SoundCtrl » interview

Eventbrite: A shining platform, taking event access to the next level

SoundCtrl — Wed, 22 May 2013 14:00:19 +0000

SoundCtrl has always been interested in the relationship between music and technology. From recording tracks, to releasing albums, to getting thousands of people through the doors for that one epic concert, when music and technology work together it’s a powerful combination. Today’s popular online ticketing service, Eventbrite, works to bring music and technology together in perfect harmony—powering live events like never before.

Unlike other ticketing agencies that are heavily involved in every step of the process, Eventbrite lets event organizers easily create online event pages, sell tickets and registrations, accept payments, and promote their events from a single place. No more crazy fees. No more confusing terms of service. No more middle man. Eventbrite has proven itself to be a horizontal platform that can be utilized for anything from a 60,000-person concert to an intimate show, and provides versatile features that support the different needs of each type of event. A festival is not the same as a symphonic concert, which is not the same as a music business seminar. And how attendees might like to buy their tickets and hold onto them is not the same either. Eventbrite accounts for all of these distinctions in its ticketing and registration services, its built-in social-sharing tools and its user-friendly mobile app.

Having processed over 100 million tickets to date, Eventbrite has become a household name in the events industry, while maintaining its simplicity and accessibility. We recently had the opportunity to talk with Eventbrite’s Vice President of Marketing, Tamara Mendelsohn and covered everything from what’s popular in music industry tech to how Eventbrite benefits its users, and not the other way around.

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Sound Ctrl – Can you tell me a bit about the growth and evolution that Eventbrite has undergone since its inception?

Tamara Mendelsohn - Since our founding in 2006, Eventbrite’s goal has been to democratize ticketing through technology. We empower anyone to organize and create a live experience, and to seamlessly sell tickets for that event. We set out to create a self-service, easy-to-use ticketing platform, fueled by the best technology.

We started in 2006 as a very small team led by husband and wife co-founders Kevin and Julia Hartz. Over the last 6 years we’ve grown to nearly 250 employees, sold over 100 million tickets in 179 countries, and surpassed $1.5 billion in gross ticket sales. In 2012 alone we ticketed 500,000 events—40,000 of which were concerts and music festivals. It’s been quite the journey to say the least.

We’ve had a number of defining moments along the way. One major moment for us came in 2008 when we discovered how powerful social media was in influencing ticket sales. Events are unique in that they are inherently social and people want to share events that they discover with their friends. We saw this happening, and that it was fueling ticket sales as a result. So, social media became a core part of our strategy from very early on. We were one of the first Facebook Connect partners. We built the tools to integrate social sharing into our platform, and continue to evolve and push the limits on social.

Music has also had its defining moments on Eventbrite. Eventbrite is by design a horizontal platform, with events across all types and categories, from conferences to marathons to concerts. But music is one of the most powerful live experiences, and has become one of our major focal points.

Our music events started out primarily with smaller and more intimate shows, but the industry has increasingly pulled us into bigger and bigger events like music festivals. In 2011 we ticketed a Black Eyed Peas charity concert in Central Park. This was a 60,000-person concert and another major milestone for us. Since then, we’ve worked with a number of large festivals and promoters, including Governors Ball Music Festival in New York and Hangout Music Festival in Alabama this year. We also announced a partnership with Disco Donnie Presents, who produces over 1,000 electronic dance events each year.

But with all this growth and progress, we still feel like this is just the beginning and we have so much more that we want to do and accomplish.

SC – What are some major industry trends that are affecting live music right now?

TM - Mobile. Multi-channel engagement can no longer be ignored in the live music scene. More and more, fans expect to get all the info they want, wherever they are, whenever they want, and on their choice of device. They are looking for mobile experiences, both to augment the event through additional content and to easily find information. Today we’re seeing over a quarter of our traffic coming from mobile pages. We’ve had nearly 2.7 million downloads of our mobile app, which allows our attendees to access their paperless tickets and event information easily from their phone. They can also now see which of their Facebook friends are going to an event.

We’re also innovating with our partners in mobile—at the events themselves. For the first time, at this year’s Governors Ball Music Festival, fans can access their e-ticket, lineup & schedule, and a venue map all in one app. Eventbrite is working with Founders Entertainment and Aloompa to improve the attendee experience by bringing everything they need for the festival into one solid app.

Live Streaming Events. The notion of live music is evolving, and extending beyond the concert venue into our homes and onto our devices. We’re starting to see artists and promoters engage with their fans through live content, like streaming concerts or shows. It’s a way to interact with your fans beyond the physical event, and reach a bigger audience that isn’t constrained by geography or venue.

Some of our own organizers have begun to explore this opportunity. A recent example is Disco Donnie Presents and Mixify on the official Meltdown Digital Pre-Festival. This was an interactive streaming experience with the DJs from the Meltdown Music Festival taking turns spinning live in a virtual room on Mixify.com a few days before the main event. The digital event was really successful and drummed up even more excitement for the main festival. There was a lot of positive feedback from the fans.

SC - What are some of the user and attendee benefits of creating/attending an event through Eventbrite? Does one need to be well-versed in marketing to properly promote their event?

TM – In the beginning, our event organizers came on board because we were a fully accessible, easy-to-use ticketing platform with low fees. As the technology has evolved and we’ve innovated on social, mobile and big data, the role that we play in their events has also evolved. Today, for the event organizer we are not just a ticketing solution but a promotional platform for them to sell more tickets and reach more fans.

We bring real expertise in social media and event distribution so that our customers don’t necessarily have to be well-versed in marketing or promotion. We are constantly innovating with social media, and have measurable results that show real impact on ticket sales. We’ve optimized our solution for organizers to share their events on Facebook, and for attendees to share events they are discovering. We know that on average every Facebook share of an Eventbrite event results in $4.15 in additional revenue to the organizer—and this number is even higher for Eventbrite music events. We also send relevant, timely event notifications to fans when two or more of their Facebook friends buy tickets to the same event. This is powerful for music events because it literally turns your fans into your biggest promoters—so you’re not reaching just your existing fans but new fans as well.

We also have our event recommendation e-newsletters, with more than 12 million subscribers. Each newsletter is unique and customized to the person receiving the email. We power these recommendations with a huge amount of rich data: our algorithm processes terabytes of data each day about the events that the fans have been to, their interests, location, and what events their friends like or have attended to suggest these lists of events. This helps attendees discover great events that are relevant to them, and therefore helps organizers sell more tickets.

A lot of the power lies in the data we provide to event organizers. We believe that every customer should have real-time access to all of their data. We give our customers charts and dashboards to be able to monitor their sales and analyze trends anytime, and therefore make smarter business and marketing decisions.

All of this means that the organizer has greater tools to help promote their event. Some of it happens automatically without the organizer needing to drive it—social media amplification and event recommendations, for example. Some of it is about giving the organizer powerful levers like sales data and tracking analytics so that they are empowered to make the best decisions.

For the fan or event attendee, we offer an easy, secure way to find and purchase tickets to all kinds of great events and across all kinds of devices. We keep our ticket fees low. And we help attendees discover relevant new events that they’ll love, and share them with their friends. Our event recommendation newsletters have open rates of 40-50%, some of the highest rates in the industry. We also pride ourselves on our quality of service. Our customer support team operates 24/7—because events don’t stop happening after 9pm or on weekends.

SC- We’re thrilled to hear about everything Eventbrite has going on and equally as thrilled to have it play such an integral part in all of SoundCtrl’s event hosting experiences. Thanks for chatting with us!

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

Better Know a FlashFWD Nominee: V Squared Labs

SoundCtrl — Thu, 02 May 2013 18:46:24 +0000

By Kareem Clarke

V Squared Labs, started by Vello Virkhaus, is a visual art production studio located in Los Angeles California. The V Squared Labs team is composed of VJ’s, visual artists, animators, programmers, and architects that together create amazing visuals for a concerts, festivals, commercials, and lots more. Through collaborations with other production teams and weeks of preparation, the V Squared Labs team has been responsible for the visuals of the Ultra Music Festival, the visuals and performance booths for the tours of Skrillex, Datsik, and Infected Mushroom, a Grammy after party for Hyundai, and a notable tour for Brazilian electronic musician Amon Tobin.

Below is our interview with Vello Virkhaus the CEO & Creative Director of V Squared Labs:

SoundCtrl: How did V Squared Labs get started?

Vello Virkhaus: By a love for created visual art. Initially we did a lot of experimental work.

SC: What was your first big project?

VV: Our first big project was with Korn. They helped us establish ourselves in LA and in entertainment in general. The project involved lots of collaboration with different directors which was great. Then we were able to create an interactive DVD with Korn that landed on Billboard and led to more work with Korn and meeting people all around the world.

SC: What has been your biggest project/what project took the longest amount of prep time?

VV: Ultra Music Festival was the biggest project this year. That took about 2 and a half weeks of prep work. Also The Hyundai Grammy after party was a pretty big deal. We created a reflective room for them and that took about 3 weeks. On average, it takes about a month or so to prepare unless there is any kind of content creation involved. Then it takes a lot longer.

SC: How did you get to work with Amon Tobin, how was that experience and about how long did it take you guys to prepare for that?

VV: The Amon Tobin project took about 15 weeks of preparation. We were recommended for the project through a mutual friend and from there, we built a team for the project. The biggest challenge of this project was that we started from nothing. There was no software or anything to go off. We had to write our own software that included face mapping and many other pieces that were all built into one system. This project was definitely the most challenging project we have had thus far but also the most rewarding. Amon Tobin is one of the most awesome artists we have worked with, he was very involved.

SC: Where do you see V squared labs in 5 years?

VV: We will continue to grow, be competitive, stay successful, and do more music projects and commercial projects. Also get more into the agency market and advance our interactive projection techniques.

SC: Where do you see the industry in 5 years?

VV: Just advancing and having bigger and better shows. I see a lot of great things; new aesthetics and new artists. The importance of visual art is growing stronger between visual artists, lighting and visual media especially in EDM. Potentially more credit will be given to visual artists, perhaps licensing and general recognition.

I definitely see more opportunity in the future. Competition creates advancement.

At Disrupt NY, Troy Carter Talks Evolving Tech, Investment Philosophy & Celebrity Investors

SoundCtrl — Wed, 01 May 2013 16:47:16 +0000

By Dana Sedgwick, @danasedgwick

As part of our continuing coverage of Disrupt NY, I headed over to the HQ yesterday to catch TechCrunch’s Josh Constine in conversation with Troy Carter, CEO & founder of Atom Factory and co-founder of Backplane.

In general, I was disappointed by TechCrunch’s line of questioning that trended towards a mistrust of the convergence of technology and music – that somehow these two industries were bound to always be at odds.

The opening question was very telling, “Has tech screwed the music industry?”

But Carter’s response was genuinely hopeful rather than apocalyptic, citing that technology has always driven music sales (the creation of the CD anyone?), and that although recent innovation has forced change within the industry, technology will eventually help it scale.

