By Ruben Lone

The Berlin-based Zerodebug has expanded the newest, smallest version of its Ableton controller software to the iPhone. touchAble mini runs with the same functionality on the popular iPad version, but condensed for even more portable use.

The Zerodebug app functions much like an Ableton hardware controller, emulating many of the controls offered by Ableton’s Push device. However, touchAble expands on many of Push’s features that open the app up to seemingly limitless iterations of speedy, customizable controls.  With touchAble, you can browse your Ableton library to add audio and MIDI effects, instruments, and Max devices to your session without ever touching the computer. Complete control of session view means you can add, launch, and stop clips in the arrangement, as well as browse through the entire session.

touchAble’s mixer includes track volumes, sends, and pans, with a highly accurate metering system for each control, of which there are multiple for each track. Users instrument banks and samples are accessible and playable with the keyboard or drum pad, which included velocity, pitch wheel, octave, and aftertouch controls. Much like the Ableton Push, the touchAble’s “in-key” mode allows you to play and build chords in the correct key. Much like a Kaoss Pad, the XY pad gives you hands-on control of effects with the ability to manually mix and match up to 12 parameters at a time. Automation is also possible with the ability to save snapshots of effect settings and environments.

Connectivity with the Apple camera kit means the touchAble is compatible with MIDI hardware as well. As for Ableton, the connection recommended by Zerodebug is an ad-hoc network between computer and phone, which offers lightning fast  controls and little latency.

Check out touchAble mini’s introductory video below, and download on the App Store.

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By Carolyn Heneghan

Imagine your favorite musician reaching out to you as they perform a live concert on a movie screen. How about playing an inexpensive keyboard made completely with 3D materials?  Believe it or not, that future is a reality.

With the rise of 3D visuals and 3D printing technology, musicians are finding new ways to integrate their music in expanded dimensions to create a new experience for their listeners. Several musicians and music professionals have already accomplished this feat using 3D in a variety of ways, with many more in development.

(Space Blanket)

Simulcasting Live 3D Concerts

While album sales have fallen drastically over the past two decades, live music remains stronger than ever, and 3D technology offers a new way to tap into fans’ love of live performances.

Some artists can sell out a concert in a matter of hours, no matter how big the venue. That means that potentially thousands of fans are either disappointed about missing the opportunity or couldn’t afford it to begin with. Instead of shutting out these fans from the experience, the concert could be simulcast in movie theaters, which can accept the overflow and still give these adoring fans a chance to see the action for themselves.

Where 3D comes in is that it takes this idea one step further. Two things make a live performance unique: seeing the band in person and the atmosphere. While the exact atmosphere may not be recreated, instead of a flat, 2D image onscreen, a 3D image would make an audience feel like they are actually part of the action, right there in the venue.

(Nathan Taylor)

Another great aspect of 3D simulcasts is that when fans are at a concert, only the front few rows really get the full experience of the band onstage. Others higher up in the stands only get to see very small versions of the show from far away. But with 3D simulcasts, those 3D cameras can get a variety of angles much closer up than that of a seat in the back row.  Although fans aren’t at the performance, they still get a unique perspective of the concert from right in the theatre.

Several major artists have already invested in this technology. U2 had the Latin American leg of their 2006 Vertigo tour filmed in 3D and premiered it at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, where it went on to be shown in 600 American movie theaters to earn $20 million in its first year. While not live, this effort showed exactly how popular this technology could be when integrated with the live music experience.

Other artists have already taken advantage of this technology as well. In 2010, the Black Eyed Peas teamed up with director James Cameron to film a 3D concert documentary. Also in 2010, Justin Bieber filmed his performance at New York’s Madison Square Garden in 3D for a biopic. In addition, Hot Ticket from Sony Pictures produces live shows and has released a 3D film for country singer Kenny Chesney.

3D Movies and Music Videos

Similar to live 3D concerts in theatres, musicians are also creating 3D performances that take on a more cinematic feel in the form of 3D movies and music videos. This allows their fans to watch and listen to their performances, documentaries, music videos, etc., from the comfort of their own homes on their own 3D-enabled TVs.

This both generates another revenue stream for the artists and gives them a new artistic medium to play around with to better get their music and message across to their fans. A wide range of artists have already produced 3D music videos, from indie artists like Young Rival, who recently created a unique 3D video using depth perception and an autostereogram, to major names like Shakira.

will.i.am’s 3D Merch Table

will.i.am has recently announced an interest in using 3D technology to enhance and even revolutionize the possibilities for band and artist merchandise. The concept involves using a 3D printer to bring a shot from a live performance alive, so to speak, and to sell it immediately after the concert is over.

For example, if Lady Gaga were to strike a certain pose during her concert, 3D printers could be working backstage to create a 3D model of that image for attendees to take home with them—a unique captured moment that they can have to commemorate the show.

Printing 3D Instruments

3D printing has another use for the music industry: the printing of musical instruments. Musical instruments can be expensive, and being able to 3D print them would make them more affordable and accessible for novice and professional musicians alike.

Already this technology has been made available. ODD Guitars has developed a process of using a layer of nylon powder and fusing it in certain locations to fit the components of an actual, usable guitar. Most of the 3D-printed parts are decorative and come in eight eye-catching designs, while the external hardware, such as the bridge, neck, pickups and tuning heads, are store-bought but also customizable. In addition to a guitar, they’ve built a 3D-printed keyboard and drum kit using the same process.

The Future of Music and 3D Technology

This is only the beginning for music and 3D technology. For example, as 3D extends beyond just the movie theatre and becomes more prevalent in the home through 3D enabled TVs, computers and mobile devices, music lovers will have a chance to enjoy live concerts and music videos in a new, exciting way on-the-go, from wherever they are, whenever they want. 3D technology will even become more common at live shows themselves, as it already finds itself enhancing the backgrounds and visualizers at performances around the world.

Also, 3D printing has only just hit its stride. will.i.am’s idea for 3D merchandise and 3D printed instruments are only the beginning for the effect this technology can have on a plethora of industries, including music. Imagine stereos, headphones, amplifiers and mp3 players all created by technologically advanced 3D printers. Just as with the instruments, these musical products could become cheaper and more accessible for more musicians and music lovers alike, which could expand the possibilities for new music created, performed and shared online.

3D technology will continue to evolve alongside music and offer new opportunities as both industries grow and change. Be prepared for what’s next, and enjoy the new and improved music experience that is to come.

The post The Co-Evolution of Music and 3D appeared first on SoundCtrl.

By Ruben Lone

Radiohead, known for pushing the envelope in every regard of their creative endeavors, have released an app in collaboration with Universal Everything, the UK-based digital art practice and design studio headed by Matt Pyke. Using elements of the song “Bloom” from the King of Limbs album, Polyfauna is a complex sound and visual experience taking full advantage of the iPhone’s and Android’s resolution, speedy graphics, and enhanced sound processing. The object of the app is to follow a red dot (searchable by rotating the phone on a 360-degree axis), which once found intensely transports you into a variety of psychedelic digital environments that shift as you progress through the constructed spaces. Best enjoyed with a pair of good headphones, we recommend using this app in your own company–it requires a good deal of spinning about in less-than-natural ways. You’ll be surprised at how much space the tiny screen can afford.

A statement by Thom Yorke:

We have made an app called PolyFauna.

PolyFauna is an experimental collaboration between us (Radiohead) & Universal Everything, born out of The King of Limbs sessions and using the imagery and the sounds from the song Bloom.

It comes from an interest in early computer life-experiments and the imagined creatures of our subconscious.

Your screen is the window into an evolving world.
Move around to look around.
You can follow the red dot.
You can wear headphones.

Download Polyfauna for free for iOS or Android.

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Five questions for the CEO of Syncofy: A new, independent marketplace for music discovery and licensing

By Kira Grunenberg

As the sub-title above suggests, it is not too difficult to figure out what indie music licensing marketplace, Syncofy, wants to help people do: get music heard and in the hands of those who wish to enhance non-musical media, such as commercials or movie trailers. This week, the proactive startup launched an alpha version of its service (currently on private request) and has made applications available for music creators or people seeking music for licensing. The core of this platform is all about cutting out the middleman. A non-exclusive service, Syncofy is both flexible and supportive of music makers. “Creators keep 100% ownership and control over their work,” is emphasized more than once in the introductory information on Syncofy’s website. Regardless of the user’s role, Syncofy is dedicated to having few barriers between partnering parties. Communications deal solely with music makers and licensees, and no one else.

Discovery is the other half of Syncofy’s services, as media producers are often unsure of what they’re looking for. A search engine targets specific music with various qualifiers including genre, tonality, social media appeal, rhythm, and correlation. The music retrieved is discerned using multiple elements as well, including “acoustic analysis, editorial data, (artist, album and track info, period, etc.), user generated data (search data, downloads, likes, etc.), and other social specific data such as geo and demographics,” as described on the site.

This is just the tip of the iceberg of what Syncofy can and looks forward to doing for music creators and media licensees going forward. I spoke with CEO/Founder Emanuel Heinstein and got his perspective on where Syncofy will fit in the current music industry, the future of syncing placement in general, and even a few details on their aspirations for mobile capability.

