Archive for the 'technology' CategoryPage 19 of 26

MixMatchMusic to Launch at DEMOfall '08

published
on August 13, 2008
by
Alan Khalfin
in culture, music business, startups, and technology
. 0 Comments Tags: , , .
MixMatchMusic is excited to announce that we have been selected to reveal our groundbreaking music service at DEMOfall 08, the premier, unparalleled event that showcases the latest, best technologies – those that promise to literally reshape our future and enrich our lives. This is a big achievement for MMM, and will be an excellent way to launch our Public Beta!

Through the $600 registration discount we’re offering you, we invite you to join us at DEMOfall 08 to see, touch, and hear about our incredible breakthrough – before anyone else does. Take advantage of this special deal, and register today for only $2,395.

Kick Ass Music Apps for the iPhone

published
on July 23, 2008
by
Sandra
in DIY, music, and technology
. 8 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Ah, mobile music. How sad would our lives be without it?

First came the iPod that we all know and love, which made its predecessors (the Boombox, the Walkman, the MiniDisc, the MP3 player) look just…silly. Its many subsequent iterations became sleeker and cooler each time. Then the iPhone came along and more and more of us drank the Apple flavored Kool-Aid. With 3G and the rapidly expanding App Store, the iPhone has become a veritable phenomenon.

Despite ongoing issues with MobileMe, email, low battery life and more, the little phone machine is charging down its steep rocky path alone, leaving its competitors in the dust and getting better every day.

Random sidenote: Someone actually told me they were torn between the new iPhone and the new Blackberry. I told him that’s like saying you’re torn between Prime Rib and a Big Mac. (He bought the iPhone the next day.)

Combining your phone and your music player into one device was certainly a convenient first step. But now, with the App Store going nuts, more and more innovative music apps for the iPhone are popping up. Here are my favorites so far:

Pandora
 Yes, I know. We rave about Pandora ad nauseum. But, quite frankly, they deserve it. What was already a killer service is now one of the leading iPhone apps. Sick of your own music? Hate the radio? Then open up Pandora at home, in your car, or in your earphones while you’re on the go and have your customized radio station at your finger tips. Remember, the more you use it the better it gets. In this case I say go ahead Captain Curious! Open up Pandora’s box and watch the magic unfold.

Shazam
How often do you find yourself saying “Wait, who sings this song?” You make a mental note to find out later and never actually do? Here is the answer to your dilemma. Open Shazam, let your iPhone “listen” to the song in question and it will tell you the artist and track name. Freaking great. I’ve also been using it as a way to effortlessly tag songs that I want to possibly download later, as I hear them.

SeeqPod
On the flip side of Shazam’s service, you have SeeqPod. You know the artist or track name but don’t have the song when you want it. Type it into SeeqPod and, boom, their crawler finds songs and videos for you. (We’ve mentioned them before too, as pioneers of a growing digital music trend – “playable search”.) So now, with SeeqPod on your iPhone, whenever a song pops into your head that you want to hear it’s there for you.

Midomi
Midomi is like Shazam, but with with more flavors to choose from. In addition to letting your phone “listen” to the song à la Shazam (Midomi calls it “grab” not “listen”), you can also sing/hum the tune, or say/type the song name. Very handy. Naturally, once you find the song you can buy it on iTunes, bookmark and share, watch YouTube videos etc. Watch the overview video here.

All of the above are easy to use, insanely practical, and really fun to have. But, for the more musically inclined among you, here are a few others worth checking out:

For musicians, there is Stay in Tune, TyroRuner (guitars only), and OmniTuner to tune your instrument on the go. If you want a mobile click track check out Orfeo or iMetronome. For DJ types, MixMeister scratch (cool concept, reviews not great though) and BeatMaker (see a review and video here).

And these are just the early apps. Imagine how prehistoric they will seem in a year or two…

Survey: How Do You Collaborate With Other Musicians, Engage With Fans, and Profit From Your Art?

published
on July 18, 2008
by
Alan Khalfin
in collaboration, music, music business, technology, web 2.0, web 3.0, and website
. 2 Comments Tags: , , , .

Musicians, we need you!

We have teamed up with our friends Hypebot and Indie Music Tech to find out how musicians collaborate on music with other musicians, how they engage fans, and how they profit from their work. We hope to find out how musicians are doing these things online, and if they are, whether they’re satisfied with the tools currently offered.

If you’re a musician, please take a minute to take the survey. The results should be very interesting and we’ll be sure to share them with you! The first 100 people to complete the survey will get a sweet ass MixMatchMusic t-shirt!

You can take the survey here.

Radiohead's "House of Cards" Video: A Reflection of Our Digital Lives

published
on July 16, 2008
by
Sandra
in culture, music, technology, and video
. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

Radiohead’s “House of Cards” video was made using Geometric Informatics and Velodyne LIDAR…or as James Montgomery from MTV News put it, “it was made entirely with lasers and fractals and math and stuff”.