Later in the conversation, he also recognized the music industry’s molasses-like adaption to the changing landscape, calling in particular for a new generation of music publishers who can see the value in lowering the barriers for young tech companies to obtain and license music.

When asked where the holes are in the music tech space, Carter mentioned the continuing battle for in-car entertainment, no doubt a space we’ll continue to watch evolve as terrestrial radio struggles and satellite radio competes with internet music subscription services.

He also pointed out the need for better solutions in tour routing and coordination.

“It’s a waste the way we route tours now… It’s not based off of real data, for the most part its just guesswork. We need a better system and cleaner data to really understand how to maximize revenue.”

But for me, the biggest takeaways were found in how Carter discussed his personal investments (Spotify, DropBox, Uber), and the areas he’s looking to invest in next which include health and education.

Carter described his investment philosophy as mirroring the methods he uses to find excellent artists.

“We look for dynamic founders… And we treat the founders the same way we treat artists. Most of the guys who come to us have come through trusted filters… whether it’s Menlo, Google Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, we invest alongside of some smart guys. And in the music industry I stay close to people with really good ears. It’s the same filter, same process.”

Also interesting was Carters’s opinion on celebrity investment, which he seemed hesitant to give despite Constine’s insistance that earlier he’d called it “just a fad.”

Carter has worked closely with Ashton Kutcher and Will.i.am, describing them both as some of “the smartest guys I’ve ever met with a clear understanding of product.”

But in general, he preached not to “use celebrity for the sake of celebrity.”

“Celebrities can’t add rocket fuel to a bad product… but when you have a great product and you marry that to a celebrity fan base where the fans get value and the celebrity gets value, and they’re incentivised by investment or getting value share, then that’s the perfect marriage.”

Troy carter is the CEO and Founder of Atom Factory and is a past FlashFWD SoundWAV Honoree (2011).

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.

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.

Better Know a FlashFWD Nominee – Songza

SoundCtrl — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 14:00:54 +0000

By Carolyn Heneghan

VOTE FOR SONGZA FOR BEST IN DISCOVERY HERE

Ever sit and stare at your massive music library, wishing you could just blink in a playlist to suit what you’re doing or feeling at that moment? Maybe you’re studying for a major test or finishing up an important project for work. Or maybe you’re throwing a party, having some friends over or just want to get pumped up for the day or night. Without a program like Songza, keep staring.

Songza and their Music Concierge endeavor strive to enhance whatever you’re doing or feeling through music. They want you to study and work harder and with more focus, to relax better after a long week and to get fired up when you’re entertaining a crowd or trying to run that extra mile.

Whether you’re in front of your PC or using a mobile device, your Music Concierge will be there to serve you wherever and whenever you need him. Simplicity is the name of the game, and the team at Songza has worked hard to present specially curated playlists for all kinds of activities. They also aim to make these playlists easily and quickly accessible with as few clicks as possible.

For example, on a Tuesday afternoon, Songza will bring up selectable activities like “Boosting Your Energy,” “Working (No Lyrics)” or “Brand New Music.” On a Thursday morning, the Music Concierge might pull up activities like “Waking Up Happy,” “Singing in the Shower” or “Working Out.” When you select one of these activities, say “Working (No Lyrics),” you’ll then find suggestions for genres of your playlist, like Ambient, Jazz Masters, or Electronic. Click on any of these, and you have a selection of playlists to choose from. That’s all you have to do to find some of the best music for your exact moment, brought to you by more than 30 music pros who are all experts in their specific genres.

So who are the brains behind such a useful and innovative music platform? We caught up with Eric Davich, co-founder and Chief Content Officer of Songza, to find out more about the birth of the Music Concierge idea and the 15-person company who brought it to life.

SoundCtrl: Where did the original idea for Songza come from?

Eric Davich: In 2010, we sold our first company, Amy Street, to Amazon. We wanted to concentrate on streaming full-time. We started that by launching Songza, which was a social radio. What that meant was that, at the time, people would suggest playlist themes and anyone could add songs to the playlist. That kind of got out of hand—when you let anyone add songs, everyone might not have the same taste or follow the same rules and guidelines. If you had a playlist, you could make it open to the community or close it so no one could add songs.

The more we curated the playlists, the more people responded to them and the more we realized that in our lives, we used these playlists to enhance our daily life and activities—not just watching the screen or watching the record spin, as they say. So we were listening to these playlists while we were working out, and we created a playlist to make working out better, things like that. As we did more activities, moods, situations, eventually we decided that what we needed was a big library of playlists unlike anything that existed anywhere else on the web.

In 2011, our first mission was to build expertly curated playlists based on a record store clerk to make a really great browsing experience for when you knew what you wanted to listen to or what activities you wanted to do. And that still exists today on our website, where you can find barbecuing and scroll through a list of over two dozen playlists perfect for barbecuing.

The more we showed it to people, the more we realized that they were having a hard time finding the perfect playlist in five seconds or less, which is what we wanted to do. Thus began the concept of the Music Concierge. Basically the idea was that instead of coming to Songza and having to type search terms to tell us what you were doing or browsing, we present you with several different options based on what we knew about you, time of day, device, etc.

Since March 2012, it really caught on quickly—first with the tech scene. The more good press we had, the more tech folks got into it and the more prominent it became. In June of last year we launched the iPad app and Apple featured it on the front page of the iTunes store which took it to a whole new level in a matter of days. We had 1.5 million downloads in 10 days since we were featured on the Apple iTunes store and became the number one music app and number 32 in all categories. It was sort of a game changing occurrence for us. We’ve been growing incredibly quickly ever since.

SC: Where does all the music on the app come from, and how did you choose it amid an endless amount of music available?

ED: We have a catalog of all the music that’s been commercially released digitally, so we have a 20 million song catalog. The songs that get played are all handpicked by our team of about 30 music experts, so each playlist is curated by an individual, and that individual is usually an expert in that genre of music or lifestyle category and knows the best songs for that particular situation based on their knowledge and experience.

SC: What is your work environment like?

ED: Everyone from Songza works in our “bare bones warehouse style office.” We have a big open room that most of us work in and a couple of offices where we pop in for phone calls. It’s a very light atmosphere—there’s always music playing, and we’re always asking each other for feedback on what we’re doing. It’s very interactive, and there’s a really great community and friendly aspect to the way that we work here. And of course we’re all kind of weird people, and there’s a lot of personality and charm rather than a soho-chic-cool office with fancy furniture. Also recently we had some artwork made that have some of the icons for our Music Concierge printed on canvas. One of our users is an artist, and on his own time, he designed a picture of our mascot, the Songza monster, so we had that printed out, and we have that hanging in our office as well.

SC: What has been your favorite part about working on Songza?

ED: We have a great team, and I think that being a 15-person company competing with gargantuan multi-million/billion-dollar companies in the music space and being able to disrupt that space with a small team of quirky people has been huge for us. And that’s been the most fun. We’ve been hard at work making the best music-listening experience that you can have digitally since 2006, when we started Amy Street, so it took us a long time for each massive plan. To be the same team, same founding team throughout and being able to see our vision through has really paid off for us.

Soundrop Announces Facebook Integration – Interview with CEO Inge Andre Sandvik

SoundCtrl — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 15:46:43 +0000

By Keith Nelson Jr.

In October of 2012, Spotify app Soundrop was an indicator of a shift in the artist-fan relationship with its digital listening session for Interscope Records rapper Kendrick Lamar’s now Gold-certified album, good kid, mAAd city. Over 40,000 people at one point chatted with Kendrick and voted for the next song the room would play, thus creating more dialogue and this phenomenon of social playlisting.

How does a service built on the constant growth of an interactive community advance its social listening rooms? Forge a partnership with the goliaths of social media: Facebook and YouTube/VEVO.

Today, Soundrop unveils its next step in making music social with the establishment of cross-platform integration with Facebook and YouTube/VEVO. As of this moment, artists can easily embed their Soundrop rooms onto their personal Facebook page here, tapping into the word-of-mouth potential of 693 million active Facebook users. YouTube/VEVO will handle the playback of the music, and fans on both Facebook and Spotify will be able to vote on songs for these newly connected rooms. Fans in the in-app chatroom on Spotify will also be able to communicate with those in the Soundrop chatrooms on Facebook in real-time.

SoundCtrl interviewed Soundrop CEO and co-founder Inge Andre Sandvik to delve deeper into the significance of the recent partnership as well as gauge Soundrop’s potential influence on artists’ careers in the constantly digitizing music industry.

SoundCtrl: The press release places an emphasis on improving video traffic and playback is handled by YouTube/VEVO. Will music videos be played or will video traffic be related to songs played over YouTube/VEVO?

Inge Andre Sandvik: We’re focused on helping artists accelerate their traffic, no matter what platform their fans prefer to use. On Facebook, we use VEVO and YouTube for playback, so we’re actually helping artists increase their video counts. In Spotify, we’re helping them increase their Spotify streams. We always want to drive traffic where the artist has licensed their content, so the artist is always in control of the videos presented in their room.

SoundCtrl: Soundrop has streamed over 500 million songs. Which artist room had the most people in it at one given time?

Inge Andre Sandvik: Kendrick Lamar is our current record holder. More than 42,000 people were simultaneously connected at any one second during his live chat. Additionally, more than 200,000 people visited his room within just a few days. This was right around the release of good kid, m.A.A.d city, which was a landmark album. Our previous champion was an event with Sebastian Ingrosso (of Swedish House Mafia) and Alesso that actually won us an award.

SoundCtrl: Are there any talks about implementing video chat or streaming music videos in a chatroom that fans can vote on?

Inge Andre Sandvik: Actually we’re doing the latter right now. Since playback in Facebook is done through VEVO and YouTube, you could say that the fans are streaming music videos in the chat room (Soundrop of course lets you chat live with fans everywhere) and voting on them to change the playlist. We’re of course always evaluating ways of improving our service, but artists tell us that the current text chat is a very easy, low threshold way of connecting with their fans. When you add a live video component, it puts more pressure and effort on the artist and their team. We want Soundrop to be easy and fun for both fans and artists to use.

SoundCtrl: Soundrop’s integration with Facebook means real-time cross-platform conversations between Spotify and Facebook members. That is pretty innovative. Will there be any differences between the Soundrop user interface and functionality such as Facebook status updates when someone enters a Soundrop room.

Inge Andre Sandvik: The core Soundrop experience will always be cross-platform and in real-time. When you vote up a song in Soundrop in Spotify, that will be reflected in the playlist I see in Soundrop in Facebook. At the same time, it’s important to carefully use the opportunities for sharing in a way that is not spamming each listener’s social graph. We will never share activity without the user’s explicit approval.

SoundCtrl: I remember being at the Kendrick Lamar Soundrop event back in October. He garnered about 40,000 guests. How can an upcoming artist with a relatively small fanbase benefit from Soundrop?