Emanuel Heinstein: Everyone at Syncofy literally breathes music and music brought us all together. I’ve been a DJ and producer for all my life and since I first picked up a book in a small NY bookstore in 1999 that explained the principals of MP3 encoding and the boundless opportunities which it unleashes, I was hooked to the idea, that one day, technology will be able to dis-intermediate the artist business, putting creators back in control. The team evolved through miraculous ways. I can’t tell you exactly how, but coincidence brought us all together and the idea behind Syncofy was so appealing , that it was simply a no-brainer and a logical next step for everyone to join the project.

Right from the start, Syncofy makes it clear that streamlining is its operative mentality. Everything, from your SoundCloud marker-style media player, to self-checkout with licensing, to the very meticulous options for finding and curating different songs for what ever specific needs a non-musical content producer might have, is very fast and straightforward. How do you see this DIY-tinged approach coexisting with traditional structures like the world’s big PROs that already do so much for so many of the world’s artists? Do you believe Syncofy’s mediation between artists and companies is the future of licensing and royalties?

As content spreads beyond traditional media and into the digital world, there is a tremendous need for high-performance monitoring services to catch up with new standards. Syncofy is not in the business of secondary market royalty collections though, and we are certainly not trying to replace PRO services. On the contrary, we would like to see these services evolve into a more reliable tool for artists to be able to collect their hard-earned performance royalties.

Having said this, we are approaching a much more serious problem for the independent artist community and therefore a massive risk of suffocating cultural diversity. As the music models are shifting and are transitioning from purchase to access models, future musicians will know little else than streaming royalties which pay little to no money. For instance, your track needs to be played over 4,500,000 times a month on Spotify to make the US minimum wage of $1,160. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy Spotify and use it on a daily basis but we simply have to acknowledge the elephant in the room. Music streaming platforms are the new way to consume music. Musicians will have to rethink their whole business approach.

We see music licensing in its various ways as the one revenue stream that has been continuously growing. So far though, the whole licensing business has been a total chaos, not only for artists and labels but also for those looking for music to license, and no one has emerged as a successful player to solve this problem. Either music licensing companies are trying to monopolize the industry, double dipping on the independent artist’s and label’s hard earned cash, or artists and labels are simply not able to cut through the noise in the thick of things.

Even though this industry is all about discovering and finding the next big act, no one has taken advantage of today’s technology that enables the aggregation and curation of music on a large scale, making it accessible to the industry. As a result, most amazing music and artists are falling through the cracks and are lost. I believe there is a great opportunity for us to create something better than that.

This is where Syncofy comes in. We believe in the disintermediation of the artist’s business. New disruptive technology lets us build an independent marketplace for music where creators keep total ownership and control over their music without having to share their profits. Music providers state their terms under which they are willing to accept a license. Licensees on the other hand will have the option to negotiate licensing terms and conditions directly. We challenge you to find anyone else who offers that.

At Syncofy’s core is its cutting edge music search and recommendation and discovery engine. In order to produce the most relevant search results, the engine combines acoustic analysis, editorial data, user generated date and other social specific data such as geo, demographics as well as frequency of use of search phrases which correlate with social trends. That’s about all the secret sauce we are able to share this far.

It is refreshing that Syncofy doesn’t abandon the color of human preference in its music discovery feature. That said, how do you balance the “human factor” involved with Syncofy’s music curation, with the highly adjustable song filtering systems available to those looking for just the right track to use in syncing? 50/50? More or less?

I recently came across a quote by E.E. Dijkstra, “The question of whether Machines Can Think, is about as relevant as the question of whether Submarines Can Swim.” I think all this disembodied data floating around needs to be put in some kind of context to make sense of it, and technology certainly does its job offering you a bird’s eye view over all of it. However, music is speaking to everyone in a different way. Ultimately, it is up to the music professional working with the site, applications, and service to identify the next big act. We simply acknowledged the necessity for music content to be filtered and curated to actually become valuable to a user. Our music department will of course also be part of this process but to what degree will depend on the task to be accomplished.

Syncofy was clearly keeping a close eye on the various talks and activities happening during this year’s midem conference via Twitter. Since a major part of your company’s objective is to, “steer the music industry into a more sustainable [entity] for music creators…” What are your thoughts on some of the principles outlined in Midem’s circulating infographic that asks, “[Music Industry:] Back to Growth?,” as well as their panel that discussed sync placement, brand integration and pitching to media?

I think music reaches more people than ever before. So in that sense, I think we do okay for now. However we must accept that the days of record sales are finally over. We’ve all seen it coming. For some reason though, most of the industry is still in some kind of “Wile E. Coyote state of mind,” who has just gone over the cliff but has not realized it yet. As said earlier, there is this big elephant in the room and only few people seem to acknowledge it. So unless we break down old structures so that something new can emerge, cultural diversity, which is channeled through independent music, is in peril.

I believe with the right tools and services though we can steer the ship around and I think the right answer is the disintermediation of the artists business. There still will be enough room for labels to get on board and help artist reach their fans.

In the coming months, as you gather data from alpha testers and refine things on the development side, is there anything preliminary you can tell prospective members about the imminent addition of a Syncofy mobile application and/or your ideals for its future capabilities? 

I love my mobile and I love my tablet. I love their touch screens and ease of use and we’re trying to incorporate this look and feel as much as we can within Syncofy’s UX. However, the processing power for those devices is just not there yet and as we improve and incorporate new technologies we want to make sure that they are performing flawlessly. Undeniably, tablets and mobile devices are the future (at least for now) but today still more than 80 percent of all users browse the web using desktop computers or laptops. This number is even higher when it comes to users that are working professionally with computers. And even though native apps currently run faster and are more likely to have access to new mobile device capabilities before web apps do, we believe in a “best of breed” hybrid approach using the right tools for the right job, focusing on both scenarios in which web and native components work together. Choosing the right approach will then better enable us to swiftly adapt to whatever the next hot technology is going to be.

Syncofy is active now via desktop computer. You can request an alpha application today as a “Content Provider” or “Licensee.” Read more at Syncofy.com and follow Syncofy on Twitter @syncofy.

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.

The post [Interview] Emanuel Heinstein, CEO/Founder of Syncofy appeared first on SoundCtrl.

By SoundCtrl

With a global musical sprawl, it is often hard for emerging artists to procure production that matches their style. This is especially true in hip-hop and R&B, where beat selection is just as important, if not more, than the flow of the lyricist him or herself. BeatStars looks to bridge that gap with a platform that facilitates sales of beats by established producers to artists in search of production for their records.

Founded by Abe Bashton in 2011, BeatStars has already helped its beta users earn over $500K in its first few years. Now the service has 100,000 active users, including esteemed producers such as !llmind, Focus, Havoc, and EASKI.  Producers looking for a more tailored experience can upgrade to Pro Pages, which are customizable profiles that allow producers to sell directly to artists, and more importantly, retain 100% of licensing fees.

Though the shopping and automated licensing will certainly only grow in the next several years, the question at hand is whether this sort of hands-off production will result in less personal music. The best relationships between artists and producers, even with the segmented rapper/producer workflow, have resulted from two artists working together on one music idea. The pop industry as a whole will definitely begin to take platforms like BeatStars into account to cut production costs, but hopefully not at the cost of sacrificed quality. However, BeatStars seams like a successful, niche service that values producers and showcasing their talents.

Check out the introductory video for BeatStars below, and visit www.beatstars.com to check out producers, beats, and top charts.

The post BeatStars Launches as a Marketplace for Beatmakers and Artists appeared first on SoundCtrl.

By Carolyn Heneghan

Have you ever heard the saying, “Listen to the rhythm of your heart”? Well, now with certain technological advances in heartbeat monitoring, that proverb is beginning to ring true.

Both devices and apps have been developed in recent years that effectively monitor your heartbeat and turn those impulses into music. And not only can music be created by your heartbeat, but your heartbeat itself can also be affected by the music you’re listening to. Check out these heartbeat-music creations that demonstrate the intricate relationship between music and the human heart.

Sound on Intuition

Sound on Intuition is a creation from Belgian designer Pieter-Jan Pieters of the Design Academy Eindhoven. After being denied by music schools due to his inability to read music, Pieters instead pursued an education in design to  invent a method of  creating music by translating their body movements into sounds without needing sheet music or traditional instruments at all.

Pieters designed a few different instruments to accomplish this task, one being a heart monitor. This device can create sounds by using a sensor to pick up the rhythm of your heartbeat. The sounds that could be created include a steady beat or rhythm for a backing beat, but as your heart rate also quickens as you move around and exert energy, your heartbeats could create a modulating rhythm that could offer a unique sound to the body movement-inspired song.

Guess he proved the music schools wrong.

BioBeats’ Pulse App

Another such device takes pulse monitoring one step further and creates entire songs around the changing rhythms of your heartbeat: BioBeats’ Pulse. Pulse generates electronic music based on your heart rate and the genre of electronic music that you select. As your heart rate changes, the music will change to mimic it. To do this, all you have to do is hold your finger over your iPhone camera, and the camera’s optical sensor will monitor changes in your finger’s color as blood flows to determine the rhythm of your heartbeat.

