Posts tagged Music
“Look Around” With The Red Hot Chili Peppers Interactive Music Video – ReelSEO Online Video News
Feb 6th
 ReelSEO Online Video News |
"Look Around" With The Red Hot Chili Peppers Interactive Music Video
ReelSEO Online Video News He is also founder of The Viral Orchard (http://www.viralorchard.com), an Internet marketing firm offering content writing and development services, viral marketing consulting, and SEO services. Jeremy writes constantly, loves online video, … |
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Is the Digital Music Revolution Really Ruining Sound Quality?
Feb 6th
It seems like every advance in digital music brings with it a debate about whether the latest format degrades quality in exchange for convenience. This was true when CDs first came onto the scene, and it’s probably even more true today with MP3s and their digital audio brethren. Heck, even the advent of the gramophone in 1889 sparked debates over whether its sound quality was worse than Thomas Edison’s phonograph.
Last week, rock veteran Neil Young chimed in with his assertion that the digital music files we listen to today are of much lower quality than the original recordings. Speaking at the D: Dive Into Media conference, he said that the technology now exists to deliver much higher-quality audio to music fans, and that he had even talked to Steve Jobs about a possible solution.
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It is certainly true that an MP3 file, by definition, is of lower quality than the original recording. The files that sit on the hard drives of recording studio engineers are massive – several gigabytes apiece – compared to the file consumers eventually download or stream. To get those MP3 file sizes down, the audio has to be compressed substantially. It’s inevitable that some of the detail will get lost in the process.
How Serious is the Problem? … And How to Fix It?
Exactly how bad is this problem? By Young’s estimation, what we hear in most files today is “only 5% of the data of the original recording”. That may be a slight exaggeration, depending on how the files are encoded. Certainly, lower bit rate files (such as 128kbps MP3s) have a noticeably degraded quality to them, compared to a CD. But most sources have graduated to higher quality files now that broadband speeds allow for it. A standard track on iTunes is a 256kbps AAC file and premium Spotify subscribers can listen to many songs at 320kbps, which is about 22% of a CD track’s bit rate.
When it comes to streaming audio on mobile devices, the quality buck pretty much stops at whatever the data connection can handle. On 3G networks, streaming CD-quality audio just isn’t feasible. Over a good WiFi connection, things look a little more promising, but there are still limitations if the user experience is to be preserved.
So what does Young propose as a solution? From the sound of it, he’d like to see a sort of mega-iPod with more disk space and internal guts optimized to playback massive files. Such a device wouldn’t be designed to include one’s entire library, but rather only a selection of audiophile-quality albums. Presumably, it would tend to be used with superior quality earphones or speakers, which is another important factor in the quality of what we hear.
Even if a device akin to what Young describes were produced and sold, how big of a market would there be for it? The quality of the audio found on sources like iTunes, Spotify, MOG, Amazon and Google Music is apparently good enough to convince millions of people to pay for access to it. At the end of the day, most of the content on the pay music services is certainly good enough. Musicians and audiophiles can pick up on the degradations in quality, but for the average listener, it’s pretty subtle. The device that Young describes would have to be marketed toward the audiophiles for whom 320kbps simply won’t cut it.
Last week wasn’t the first time Young has criticized the state of digital music. Some may dismiss his stance as nothing more than a grumpy, old-school perspective, as though he’s just an old guy that doesn’t get the new-fangled ways of the Web and digital media. This isn’t the case. Young may be a veteran of the music industry, but he’s well aware of what’s changed about it and why. During the same interview in which he slammed MP3′s, he said that “piracy is the new radio” and encouraged new artists to forgo record labels in favor of doing it themselves.
There’s Nothing Wrong With Analog
As Young pointed out, Steve Jobs may have been a digital music pioneer, but “when he went home, he listened to vinyl.” This is true not only of Young’s generation, but of a growing number of music fans today. Vinyl sales have been surging for the last few years, with 2011 seeing a 39% increase in sales over the previous year. Digital music sales grew last year too, but by considerably less.
For music fans with the deepest concern for audio quality, it seems analog is increasingly the way to go. That’s okay. We can have our digital revolution in music and still fall back on analog formats. Just like with books, the value offered by digital music is primarily about volume, convenience and ease of production and distribution. And just like sitting down with a good, paper-bound book, putting on a vinyl record is more about quality and the overall experience.