Inge Andre Sandvik: 40,000 was just the beginning. There were more than 200,000 visits within a few days to the Kendrick Lamar room. It proves that people want to enjoy music in a social setting. Humans have done this for thousands of years. We’re just bringing that activity online. A Soundrop room is about giving your fans a place to connect. It’s not about the size of your tribe today, it’s about how you keep them engaged and nurture your fan base so it grows over time. We’re the perfect tool for an artist to do exactly that. And since we’re always driving to licensed content, we’re always helping an artist generate revenue. Everybody wins. Fans get a great experience, and an artist can generate more revenue.

Soundctrl: Will Soundrop’s new development deliver any analytics for artists to gauge traffic?

Inge Andre Sandvik: We provide analytics so room owners can see how their rooms are performing. Our goal is to give them unique insights in who their listeners are and what they are doing. However we see that there is much more to do there, so expect more things from us soon.

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In the next few weeks, artists such as Matisyahu, English rapper Delvin, and a few other surprises will be the first to host live chat events on the new Soundrop. In December, we discussed Facebook’s low video traffic (in relation to overall Facebook traffic) and the friction between VEVO and YouTube so Soundrop could be a beneficial middleman for all. Until that is known, let’s all listen with thy (digital) neighbor.

Stay social, people.

Keith Nelson Jr. is a music appreciator bordering on elitist trying to connect all the dots. He graduated from Syracuse University in 2010 with a B.A. in English & Textual Studies. Tweet at him at @JusAire.

Insider Interview: SoundTracking CEO, Steve Jang talks SoundTracking’s iOS update and aspirations for the future of music and memories

SoundCtrl — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 19:50:25 +0000

By Kira Grunenberg

We’ve begun another bustling year in the world of music and tech; especially so where the two collide. New faces are joining the business and old familiars have pushed forward to new heights. One of those many familiars is the memory-fueled, ‘music postcard’ app, SoundTracking, on which we’ve kept a close watch for quite some time; reporting as recently as this past October.

Steadily working to become an established app rather than a newcomer, SoundTracking has been active since March of 2011 and gained the accolades of many; only a few of which include Apple, for “Best iPhone Music App of 2011,” as well as SoundCtrl’s own 2011 FlashFWD Awards, receiving our “Best in Mobile” title. During the short time span between then and now, SoundTracking has covered a lot of improvement ground, making several moves to expand access and tighten its services with numerous updates. The newest of these changes rolled out yesterday for the iOS; including modifications that span from integral performance improvements to game changing feature additions and a freshly designed user interface that alters users’ frontline experiences with the app.

SoundTracking has touched upon a range of socialization elements that round out the app well as both an organizer and memory-maker. Here is a general run down of the new features:

Embracing of the photos and visual memories that accompany the songs in people’s lives: New profile and post personalization via Like/Love emoticons and inclusion of customized cover images and image-focused content feeds.
Emphasis on the value of connecting with other music lovers: This is done in the app with tagging and outside of the app by seeing who and what is “Trending Nearby.”
Widened ability to share: Twitter Card integration lets Twitter users see and hear the musical moments users post, embedded in the tweets themselves and with Facebook, songs posted can be viewed and liked by others.
Faster discovery: Songs are streamlined to users faster in SoundTracking’s “Search” and users are better streamlined to each other, through instant “Fan Recommendation,” pointing out individuals who like a user’s favorite songs.

Steve Jang, CEO of Schematic Labs, the company that produced SoundTracking, offered to share some of his thoughts about the app’s latest transformation and ideas for what he hopes the business can come to achieve going forward.

SoundCtrl: This newest iOS incarnation seems to show the app having integrated relatable forms of appealing features from many of the web’s general social media players: Artist verification badges, cover images and friend tagging, just to name a few. Do you feel this sets you truly apart in the app market, having a “bit of everybody” to offer –particularly when you are pushed as a music-centric service?

Steve Jang: We observed people using SoundTracking in different ways over the last year. Some of the most prevalent actions we saw were [users] trying to tag people in their music moments, to either dedicate songs or say, “I’m listening to this song with X and Y.” Some other behavior and feedback [we observed] was the popularity of following the musical tastes of higher-profile users such as DJs, bands and hip-hop artists using SoundTracking, [as well as] the desire to have a more customizable and personalized music identity and profile.

We want to help people naturally and authentically create their music timeline on SoundTracking as they serendipitously discover and listen to music and create a music identity for themselves. As with any online social identity, visual representation, like a profile avatar or a cover image/theme, is important, just like an album cover is important to a band in their personal expression to fans. One thing that we’ve implemented in our new Music Profiles is a personal music timeline and two filtered feeds showing your most popular music moments and your favorite music moments shared by other people. All of this gives a more holistic and implicit way of understanding more about someone and getting a sense of their music personality.

Rather than worrying about what other apps are doing, we really tried to watch organic behavior among our music fan community and develop easier, more fun and powerful ways to let them share, discover and interact with each other. It’s pretty common to hear people say that “music is inherently social” but there is a lot of truth to that and our goal is to provide an exciting music community designed for authentic expression and discovery.

SoundCtrl: Since SoundTracking has such a multi-faceted interface, is that one of the reasons you have also decided to alter its primary design to one of a more visual and expressive nature –to keep with this trend in the app? After all, music at its core is an auditory experience –more so at least than a visual one.

Jang: We moved in a more visual direction after studying how our community was actually using the service. People were sharing personal photos, album covers, and captions that expressed that specific music moment and why it was important. We wanted to give people an easy and aesthetically beautiful way to share and browse music moments inside of SoundTracking. Audio is at the core of music but the other elements in a SoundTracking post such as a photo, user caption and location add more context and meaning to why the song was shared by that person. Music moments are made up of songs, emotions, people, and places. By having the ability to include a photo to serve as sort of an “album cover” and play button to someone’s song gives people a more expressive way to share emotions and activities through a song, as opposed to a cookie-cutter chrome player with little other information or media attached.

SoundCtrl: Would you ever consider partnering with more non-music based businesses for cross promotional purposes, given the potential for widespread and frequent use of the new “Trending Nearby” feature? Places where people listen to music sometimes have other amenities of life around (e.g. restaurants or shops) and with Foursquare already incorporated, these kinds of places could push things like nearby concerts, as well as themselves, to enhance a person’s memory making experience.

Jang: We’ve seen some local businesses start using the app and sharing what music they are playing inside their hotel, bar, store, or cafe. Music curation is storytelling through songs. Businesses that want to either communicate their tastes or certain ethos to customers can certainly share a [particular] personality to the world and tell a unique story to people.

Over half of our users share their exact venue location, neighborhood or city with every music moment. Moving forward, there’s a real opportunity to offer people real-time insights into which bars, stores and clubs play music they like. I often remember the music that a retail store will play and either appreciate or be turned off by what they’ve got on their speakers.

Local entertainment has a real opportunity to reach people through this type of data and social interaction as well. Apps like Foursquare and WillCall have done a great job of telling people where their friends are and what shows they are going to. [In] WillCall’s case, [this means] letting [users] see a curated feed of shows for which they can buy tickets. SoundTracking can give great signal data to services like these and let people receive higher quality recommendations and offers based upon musical taste and location.

Also interesting to us is the mapping of music trends and seeing how tastes change and differ between not only cities, but even neighborhoods. We recently released a top songs and artists list of 2012 by San Francisco, LA, and New York. There were key differences in these city lists. Another difference you can see is the difference in music between neighborhoods like the East Village and Upper East Side in NY or The Mission District and Marina in San Francisco. It would be great one day, to walk down a street and listen to a soundtrack of the combined music of all the people that have lived, worked and hung out there and see the pictures, places and emotions that have taken place.

SoundCtrl: That would really be great –almost like having a musical history book! We’ll see how things come to unfold. All of us at SoundCtrl wish you continued success!

Five Questions for John Pisciotta – CEO, MusicSynk

SoundCtrl — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 16:27:21 +0000

John Pisciotta – CEO, MusicSynk

By Jamison Antoine

John Pisciotta is an entertainment entrepreneur focused on creating innovative business models for the entertainment industry in the digital age. He is the CEO of Nashville based MusicSynk, which offers a secure online platform that facilitates the music licenses for the film, television, online, advertising and video game markets. I had a chance to demo the service and speak with John about how he and his team intend to make life easier for rights owners and music supervisors.

Q1 – John, your resume is flush with endeavors in the music and tech space. Can you share briefly how you made the transition from a producer to serial entrepreneur?

John Pisciotta – As a music producer and publisher, I have spent well over a decade producing records. We won an American music award and song and video of the year nominations during that time.

The DNA of a producer parallels that of the entrepreneur. As a producer you’re putting the team together, you’re choosing songs for the record, you’re driving the process, finding solutions, building partnerships, handling financials and you’re basically leading the charge. This is what an entrepreneur does every day in an early stage company (just on a larger scale). So, after years of doing licensing I decided to build a solution that fixes the 40+ fractured steps in the sync licensing process. I went from working in music to working on music. At MusicSynk we have a unique view, in that we understand the importance of copyrights and technology at the same time. We have one foot in entertainment and one foot in technology. We see these as complimentary, not competitive. The mistake is looking at it through the lens of “either or”. We see them as inseparable and a massive opportunity. The entertainment space has gone through an industry- wide reset. We think there are many problems to solve and greenfield opportunities for the next era. This is what I wake up every day focused on working on.

Q2 – What specific licensing pain points do you hope to ease with your new site MusicSynk?

JP - MusicSynk was built to synthesize the synchronization process. So previously, you had 40+ fractured steps that would take weeks to clear songs for use in film and television. The process had not innovated since the 1940s Tin Pan Alley era. The entire process was frustrating for both rights holders and supervisors. Often, money was left on the table by either party quitting out of frustration. So, MusicSynk empowers both parties (rights holders and supervisors) to accelerate how they work. MS users are in complete control of who, what, when and where their content is licensed. This allows for MusicSynk users to collapse the time it takes to license music from weeks into hours, increases their income and expands their reach to new licensing opportunities. It really frees them up to work better, faster and smarter. There are a few new modules that we are testing that we will be talking about in early 2013 that are very, very cool.

Q3 – Many of the larger rights holders (labels, publishers) have sites that allow music supervisors to license their content.

JP - Sure, most labels and publishers have an in-house system for RFP (request for proposal). “Click here for more information and we will get back to you” kind of system. MusicSynk goes quite a bit further than in-house systems. Some of the things we are working on we can’t talk about yet.

Based on our users, the response is really great. One of our supervisors said, “So, really what you’ve built is the Holy Grail” (referring to our MusicSynk platform). We like that. We won’t stop until it is 10x better than what is currently in use today. MS users have a dashboard suite of tools that accelerates their workflow significantly.

Q4 – There are some producers who need one song and others who are looking for twenty. What type of support does MusicSynk provide to usher these individuals through the process?