BioBeats co-founder Nadeem Kassam believes that this app might go further than simply being a means for entertainment and could eventually affect the healthcare industry. Pulse is a fun way to monitor your heart rate, which is an important aspect of healthcare for many people, and this device could raise awareness of the importance of monitoring your heart rate while working toward prevention of certain illnesses or health situations.

In addition to being a tool to create music, Pulse joins the proliferation of healthcare devices, such as wearables, being created today.

Spotify

Spotify is one more company who is looking into this concept, but for Spotify, it’s about tailoring music playlists to fit your mood and movement—all based around your heartbeat. For example, if you’re heartbeat is accelerated for an extended length of time, Spotify can deduce that you might be exercising, so it can play faster, more upbeat music to suit that activity. If your heartbeat is slower, such as while you are relaxing by the pool, Spotify may play music that is more laidback to suit your mood.

Spotify has been making strides to collect as much data about its users as possible to continue bettering its ability to guesstimate and provide the appropriate music at the appropriate time. Just another avenue for collecting this data, heartbeat monitoring is perhaps the next step in bringing tailored playlists to the next level.

How Your Heartbeat Responds To Music

Besides all these companies that monitor your heartbeat to create and tailor music, did you also know that, conversely, music also affects your heartbeat? Music is a powerful instrument that can affect anything from your mood and muscle tension to your heartbeat, pulse and brainwaves, and your mind and body can experience significant reactions based solely on what you are listening to in the moment.

For example, if you are listening to rock or electronic music with a harder, faster beat, your heartbeat will involuntarily speed up to match the intensity of the music. If you are listening to classical, ambient, or calm, relaxing music, your heartbeat will slow down. That’s part of the reason why if you’re looking to get pumped up, you might put on more upbeat music because not only will it improve your mood, but it will accelerate your heart rate as well. This means that not only does your mind get pumped up, but your entire body does as well.

The post New Apps Let Your Heart Create and Curate Your Music appeared first on SoundCtrl.

By SoundCtrl

During this year’s annual four-day MIDEM festival in Cannes, Music Hack Day featured an innovative engineer named Yuli Levtov, who discovered a way to DJ with Spotify streams. The Spotify-enabled app has been a fantasized technology for the last few years, mainly as a result of diffiicult licensing structures and logistics for app developers.

On the blog for Reactify Music, a music app development company, Levtov spilled about the process, introducing his revelation as ”by far the most involved, impractical and ‘hackiest’ hack” he’s ever done. Calling it DJ Spotify, its structure is two-fold.  DJ Spotify enables simultaneous playback of two Spotify streams, with DJ controls including pitch/tempo adjust, as well as the integration of EchoNest, which gathers key and BPM information from streaming tracks. DJ Spotify is a rather complicated hack, with connections between Ableton, Max for Live, a Wi-Fi iPad connection, Pure Data patches, Python coding and more.  You can check out the hack and the key/BPM app here.

But on the heels of Levtov’s impressive hack, a new app released a few days later consolidated his ideas into a slightly more appealing interface for the massive new wave of portable DJs. Pacemaker is a new iPad app with the first, official licensing from Spotify for integration in a DJing platform. The interface of Pacemaker is quite design-oriented, with simple electric blue and red waveform bars and cue points split down the two touch screen “decks.” Tempo and nudge functions are dedicated to beatmatching two tracks, and beat skip functions allow you to chop the record up in creative ways.

Tracks can be loaded from Spotify or local files, and mixes are recordable and savable within the app. Pacemaker’s sync function works relatively well, but you may have to jog the nudge wheel if it syncs on the off-beat transient.  EQ controls are reconfigured in the app’s signature wheel pattern, but aren’t quite intuitive if you have never DJ’ed before. Unfortunately, there are no volume faders that allow you to EQ and volume adjust simultaneously, but there is a crossfader for blending. Additional effects are available as in-app purchases, allowing the user to customize their iPad DJ “rig” but the lack of standardization here doesn’t show an incredible promise for getting this app into clubs. Since Traktor has integration for its own computer software with CDJ functionality, and a number of other apps offer effects controls independent of the software, Pacemaker certainly has competition in the pro market. But this app focuses on a home user experience, and it’s not a bad way to preview a mix on the fly or curate your own parties, listening sessions, and podcasts.

While many traditional DJs are contemptuous and apathetic toward this new type of technology due to a lack of mixing skills and faulty execution, the real problem with new streaming DJ tools is that the sound quality is sacrificed for efficiency and portability. Spotify’s highest streaming rate is 320 kbps, and as any trained listener knows, the highest quality mp3 still sounds much weaker on a club-quality sound system compared to WAV files and vinyl records. Unfortunately, this means a rise in DJs ignoring poor sound quality in exchange for track availability and cutting costs in preparation for sets. Since electronic music is often showcasing a producer’s ability to create highly specific and idealized sound environments and experiences, a poor mix with poor sound quality is essentially the antithesis of the art at hand.

However, streaming has made its way to the pro decks, especially since the newer Pioneer CDJs can play source files over Wi-Fi. As streaming quality improves and wireless connections can handle more bandwidth, cloud-based DJing will definitely take off on the professional level. But at the end of the day (or early in the morning) if your offline playlists aren’t synced and you’ve got no internet connection at a peak-time basement party, you may be relinquishing your DJ duties at the next party if you make it out of the club alive.

At any rate, the Pacemaker app is highly recommended for those with Spotify premium accounts, and you can grab it on the iTunes app store.

The post The Rise of the Streaming DJ appeared first on SoundCtrl.

By Ruben Lone

I am an avid Spotify user with plenty of esoteric playlists, starred tracks, and an ongoing music sharing conversation with many of my friends. And Spotify is great for digging into classic artists whose entire discographies have been made available by their record labels. Though I haven’t given it a second thought due to multiple crashes on launch day, I’m sure Beats Music does its job just as well, with 20 million songs and an allegedly personalized discovery experience. But amidst these and other competing music streaming platforms, it seems the focus is to generate money via an appealing and hefty library of music at a low cost. Spotify constantly features pop stars on the front page, makes pretty uniformed music recommendations based on what I’ve been listening to, and its radio is a predictable application which fails to launch stations based on deeper artists’ cuts. And while Beats Music is powered by a hand-picked database of endless music, the featured artists on its promotional campaigns show off some respectable, yet very obvious choices like Kendrick Lamar, Green Day, Miles Davis, and Fleetwood Mac. Let me clarify again that all of these artists are great! They’re just not new.

It’s surprisingly how frequently I’m asked about music discovery methods, and as any music obsessive knows, it’s not as simple as logging into one site and being fed from a pre-selected list. On any given day, I’ve probably bounced around 10-15 SoundCloud profiles, sifted through the stark text and catalog numbers on Discogs, roamed the recent posts, podcasts, and mixes on a number of blogs and music journalisms sites,  navigated to several artists’, labels’, and booking agencies’ websites and Twitter accounts, and received files and links from friends all over the industry. But one website and distribution platform that truly values function, fairness, and artistry over popularity and mass appeal, and quality over quantity, is Bandcamp.

Bandcamp was founded in 2008 by Ethan Diamond and Shawn Grunberger, less as means of streaming music and more as an outlet for musicians to share and distribute their work as they saw fit. Using the DIY-model, artists could creating revenue whilst avoiding the major label industry, which at the time was looking dire. The company has since grown to be a vehicle for artists to freely share their music and merchandise and reap the benefits of a close fan relationships. The perfect site for limited editions of tangible goods and unlimited editions of digital music, Bandcamp’s model doesn’t rely on hefty promotion campaigns to spread its brand and gain more customers. Rather, the details and functionality of site make it a transparent, stable option for any musician or label to distribute music directly to fans.

Bandcamp’s landing page features a player for Bandcamp Weekly, a weekly radio show hosted by chief curator Andew Jervis, featuring new artists across the site. Every week, the playlist is curated according to a specific theme, and features a variety of new and exciting artists–the majority of whom I’ve never heard.  There has yet to be an engine of hand-selected music sourced from its own platform, curated by music professionals, with as much functionality and care of selection as this one. To top it off, the player sports wishlist buttons and buy links for all of the artists included.

The Fan Spotlight places special interest on fans who have curated interesting collections of music purchased from Bandcamp. Fan pages, much like artist pages, include album art and personal descriptions of the record, as well as an option to select a favorite track from the release. As a fan, you can follow artists and other fans, and compile albums into wish lists for later purchases. The newly released Bandcamp app consolidates your entire music library on your phone, and allows you stream tracks and albums you’ve purchased. The UI is modeled after the website, with clean formatting and friendly graphics.

The discover section on Bandcamp surprises with its thoroughness and copious genre options. These selections are easily filtered by best-selling, staff picks, new arrivals, and artist-recommended, meaning that discovery is generated by the tastes of the various user bases of the Bandcamp engine, not just the hired staff. Album art is displayed prominently but minimally, without favoring one musician’s work over another.

Finally, the “Selling Right Now” portion of the homepage shows a live feed of music sales, most of which are singles for around $2 and albums for around $14. The stream updates constantly to showcase Bandcamp’s quick turnaround for record sales and unwavering efficacy.