Digital and analog don’t need to be at war with one another. What many labels and artists are doing now is sell records on vinyl and include a coupon for a free, high-quality digital download in the record’s sleeve. That allows people to enjoy the album as it was intended and also throw it onto their iPod or smartphone for listening on the go.
It’s also possible to go the high-quality route in a digital-only format. When The Beatles’ catalogue was remastered and reissued in 2009, the material was released on CD and, for the first time, via iTunes. For diehard fans who wanted more than what iTunes could offer, they also sold an apple-shaped (no, not that Apple) thumb drive containing every album in superior quality, lossless FLAC format, as well as as 320kbps MP3s.
However things may evolve, it’s evident that digital music has brought us great value, but it’s done so at a cost, namely quality. This may not be perceived as a problem by every consumer, but for those who take the craft of creating and recording music most seriously, it’s a one worth solving. Whether it’s through a hybrid of analog/digital music consumption or through some new, high-capacity device for playing back lossless digital audio, the challenge isn’t an insurmountable one.
Vinyl sales chart courtesy of Digital Music News.
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64 Billion Plays: What Online Music Looks Like Today (Infographic)
Jan 20th
In 2011, we collectively listened to 64,876,491,602 songs on the Internet. Whether it was on YouTube, SoundCloud, Rdio or MySpace, the citizens of the Web listened to quite a lot of music last year. Bands and musicians made over 3 billion new fans, who viewed artist profiles over 16 billion times. These are just a few data points recently released by Next Big Sound, a startup that tracks the popularity of music and individual artists across a range of digital music providers and social services.
Digital music only continues to grow and mature, as streaming services explode, Internet radio companies go public and developers begin using the power of open APIs to mash up sounds and services. SoundCloud alone saw 231% growth last year, while Twitter saw a 104% increase in music-related activity.
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The top artists on the Web are mostly unsurprising. You knew that people can’t get enough Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber, for better or worse. Rihanna. Katy Perry. Adele. No shockers there.
What’s interesting, though, is how the Web is paving the way for unsigned, independent artists to reach levels of popularity that rival major label acts. This is especially true on SoundCloud, where unsigned artists flock to upload their recordings. But even across the larger Web, three unsigned artists broke into Next Big Sound’s “Social 50″ list, which chronicles, the 50 biggest artists across all of the social and music sites that they track.
These numbers, while impressive, should be taken with a grain of salt. Next Big Sound has gone to great lengths to pull data from sources like YouTube, Rdio, Last.fm, Pandora, SoundCloud and several others. One service missing from their list is Spotify, which just launched in the U.S. this past summer and has seen enormous growth since then. Still, it looks like they’re using a pretty hefty sample of online music data to draw their conclusions. You can take a closer look at their methodology. if you’re curious.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
10 Ways Facebook Is Integrating Into Your TV, Music, Games, Cars & Cameras
Jan 14th
The world’s biggest social network wants to change the way you share TV shows, music and games. Think frictionless sharing meets social TV for all media. Given what Facebook recent announcements about integration with cameras and cars, is full media integration? If you’re still unsure, take a hint from this: Earlier this week, Facebook announced frictionless sharing for your TV with Boxee.
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Facebook is integrating with DIRECTV for social discovery of programs and movies. You can see what their friends are watching, and then start watching those shows immediately or, just save them for later.
With the IntoNow iPhone app, you can identify the shows your friends are watching by analyzing the audio signal. Then you can share those TV shows with your Facebook friends.
Trident is not a bubblegum app. It’s yet another apps for seeing what shows your friends are watching, liking and commenting on.
The U-Verse social TV app integrates directly with the Facebook Platform. You can share what you’re watching and what you “like.”
Zeebox is a social TV app with a slightly different twist. Instead of just seeing what your friends are watching and liking, you can also post those shows directly to your Facebook Timeline.
The Snapstick app for Facebook Timeline is designed for playing and watching video, listening to music and surfing channels with your friends. Web content is streamed directly to your TV.
With the Xbox app, you can share game achievements with friends, which seems more useful than just dumping them into the crowded Facebook news feed. You can also share shows, music and pictures taken with their Kinect device.