JP - That’s a great point. One of the things we think about a lot is the idea that one size does not fit all. Everybody has a different workflow. Some supervisors work super-fast and are going to air at 2:00 pm, others are very methodical and very protective. MS was built to be agnostic. So, a MusicSynk user could do 2 licenses a month or get 100 sync requests a day. Whether you are a label, major music publisher or a scoring composer, the workflow is very different. We work closely and listen to our users, as to how they work and the things they ask for.

Q5 – Last but not least, are there any plans to sneak some of your own music in on the site for consideration or are your songwriting days behind you?

JP - Sure, we built it largely around our needs. We built it initially to scratch our itch and to solve the problems in the sync space that we were having ourselves. So we will use the platform for existing catalog, you bet! As far as songwriting… as an entrepreneur, I am just writing different types of “songs” now.

Jamison Antoine is a music industry veteran and social media marketer with stints at Island Def Jam, Universal Music Group and 360i Digital Marketing. Follow him on Twitter: @JayDigital

Insider Interview: Michela Magas of Music Tech Fest

SoundCtrl — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 17:52:26 +0000

By Keith Nelson Jr.

Throughout history, renaissances have been marked by individuals pushing conventions in response to present day needs and/or deficiencies. The recent music technology boom, which sees music streaming services outperforming traditional models of music distribution, has developed its own renaissance. Instead of composers manipulating scales and functional tonality, there are app developers creating sound from colors and controlling music selections with webcam hacks. London-based research lab Stromatolite Music Tech Fest is a paradigm in the burgeoning evolution of music technology that has turned every smartphone into an MP3 player with a series of talks which join together creative minds from all over the music industry (app developers, record label execs, etc). Stromatolite co-founder, Michela Magas elucidates the purpose and goal of this audacious endeavor in an interview with SoundCtrl.

SoundCtrl: What was the reason for Stromatolite to begin the Music Tech Fest?

Michela Magas:: We wanted to bring all the guys doing great things with music tech – hackers, startups, researchers – together with music industry people – all under one roof. We are working on a European project at the moment with seven great EU research centers looking at where this whole field might be going. We set it up as a “festival of music ideas” – a creative event where everyone can come together and demo, perform, create. It turned out that everyone we talked to thought this was a good idea.

SC: It looks as if this gathering of the minds is yielding interesting results. I tried out the Synaesthesia app and was blown away with how intuitive it was.

MM: Oh cool, that’s really great. You know we only did that one as an incentive for people to interact and create together during the fest? But it turned out more people were interested.

SC: Any plans to develop it further and add more features?

MM: Yes totally. You see it was created on a shoestring budget and everyone involved had sleepless nights. It wasn’t even in our remit! We just really wanted to do it. So of course we now need to expand it so people can upload their own sounds and match them to the colours they associate with them.

SC: I never thought of that. I suggested adding new sounds but that is pretty ingenious to allow users to match colors to whatever sounds they want.

MM: Well that would make sense because if you read up about synaesthesia you’ll find people associate different colours and sounds. But what was cool was that everyone wore the Music Tech Fest T-shirts in the “testcard” colours so people were “scanning each other.”

SC: What trends in the music tech industry have been addressed at these Music Tech Fest events?

MM: Things like visualising music, hacking into and sonifying ordinary objects, music rights, new tech which allows more efficient music licensing, music-making apps, performance tools and setups… all videos are now being uploaded on our YouTube channel.

SC: What about music streaming? That seems to be a big topic in today’s changing climate on digital music industry.

MM: Yes that too. And sonifying the Twitter stream. So not just ordinary streaming. Companies like Spotify and Last.fm now allow their APIs to be used for the creation of great new apps. Apps and interesting interfaces (both visual and tangible) are definitely top of the list in how those companies see their interaction with listeners.

SC: There was a Tech Talk two weeks ago. How was that event?

MM: Robert Kaye from MusicBrainz was over for the Music Hack Day London and said – hey guys, how about we record a Music Tech Talk? So we got into gear and set that up with our partners Centre for Digital Music at Queen Mary University of London. This MHD event sold out in about 18 minutes.

We had Matt Black from Ninja Tune presenting the new Ninja Jamm app - a great tool for jamming together. We also had a superb performance from Jason Singh – a beatboxer who makes tech to support his voice.

Photo credit: Jamillah Knowles

SC: Any plans for bringing an event to the United States?

MM: Yep – lots of people are asking. People are suggesting NYC or San Francisco but we also have a great community in Portland, OR we are looking at. We need people to help us take this forward. We did everything on a shoestring budget with the first one, with some help from the MIReS funding for our EU project and some help from the EU regional funding. We need to see who’s into backing a truly creative underground crowd and take it to the next level. The BBC introduced their podcast on the Music Tech Fest as “the future of music.” We were really surprised, but maybe there’s something in that.

SC: Are you guys familiar with the TED talks series? I feel a demonstration of a Music Tech Fest app at one of these speaking events would do wonders

MM: Yeah – in fact our idea was that the Music Tech Talks were “half-TED, half-gig” ( i.e. more performance but still intelligent ideas).

SC: The festival caters to an “underground crowd” as you have said and includes hackers. With Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom being indicted and attempting to start his own music store, what discussions have been had on the legislative aspect of the burgeoning music tech industry?

MM: We had talks by music industry legal guys about music rights and about people looking at ways in which music industry will pre-clear rights for licensing. We also had many discussions about how important it is to be able to access music files to develop great music apps. We are really keen that the developer crowd has access to content.

SC: What do you see the Music Tech Fest evolving into?

MM: Firstly, I’d like to see all the guys and gals making interesting things with sound and tech in some less exposed corners of the planet team up with some of the well-versed research centers and startups. We are looking at taking the festival to Croatia which is entering the European Union next year. There are some great people in that part of the world doing both music and tech but they don’t get much exposure. So – I’d like it to be the place where we evolve new ways of making music, collaborating, sharing, inventing new formats, and generally regenerating the stale old methods of the music industry.

A trip through the Music Tech Fest’s YouTube channel will take you across ping-pong tables that play music based on performance (TripPong), online repositories for guitar chords (This Is My Chord) and other demonstrations. The old-school Casio hacks are impressive novelties but there are apps such as Sonaris, a music discovery tool based on real-time musical quality analysis which presents a comprehensive database for licensing songs. All of these discussions and innovations stems from an organic reaction to present-time events even the planning of the Tech talks. With an expansion into more areas the music technology renaissance may soon have a centralized hub to concentrate the vast create minds to produce truly world-shaping inventions.

Five Questions for Andy Young – CEO, Merchluv

SoundCtrl — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 16:00:30 +0000

Andrew Young – CEO, Merchluv

By Jamison Antoine

Imagine being able to listen to your favorite band on Spotify then buy one of their T-shirts in the same experience, without skipping a beat. That’s what the new start-up Merchluv envisions, as the first company to streamline the $2.2 billion dollar U.S. music merchandise market with a single point of access for artists and suppliers. In this edition of “Five Questions,” I spoke with MerchLuv CEO, Andy Young before the 2013 launch about how he plans to open his service up to music services, online video, ticketing sites, and mobile applications.

Q1 – Merchluv has a pretty unique business model. Can you discuss how it went from a site that fostered collaborations between craftsmen and artists a few years ago to what it is today?

Andy Young – As we were exploring ways to democratize the merch product development side of the business, we found that there was a massive disconnect between what’s happening in the digital music space and the ability to move physical products through that system. We realized that there was a far greater challenge on the delivery side of the equation that would have to be met before any innovations on the product side could really bear fruit. Active music listeners play about 45 billion music tracks and videos each month in the U.S. alone, all without the ability to purchase merchandise. Adding a merch component would go a long way towards offsetting the declines in recorded revenues, so we directed Merchluv’s focus to better synching up the merch market with the way music is discovered and consumed today. With that as our goal, Merchluv evolved into a platform to collect, curate, and standardize access to all available music merchandise regardless of the supplier, artists or genre, so that an artist’s merchandise could be as accessible to their fans as the music, regardless of the platform or device. As a business, our stated goal is to be the premier music merchandise platform and fundamentally disrupt the way merch is marketed and sold.

Q2 – The application sounds like a win-win for established artists with extensive catalogs, but how can emerging artists participate in what Merchluv offers?

AY – Emerging artists more than ever need multiple revenue channels to survive in today’s music industry, since revenue from music sales can no longer sustain careers and streaming hasn’t yet grown large enough to make a significant impact. The beauty of the Merchluv system is that it can scale along with an artist’s career. From one SKU [product] to hundreds, doesn’t matter. Right now we are focused on working with the major merchandise vendors, but our target for 2013 is to open up the marketplace, so that all artists and authorized vendors, both big and small, can participate and profit from an increase in merchandise sales.

Q3 – Many of the streaming services are under fire to turn a profit and to pay artists a decent royalty. Why should a site like Rdio or Spotify integrate your app with theirs? What’s in it for them?

AY – Much of the benefit of streaming services is their opportunity for users to discover of new music and artists. But today, even with billions of monthly streams, there’s no solid data trail that links discovery on these services to any subsequent purchasing activity such as merchandise. Integrating the Merchluv platform would allow a streaming service to show artists a one-to-one connection between the streaming activity they receive and the merch sales that ultimately result. That allows artists to evaluate the impact of streaming services beyond just their royalty statement. The streaming services benefit directly by participating in a new ancillary revenue stream, but perhaps as important, can show they are artist friendly and able to help them drive additional revenue through their platform. Management on the other hand can build a complete campaign that incorporates merchandise and tailor for each sales channel, optimizing the impact.

Q4 – You’ve tested Merchluv with GrooveShark and at live events so far. Outside of streaming and ticketing what other types of partnerships can we look forward to seeing in 2013?

AY – As a platform, we want Merchluv to enable merchandise selling wherever it is most relevant to the artist and their fans. Merchluv can be integrated not only into streaming services, but also video sites and even live at events. Merchluv is more than anything, a technology platform that exists to further monetize the fan at whatever moment they are engaged most with the music. Our universal database aggregates all vendors and artists, providing a standardize product feed, and our API will allow developers to integrate a robust merchandise selling solution on-line or mobile, without having to deal with supplier management or customer service issues. You can look to us to make announcements with a broad range of companies including merchandise vendors, music services, technology partners, artists, and management groups.

Q5 – When I think of the masters of merchandising, groups like Kiss, ICP, and Nine Inch Nails come to mind. With that said, who would be your ideal artist ambassador for Merchluv?

AY – Our ideal ambassador would be an artist that embraces merchandise as an important and profitable part of their business and as a method to engage fans around their music, wherever and whenever that may be. Most people think about pop music, but merchandise selling is a business tool that all successful musicians have in common. Merchandise crosses all genres, for example many symphonies sell merchandise, as do jazz musicians and Christians artists. Our goal is to break down the barriers that make online merchandise selling difficult, and begin to grow the actual market size by making it a more efficient business proposition while creating value for the entire stream; artists, management, supplier, music service and fan. Interestingly, in many ways, the existing merchandise market parallels the recorded music business—it is largely controlled by a handful of large licensed merchandise companies. The reality is when you look at a genre like pop music, you will find that a vast majority of those artists actually run their own merchandise business, but they have extremely limited access to sales channels outside of their own website and FB page.