Bandcamp’s artist pages are  microsites that are customizable, yet simple. Electronic musician Four Tet outfitted his page in a humorous Sendspace backdrop and sardonic Spotify header for a digital re-release of his 1999 album Glasshead. Sampha, on the other hand, chose a retro album art image on a plain white background and a wordmark of his name for his Sundanza EP. The brand, or lack thereof, shines on the Bandcamp pages, with the artist having full creative control over how they represent themselves and their music.

Sure, Bandcamp doesn’t offer discographies by Led Zeppelin or the latest Avicii remix, but if you take the time to scour the site and engage with fans and artists, you’re much more likely to discover new music on a more regular basis than by using large, search engine-type music libraries and streaming services. More importantly, the musicians get paid. And while many artists on Bandcamp have their music on Spotify, Beats, Rhapsody, and the like, why not spend a few extra bucks to help support an artist whose music you’re constantly playing? Bandcamp has some stubbornness in its design–you have to work with the structure you’re given in order to host your music on their site, but it does keep everyone’s page consistent.

Labels (and more prolific artists) can find the site useful for cataloging all of their work in a highly functional way with discographies and series. Newer artists can use the site as a landing page for all of their music streams and downloads, track insights, and integrate with Facebook pages.

I’ve found Bandcamp to be far less humble than its purported to be, especially with bigger artists using it as a tool for releases independent of their labels and one-off projects. The site and app supplement the mainstream methods of distribution, especially for niche artists who can leverage their support and sell physical merchandise.  The pay-as-you wish model liberates both sides of the transaction, and actually gives listeners an opportunity to tell artists what their work is actually worth to an audience. And as far as pricing goes, I’m still willing to pay $1 per track even when the album is offered for free–it’s the least  I can do as a fan.

The post Bandcamp is Still the Best Music Streaming and Discovery Platform appeared first on SoundCtrl.

By Michael Valinsky

On February 5^th, app software company Junecloud will be releasing a generative music app, Chicago Avenue Moon, which organizes and creates music based on the location and phases of the moon. Additional elements that inform the app’s functionality are related to us back on Earth, such as date and time. The idea is that the user’s GPS location and the current moon phase determine how the music unfolds. As a result, and if you are in motion (walking down a street or on your way to the grocery store), the music that is created will change rapidly. Every step you take makes the piece change.

Joshua Dumas, the head of this operation, composed over 1000 brief musical phrases that he and app owners can then use to manipulate the sound created by the app. These phrases layer themselves and become sequences in an infinite process, and the associations from one sound to another are endless. No one user will have the same experience.

Because the sounds are so arbitrary but also meticulously chosen by Dumas himself, each user has the opportunity to create his own walking score. Not many apps have captured the arbitrariness in outdoor sounds quite like this. Instead of sifting through an iPod full of pre-recorded hits, Dumas gives us the possibility to record as we go, to make our recordings unique and geologically relevant. Dumas even included walking scores capturing the sounds of his neighborhood, Ukranian Village in Chicago. In that sense, he reminds us of an actual physical space that can exist on your mobile device.

Chicago Avenue Moon was inspired in part by Brian Eno, Janet Cardiff, John Cage and Terry Riley, Glenn Gould and ideas explored by the Long Now Foundation. Recorded by Matt DeWine and Dumas himself, the app is easy to use, interactive and fun. What better way to walk is there? Musically in tune with the phases and location of the Moon.

Chicago Avenue Moon works with the iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad running iOS7.

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By Kira Grunenberg

Remember when telephones had one standard ringing bell to let you know someone was calling? Fast-forward to cell phones: first they had a standard set of 8-bit ringtone, then added more complex, layered, and melodious tones, and now they’ve become anything but standard. We can now use songs as the sounds we hear anytime someone wants to talk, text or video chat. Granted, phones are not the only scope of sound and music utilized as a signaling device in modern society–home doorbells, public transportation, and elevators come to mind as well. What though, would the world be like if sound stepped up to more a idiosyncratic role in identifying the “who’s who” among many of the interfaces incorporated into our everyday routines, like email and social media notifications?

The scenario described above might not stay hypothetical for much longer, should any of the projects happening around the world catch the wave of massively appealing trends and become a point of desire for everyday use. Organizations like Parametric Sound in San Diego, CA, who are developing a technology called HyperSound, and Jörg Müller and his research team at the Technical University of Berlin, who are working on a concept called “BoomRoom,” want to make it possible for sound to not only alert you when something needs your attention but to make each notice unique and with a sound isolated to just those who need or want to hear it–without wires or headphones of any kind.

The two projects, which were recently highlighted in New Scientist, have already put test runs in place for specific uses. HyperSound has been implemented by some US McDonalds locations for their in-restaurant TV monitors to project sound to specific tables. New Scientist describes the BoomRoom’s initial test method as an, “audio-based lightsaber game in which a blindfolded person had to react to the “zummm, zummm” of a digital adversary’s lightsaber, their voice or their breath on the back of their neck.”

The mechanics of how these two technologies function can get quite complicated (just take a look at the abstract in Müller’s paper linked above,) but the bottom line objectives promote envisioning rather futuristic capabilities inside homes and commonplace businesses. Right now, the idea of moving, activating, and manipulating sounds that are projected in the space around us, as if they were tangible objects, as the BoomRoom aspires, relies primarily on gesture and “flat panel actuators that act as loudspeakers by making glass and other flat surfaces vibrate.” These bases for operation seem to combine the best aspects of existing sound technology advancements that we have reported before, like the V-Motion Project, the Kinectar and Feonic Technology’s “Whispering Windows.” (Plus, it’s clear wireless gesture is indeed the next big sound trend, given some of the emerging companies featured in this year’s midemlab competition, like Sound Wand and Nagual Sounds competing under “Recommendation and Discovery” –the latter of whom turned out to be this year’s category winner.)

The one downside that does stand out amidst the potential for benefit beyond convenience, (e.g. better human sensory awareness) is that the idea of everyone having their own invisible ‘sound bubble’ comes across like a departure from trying to avoid perpetual electronically-driven distraction. Google Glass has already breached the psychological controversies of what it could be like if people are silently scanning information about each other from the web, while simultaneously appearing to maintain a face-to-face conversation with the person in question. Nevertheless, for however much paranoia or personal discomfort that proposal might inflict on one’s mind, at least Google Glass is visible.

You could theoretically assume someone is multi-tasking while talking with you, and possibly about you if you engage someone wearing the glasses. What if though, there comes a day when individual seats on NYC buses or the London Tube allow passengers to hear only what they want to hear, within the “space” of their seat? The end result wouldn’t be much different than the present scene of a NYC subway car full of passengers engrossed in music with earbuds or studio sized headphones but, at least then it is obvious who is not “available” to give their attention to another. Absent a tangible or visible cue, there might come a day where we (at least temporarily during various lapses of time) don’t notice others whatsoever, even if we are packed tightly among many other bodies in a single place. Visualizing a world where the boundaries of who is preoccupied becomes hidden, feels mildly disturbing for all the ensuing psychological isolation and external confusion it would foster–a literal manifestation of being “zoned out.”

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

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By Ruben Lone

During this weekend’s MIDEM music festival in Cannes, France, 6400 participants from 74 countries converge to discuss the state of the music industry and its forthcoming trends and technologies. Lyor Cohen, MIDEM speaker and former Warner Music Group CEO, announced his newest entrepreneurial venture that will function as a toolset for A&Rs scouting new artists and bands on Twitter. Called 300, Cohen’s new label and “content company” will be distributed by Atlantic Records, reuniting the CEO with his former Warner peers. Also involved in the venture are Todd Moscowitz and Kevin Liles, successful industry pros who’ve both worked with Cohen at Warner and Def Jam in its heyday.

300 marks an interesting transition in the music industry’s integration with social media. Most reports of how these A&R “tools” will actually function are vague, but Cohen has enlisted the help of both music business veterans as well as data mining and analytic experts, alluding to a machine-driven scouring for new artists on Twitter’s platform. While it doesn’t seem like Cohen’s technologies are intended to replace the role of the traditional A&R (which to be honest, is a sadly neglected and underpaid role at major record labels), 300 has implications of a future where machines are analyzing data and picking series of artists based on metadata, tags, and social media relevance.

Twitter’s ubiquity and purposeful design limitations make it easy to dissect, and the number ratios between followers and tweets are generally good indicators of rising popularity and virality. Hopefully, the 300′s algorithms will differentiate between artists whose social media presence is organic and/or viral and the hype hordes who trade follow-for-follow on Twitter in an attempt to gain more visibility–a case where having more followers is a clear misrepresentation of purported popularity. Human fact-checking will ideally keep mediocrity from slipping through the digital cracks, but well-informed discovery still requires a degree of keen research. Skepticism aside, Lyor Cohen does seem to be focused on putting the artist before the label and the business, and his past in artist development and management speaks to a industry where attention was paid to new music and to the world in which it existed.

With backing from several investors including Google, a music industry veteran like Cohen is hardly taking an entrepreneurial risk, especially with partnerships fully designed to support a new A&R toolset in the digital age. Let’s just hope new artists don’t overload their Twitter presences with fluff and vapid popularity schemes in attempts to get signed. If 300 leverages the dedication of diligent, innovative artists, it could very well be a tool that streamlines an oft-complicated and esoteric element of the scouting process.