He also mentioned that an associate producer over at MTV news proposed that “the ‘Cards’ clip could actually be Radiohead’s loving acknowledgement to the Grid, the high-speed super-Internet currently being developed by scientists at CERN, a particle physics laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland”. How very Matrix. I like it.

For the techy, nerdy, science-y, and curious among you, go to the Google Code page and eat your heart out. You can learn about, you know, data visualization and stuff. Otherwise just watch the video:

You almost have to know the story behind the video to be impressed by it. The technology used is indeed very interesting. And very Radiohead.

In fact, when the makers of the video came across research being done at UCLA for real time 3D recording and had the idea for a video, they immediately sent a proposal to Radiohead’s management, figuring that they would be the only band willing to take that kind of a risk – making a music video without cameras. After all, Radiohead has quite firmly established itself as a pioneer in today’s music industry, has it not?

But if you blindly watch, without knowing the story behind the video, it can be a tad… simplistic. Or to quote James Montgomery once again, “a total triumph in technology, but a decidedly underwhelming experience for the viewer.” Kinda like Winamp skins a la 1999. Yet, if you put on your artistic appreciation hat and keep in mind the made-using-data aspect, it’s pretty damn cool.

To further your appreciation of the feat, watch the making of video below:

As director James Frost notes towards the end, “in a weird way [the video] is a direct reflection of where we are in society… everything is data-driven in some shape or form… our lives are digital.”

Top 5 Music Discovery Sites

published
on July 9, 2008
by
Sandra
in music, music business, and technology
. 16 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , .

Update: Read our breakdown of Music Discovery in 2010 here.

Long gone are the days of browsing through record stores to find new music (record stores are still awesome hangouts though), making physical mixtapes for your friends (except for the nostalgic among us), and putting CDs on your Christmas list (iTunes gift cards anyone?). Digital technologies and the seemingly endless supply of online music destinations have forever changed the way we discover the tunes we like.

Record Store

Born out of my own frustration with the retardedly over-crowded “music discovery” space, this post aims to sift through the plethora of sites, many of which are variations of the same concept, and pinpoint the best ones.

Do you prefer to listen to short clips of top downloads on iTunes because it’s easy? (Ya, iTunes is more of a place to buy a song/album that you know you want, but you can definitely discover new stuff by poking around, checking the free download of the week etc). Are you a fan of one of the numerous music social networking sites that let you discover people with similar musical taste, create/share playlists, or track down obscure indie bands? Or do you love Pandora’s almost-no-work-involved recommendation system?

We’re all different when it comes to our preferred methods of music discovery, but the end goal is the same, right? We want to consistently discover new music that resonates with us personally – bands we can go see live, music to download, artists we can relate to. There are so many places to do this now it makes my head spin, so I needed to simplify.

With that, here are my top 5:

Pandora
I’ve been a fan of Pandora for a long time. The internet radio station, with its robust recommendation system based on the work of 50 analysts who break songs down into musical attributes, is surprisingly good at finding music that suits your tastes. And with the thumbs-up/thumbs-down rating system, the more you use it the smarter it gets. Their Facebook app is certainly convenient too.

iLike
If you can put up with 30 second clips, iLike is great for discovery. The fact that it can be plugged into Facebook, iTunes, MySpace, Bebo and others makes it a versatile social platform and is probably why they have so many registered users making profiles, sharing playlists and the like. And you can get lots of free music from new artists.

Fuzz
“Music Uprising…Connecting people who create and love music”. Other than having pretty good music discovery tools, I like Fuzz because I like the Fuzz Manifesto. This is the kind of mentality that I think everyone in the music industry needs to adopt, and soon, in order to survive and thrive in the exciting new frontier that is developing. Open, participatory, fair etc…

Grooveshark
In addition to letting you listen to any song in its entirety, Grooveshark rewards you for sharing music with people by giving you credits for free music. It also serves as an online library so you can store your music and access it from anywhere. There is a tagging/ranking system to help you find what you want as well as playlist creation/sharing.

Last.fm
Easily one of the most dominant players in the social music discovery space, Last.fm has a powerful recommendation engine based on data from the user community (unlike Pandora’s engine which matches similar musical attributes). Worth noting here is that Last.fm is now paying royalties to unsigned artists – and thus providing an alternative for artists who are not part of SoundExchange.

If this list is too short for you, check Mashable’s Music News Toolbox: 50+ Links for Discovering New Music to read about sites like iJigg, MOG, Goombah, Music Nation, and many more. Or leave us a comment with your favorite ones.

And of course, soon you will be able to discover kick-ass new music at MixMatchMusic. Stay tuned.