Bonus Question! – Since fans are used to streaming services in the background while they work or work out, how do you influence their natural behavior to actually purchase items from what used to be a passive place of engagement?

AY – Streaming services can be both passive and active. At the very least, there’s some level of active participation to get the stream going, manage playlists, or to change options. For those users, Merchluv is offering a new component to engage them that doesn’t currently exist, so there’s the opportunity to extend that moment of engagement before their active attention turns to passive. But there are also other more active users—particularly those who use on-demand streaming services like Spotify—who are more directly engaged. They’re streaming music but also reading up on similar artists, or searching for similar songs while making a playlist, etc., this is especially true for mobile users. For them, Merchluv adds another layer of depth to that experience. In a broader sense, we want to establish an identifiable moniker that becomes a trusted and predictable source for authentic merchandise wherever that may be encountered, and where fans will know they will have a satisfying experience, have access to everything that is available in one place, and know that artists are being appropriately compensated.

Insider Interview: Johnny Quattro, Developer of the Jamn App for Musicians

SoundCtrl — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 15:37:45 +0000

By Carolyn Heneghan

Jamn is a new app that doubles as both a music tutor and guitar tabsmith. As a follow up to our Jamn app review, we sat down with Johnny Quattro, inventor and developer of the app to find out a bit more about the story behind it and his thoughts as to how this tool might change the way musicians approach jamming and songwriting.

SoundCtrl: How did you come up with the concept for the Jamn app?

Johnny Quattro: In the summer of 2010, I was invited to play a few songs at the Harmony Festival in California. When I got up on stage, one of the band members reaches out to me and says, “Johnny, this next song is in the key of A-flat,” and I was just stumped. I had no idea what it was. So I had no option but to turn my guitar volume down and strum a little bit of air guitar. I got through the show, and afterward I vowed that this would never happen again.

So I needed to come up with a some kind of tool that would help me remember the music theory quite quickly, and if I ever found myself in that situation again I could just pop it out and have it handy. So I invented a little wheel that kind of looks like a color wheel—it’s a cardboard cutout, I basically just cut out all the little compartments and wrote all the information down on the wheel.

SC: Was it a long and/or difficult process to turn that color wheel into an app?

JQ: Yes it was. It’s one thing to get this on paper and think, “Wow, this is a really cool thing,” and then I kinda shelved it. It wasn’t until about a year later when I showed a family member what I’d been using all along, because the family member had asked me about musical advice and theory. So I sort of said, “Hey, look at this little object, that’s something that I’ve been using.” I didn’t realize that it actually had the potential to teach others. So we started developing a much more official product, and we got a bit involved in patenting the actual wheel.

We went through about three design innovations, tested prototypes, and ran it through a bunch of focus groups—musicians, non-musicians, and a whole bunch of different people—to really find the right combination of parts and pieces to fit to most people’s comfort zone. The actual design process took us about 10 months to get to market.

SC: How have these musicians found this helpful? What have been their reactions?

JQ: It’s been overwhelming. Honestly, it’s stunning. In the last three weeks, I continually get emails, at least one a day, that comes from a new customer that says, “Thank you so much, it’s so amazing,” and they give nothing but 5-star ratings. Last week we had a guy that reviewed it for the App Store and gave it 5 stars. He said he’d been playing for more than 25 years and was just so thankful that this was being released to market because it truly helps with music theory in a way that he never really understood it.

SC: What have the reactions been like with people who are new to music?

JQ: There is a small visual barrier, they look at this wheel and don’t really understand what it is. Once they start touching buttons, they quickly find that it’s something that can elevate them into music learning quite quickly. Once we explain, touch this button, touch that, and you can see what you’re doing on the guitar or on the piano, already within a few minutes they become comfortable with it. I would say that people who are beginning musicians spend time on the application and within 15 to 20 minutes, they’re actually playing something on the instrument.

SC: Have you been continuing to use this yourself?

JQ: When I first stitched t up I was using it night and day, and it really elevated my musical ability. Within six months of using it, my music has improved more so in the last six months that over the last 26 years. And I have not needed very technical books or anything like that, just researched a bit on the internet, read a few small textbooks, and got the jist of what music theory was about. I then converted it to this very simple utility, or tool, and as I’ve started using it, I’ve realized how much I was learning. And in six months my guitaring is just on another level entirely.

SC: Are there particular algorithms involved in how this works?

JQ: Yes, of course. From the technical side of things, the application needed a lot of mathematical programming because say for example, every single position on the wheel itself has a particular number, and every single string on the guitar and every fret on the guitar has a corresponding number. So the two numbers have to match into this gigantic algorithm that allows you to use at the touch of a button. It knows the correct information for a chord, like for example a C chord, it will show the I, the III, the V, and then it will correspond to the instrument above so that the wheel and the instrument are perfectly matched. So that was a massive mathematical algorithm that took us months to figure out and tweak and get it right.

SC: How would you have found this helpful in the past when you were first learning?

JQ: It would have been so helpful because I would have been able to see which chords go together. I could’ve quickly, much more easily write songs at a younger age, purely because I had this tool, to figure out which are the nicer sounding chords and which go together.

SC: How does it feel that you’ve invented a tool that’s very likely going to improve the music experience for musicians all over the world?

JQ: On some days it’s surprising because I never expected it to have such a positive, profound kind of effect on people. It’s a wonderful feeling, of course, to be able to contribute to something I really love, which is music and playing music and sharing music—to be able to contribute on such a level is nothing less than great honor. So pretty much, my life 24/7 has been to devote myself to sharing this experience and sharing this tool with the world. It’s been a deeply wonderful experience, very moving.

The Jamn app is available for download from the App Store for $.99.

Insider Interview: Don Greenough of Fox Hollow Guitars

SoundCtrl — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 17:59:48 +0000

By Jason Epstein

Based out of Eugene, Oregon, Fox Hollow Guitars isn’t just a place to purchase an instrument; they’re the areas premiere custom “luthier” (maker of stringed instruments) and repair shop. We spoke to the mastermind behind it Fox Hollow Guitars, Don Greenough about his process and the challenges and rewards of custom guitar building.

SoundCtrl: Can you talk a bit about the process behind custom guitar building from concept to finished product?

Don Greenough: Usually I am mulling over something that bothers me about a design or type of guitar. For example the sharp edges of the body, poorly placed controls, or the discomfort of reaching the higher frets. Of course, if you are building for a customer, you need to give them what they want to the best of your abilities. From there comes the sketches and the design of jigs and guides to help accomplish the developing concept. A lot of time cutting pattern pieces, getting them to fit properly, and making sure that the modifications don’t compromise the integrity of the guitar comes next. Finally, if the changes can be applied to the guitar under construction, they must be added in the strongest and most attractive way possible.

SC: Is there a difference in the length of development between building acoustic or electric guitars?

Don: There is not much difference between an acoustic or electric guitar as far as development goes, but especially if an electric guitar is a solid body, the actual construction is much easier. As far as the length of development, there is no way to predict how long it will take to solve a particular problem.

SC: What’s more important, the technology, functionality, or artistry behind custom guitar making?

Don: By far and away, playability and quality of sound are the two most important qualities to look for in a guitar. If a guitar is not playable, no one will play it no matter how good it sounds. Conversely, if the guitar sounds horrible no one will want to play it [either]. There is a need to do attractive work because that is what attracts people to your work; people do judge the guitar on its looks a great deal. Almost all factory guitars have near perfect finishes and look great. It is not ‘til upon closer inspection you find things like an abalone shell decal for the rosette instead of real inlaid abalone, plastic trim instead of wood, plywood tops instead of solid ‘sika’ spruce, or fret-board dyed black to look like ebony instead of using ebony. The finished work gives you a chance to show off your skills, abilities and artistry. Technology is important in that it should allow you to use better tools, techniques, or superior materials in new and innovative ways. But playability and sound are paramount.

SC: What are some of the most challenging projects that you’ve worked on?

Don: I made a custom guitar for a young rising star in our area, Savanna Coen, a young (14) blues singer who has been on stage with Buddy Guy and was a featured performer at the Olympic trials in Eugene, Oregon this Summer. We talked a few times about what she wanted and set out to design it as I built it. There were many unforeseen problems and challenging situations that popped up along the journey to completion trying to fit the requirements into the confines of the body. It was fun figuring out the problems, but it took a long time. She was very patient with me and I finally finished it, hopefully giving her the best guitar (for her) that she will ever find.

SC: Where do you procure all of the different pieces (i.e. electronics, wood etc.) for your guitars?

Don: My wood supply comes from everywhere. I’ve found wood in garage sales, people’s sheds, given to me by friends, and of course, commercial sources. Electronics come from online suppliers and local electronics stores.

SC: How are the guitar’s colorful designs created?

Don: Most of my guitars utilize the natural colors in the wood, but woods with more neutral tones like maple can be dyed in almost any color you can think of. The figures in the wood give all those wonderful patterns, and seem to pop off the surface when highlighted by the stains.

Insider Interview: Edward Donnelly – CEO, Aderra Media

SoundCtrl — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 15:08:13 +0000

By Jason Epstein

Aderra Media, a company specializing in the recording and near-instant distribution of live events, has an impressive list of clients including everyone from Lady Gaga to Metallica. So, why does everyone want to work with them? It’s Aderra Media’s forward-thinking services and modern technological approach to live music that makes artists extra money and fans extra happy. We spoke to CEO Edward Donnelly about the company’s proprietary technology, the services it provides, and the artists that take advantage of it.

Sound Ctrl: Ed, can you tell us a bit about the products and services Aderra Media offers like Live in a Flash! USB Technology, All you Need is Live Event Recording Services, Back to the Present Video Capture Technology, and PushOvr™ Content Delivery?

Edward Donnelly: Aderra is a digital content distribution company that captures live events (concerts, conferences and worship services) and then delivers the audio or video via mobile phone downloads, Smartphone apps, web downloads and flash drives. All of this delivery is powered by our PushOvr platform which allows us to send content directly to an end user via a mobile or desktop app.

This content can be updated and added to at any time following the live event. We can also use PushOvr to stream exclusive video that cannot be viewed anywhere on the web directly to the app.

Our legacy technology, Live in a Flash! (in which we burned flash drives on-site) is still used on rare occasions. Aderra now predominantly uses the newer technologies to deliver content.

In addition to live event content we have also done a number of projects with pre-loaded catalog content that still takes full advantage of being update-able via PushOvr.

SC: Something about USB wristbands seems awesome and futuristic, is Aderra the first company to come up with something like that?

ED: We didn’t invent the wristbands but in the early days [we] thought they would be a great way for fans to take live recordings home with them. The first substantial tours we worked on with the wristbands were Willie Nelson and Matchbox Twenty. The most popular USB form factor we work with these days is a “backstage pass” style lanyard and laminate.

SC: Can you tell me a bit about the specs of the end-product audio that is offered to fans through these?