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by Jason Epstein

51 million iPhones and 26 million iPads were sold in the fourth quarter of 2013.  The iPod, however, moved just 6 million units.  And one can only assume that the vast majority of those sold were of the ‘Touch’ persuasion.  But despite those fast waning sales figures, I’m here to tell you that the iPod is alive and well.  No, not the Touch – the Classic.

I love my iPod.  LOVE IT. That’s right – it’s not an iPad, iPhone or even iPod Touch – it’s an iPod Classic 6th generation from the dawn of technology back in 2008.  First fire was invented, then the wheel and then the iPod.  So why do I love an outdated, obsolete piece of technology?  Well, first of all, I’m not your average music consumer.  I was a late adopter of the iPod having listened to CDs until 2006 – and yes, I’m gasping and shuddering at that thought along with you.  I don’t listen to the radio and I don’t use music streaming services.  Instead, I’m all about ownership of actual music files and listening to them as I please – and I own and listen to a LOT of music.  I love my iPod because it stores a hell of a lot more content than any ‘Touch’ device or phone does.  It doesn’t get bogged down by concurrently running programs or advertisements or incoming phone calls or texts.  So I can keep my 11,000+ song music library on it plus multiple seasons of my favorite TV shows.  Most consumers aren’t happy unless their music device is connected to the Internet.  But to me, that’s what a smart phone is for.  

Does the iPod bear updating beyond its latest “Classic” iteration?  I don’t think so.  Sure, it’s possible the iPod Touch could catch up eventually in terms of storage space, but the increased popularity of streaming media also means that the average consumer may not have a need for that space.  Also, the iPod Touch is way too close to the iPhone in its build and features to make it worthwhile to buy one without strongly considering an iPhone purchase – or for Apple to even invest in an ylonger.

I feel good about my iPod Classic, but if Apple were ever to revisit this dying breed, upgrades to all the normal accouterments such as battery power, storage space, weight, screen size, etc. would certainly be well-received.  But they won’t.  As time goes on the increasing cannibalization of Internet-incapable storage-based products is impossible to deny; the Xbox One and PS4 are based on hardware, software and subscription revenue streams, while the Apple iPhone ensures continual revenue streams through high-priced data plans.  It’s a trend that won’t stop as companies continually find more (and increasingly creative) methods of getting money from their customers.

Apple hasn’t introduced any new iPods in years which can certainly explain in part its decline in sales, but that’s all part of their well-publicized plan to make the iPhone into the new iPod – and then some. And they’ve achieved that.  What they haven’t achieved is satisfying a niche music and music technology consumer like myself that values uninterrupted music play, large quantities of storage space, and owning at least one portable electronic device that has absolutely no Internet connection whatsoever.  So while sales figures may continue to decline and future innovation may look bleak, the iPod Classic still has a warm, loving home to come to for the few of us that still appreciate its simple, limited and no-nonsense capabilities as a dedicated music player.

The post The iPod is Alive and Well…For Some of Us appeared first on SoundCtrl.

By Ruben Lone

Facebook has announced a new platform for its own creative ambitions, and the first app to go along with it. Facebook’s Creative Labs hopes to be a launchpad for new technologies that could potentially be disruptive to the billion-user base if implemented into the existing framework of the website and app. However, Facebook doesn’t want its foresight to be hampered by its own size, so it plans on using Creative Labs to push the boundaries of the social media network’s current scope.

For the first of Creative Labs’ creations, Facebook has announced a new app called Paper, which is a dedicated news reader for mobile devices. Unlike Facebook’s website, the timeline, photo streams, and updates will be custom-tailored by the user, with varied options for reading, sharing, and photos viewing. In the introductory video, Paper exudes a certain natural simplicity, bringing the social network back to its community roots.

With well-designed and curated interface, white backgrounds, and thin, modern lines, Paper looks incredibly attractive and easy to use. As a stubborn Facebook user who has systematically hidden about 90% of my “friends” from my news feed, Paper appears to be a “reverse Facebook” that lets the user can choose who they want to see, and how they want information to appear. Thematic exploration and category options make Paper much less obtrusive than browser Facebook, and sharing options are easily sorted to limit or allow particular posts to be seen by others.

Rather than status updates, Paper is built on “stories” which include users’ and their friends’ own updates as well as stories from whichever news and blogs you choose to follow. When preparing a post, you can see an exact preview prior to sending it off into the digital world, and full screen photos are fulling viewable using the iPhone’s tilt technology.

Facebook’s user interface has become ubiquitous, but is often unpredictable. The recent addition of trending topics makes the network look like it’s throwing effort into far more functionality than it affords, and the methods of posting, editing, tagging, and uploading photos that complement each story are somewhat tedious. However, Paper is an appealing option for a new wave of Facebook, and its single functionality (sans messaging and little red bubbles popping up every time a comment is commented-on) will hopefully replace the clutter on the screen. If the design aesthetic of Paper then translates to a new browser view, Facebook users may be in for a much more personal experience.

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By Carolyn Heneghan

Every winter, the National Association of Music Merchants hosts its annual NAMM show, a 113-year-old showcase of established and up-and-coming creators of musical instruments, hardware, software, accessories and more, all on display for the association members media to see.

Running from Thurs., Jan. 23^rd through Sun., Jan. 26^th, 2014, the NAMM show occupied all 1.2 million square feet of the Anaheim Convention Center, in addition to space nearby hotels. This year, NAMM hosted more than 1,500 companies from around the world who exhibited more than 5,000 brands for over 100,000 peopl, the largest show of the past five years, and one of the largest in NAMM’s history.

Here are a few music-tech standouts of the show, that caught our attention and intrigue.

Moog Sub37

Based on Moog’s Sub Phatty synth circuits, the Sub37 is upgraded with a larger 37-note velocity-sensitive keyboard with aftertouch. It also boasts a paraphonic synth architecture (not fully polyphonic, but able to play two notes simultaneously through a single filter), which is a step in a different direction from all of the other post-2002 monophonic Moog synths, besides the Animoog app. It also has two modulation busses with assignable source and destinations and DAHDSR (Delay, Attach, Hold, Decay, Sustain, Release) looping envelopes with sync.

Retail price is $1,579.

Moog Theremini

Moog calls its new Theremini, “a re-imagination of one of the oldest electronic musical instruments in history, and Bob Moog’s first love.” The device fuses together the basic component of the theremin—an instrument you don’t actually touch—with the high-quality sound engine from Moog’s award-winning Animoog synthesizer. This means that any user with any amount of musical ability can pick up a Theremini and make music with ease. It comes with a built-in tuner, and it has assistive pitch correction for adjusting the level of playing difficulty (the highest level makes it so that all notes played are perfect scale pitches).

Retail price is $319.

Korg MS-20 Kit

A follow-up to its MS-20 Mini from last year’s NAMM, Korg restores its limited-edition MS-20 to the classic’s original full size but adds another layer of interaction with the kit: Users must also put it together piece by piece. There’s no soldering involved, and the entire assembly can be done with two hands and a screwdriver. But in terms of parts and features, it has the same circuitry and was overseen by the engineers who produced the original, but the MS-20 also features two switchable filter modes based on variations of the original MS filter.

The MS-20 kit will be released in March 2014 at a retail price of $1,399.99.

Bitwig Studio

There was plenty more than just instruments and hardware at NAMM. Created by some of the original developers of Ableton Live, Bitwig Studio aims to speed up and enhance production workflow to the max by making all interactions with the software involve as few mouse clicks as possible. This intuitive piece of software has found ways to both combine and improve upon many different aspects of other popular DAWs that have come before it.

Like other DAWs, the full reach of its features is too long to be explained, but a few different exciting features include a non-linear environment for arranging and triggering clips in real-time (for a more spontaneous composing session) and hybrid tracks, which go beyond basic audio and instrument tracks to work with any kind of material. It also has 32/64 bit VST support, which keeps the application from crashing even if your plug-in crashes, and it’s compatible with Mac, Windows and Linux.

Bitwig Studio will be released March 26^th with a retail price of $399.

Avid Sibelius 7.5

At this year’s NAMM, Avid launched its latest version of its best-selling music composition and notation software, Sibelius 7.5. With version 7.5, you get all of Sibelius’ foundational tools in addition to some noteworthy new features—all with the aim of enabling you to “write and arrange music easier and faster than ever before.”

A new timeline window allows easy access for a quick but entire overview of a score with all the important landmarks to allow faster editing and playback, no matter how large or complex the piece of music might be. The software’s fully redesigned Espressivo 2.0 feature means that the feedback you hear is a better quality interpretation with more expressive and realistic feel, and you’ll also get better interpretation of your musical notation, such as tempo markings, grace notes, breath marks and so on. You can now also export your composition to Avid Scorch, which is fully optimized for iPad display and fully interactive playback, practice, performance and publishing. And finally, sharing your music through Sibelius has never been easier: You can share and distribute your compositions via email and social media, upload and publish them as sheet music on ScoreExchange.com or share them as video or audio files on YouTube, Facebook or Soundcloud.

Sibelius 7.5 will be available worldwide in February 2014.