The Slacker Radio app is similar to frictionless sharing music services Spotify, MOG and Rdio. You discover and listen to music with friends through Web or mobile devices.
Earlier this week, Kodak launched two Facebook-integrated cameras and two apps; could these two moves save Kodak from its tenuous pre-bankruptcy state?
Facebook and Mercedes-Benz announced a new Facebook app that allows drivers to access Facebook friends and restaurants that their friends have “liked.” The new feature will be available in the 2012 SL-Class Mercedes this upcoming spring.
With integration of cars, cameras, music, TV and games, will Facebook become your one true login?
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Listen To Music With Your Facebook Friends Via Chat
Jan 13th
Looking for a quick pick-me-up in those late afternoon hours, I’ve found myself heading over to my Spotify account to check out what Facebook friends are listening to. While this has been a neat way to notice shared music tastes, there’s still something awkward about it. Unless I’ve already had some sort of communication about music with a friend on Spotify, or at least some recent contact on Facebook or otherwise, I feel weird scrolling through their playlists.
Facebook must have foreseen this problem because today it announced yet another way to listen to music through your account. The catch here is that you’re actually listening with your friends rather than voyeuristically peering into their playlists and, unbeknownst to them, clicking on their songs.
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There is something close to this group listening feature currently. Let’s say you and a friend are listening to the same artist on Spotify or one of the other music sharing apps like Rdio or MOG. In the news feed, you might see that you and other friends are all listening to the same artist. This happened to me yesterday – me and two other friends were all listening to Beyoncé. Great, I thought to myself: I know people who also like Beyoncé. (I also heard that she promised her first-born to a witch.)
This new Facebook music feature works through the private chat sidebar, not the news feed. Log on and you’ll be able to see what your friend are listening to, which is indicated by a music note. Any chat friends who are listening to music will automatically display a “Listen With” button. Click it and you’ll start listening, too.
The catch here is that you’ll only actually listen with people if others randomly click on the song. Then a group chat will pop up. From there, one of your friends can start playing DJ, selecting the songs that the whole group listens to.
With Spotify integration in the news ticker, you see a music note; if you hover over it and click, you can listen to the same song or artist that your friend is listening to, but you’re not actually listening with them.
The Facebook “Listen With” feature begins rolling out today.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
How the Web and Mobile Tech Are Changing How People Learn Music
Jan 12th
That the Web has revolutionized music is not exactly a news flash, but most people typically think about that in terms of music consumption. iTunes. YouTube. SoundCloud. Spotify. Group listening sites like Turntable.fm. Recommendation engines like those of Pandora, Last.fm and the Echo Nest. Now voice-controlled Internet radio apps are coming pre-installed in new cars. There’s no doubt that they way people discover and listen to music has changed radically, and will continue to do so.
The Internet and mobile technology are beginning to have an equally significant impact on the creation of music itself. Extremely powerful recording, DJing and sequencing software is making its way from laptops to tablets and smartphones, for example. Now, the way people learn to play music in the first place is changing as well.
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From Skype to YouTube, Music Lessons Move Online
These days, instead of traveling across town to attend music lessons, many people are using tools like Skype to learn from a distance, just as they can do things like attend meetings and take academic courses regardless of their physical location. The new model allows for more flexible learning and in many cases improves the regularity of lessons since it avoids things like traffic jams and bad weather.
Even if one doesn’t get one-on-one lessons via Skype, the Web is loaded with music education resources for all skill levels. When a few friends and I started a band last year, I decided to brush up some more advanced drumming techniques, since it had been a few years since I last played. Much like Lynda.com and Tuts+offer video tutorials for software and coding, there a number of sites out there who do the same for drummers and other musicians. I found one in particular that published a free video podcast, enabling me to download the lessons to my phone or iPad and bring a virtual teacher down into the basement with me.
Online music lessons range from having the structure of a college course to being as loose and on-your-own-time as a series of YouTube searches. On YouTube, the quality of the material may vary, but there are quite a few dedicated sites with legitimate, high-quality video lessons available, sometimes for free.
For those who are especially serious and have the money to spend, the Berklee College of Music offers online-only courses and certifications through a website called BerkleeMusic. The courses don’t come cheap, but enrolling and paying for them is a straight-forward, Web-based process.
