hype Machine as an app for iPhone and Adroid recently came out, and it markedly improves an already handy app.

The Hype Machine App and blog (developed by The Hype Machine Inc) combines social media and real time music trends to great effect. The basic idea is one place to get all the latest music that’s trending on the web and on blogs. Both the App and the Blog allow you to listen to the music as well. Basically it’s a great way to keep track of old artists, discover new, keep your pulse on the next big thing to hit the music scene—and then share it with your friends.

The newest update has revamped the App. As usual, you can sign up via the site, or sign in with Twitter or Facebook. The new home screen is very visual, and scrolls album art while showing you popular tracks. Down at the bottom is the feed which is continually updating to show you the latest music blog trends.

Hit the bar on the top right corner, and you are brought to a Menu. Via the Menu you can scroll through from What’s New, to Popular, to different Genres and a Blog Directory. You can also get to your own tracks, the feed, friends who are also sharing, your History, what Album’s are Premiering, the Hype Machine Radio Show, or access the Settings menu. Via settings, can also now enable Last.fm scrobbling.

It’s a lot of options, and perhaps some of them are extraneous—Album Premiere is strikingly similar to What’s New—but the Blog Directory is a nice touch, and Favorite and Popular are standard for these kind of apps.

Once you enter a category (or feed), the visual turns less busy. Each feed shows you a song list, no matter what the category. It also provides them with a small snapshot of album art on the side. It’s easy to scroll up and down, and the app is very fast. The connectivity and stability problems seem to be mostly solved, and tracks load extremely quickly.

The audio quality of song playback is clear, and songs continue to play even if you close the app. The app now also includes remix filters for the Latest and Popular feeds, so you can now find both original tracks as well as the different mixes that have been applied to them. It also gives you the option to do “No Remixes” or “Only Remixes.” This change was due to listener feedback, and it’s nice to see a maker actively incorporating changes from its app audience.

With the Friends feed, you can see what Friends are tuned in, as well as see what they’re listening to at the moment.

In essence, Hype Machine was always one of the better radio apps available. It’s unique approach to featuring music and artists via blogs instead of say, popular radio or Billboard, is the 21^st century way of being on the pulse of the music scene. The update has only improved a great app. Speedy, not as prone to crashing, and a clean, user friendly design, this is an app any music lover ought to have on their iPhone. Bloggers will find it useful to, in keeping track of what other music blogs are saying—and hopefully, by getting on Hype Machine’s radar to be included on their feed.

Webapp Review: Spotify Takes To The Web

SoundCtrl — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 17:26:38 +0000

By Alex Horowitz

Welcome to the internet, Spotify!

That’s right, at long last, it’s in beta, but it’s here (for some of us) — a webapp version of the music streaming service Spotify. It took being beaten to the punch by Rdio, MOG, Rhapsody, Pandora, etc. but it finally happened: Spotify, meet the web. Web, Spotify.

Gut Reaction

It’s slick, if safe. It’s a bit confusing, if only at first. It basically works, if only well enough for beta.

It’s here, and I’m glad.

Deeper Dive

Upon opening the webapp it becomes clear fairly quickly that this is a bit more complicated than a cut-and-paste of the desktop app onto a website. Let’s take a quick tour through Spotify’s web-based experience:

Design

While looking for a word to describe the look and feel of the webapp, the word that most consistently came to mind was safe. Spotify clearly borrowed its favorite bits from those that came before them, and what resulted was sort of the HTML5 ambition of Pandora mixed with the style of Rdio.

Is that a bad thing? Absolutely not. To be crystal clear, I kind of like the design.

That said, they certainly didn’t push any boundaries. The quality of the app’s look and feel is on par with the level you would expect from the leader in music streaming — it’s slick, it’s smooth, and it’s fairly devoid of any pleasant surprises.

User Experience

Using the app really is not very complicated, but it does take some getting used to.

After a bit of playing around you’ll eventually realize that navigating the searching and browsing experiences takes place on the left side of your screen, and managing what you’re hearing at the moment takes place to the right.

The left side of your screen is fairly straightforward. The right…not so much.

Clicking on the image of the album or playlist you’re currently listening to (right side of your screen) slides, from right to left, an expanded view of the album or playlist, featuring the tracks on the album and other albums you might enjoy by the same artist. While it would seem to follow that clicking on the album art again, either where you clicked on it the first time or the second smaller album art that resulted from opening the album details, would close the expanded view, such is not the case. In reality, you have to find some unused real estate elsewhere on the page and simply click there to close the tray. Not complicated once you get the hang of it, just not what I was expecting.