SuperMegaUltraGroovy Capo 3

SuperMegaUltraGroovy used its opportunity at NAMM to showcase its Apple Design Award-winning Capo 3 application, which gave attendees a new way to look at learning music. With automatic chord detection, the Capo 3 app can access your iTunes music library and transcribe any recorded audio file, from MP3 and M4A to AIFF and WAV, into legible tablature that appears onscreen while you’re playing the song.

While it displays the chords you need to play, it also tells you how to play the chords by presenting various guitar chord shapes in several different tunings. You can transcribe solos, block out vocals to concentrate on instrumental parts and create a loop that allows you to play around with a song’s tempo without distorting the sound of the song itself. With a Capo 3 audio file called Spectogram, you can even see vibrato and note bends. Always wanted to learn to play your favorite band’s music yourself? Now you can, in a simple and streamlined learning format that SuperMegaUltraGroovy calls “the future of learning to play music.”

Retail price is $29.99 at the Apple Mac Store, and you can also download a free trial on the Capo 3 website.

NAMM returns in summer 2014. Learn more at NAMM.org.

The post Our Innovative Gear Picks From NAMM 2014 appeared first on SoundCtrl.

by Ruben Lone

The recent debacle with Google SEO spamming gave Rap Genius a run for its money, but as we reported, the founders ‘fessed up and cleaned up their ill-advised internet scheme. Rap Genius has since bounced back with the launch of a new iPhone app,  hopefully steering the app away from the browser window and into an independent cloud.

To be honest, I’m not much a fan of the mainstream rap music of our current age, save for a few choice innovators. However, Rap Genius is well-aware that its site could offer interpretations for text beyond the scope of hip-hop, and it’s News Genius and Rock Genius subsidiaries are indicative of a market gap. By calling the iPhone app “Genius for iPhone,” Rap Genius avoids the “rap” association (save for the diamond logo that conjures flamboyant displays of wealth) and offers wiki-like annotations on rap, rock, poetry, and news.

Cleanly constructed on their signature black background with white text and golden highlighting, the app offers all the same features as the browser version, but without the excess clutter of stats, features, and social media links–unfortunate and hopefully soon-to-be antiquated elements of an unconsolidated internet era.  The search bar is often a little sticky when returning from selected texts, and you may have to re-enter your search query to jumpstart the app. But this seems like a bug to be fixed in a normal update, and the general functionality is stable.

The array of easily accessible annotations on Genius is impressive. Just this morning, President Obama’s State of the Union address had been uploaded and was trending on the app. Also impressively, the fully annotated copy of T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” arguably one of the most important and challenging pieces of 20th century literature, has over 150k views. Not exactly the 3 million for Beyonce’s “Drunk In Love,” but promising nonetheless.  You can also search lyrics based on your local music library, and the app will source the lyrics and descriptions for any songs in its database. The mobile app is far speedier than the website, and it’s nice to navigate around a huge library of texts with your thumb. Since Rap Genius functions like a dictionary in many ways, the interface afforded integration into a more reference-based and user-friendly version.

Genius seems like the next big step for Rap Genius, and the company may predictably allow this platform to influence a restructuring in the future that makes the site and app less niche-driven. However, Rap Genius is a viable and reliable source for both lyrics and lyrical annotations, as well as transcriptions of popular text. The company should certainly look to expand this brand into an increasingly universal system whilst leveraging its current user base as a new, quietly connected community of contributors and curious fans music and literature alike. Highly recommended, so download the Genius for iPhone app at the iTunes store.

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By Kira Grunenberg

Today’s newest rollout for the Dublin, Ireland company comes on the tails of their last update adding YouTube Integration, and it feels like a clever and deliberate one-two punch: commenting and tagging functionality. The ‘musical jet-setting app’ is continuing to grow and change with a new feature that has been awaited by its users over several versions. As such, Soundwave is quite liable to explode even more in app store popularity, if it hasn’t already.

The meat and potatoes of this update are laid out succinctly and immediately opens up chatting and tagging. Operationally speaking, few current social media users will have trouble using Soundwave’s new features.

• The # sign is key and like Twitter, is Soundwave’s symbol of choice for aggregating common words and phrases people use to describe the music they are circling on the app’s map, all over the world. This contributes to the app’s music “grouping” appeal.

• Users will be given the option of tagging others in comments. Metadata-based conversation is ubiquitous at this point, but the combinative, current, global display is what distinguishes Soundwave from other similar platforms.

The latter of these two additions is especially intriguing to consider, as tagging expands what Soundwave comes to represent.  It is an app fixed on music at its core, but, the sudden entrance of chatter into the formula does not feel like an immediate or severe risk to the company’s identity, focus or brand. This is likely because the songs and vast and literal exploration factor still rule. Non-musical media isn’t intruding and thus, not distracting or redirecting the purpose behind commenting. What’s left is akin to an open, 24-hour room with a stereo that plays all the music in the world, with a feedback box anyone can write to, or read from. Who wouldn’t be into that?

Not forgetting to look beyond the present, Soundwave recognizes the new comment functionality for long term benefits as well–the user landscape will now be discernable and organizanble in a whole new way. For example, music industry-oriented users may enjoy contributing their two cents about songs on a regular basis (e.g. reviewers, other artists). Conversely, casual users, more intent on just listening, can “consume” the comments of their talkative counterparts and maybe learn more about songs or artists. (This is something that could be of particular evaluative interest, to both users and Soundwave itself, where songs far outside one’s local demographic are concerned.) Lastly, those who relish sharing and spreading new material will only more rapidly expand global exposure to music, by sharing and tagging played tracks.

Head over to the iTunes App Store and Google Play Store to download the newest version of Soundwave and get in on the music-centric conversations happening across the world right now!

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

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By Brian Parker

A while back, we covered TicketMob‘s triply segmented ticketing and event management platform for live music, electronic music, and comedy events. TicketMob allowed artists, labels, brands, and festivals to manage their interactions with fans independently of large middleman ticketing companies like Ticketmaster and LiveNation. As of today, under the acquisition of cloud-based event management platform Cvent and subsequent merger with mobile Seed Labs, TicketMob will be known as CrowdTorch, a highly specialized and improved event and audience management solution.

Scot Richardson, CrowdTorch General Manager and founder of TicketMob, explained that CrowdTorch is focused on brands’ individual intentions for event management, with “white labelling being front and center.”  ”We want to give clients an entire toolset to engage with fans’ lifestyles,” says Richardson, regarding CrowdTorch’s goal to keep ticketing internal whilst maintaining a level of trust, transparency, and reliability between event organizers and their fans. A huge focus of CrowdTorch’s efforts will go into developing mobile apps for events that consolidate complete fan experience, from sharing functionality on social networks, to adding VIP packages upon entering an event, and quite feasibly reselling unused tickets for customers who are unable to attend.

With analytics that can track the correlations between promotions and ticket sales, event creators can keep tabs on what marketing methods are efficient to their particular fan bases.  One such application of the social media toolset proved to be instantly successful–an artist offered a $1 discount to anyone who bought tickets through their event app, and gained a 380% ROI. Though Richardson says CrowdTorch is “still scratching the surface of the mobile app developments,” a dedicated platform that offers both solutions and analysis for events seems to be ushering in a new, independent method of interacting with fans.

CrowdTorch is certainly competing with major ticketing hubs on the level of direct ticket sales, but the company isn’t interested in a direct challenge against the current industry standard. Rather, by creating a new method of audience and event management, the new model may emerge naturally over time as a more lucrative option for artists and events. “We’re trying to be a replacement for multiple providers of ticketing, branding, and event management…we’re trying to do all of that for you and to integrate all of the relevant touch points,” Richardson explains of CrowdTorch’s 360-degree approach. And by maintaing the former structure that TicketMob called “verticals,” artists and organizers can customize a total fan experience without worrying about scalpers, disorganization, or a lack of information about programming, lineups, and the like.

With TicketMob’s former LaughStub (comedy), TuneStub (live music), and ElectroStub (electronic music/nightlife) still in place, events can be customized based on category, marketplace, and audience demographics. For example, creating an event with the ElectroStub platform can offer options for table service at a nightclub, with a group of friends splitting the costs via an app. In the same vein, promoters for these events are given a unique set of tools that cater to their job functions. Furthermore, having distinct channels allows event organizers to cater to communities of fans that respond to different types of marketing and promotions, a feat that is much more difficult under an umbrella platform with unlimited options.

Finally, Richardson made clear that CrowdTorch is a highly viable option for working with individual, independent artists. The same solutions are offered at this level with pre-sales, VIP packages, and special opportunities for superfans willing pay for an additional, meaningful experience. By integrating ticketing and audience management tools, points of purchase need not be disparately associated, and artists and fans can expect a more personal relationship without the hassle of hopping around various websites and social media networks to redeem special offers and features.

You can keep up with @CrowdTorch on Twitter, and learn more about the company’s outlook and functionality in the video below:

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By Ruben Lone

Cologne, Germany-based Audiotool has created a browser-based music production suite that fuses the immediacy of modular synthesis with the accessibility of the internet. Audiotool offers a free workstation for producers interested in electronic music synthesis, with proprietary instruments, effects, and mixing controls all in a broswer window. Audiotool’s site also functions as a community for producers and composers who have cerated music using the platform, and Audiotool provides in-depth reference Wikis for each of its devices.