ED: Audio quality runs the gamut from 192kbps MP3s to uncompressed WAVs and high resolution FLACs.

We did a project for Apple Corp. and delivered the entire Beatles catalog in higher than CD resolution FLACs. Once we have captured the performance we can deliver in any format and have even pressed 180gram vinyl!

SC: Who are some of the most interesting clients you’ve worked with and why?

ED: We’ve worked with over 150 touring artists in the past few years plus some great speakers and lecturers. The most interesting clients have been those who are fearless about new technology and take full advantage of everything we can offer. OK Go, Deadmau5, Killola and Hay House Publishing come to mind as some of our more forward-thinking clients.

SC: What are some exciting upcoming projects you’re working on and clients you’re working with?

ED: A bunch of the acts we have been on the road with over the last couple of years have new records coming out in early 2013. We’re looking forward to getting back on the road again with them. In addition, we just did our first project at Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church and we’re looking forward to doing more work there too.

Insider Interview: Sam Valenti – Drip.fm CEO and co-founder

SoundCtrl — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 17:19:41 +0000

By Jason Epstein

Drip.fm is on the cusp of their launch, allowing users to subscribe to their favorite music. They tout direct access to music, perks from labels and artists, high fidelity audio, and advance releases for subscribers. So far, Drip.fm has labels like Mad Decent, Fool’s Gold, Domino Recording Company, Stones Throw and Ghostly on-board with more to be added to an ever-growing roster. We spoke to CEO and co-founder Sam Valenti about the service, its future and how it relates to the always-changing music industry.

Sound Ctrl: How does drip.fm work? What are the benefits of using it compared to other services?
Sam: Drip.fm acts a place of connection and discovery for music culture. By allowing artists and labels to communicate in a curatorial way, via membership, we are encouraging the support of music from the people who care about it most, the fans.

We love the sensation of receiving new music from the artists and labels we love through many sources. Drip.fm is the one that didn’t exist yet.

SC: Can you tell me about the launch of new label Luaka Bop?
Sam: Luaka Bop is a classic label in every sense of the word. Yale Evelev and David Byrne created a great brand that has lasted twenty years now. They have been responsible for bringing world music, particularly the music of Brazil to a larger public and have kept stride with new artists.

SC: What are some of the genres of music featured on drip.fm?
Sam: We are building a genre-agnostic platform, what matters to us is that the music is great and that fans are finding a service that does for them what other services can’t provide.

SC: What other labels are you hoping to secure contracts with in the near future?
Sam: We are working with a variety of different curators, labels and artists in different genres. Stay tuned.

SC: Can you tell me what you see in the future of drip.fm as it relates to an ever-evolving music industry?
Sam: Everyone is quite keen to know the future of the music industry, but in a lot of ways, we have to look to the past to see what works.

We believe, as music fans, that connection and context is crucial to enjoying and discovering music. The record store had it right in many ways; it just became harder to make that model work, though some have thrived. While we cannot replicate that experience, nor would we want to entirely, we believe that allowing fans, creators and curators to see equal value in a music purchase is key to a successful future.

Interview with Bastion Soundtrack Composer and Producer Darren Korb

SoundCtrl — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 15:07:46 +0000

by Jason Epstein

While independent games have had a surge in popularity, some present themselves ahead of the pack with their story, art direction, graphics, or gameplay. Bastion surpassed expectations with all of these things, but truly shined in the audio department. The excellent voice acting and writing combine to provide a truly unique and engrossing narrative style, while the intriguing and immersive soundtrack permeates throughout, holding the entire game together like beautiful, musical glue. I had a chat with composer and producer of Bastion’s award-winning soundtrack, Darren Korb about his music and the tech behind it.

SoundCtrl - How were you able to keep the consistency of Bastion’s soundtrack so fluid sounding amidst such frequent narration? Did any sort of editing or mixing technology aid this effort?
Darren Korb – As far as keeping the sound of the music consistent, I established some writing parameters for myself early on in the project. I decided that if I kept all of the music in the same genre, that would provide the consistency I was looking for, without being repetitive, so I came up with “Acoustic Frontier Triphop” and I tried to make all of the pieces fit somewhere in there. As far as the mix itself goes, it was definitely important to have the sounds and music get out of the way of the narration, so we used automation to duck the music and other sounds when the narrator speaks.

SC - I understand this was your first time scoring a game. How was this different with regards to the technology you used to achieve it from other television shows and movies you’d done in the past?
DK – I actually used all of the same recording tech (Logic Studio), but the integration tools were new to me. We used XACT, which took quite a bit of getting used to! It isn’t set up like any other audio programs I’ve worked with, in that it has no “mixing board” equivalent, no faders, or anything that would look familiar to an audio engineer.

SC - Bastion’s soundtrack was a whopping 60 minutes in length and netted you a Best Original Score at the Spike Video Game Awards among other awards and nominations. You’ve set the bar high in terms of both quality and quantity, where do you go from here?
DK - I feel super lucky that the music from Bastion was received so well. All I can do is keep making stuff that I find compelling and hope that people like it!

SC - Is there anything you can tell me about your musicality goals or new ways you will use audio technology for your next project?
DK – I’ve been curious about working with some stem-based in game mixes, so you can bring elements of a piece in and out based on gameplay states. I’m also interested in getting some more obscure acoustic instruments involved in the future.

SC - What are some of your favorite video game soundtracks of all time?
DK - Marble Madness (NES), Fallout 2 (PC), Dungeon Keeper (PC)

Five Questions with Chris Graham – Sr. Director Digital Marketing, Wind Up Records

SoundCtrl — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 14:19:49 +0000

by Jamison Antoine

Q1 – At Universal Motown/Republic you worked as a member of the creative dept. How does that experience help you in your role at Wind-Up?

A1 – The interaction with all departments made the transition from a major to an indie very smooth. In the creative dept at Uni I was responsible for dealing directly with all departments throughout the artist album cycle.

Q2 – What is it that Wind-Up does better than any other label in the digital space?

A2 – We try to offer compelling offers targeted for each sites audience, rather than offering everyone “the same thing.”

Q3 – Mobile is a major player in the digital echo system. What types of things are you working on with your artists to create cool mobile experiences for fans?

A3 – We are optimizing all our sites to be mobile friendly and recently launched a separate mobile site for Evanescence and Seether. ALL of our online campaigns work on mobile. Check out Civiltwilightband.com on your iPad to see what I mean.

Q4 – What is your greatest challenge day to day working in the digital space with artists and managers?

A4- The digital space changes every day. Keeping artists active and engaged with their fans can be tough at times, the “right” networks can change at any moment. Look at MySpace.

Q5 – What artist have you discovered recently through social?

A5 – Right now I’m listening to Imagine Dragons.

Five Questions for Andre Howard – Managing Director, Media Music

SoundCtrl — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 19:49:30 +0000

by Jamison Antoine

Q1 – You’ve been managing artists for over 10 years. How has your approach to management changed with the evolution of technology in the music space?

Andre Howard – The digital space is crowded…its up to me a manager to use technology to communicate with fans/consumers. This goes beyond just having a Twitter or Facebook account. As a manager, these are things I tackle based on the project I’m working on:

1) How are we cutting through the noise on the Internet?
2) How do we engage our audience?
3) How do we monetize and retain our audience.

Q2 – In the past few years companies like Root Music, Band Camp, and Tune Core have sprouted up offering artist services once performed by labels. Is there an app or platform that you feel is really moving the needle for artist?

AH – I think they all play an integral part in helping new & independent artists get their music to the masses. Now more than ever the DIY generation can literally be their own boss, take control of their own destiny. It’s evident when you have artist’s like The Civil Wars who won a Grammy and recorded with Taylor Swift this year and they’re independent serviced through an indie label via TuneCore.

One of the “new” companies to watch is Hello Merch, they allow artists to sell merchandise online and on tour without giving up merchandising right to 3rd party. This is a great service for those bands that are in the intermediate stage where they are literally starting to make a living off their art.

Q3 – Although apps and services make life easier for artists, what are the intangibles artist should keep in mind?

AH – These services make life easier if you are in what I call the “go mode.” If you have a growing a fan base, these services allow you to reach people globally at the click of a button. You can’t account for what it means for people to discover your art while passing their discovery along to their friends and peers. That’s an intangible you should be mindful of. The power of 10… if you have 1000 fans and 10% buys a single, that’s $100! That number will continue to grow.

Q4 – Recently we’ve seen artists wrestle with fans on Twitter from Chris Brown to Nicki Minaj. Who should be tweeting and posting when it comes to social media?

AH – Do I think artists should tweet, absolutely! It’s the most direct way to actually TALK to fans. The label & management should have a separate account from the talent themselves. This will allow them to promote releases, product and provide artist updates. I would say depending on your audience go to town with the tweeting but you have to be careful on what you put out there.

Q5 – What artist are you loving right now?

AH – Definitely my artist Tesla Boy, whose single “Fantasy” is available on iTunes. I’m digging Little Dragon, Kendrick Lamar, Big Sean, Grimes, A$AP Rocky… I respect Wiz Khalifa too.

Insider Interview with German electro house duo Digitalism

SoundCtrl — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 15:18:43 +0000

by Lily Moayeri

There is something basic and straightforward about naming your band after a style of music. No confusion, no cross-pollination of genres, even the pigeonhole is a comfortable one. German electro house duo Digitalism is the beneficiary of such labeling. Jens “Jence” Moelle and Ismail “Isi” Tufekci are equally known for their remixes as they are for their two artist albums, Idealism and I Love You, Dude. From the White Stripes and Cut Copy to the Klaxons, Depeche Mode, and the Cure, getting “Digitified” is a badge of honor. On its latest offering, a contribution to the longstanding and well regarded DJ Kicks series, Digitalism combines its knack for remixes, (two done exclusively for this mix), its deft production skills, (there are six brand new Digitalism tracks exclusive to this mix), and its unerring track selection, (choice cuts from Alex Gopher, Hiroki Esashika, the Rapture, among others), for a sharply defined collection of high-quality floor-friendly cuts. Moelle elaborates on the creation of Digitalism—DJ Kicks for us.

SoundCtrl – What equipment did you use to record the DJ Kicks mix?
Jence – It was a proper DJ set up, what we usually use in the clubs: Pioneer CDJ-2000s and a Pioneer DJM-800 mixer, on which we recorded parts of the mix and tried out stuff beforehand, and Ableton Live 8.2, which served as the final editor. We recorded the parts into our studio computer and then did little tweaks and pasted the whole thing together, made it cohesive and added EQs [using Ableton]. With something as big and important as a DJ Kicks mix, you have to make sure you go over it again and make it one big, long piece of music. Ideally we would have used a couple of 12”s too, but at the time of compiling the mix we were on the road so we had to request the mastered WAV files.