What’s a bit more confusing is that you can open up more than one tray at a time. You can always close one tray at a time, but again, it’s not always immediately intuitive how.

Share buttons for the music you’re listening to are tucked away in a drop-down menu that only appears once you hover over the album art on the right hand side of your screen. Again, once you know where it is, it’s fine — but for a while I didn’t, and it was a bit frustrating.

That’s really this app’s user experience up and down — everything is somewhere, you just have to commit to finding it the first time if you want to fully enjoy the experience of using it in the future.

Syncing

Well, not quite everything is somewhere. For those hoping to manage your favorite music device with the webapp, please prepare for disappointment. So far such functionality has apparently not been built out for the beta at least.

Bugs

So far the app has only crashed on me once, and for all I know that was my browser’s fault. What’s more apparent in using the app so far is that my (admittedly pretty huge) starred playlist has yet to fully render with a complete list of all the music I’d put in there. I can find all the same music by searching for it, but sometimes I just like to shuffle through the playlist of all my favorites. Online, that’s not easy to pull off at the moment.

All that said, I can’t stress enough that I am reviewing a beta. I love Spotify, and I have faith that these issues will be resolved soon.

(Side note: Feel free to sound off in the comments if you’re reading this after the beta tag has been removed and keep us up to date on how these bugs are resolving themselves. I’ll be sure to check back myself as often as I can. What can I say, I’m a Spotify junkie.)

Conclusion

Spotify should have had a webapp long ago, and when it finally came I should have been running down the streets of New York screaming about how Spotify just changed the game. That’s what industry leaders do for their biggest fans, right? Rdio, Pandora, MOG, they’re all playing catch up to Spotify in terms of adoption and cache; and yet, here we are, slowly realizing that Spotify’s got nothing on the web-based experience of their competitors. Their offering is far from bad (seriously, I do like it!) but it’s not enough to be a reason to pick Spotify over any other streaming service.

Fortunately for Spotify, that’s not the point.

The point is that Spotify, whatever the reason might be, is the industry leader in music streaming. And now, it (almost) has a webapp. Soon it will also have a properly functioning webapp, (I can’t stress enough that this is beta country.) It won’t blow your mind in terms of new features or revolutionary design – which, again, I do like – but it exists. Bugs aside, it’s solid, and that’s a very good thing for a tech nerd with a Spotify subscription like yours truly.

WiMP and Gracenote Give Listeners Instant Song Recognition

SoundCtrl — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 18:58:55 +0000

By Kira Grunenberg

WiMP, short for Wireless Music Player, is one of many music services that also happens to have a mobile element, with an attached song identification capability. Started only as recently as 2010, this Norwegian service has tackled and mastered a number of customizable browsing, discovery, and social angles to appeal to music consumers, making it stiff competition to the many other players and ID services out there. Nonetheless, in regards to their song recognition function, one might be inclined to turn to similar, longer existing, and widely received services like Shazam instead (founded in 2002).

According to Shazam’s FAQ, with an identification feature promising that “[w]ithin seconds, you’ll know the artist, track and other interesting info [and that from] the Tag Details you can [also] buy [music], check out the videos, get the lyrics [and] share it with friends,” Shazam does sound comparably impressive. When stacked up against WiMP, the idea of a “better” service to choose may become negligible to non-important, if both can do their claimed duties in a parallel amount of time. Where WiMP separates itself from Shazam and other apps/services like it, is two-fold: songs can be instantly pulled up and listened to after they are recognized and the song identification power is as big as the Gracenote music database; at a massive 130 million+ tracks.

Translated from the newest blog post on WiMP’s website, Fredrik Nyström, the CEO of WiMP in Sweden, explains his optimism on the benefits of instant listening access beyond identification:

The most important task for all of us who work on WiMP is to inspire people to listen to more music, new or old. Sure, there are other apps that can recognize songs, but none that can also play them. The whole point of finding out what a song is called is that you should be able to listen to it again. With this feature in WiMP, I am sure that our users will be able to browse deeper into the daily life music jungle. It will be easier and more fun to discover new songs and artists[.]