As part of Google’s Chrome Experiments, which showcase creative web coding applications built in HTML5 and Java, Audiotool has designed a standalone sequencer app called Sketch. Sketch is modeled on of iconic analog drum machines and bassline synthesizers, which three web-based versions of the Roland TR-808, TR-909, and TB-303. These instruments, widely used in house and techno styles, are an entry point (if not a mainstay) for electronic music production, as the basis of their functionality is essential to most of the sequencer instruments that succeeded them.

The Sketch experiment is quite easy to use if you have a general understanding of digital audio workstations or basic audio signal routing. The browser panels include a mixer with panning, delay, and level controls. The delay effects can be adjusted based on 16-note subdivisions with control knobs for feedback and level. Each channel has options for choosing patterns from each of the devices for quick arrangement edits. There is also a BPM adjust and “groove” knob that adjusts the swing factor of the rhythms across each device.

The “Bassline” is modeled on the TB-303 with a very similar interface to the analog machine. When programming a bassline, it isn’t possible to preview the note, but the accent, slide, transposition, and step index buttons are very clearly displayed and straightforward to use. The waveform controls at the top are the basic 303 options–waveform, tuning, filter cutoff frequency, filter resonance, envelope mode, decay, and accent level.

The Beatbox 8 and Beatbox 9, modeled after the 808 and 909 respectively, are equally functional, if not easier to use than the Bassline device. The step sequencers can be arranged in up to 4 16-bar patterns, with options for various classic Roland drum sounds.

Audiotool built Sketch using a proprietary platform called defrac, which allows multiple devices to be programmed with a single code. The only setback of Sketch is intrinsic to its browser functionality, in that clicking in sequences takes much longer than pushing the buttons of an analog devices with your hands. However, if the Chrome experiment becomes available on the iPad or another tablet device, it could certainly open doors to an interesting opportunity for internet-based, improvisatory electronic music creation.

The post Google Chrome Drum Machines on Audiotool’s Sketch appeared first on SoundCtrl.

By Jason Epstein

That’s right: StubHub is treating price transparency as though it were a perk.

In recent years, StubHub has joined the ranks of Ticketmaster in providing a highly sought-after service with hardly any competition – and making an absurd profit from service fees that have ballooned to epic proportions.  But now, StubHub is purporting its friendliness with promises to be transparent about the service fees you’ll be paying…by forgoing showing customers ticket fees, in exchange for displaying the full price of the ticket.   (Okay, that’s not entirely true; if you click ‘See Details’ under ‘Price Details’ they’ll let you in on the actual makeup of your total cost.)

It’s called “All-in Pricing.”  Here’s a quote from their announcement email:

“On StubHub, you’ll see the final price right when you hit the site. Nothing more will be added to your cost.  Not even delivery charges.”

It reads like a loud, aggressive sales pitch for a feature that is basically saying, ‘We won’t bait and switch you like any ordinary good business wouldn’t anyhow.  You’ll still pay ludicrous fees, but we’ll just give you a mild heart attack at the beginning of the sale – not the conclusion.’

What they don’t call attention to is that you’ll already be paying for whichever delivery options have been selected by the seller.  Service fees are often about 10% of the price of the ticket before this delivery fee.  Percentage-wise, that’s certainly better than Ticketmaster, but because these are high-priced scalped tickets, you can bet it won’t be amount-wise.  And that’s not the end of it, because they charge the seller a fee too, further inflating prices.

StubHub is a great service and I’m certainly not upset that it exists, but you know what else works well? Buying tickets when they go on sale, and to a lesser-extent, nabbing some tickets outside the venue from a shady dude who only has $100 bills as change.  To see the entire announcement, click here.

The post StubHub Boasts Its New Transparent Pricing appeared first on SoundCtrl.

By Carolyn Heneghan

As streaming becomes the prominent method of listening to music, online music discovery tools have arisen en masse. However, at this point, they’re really a dime a dozen. To help you on your search, we’ve curated five of the best music discovery platforms that are sure to bring about a heaping helping of bold, new favorites for your music collection.

seevl

A passion project of rising startup MDG Web, seevl presents a new way for music lovers to both discover and find information pertaining to new music. Seevl is an unlimited and targeted music discovery platform that, immediately from its homepage, offers suggestions based on what’s trending—though there’s plenty more to it. One registered, the site is a rich resource for personalized recommendations. While music platforms like YouTube, Spotify, and Deezer are focused on content licensing, seevl turned to improving music discovery as its primary objective.

The seevl platform is built on a pipeline that creates an enormous, cloud-stored graph of data that is based on the mining of music information from the Internet, including artist genres, record labels, band members and more. Armed with this extensive graph, MDG has also built a series of algorithms that govern the ability to search, discover, and make recommendations.

What’s perhaps most interesting about seevl is that it not only presents you with songs, artists, albums and recommendations—most music discovery platforms do that—is that it provides users with information about why these recommendations are being made. Not only do users discover new music, they also learn how certain music is related, how music can lead to seemingly different but still relevant songs, and why a musical style might best fit their personalities based on the songs they’ve already chosen.

seevl too has incorporated a social feed that allows you to follow other users who share similar tastes and discover music that way. But having explanations for music recommendations is something that sets this platform apart from others.

LuckyPennie

What’s distinct and fresh about LuckyPennie is the way it brings local artists and concerts into the music discovery process. Just recently launched on iOS, the app not only allows users to discover music through other users they follow, but it also gives users access to local tastemakers, who can recommend both recorded and live music in their area. Its location-based design connects users to other artists, music experts, and hand-selected users. Users can also see what their “crew” of friends and other local users are listening to and which concerts they plan to attend.

To listen to songs, you can hear 30-second clips via iTunes or stream full-length audio by connecting with Rdio or Spotify. As you use the platform, you can earn “cred” by posting likable songs and concerts and gain influence on the app to achieve more visibility. You can also post your songs and activities directly to Facebook and Twitter.

Taking a localized approach sets this music discovery platform apart, and it’s bound to create new connections between music lovers as they discover music and make new personal connections.

This Is My Jam

Ever have that one song that’s been stuck in your head for days? That one song that comes on in your car or on your home stereo, and you can’t help but say out loud, “This is my jam!” Well, the web platform and Spotify in-app This Is My Jam should hit the sweet spot for you.

When you access the homepage, you’re first greeted by the day’s most-loved jams, which include anything from Van Morrison’s “Natalia” to Daft Punk’s “Around the World” on a given day. You can then browse for more jams by using filters such as “Popular,” “Breaking,” “Rare,” “Newcomers” and “Chance.”

The basic premise is that a user can upload any one song—you only get one, so choose wisely!—that will stay up for one week max as his or her current jam. Users can look at other users’ jams and even follow people whose music tastes they love. You can then play all their jams in one click, which creates a playlist you can play from the Spotify app. You can also browse past hits and find new people to follow from inside Spotify.

You just never know how many times you might find yourself saying, “This is my jam.” “No, this is my jam!”

The Hype Machine

Instead of gleaning songs from other people’s playlists, why not see what the music experts have to say? With The Hype Machine, you can do just that. This music discovery tool sifts through thousands of articles written by music lovers from around the world and keeps track of a handpicked selection of MP3 blogs’ daily musings. They then present the tracks and info to enable easy analysis, consumption, and discovery for its users. While you can’t download the music from the site, you can preview songs via play buttons next to each track.

Besides being a unique and valuable music discovery option, The Hype Machine has created a tool that supports and even empowers independent music writers across the globe. It gives even more meaning to writers’ words by translating those articles into easy-to-browse selections for music lovers everywhere—extending a writer’s reach and enriching his or her effect on other people. You can also purchase individual tracks and CDs using the Amazon and iTunes links that The Hype Machine includes next to most tracks, which provides a new venue for musicians to get their music out there in front of potential fans.

With The Hype Machine, you can both support the musicians and writers you love while discovering new tunes and increasing your music library all at the same time.

TuneIn

If you’re more into sitting back and letting a radio station find and choose music for you, TuneIn should be your top destination. With more than 100,000 stations and 2 million podcasts from around the world at your fingertips, you can find yourself bombarded with hours of music discovery. Browse by genre, station, what’s trending, popular shows or even scan the stations that are in your area.

Take a look at these discovery options, and feel free to tip us off to any new apps that you think work as well, if not better!

The post 5 Music Discovery Tools That Aren’t Spotify or Rdio appeared first on SoundCtrl.

By Ruben Lone

The latest in their line of analog modeling synths, the Lead A1 is Nord‘s newest performance synthesizer. With a quick user interface and simplified front panel, the A1 recreates analog sounds to a tee, and packs features including 8 oscillator configurations, filters, LFOs, onboard effects including chorus and ensemble, and master clock control for onboard syncing.

The power in this synth comes in the oscillator functionality with a new Wave engine, which allows for shortcuts to Pitch, Detune, Shape, Sync, FM (frequency modulation), AM (amplitude modulation), Dual Oscillators or Noise, without requiring the patching usually found on all-analog synths.