Learning Music Goes Mobile
The explosion of smartphones and tablets has impacted countless aspects of daily life for millions of people, and budding musicians are no exception. Not only can you watch video tutorials on your iPad or Android phone, but there’s a growing selection of educational apps that allow for casual learning from any location.
Some of the numerous mini-piano and keyboard apps for the iOS and Android, for example, come with built-in guides to musical notation, with some of them going into more depth about music theory. Other apps drill down further into music theory, such as Wolfram Alpha’s Music Theory Course Assistant app for iOS.
There’s a wide selection of instrument-specific learning apps for iOS alone, such as GuitarLab and Gibson Learn and Master Guitar or Piano Tutor and Virtuoso Piano.
Like with any learning process, the effectiveness of mobile apps and Web tutorials like these will depend somewhat on one’s approach and level of motivation. Ultimately, in-person music lessons may still work best for some. There will likely always be a place for one-on-one, in-the-flesh education, but these new tools and methods open things up to a wider group of people with virtually no restrictions on time and place.
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Mideast Tunes 2.0: A Mixing Board for the Real Music of the Middle East
Jan 6th
The ability to create expressive, gorgeous, geographically-agnostic gateways to the human experience is one of the true boons of the social Web. If you’re still laboring under the misapprehension that the Middle East is mostly donkeys and dahabiyas, Mideast Tunes, especially in its new incarnation, will disabuse you of that notion.
Lauched in 2010, the site was dedicated to bridging “barriers of faith and geography to unite young people committed to fostering constructive discourse in the Middle East through music.” I don’t know if that’s happened, but it rocks.
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Space-Age Mosaic
“Music is a huge part of our lives here,” said Bahrain-based Esra’a Al Shafei, the director of MeT’s parent organization, Mideast Youth “Most of the bands we have are young, but many have also been active for over a decade. We have always had an underground music scene for as long as I can remember. The main difference is that in today’s age, the Internet allows people to discover and connect with these bands.” MeT is becoming an important part of that process.
“The greatest success stories usually come from the PR that results for the bands that were previously unrecognized but have made it to the frontpages of CNN, TIME or NPR as a result of being discovered on Mideast Tunes,” she told ReadWriteWeb. “We have seen that happen with several artists and musicians, such as Smouldering in Forgotten (Bahraini metal band), Foad Manshady (Iranian Baha’i rapper), Siwan Erdal (Kurdish rapper), amongst others. Many journalists or event management groups still get in touch with us to request information for coverage on a lot of the bands that are featured.”
Iranian hip-hop artist, Ghogha
The redesign, led by developer Navid Safabakhsh, has made the UI much more reflective of the scintillating wash of music across the Arab world and the Mideast in general. A large, bold band of color across the top presents a featured band, and subsequently any band you choose to play. Start a song and the player will continue to feed you that band’s music until you choose a different one.
Beneath a slider you are presented with the ability to browse by the most up-voted popular bands, by featured bands or by collections, including a seven-song playlist on the Arab Spring. Other rejiggered navigational buttons – all of which give you the sense that you’re operating a sound board, or a space ship – give you access to music via genre (alternative to trance) or location (Afghanistan to Syria). You can search for bands by name or keyword, as well.
Additionally, as you begin to use the site, a new recommendation engine will begin to suggest bands you might like based on your listening history.
There is also a blog on site that acts as a kind of magazine on new Mideast music.
Changes to the site include:
- Completely revamped web application
- Better navigation
- Ability to easily view, share, add and explore bands
- New player
- Ability to create your own personal collection of favorite tracks
- Ability to receive suggestions for other bands based on your favorite tracks
- An iPhone application that syncs with your collection (awaiting approval from Apple)
Another change is the elimination of video, in order to, as Al Shafei told us, “to focus on the music first and foremost… we’ll be sending users to these bands’ YouTube channels, as it’s a better place to subscribe to bands’ videos and channels.”
User: Generated
Mideast Tunes is made up of user-generated content. From singer-songwriters to traditional oud players to trance DJs, the musicians themselves are involved in putting themselves forward. Given that the Middle East is a region of great variation, that means the music as a whole reflects that.