WiMP announced its partnership with the California-based company just yesterday in a press release, meant to up the ante on newest the iPhone and iPad versions of WiMP’s services. Quoted from the press release (and also similar to Shazam), WiMP will be identifying songs by matching “unique audio fingerprint[s]” in Gracenote’s database.

Comparison of features between rival services could go on and on. (Technically, Shazam Encore allows for full playback of tagged songs as well but this is accomplished through Spotify, not natively). What makes this partnership so intriguing is the fact that WiMP is not available whatsoever, in the United States. Thus far, only Sweden, Germany, Denmark, and of course Norway, can sign up for a subscription. Therefore, to see Gracenote, the world’s biggest music database, enhance WiMP rather than a music service of American origin is somewhat surprising. At the same time, given the wide feature and hardware flexibility offered by WiMP that extends past the usual Android and iPhone expectations, there might be nothing like supporting some healthy international competition to motivate a higher level of American innovation and music tech evolution.

Below is a quick video showing WiMP’s song ID feature in action:

App Review: Borderlands Granular – Harvesting Grains of Sound

SoundCtrl — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 18:08:02 +0000

By Carolyn Heneghan

The latest high-tech tool for musicians and music lovers, Borderlands Granular, enables users to control and evolve sound using the latest in gestural technology. Developed by Chris Carlson, the instrument favors the user’s gestural interactivity over the knobs and sliders common to most mixing and sound-harnessing instruments.

The demo video depicts a pliable graph interface that looks like something straight out of an iTunes visualizer, with almost psychedelic qualities to it. Waves of sound conjoin, break apart, and mesh in a dissonant bending of sounds that resemble what I’d imagine to be alien transmissions. How to get the app to look and sound like that takes some time spent familiarizing yourself with the complex and intricate gestural interface.

When you first load up the app, on screen you’ll find four overlapping and transparent boxes with sound waves depicted in stark white lines. Double-click any spot on these boxes and a blue circle will appear filled with seemingly erratic red dots, or grains, that fade to white and then pop up elsewhere within the circle. These red dots correspond to a sound located on that particular spot on the sound wave graphs. In the center, a white atomic nucleus spins and jolts around with the sound that’s played, tracking its waves in real time.

Dragging is one way to manipulate the interface. With single-finger swipes you can move the four graphs to separate and align in different ways as well as stretch and rotate them. You can also move the blue circle to different points of these graphs for different combinations of sound. Two-finger swiping over the circle allows you to spin it around at different angles, and it also allows you to tilt the background graphs.

Double-clicking the circle will pull up more circles and options for manipulating the sounds. For example, you can drag the volume circle away from the main circle to increase the sound, and you can drag the LFO or Hz function up and down to dictate the hertz at which the sounds are picked up and played. The pitch will modulate and bend the pitches of the sounds overall, and the overlap function will shrink the atomic nucleus closer into a line so less sounds will play at any one time. The number of voices affects how many different pitches you hear throughout the sound waves, and so on. You can play around with these endlessly to find different versions of the sounds you are creating.

When you double-click another spot on the sound wave graphs, another blue circle will appear and all of the sounds for all blue circles onscreen will play. Some graphs, for example, sound more like voices, and others sound more like chimes or notes on a synthesizer, so manipulating the smaller circles within each of these larger ones will create still more different varieties of what you’ll hear.

The sounds not only fade in and out; when wearing headphones, they also switch from ear to ear, enveloping you in your creations. Depending on where the graphs are lined up, the sounds will not only be dissonant, as the demo might suggest. At times they will sound in perfect if not erratic harmony, sounding something like wind chimes or bits of an overheard phone conversation depending on the frequency and duration of the sounds you’ve selected.

There are still more and more granular ways you can use this app, more than we could possibly go into in one review. The interface is incredibly expansive and intensive, and has innumerable possibilities built into it—only hindered by the extent of your imagination and ability to play around. But once you mess around with the app, particularly if you are a musician that is familiar with these types of programs, you will unlock the limitless creations of sound that you can control, manipulate, and evolve with just your fingertips.

You can also upload your own sounds by creating a playlist named Borderlands in iTunes and syncing it with the app. This way you can manipulate your own creations from other music tools in a unique, gestural-controlled way.

This iPad-only app has been optimized for the iPad 2 and 3. It will run on the first generation tablet but will perform much more slowly due to heavy audio processing requirements.

The app is available for download on the App Store for $3.99.