Nord’s products are often build around ease of use for live applications, especially in their Nord Stage and Lead series. However, the Lead A1 breaks down some of the more tedious walls of analog synthesis for speedier response and improvisation. This technology mirrors the functionality of modern DAWs which presently center on working on the fly in the studio and on the road (i.e. Ableton and Logic), keeping creativity flowing without technical hangups. While Nords aren’t exactly beginner instruments and an understanding analog synthesis makes using their gear all the more useful, it seems like the A1 would be nice for entry-level players and pros alike.

The Nord A1 Lead will be showcased at the upcoming NAMM Show which begins today in Las Vegas.

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By Carolyn Heneghan

When you’re fiddling with your phone and attempting to take photos or videos of a concert, you can hardly enjoy the show. You want to bring a piece of the memory home with you, but you actually establish a memory by fully experiencing the performance with your eyes rather than through a screen. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could have access to audio and videos of the show as soon as you leave, without having to capture the media yourself? Now with the Lively app, you can.

Lively is dedicated to providing high-quality audio and video of live performances to its users while also offering a platform for artists to interact with their fans on another level. The quality of the audio and videos far surpasses anything you could capture with your phone while at the show, so you can relax but still bring home high-quality versions of the memories when you leave.

According to Lively’s latest press release, Lively’s team has quadrupled in size since it first launched in May 2013, and they’ve also moved into a state-of-the-art facility in Seattle. They’ve now worked with more than 110 artists in 47 venues across the country, and they’ve delivered thousands of app downloads. Capitalizing on their early successes and developing the improvements needed to take the app to the next level, Lively’s team has now officially launched its updated version two of the app.

On this new version of Lively, which focuses on improving the overall mobile experience of the app, added features include:

• A sharp new menu providing easy-access to the growing list of available shows and content in music, comedy, fashion, talk, and more.
• Sharing capabilities and access to social channels available on the swipe and scroll menu.
• Additional swipe gestures for easy navigation throughout the app.
• The ability to build playlists and share tracks from lists or the entire library.

These new features improve upon Lively’s core technology, the patent-pending Lively Audio Manager (LAM), which is the mechanism by which live recordings can be made available to fans. Essentially, LAM is a free app for the iPad that enables engineers to record a stereo mix from the soundboard. When the show is finished, the mix down of the recording is sent directly to the app. The audio is available on the app right after the show, and professional video is available the next day. All-in-all, it is a simple, streamlined process that makes getting these live performances out there that much easier for artists and engineers.

How Lively Can Make a Difference in Artist-Fan Interaction

When fans want to take a piece of an artist’s live performance home, they’re already trying to deepen their relationship with that artist and his or her music. However, some of that experience is taken away when a fan has to fiddle with a smartphone to get a recording going. Lively enables fans to take home that piece of the performance without having to record it themselves. Already, Lively has had a direct impact on how the artist and fans interact with each other during the performance itself.

Lively continues to affect this artist-fan interaction when the live performance is complete as well. By making these high-quality audio and video recordings available, those fans get to relive the magic of that performance on-demand. In addition, fans who couldn’t make the show are now able to enjoy the experience of at least listening to or watching the live set from their mobile devices. And finally, music lovers who have never heard the artist’s music can check out the live performance and potentially become new fans.

Armed with these new features and upgrades, Lively is poised to take the music industry by storm by introducing a concept that can revolutionize the way people approach capturing their own recordings of live music performances. Simply put your phone away, and enjoy the music the way it was intended–in the moment.

The post Lively Introduces Instant Access To Recorded Concerts appeared first on SoundCtrl.

By Keith Nelson Jr.

When Bruce Springsteen released his debut album Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ, personal computers were still five years from being marketed to the masses. Over 40 years later, Bruce Springsteen is implementing technology  with new music promotion strategies in 2014. In a recent interview with NPR, the legendary rocker announced that he will be selling USB wristbands to fans online and at his current tour for $40. When connected to a computer, the USB wristband will allow fans to download the official recording of the show, 48 hours after the performance.

Springsteen acknowledges the shift in pop culture consumption and is comfortable adapting to a world where “everything you do is recorded.” Back in 2011, Pearl Jam utilized a similar method by offering audio downloads of their Lightning Bell tour on Sirius XM’s Pearl Jam Radio. While these moves could be perceived as generosity from immensely successful bands, they have more monetary predications for acts attempting to collect lost revenue. Pearl Jams’ Backspacer tour contained 56 shows, had two legs in 2009 and 2010 that lasted five months in total and did not rank in the Top 25 highest grossing tours for either years. Springsteen has experienced considerably better success by ranking in the Top 5 for his last three tours, 2009’s Working on a Dream tour, 2012’s first half of Wrecking Ball World Tour, and 2013’s second half of the Wrecking Ball World Tour. However, in those three years, Springsteen’s tours were unable to sell out over 75% of their shows (58% in 2009, 75% in 2012 and 67% in 2013).

An artist such as Beyonce could benefit from Springsteen’s wearable technology, as she also has experienced similar touring inconsistencies. Her last two tours each grossed over $55 million yet had less than 70% of the shows sold out with her 2009 I Am…Sasha Fierce tour having only roughly 44% of its shows sold out. While this merchandising development can help the superrich get richer, the ability for fans to download a show could prove to be most beneficial to artists whose fanbase originated and is most popular online. With the rising popularity of social media and the expansion of avenues to release music online, more artists are garnering large fanbases without any physical representation (tours, physical albums, videos). Selling downloadable concert audio allows artists to maintain the distribution models to which their fans are accustomed, while allowing their spread-out fanbase to experience all of their performances no matter the location.  From a fan engagement and business standpoint, Bruce Springsteen might have helped to usher in a future industry standard.

Keep in touch with Keith Nelson Jr. on Twitter @jusaire.

The post Fans Relive Springsteen Via USB, The Boss Recoups The Cost appeared first on SoundCtrl.

By Kira Grunenberg

Ask any musician, collegiate, or established professional about picking out a new instrument, and the ensuing conversation is liable to be different every time. There are few things more personal than shopping for an instrument, and at the risk of speaking from a place of slight bias, purchasing a violin is even more of a meticulous and idiosyncratic undertaking. Choice can be affected by any number of factors that can include maker, aesthetics, craftsmanship, price, sound, and physical feel, just to name a few.

Bring the conversation to the realm of modern electric model instruments and a whole separate set of questions and concerns arise–durability, comfort, weight, sound integrity, aesthetics (that hot pink violin modeled with a Flying V-esque frame might not be as versatile as the subtle black or neutral brown). It might seem like some of these factors are repeated but expectations for construction of a quality violin changes with every new element incorporated into its functional use, and digitalization is a significant addition.

While there are plenty of violin makers and brands that handle both acoustic and electric stringed instruments, a fresh startup in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Weinreich Labs, has unveiled news of a new project; one that immediately generates intrigue, given the aforementioned discretion in the violin shopping process.

Weinreich Labs initially stepped into the startup space focused on the goal of “creating the next generation of electric violins”  Their first major accomplishment, as outlined by Southeast Michigan Startup, was “a violin that produces heirloom quality music when amplified or recorded.” Aiming to stay ahead of the curve of small business and generate quicker revenue, Weinreich is now also developing a mobile app meant to serve as a digital violin repository of exemplary quality. Viewers will be able to read about and visually analyze an assortment of violins. The caliber of the visuals is expected to be so high that it will be possible to discern even the most delicate variations, such as the instrument’s varnish.

“The Violin Gallery” app is slated for launch at the end of the month and will be marked at an affordable $0.99 for a lite version and $15 USD annually for its most expansive version. What the exact range of features between price tiers will entail has yet to be divulged, but even just the ability to see and read just a few preview shots after launch will be enough to showcase the gallery’s potential for informing violinists looking to make future purchases. Similarly to acquiring a new car, buying a violin comes down to an in-person experience, decided once the buyer has the opportunity to play the instrument. Still, if one can inspect and determine selected interests prior to visiting a shop, it will be that much easier to get right down to the business of playing, hearing, and paying without excess fuss or the risk of getting overwhelmed.

You can sign up to the Weinreich Labs newsletter right from their homepage, for future information on the app’s development, as well as follow them on Tumblr and Twitter @WeinreichLabs.

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

The post Weinreich Labs’ Violin Gallery App is Vying for Quality appeared first on SoundCtrl.

Jawbone has just released the newest addition to its line of Bluetooth headset devices. The ERA, which comes after the Icon and Icon HD headset series, is Jawbone’s lightest headset to date, and sports a number of colors and casing textures to choose from. Jawbone’s Bluetooth technology extends to its popular line of Jambox portable speakers and UP wearable fitness and activity trackers, but the ERA represents a revived interest in and refined functionality for the mobile phone headset.

The ERA features 4 hours of talk time battery life, with an optional charging case that adds an additional 6 hours of battery life. The ERA is not limited to phone calls only; it can also stream music, podcasts, and audio from video conference apps such as Skype or Google Hangouts. The proprietary Jawbone apps allows for customized commands and user-specific interaction with Siri and voice control. The app also supports GPS location of a lost headset, calendar notifications, and conference calling.

The kicker feature of the ERA is the military-grade noise cancellation technology called NoiseAssassin, which recognizes and differentiates the human voice from ambient and background noise. This makes the ERA ideal for use when users are on the go in cities, or driving with excessive traffic noise.

The ERA is now retailing for $130.00.

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