SC – How did you decide on the selections for this mix? What were trying to put across with your choices?
Jence –We chose to go for a historic/portfolio-esque approach. We started writing down all the tracks, labels, and artists that we play over and over again the last decade. We then added new music by friends and our own, then started kicking things out of it until we were down to about 90 minutes of music. We also made sure that there would be enough different music on it to show our musical spectrum, which ranges from techno, house, and disco via electroclash and new wave to indie. For us, it’s important to create a mix that would life you to peaks and drop you down to mellow parts that let you take a breath. This mix is pretty much an essence of our DJ sets and the music that orbits the Digitalism universe.

SC – What is your ideal DJ set-up in a venue?
Jence – We play with several CDJ-2000s and a DJM-800 mixer. Of course good monitoring is appreciated—not old trashed rock ‘n’ roll ones. Recently we played a gig where the monitors were half a second behind so we had to do it old school like in the bedroom 12 years ago with just the headphones on.

SC – Coolest piece of DJ equipment?
Jence – CDJs. The Pioneer CDJ-2000s have a good sound—even warped—and are really versatile. We use them in the studio sometimes to perform live things with new material from a USB stick.

SC – Favorite headphones?
Isi – Technics RP-DJ1210
Jence – Sennheiser HD 25-1 II

SC – Favorite instrument? And is there an app or software you know of that sounds just as good?
Jence – Roland TR-808. It’s the ultimate bass drum. You can sample it, but that will render it down to a certain bit-depth and digital distortion. You have to hear that through a live PA. Actually, astoundingly enough, the simple, built-in Logic Ultrabeat is quite good with similar sound controls.

SC – Coolest app you’ve seen in the past six months?
Jence – Lemur Liine (controller for a number of music and visual software), Jasuto Pro (modular synthesizer), Moog Animoog (polyphonic synthesizer).

SC – First album you ever bought? What was the format?
Jence – Snap! The Madman’s Return on CD in 1991 probably.
Isi – Can’t remember exactly but the first single purchase was Zhane “Hey Mr. DJ” on CD.

SC – Best piece of music-related advice you ever got?
Jence – Only trust your ears.

SoundCtrl Insider Interview: Robbie Rivera live from SiriusXM

SoundCtrl — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 01:46:27 +0000

by Sarah Polonsky

Last week house music pioneer Robbie Rivera had an intimate party at SiriusXM’s headquarters in Midtown Manhattan. Moments before his live set the acclaimed DJ sat down for a chat with SoundCtrl.

In town promoting his new album “Dance or Die,” Rivera has a slew of tour dates in the Northeast this summer. “It’s been exciting,” said the warm and approachable Rivera, donning his spectacles and a nondescript green t-shirt. “One of the tracks off the album, ‘Forever Young,’ went Top Ten on Beatport,” Rivera said from the sound booth at Sirius. He’s also bringing his long-running Juicy Beach party to New York for the first time ever on July 14th at Governors Island.

“The Miami party has been going down for seven years, and it always brings out around 4,000 people,” Rivera said. ” We’ve had people like Deadmau5 headline it, and Swedish House Mafia play there. It’s always the best time.”

How does an aspiring DJ reach a Robbie Rivera level of mass appeal in 2012? “Stop copying everyone else,” he proclaimed. “You need to start creating original music because what’s happening is everyone is starting to sound the same. You also have to play a lot of parties, and playing the same 16 tracks is not going to work. It’s going to die and how can you DJ a five hour party like that? You need to be creative and have the balls to educate a bit.”

Educating is huge for Rivera. He even admitted that he’d like to design an app “for when I’m playing live, people can see what I’m doing,” adding “but I read that Ritchie Hawtin is doing something like that.”

As for his favorite app that does exist, Rivera announced, “You might be surprised.” A few lucky fans began circulating the SiriusXM space, as the DJ started setting up his console and tweaking various knobs and plug-ins for the live set. “The weather app.” DJs travel a lot, so it never hurts to know what conditions to expect, especially when your set is outside in front of thousands of partygoers who expect audile awesomeness, rain or shine.

And with that, Rivera took to the decks and delivered a bouncy, happy set for listeners across the nation via SiriusXM’s airwaves.

If you want to attend Robbie Rivera’s Juicy New York, enter for your chance to win a pair of free tickets courtesy of Vibe.

The Future Is Now: SoundCtrl Chats with TheFuture.fm VP of Marketing Chris Nagy

SoundCtrl — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 13:37:34 +0000

By Jessica Wunsch

The bleary-eyed music savant is tired but still bursting with excitement. Chris Nagy, VP of Marketing of TheFuture.fm, just got off the red-eye from his trip to LA, and is running around his office trying to find a quiet place (there’s a lot of music blasting at The Future) moment to chat with SoundCtrl about the application, along with some of its future prospects. The DJ turned entrepreneur throws out some advice for future tech-mogul aspirers, reveals his favorite iPhone apps and more…

SoundCtrl - What was the purpose in developing Thefuture.fm?
Chris Nagy - Literally the purpose was a desire to recreate the unique experience people get when they are in the presence of a DJ, whether they’re at a club, festival or party. That was the original desire, and once the process got started in creating a platform for this, a lot of hurdles and obstacles arose—not only from a technological standpoint, but also from the music industry, which we felt needed to be addressed.

SC - It has been reported that on April 25, when you re-launched dubset.com as thefuture.fm, your user base doubled to more than 100,000. How?
CN - It’s become a combination of our team and platform being more developed – all these things working together have put the company as a whole on another level. I think it’s creating a momentum that pushes us forward more quickly. It’s also a good time to be in the EDM space where there’s a lot going on – especially in the United States, where we’re really starting to embrace DJ culture more actively.

SC - Tell us about implementing mixSCAN technologies.
CN - mixSCAN pretty much serves as the backbone and it’s what makes everything else possible. Anytime a mix is constrained to any capacity within our platform, mixSCAN creates an automated report, and then pays off for the different copyrights in an automated fashion. This way we’ve created the first ever platform that respects the DJ as artists. We even have plans for a mechanism that will be able to pay DJs royalties for the work that they do.

SC - What did your 15+ years in the music biz, especially your time at Grooveshark, teach you about music technology? How are you applying what you’ve learned to make thefuture.fm?
CN - I’ve found that the integration of the music culture being tied to technology has really changed the business of it. The only way to be successful on a commercial level is through some form of technology, right? So I think the big thing that I learned is seeing these two separate opposing forces now working together hand-in-hand. I’ve also recently learned that you have to take the opinions of everyone you work with into consideration, especially in the music industry. From managers to artists, everyone has a vision on how they want to distribute the listening experience to their audience, and you have to foster a healthy dialogue with them in order to ensure the opportunity to grow and succeed.

SC - Will the future.fm ever host more than DJ music?
CN - We’re definitely not strictly EDM. Since we are a part of the DJ culture, we see many genres that are mixed into the work including hip-hop, trance, rock, alternative stuff, classics…whatever. EDM stems from all different types of music, and technology can be applied to any format of music.

SC - With all the young success stories these days, including Mark Zuckerburg and Dennis Crowley, what would you say is the key to becoming a successful programmer/entrepreneur?
CN - It’s a combination of actually having a vision, and business deliverance – it’s not just coding. Also, having a true grasp of the product and its marketing/packaging, or surrounding yourself with quality people that do. What I’ve seen often times is that some start-ups may have extremely talented developers who just want to create all different kinds of stuff and get it out there. Then there’s the Apple mentality where all these products are calculated and programmed so that the messaging, their packaging, their look, their feel, their identity, and their timing is all thought out. And I think the latter approach stands better. You can develop the greatest product, but if you don’t find a way to make it compelling with your users, even if you are be discovered organically or virally, ultimately you’re going to have a much slimmer chance at success.

SC - If you were to start charging for services, how do you do so strategically so as not to offend your users?
CN - I think there’s the ability to continue to allow people to adhere to our platform in certain capacities, but don’t want to participate financially. Then there’s the ability to offer access and services for a higher level product that involves a combination of a subscription service and then also a unique approach for users to be able to acquire exclusive original mixes that can’t be accessed from anywhere else.

SC - What is your favorite iPhone app?
CN - Right now I’m using Thefuture.fm app heavily for my entertainment consumption. I travel a lot so I use Instagram and Hotel Tonight. I also like to have Sign It! on hand as well.

SC - What’s next on Thefuture.fm’s agenda?
CN - We are in the process of rolling out various ways to monetize content, and at the same time provide special access to the audience with some exclusive mixes so that it’s basically become a new marketplace.

Insider Interview: Omid McDonald and Booker Sim of Legitmix

SoundCtrl — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 13:00:25 +0000

By Sarah Polonsky

SoundCtrl caught up with Omid McDonald and Booker Sim, founders of Legitmix, a music technology dedicated to building virtual bridges between those who create using other people’s music, the artists they remix and music fans – in a way that promotes, liberates and profits both remixers and copyright holders. The goal of Legitimix is to be the framework of music.

But how? We’re glad you asked…

SoundCtrl – What made you make the switch from producing medical software to inventing music based program?
Omid McDonald – After my last start-up was acquired, I was looking for an interesting new project. When my friend Booker introduced me to the problem of sample clearance, I saw an opportunity to improve the situation using software. The chance to make a difference is what motivated me to take on this project. While I have had to learn a lot about the music industry, the challenges of running a start-up in the medical or music business are similar.

SC – With your history, what would you say is the secret to a successful software program?
OM - Understanding your client. Most software projects fail because the customers needs are not properly understood. Getting software developers to understand the real-world is not alway easy.

SC – What was your original purpose in creating the Legitmix software?
OM – The problem facing remixers is that their intellectual property is glued in with the copyrighted music they sample. This means that to distribute or sell their work, they have to negotiate a license to the music they use. I thought this was unfair and wanted to create a way remixers could sell their work without infringing anyone’s rights.

SC - How does your program stand out from all other music-based website and applications like Soundcloud and Beatport?
OM – Soundcloud and Beatport avoid the copyright issue by having the remixer certify their content is non-infringing. With Legitmix, the remixer openly identify the tracks they sampled and our algorithm creates digital instructions that consumers can buy to recreate the remix using their copy of the sampled tracks. If they consumer doesn’t have the sampled tracks, they must buy them in order to recreate the remix. This novel approach allows remixers to profit from their work and get the artists the sample credited and paid.

SC - How do you intend to evolve it and keep it fresh?
OM – We recently launched our self-serve interface that allows remixers to submit and promote their work. We are seeing a good number of high quality remixes posted everyday. This fall we will be releasing some cool features to better connect fans with our users. We’ll also be launching several major marketing initiatives with leading remixers.

SC – You were inspired to create this program due to what you saw during Booker Sim’s, your boyhood friend, filming of his most recent documentary “Tragedy: The Story of Queensbridge.” What are your thoughts on the film?
OM – The fact that Booker’s film was blocked due to legal red tape really upset me. It wasn’t that the original artists were against his use of their music but that the system is so complex and inefficient that he couldn’t even get to talk to the right people. So in the end, everyone lost and that made no sense to me.

SC – What was your reasoning behind making this film?
Booker Sim – Ever since I the heard Mobb Deep’s HELL ON EARTH, I was obsessed with capturing the essence of 90s Queensbridge thug rap cinematically. My background is in war documentaries, so Capone-n-Noreaga’s THE WAR REPORT was especially meaningful to me. THE WAR REPORT was “ghetto CNN,” showing the world what was going on in hood, but more importantly in my view, it taught the hood to use street knowledge to deconstruct world power politics. Not only did Tragedy (as the architect of the WAR REPORT) birth this idea of teaching geo-politics to the hood, but his life story provided a great way to report about life in Queensbridge as well.

SC – Your documentary has gone viral throughout the web, being posted on many free-to-watch video sites including YouTube and Daily Motion. Was this always your intention? Why?
BS - I didn’t put TRAGEDY online. French fans did. While my partners and I did sell a version to FUSE, all the proceeds went to cutting the Queensbridge rap out of the film because it was impossibly complicated and expensive to clear the music. Because French laws allow for per-sale incremental music licensing for home video, French fans get to enjoy the real version, which actually contains Queensbridge hip-hop! So in the end, like most projects that fail to get released legitimately because of our byzantine music clearance system, fans still find a way to get what they want, and copyright holders (and music “remixers” like myself) get squat.

SC – Of all the Queensbridge rappers to profile in your documentary, why did you choose Tragedy?
BS – I actually moved to New York in 99 to get Prodigy of Mobb Deep, then at the height of his fame, to star in a screenplay I wrote. I connected with Tragedy around the same time, and learned from people in Queensbridge that he was part of pretty much every great Queensbridge hip-hop moment, from the early Park Jams, to the Juice Crew days, straight through to Nas, Capone-N-Noreaga and Mobb Deep. While I did manage to convince Prodigy to star in my film, I couldn’t raise the $50 million needed to make it. So I grabbed a camera and went the low budget route, realizing the real Queensbridge story was right in front of me, with Tragedy. But had I known I’d never be able to release the doc in the US with actual Queensbridge music in it, I’d never have made the film.

SC – You helped co-found Legitmix with your childhood friend Omid McDonald. What inspired you guys to make this new music technology?
BS – After a rough cut of TRAGEDY was accepted into a bunch of prestigious festivals and offers from major distributors, Omid lent me money to clear the music (which I only recently paid back). After six months and thousands of dollars in legal bills, I was unable to clear the music, so gave up on a premium release (and only released it years later years later, with the music cut out). Omid, coming from a tech background, was shocked to learn I couldn’t release a movie people wanted to buy because there was no rational, per-unit music clearance system in place. Not only was I losing out, but so too were the music copyright holders. He felt technology could provide a solution to the sample clearance problem, and went to work on that solution.

SC – What’s next for Legitimix?
Omid McDonald – We are focused on getting remixers aware of our technology and make the platform work for them. Eventually we will support releasing movies so Booker documentary can finally be enjoyed in its original form.

Insider Tips From Pro Music Photographer Shane McCauley

SoundCtrl — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 18:35:11 +0000

by Shane McCauley

From shooting for music labels (Universal/DefJam, Warner Music Group, Mad Decent, Columbia) and publications (Rolling Stone, The Fader, Vice, Nylon), to traveling the world with Diplo, as well as publishing a book with the famed DJ, 128 Beats Per Minute, Shane McCauley documents music and life. For many of us, music is life; subsequently, we seek to carve out a space in the both physical and digital world of the industry.

Here are tips from McCauley for all the pit-standing, side stage-snapping, all-access press pass-wearing shutterbug hopefuls…

1. Read these blogs so you can always stay up-to-date with what’s new in your field:

2. So you want to go to college…

I’m gonna give it you straight: Going to a 4-year institution to get a degree in photography is the biggest waste of +$100,000 ever. If you do take business classes, video editing and post-production classes, web application classes, but better yet, don’t go to college at all. I have messed with a lot of cameras and lighting and spent 10 years working as a photo assistant for some of the best photographers in the world. I learned a ton that you just can’t learn in a classroom. Much of photography is just having problem solving abilities.

3. Develop your own style and stay positive.

Figure it our by trial and error. I have gone to shoot to discover that someone forgot to pack a cable, rendering most of the equipment useless, things break all the time. It is important to know how to take the lemons and make lemonade.

4. Make the purchases you must make.

You need to spend a little bit, but stop here: Photoshop, lenses, Final Cut Pro and Alien Skin (especially VSCoOfilters packs)…hard drive back up and a solid DSLR!

Out of all the stuff I have used the most reliable tool I have is my Canon 5D Ark II. I’ve shot with Mamaiya cameras also, and occasionally I still do shoot medium format, but only in portrait session situations. The Canons are way faster and more versatile. It really is important to invest in great lenses. You won’t get the same result with the $200 lens that you will with the $1,500 lens. I always shoot with Zeiss lenses or Canon L Series Glass.

5. Technique, technique, technique.

If you aren’t shooting with natural light, make it look that way.
If you aren’t already doing video also, you should start.
Live Shows vs. Studio: Stay away from fish eye lenses, avoid using your flash, and know that shooting in the studio can take years to make right.

6. DEADLINE

I rarely work with assistants, so I have a system worked out for getting my stuff where it needs to be on time. Meeting the deadline is always the most important thing. Hungover? No one else’s problem but yours!

7. Draw the line between “favor gigs” and “paid gigs.”

Favor gigs have to be something that I would actually enjoy shooting or it has to be an opportunity to make something really special. Do not fall for the “this will be really great exposure for you” line.

8. Promote yourself.

Just a few years ago, not many photographers were taking Social Media seriously. There used to be something that was mysterious about being a photographer. I have been working in photography since before the Internet (gasp!) so the way a photographer markets themselves has changed dramatically in the last few years. You need to show people what you are doing all the time. There is a saturation of photographers out there. I take time out of my day, everyday to post new images to my Tumblr and to my Twitter feeds.

9. Persistence is KEY.

Insider Interview: Producer Duo Beauties Rebecca & Fiona Get Tech Crazy With SoundCtrl

SoundCtrl — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 18:33:23 +0000

by Sarah Polonsky

The US is about to be hit in the face (and like it!) by Sweden’s hottest DJ duo, Rebecca and Fiona. If you haven’t heard of them yet, YOU WILL. With a hard-as-bullets live show, a saucy new video for chart-topper, (ahem) “Bullets” and a tour promoting the US release of their album I Love You, Man, Rebecca and Fiona are taking the Northeast by storm.

While they may look adorable and teeny, don’t be fooled. Rebecca and Fiona are titans of tonality, armed with badass beats and hard-dropping bass. The gals made room in their party-making schedule to chat with SoundCtrl about music tech and more…

SoundCtrl - Describe your sound and what we get from a Rebecca and Fiona live show.
Rebecca & Fiona - While DJing, we play non-commercial stuff with hard drops. We try to avoid cheesy vocals. We’re really into the technology aspect. We’re Nazi mixers, but we’re really into the party, as well.

SC – Describe your single “Bullets” from a production standpoint.
R&F – It was just a guitar riff. Adrian [producer/DJ Adrian Lux, and Rebecca’s boyfriend] and his friend were making a remix. They recorded a guitar riff that never got released. So, we just had the guitar riff and some base—it was nothing, just a loop. We took it from there, and started to create a song. We usually start with making a demo version of a track, and the production aspect we finish up together in the studio.

SC – Do you do all your own producing?
R&F – Yes. It’s so different every time. Basically, we create some melodies in Logic, some piano or a little synthesizer vibe, and then we go from there.

SC – What are your software and hardware must-haves?
R&F – Logic! We almost always work with software. But, we have some old synthesizers. On our album, I Love You, Man we used midi synthesizers.

SC – What is your favorite music app?
R&F – Reason. Ot is a Swedish app like Ableton. They have a really good iPad app, so does GarageBand. But we mostly use Twitter and Instagram for fun. There’s a new app in Spotify that gets all the lyrics so when you listen to a track you get all the lyrics.

SC – Favorite headphones?
R&F – Sennheiser, we can’t play with anything else. We started with them and we produce with them, as well. They’re small and they’re sound is perfect.

SC – If you could perfect a piece of software, what would it be?
R&F – We would like to design a synthesizer with our favorite catalog or dream sounds that we love. It’s got to have the weirdest sounds, with its own DNA that you can go in and change and it’s fucking mental. And of course, no one else can use it.

Check out Rebecca & Fiona’s video for “Bullets,” available on iTunes.

Catch Rebecca and Fiona on tour:

DATE		CITY	VENUE
Mon	6/25	Las Vegas, NV	Marquee, NC
Sun	7/1	Ottawa, ON	Escapade Music Festival
Tue	7/3	Las Vegas, NV	LAVO
Wed	7/11	Chicago, IL	Studio Paris
Thu	7/12	San Diego, CA	Fluxx
Fri	7/13	Las Vegas, NV	Marquee, DC
Fri	7/13	Phoenix, AZ	Wild Knight
Sat	7/14	San Francisco, CA	Ruby Skye
Sun	7/15	Las Vegas, NV	Marquee, DC
Fri	8/3	Las Vegas, NV	Marquee, NC
Sat	8/4	Las Vegas, NV	Marquee, DC
Sun	8/5	Miami, FL	Set
Fri	8/10	Las Vegas, NV	Marquee, NC

SoundCtrl’s Insider Interview with Producer/DJ Arty: “I Would Make Some Insane VST with Crazy Combined Effects on Output”

SoundCtrl — Fri, 22 Jun 2012 21:06:40 +0000

by Sarah Polonsky

Russian producer Arty is having a big month in music. The 22-year-old sonic savant just released “Open Space,” his new single for Anjunabeats, on June 18, and launches, “Together We Are,” his new weekly radio show for Sirius XM, beginning tomorrow, June 23. Listen online at www.2getherweare.com.

In celebration of the “little Arty that could,” SoundCtrl picked his brain about music tech, apps and following your dream.

SoundCtrl – Favorite instrument? Why? Is there an app or software that sounds just as good?
Arty – Piano of course—I played for seven years in music school on this instrument, so there is no other option for me. There is no software that can sound the same or replace it and nothing that can convey a sense of touching the note.

SC – What’s the coolest app you’ve seen in the past six months?
Arty – Gross Beat in FL Studio. I love the way you can work with the sound using this little beast.

SC - If you could design your dream app, what would it be?
Arty – As a big fan of delays and reverbs, I would make some insane VST with crazy combined effects on output. But since I didn’t make it, I use FabFilter Timeless.

SC - First album you ever bought?
Arty – The Prodigy – “Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned”

SC Best piece of advice you ever got?
Arty – Follow your dream.

SC - Coolest piece of DJ equipment?
Arty – Pioneer EFX-1000

SC - Favorite headphones?
Arty – Sennheiser HD-25

You can stream Arty’s new single “Open Space” (out now on Anjunabeats) at SoundCloud

Photo Credit: Sergey Mikhitarov