Punk rock band, Al Thawra
Richard Savo and Charlie Shaabi’s ElectrowaveZ is my new favorite. They are undeniable electro-house-trance. But they are ancient and specific as well, folding Arabic tonality and instrumentation into a thoroughly modern sound. It’s just that it’s the thoroughly modern sound of Acre, not of Berlin or Oakland. In other words, it sounds like here and now, which is built of there and then. No one listening would mistake it for Finnish music, but they wouldn’t mistake it for traditional Arabic music either.
With 1,443 tracks from 409 bands, groups and individuals, you can expect the here and now to shuttle back and forth between a seemingly infinite interplay of times, sensibilities, musical traditions, contemporary genres, languages and landscapes.
There are a couple of things that stick out as less than optimal. For one, Israel, a country not deficient in music, is missing. For another, when a new band is selected it is returned in a pop-up window… which was backward. A reload fixes it, but so does a click on the information icon, so it’s hard to know if it’s on purpose. (If it is, eep.) Finally, clicking on the band window does not transfer the information to the main site window, which I would much prefer.
According to Al Shafei:
“The core of the project manifested from our desire to promote bands and musicians that would otherwise never be given a second glance in the international scene. We feel that is because most people would never think to look to regions like the Middle East and North Africa for highly thought provoking music. The need to change this is our driving force. We believe music can change the world and that the musicians of the Middle East and North Africa will lead the way.”
Whether this music has changed, or will change, the world is hard to say. The goal of focusing attention in a fun, engaging way on a whole world of music, however, seems to have been accomplished.
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Even When Searching For Torrents, Fans Will Still Buy Music
Jan 3rd
In 2012, anybody that starts a band or begins recording their own music at home is probably not quitting their day job and awaiting huge financial returns. If they’re good at what they do and the Web helps them build a huge audience, then great, but that’s not their chief motivator. Of all the ways for artists to make money early in the game, selling music is generally not seen as a cash cow. For many, making their music available for free and getting it on streaming services is a better way to get exposure and monetization is a strategy best saved for later.
The state of online music sales for independent artists may not be as abysmal at it feels though, according to some data recently shared by Bandcamp. While coming through their analytics, the artist promotion and e-commerce site found that several of their paid music downloads were being initiated by users who had searched explicitly for pirated content.
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Search terms that combined artist names with words like “torrent” and “rapidshare” routinely showed up in the data, but in many cases those searches resulted in purchases of music. In at least one case, a paying customer had clicked on a link on The Pirate Bay imploring users to support the artist.
Bandcamp didn’t offer hard, aggregate data about how often this is happening, so it’s largely anecdotal evidence. Still, it appears to bolster the argument that if digital content is made easily available, many of those that want it most will happily pay for it. It’s a notion recently tested by comedian Louis C.K., and so far the results look very positive for artists and content creators.
C.K., just like independent artists on Bandcamp, did not thwart piracy all together. That’s not the point. Illegal downloads still take place all day long, and probably always will as long as the Internet is intact. But what’s emerging lately are signs that many will in fact pay for content online, if it’s easy and convenient to do so. An increase in that tendency, combined with new and innovative ways of monetizing one’s work, may well represent the future of some creative industries, or could at least infuse them with a host of new self-sustained talent.
Another reason to take the Bandcamp story with a grain of salt is that the site is a relatively new, if quickly emerging, force in the music industry, and it’s one that’s geared toward independent musicians. It’s entirely possible that people are no less inclined to illegally download blockbuster albums from major label acts, which may be harder for some to feel guilty about.
Even so, the digital future of music is still very much emerging and these early signs of economic viability should serve as some encouragement for those looking to be a part of it.
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Rdio Beats Spotify at Having Music You Actually Like, Says Study
Dec 14th
In the fast-changing digital music streaming space, it’s hard to know which service is best for you. Spotify gets the most hype, but lots of people love Rdio, which has solid backing and a huge library of music. There are also beloved underdogs like MOG and Grooveshark.
When it comes to choosing which option to go for, the most you can do is take each service for a spin, run a couple searches for stuff you like and see what comes up. You can get a general feeling of which one’s a better fit and go with your gut, but wouldn’t some hard data be nice?
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The folks at Wired thought so, and decided to conduct an API-fueled study of Spotify and Rdio to see which service had more acclaimed music and which artists were exclusive to either service. The study took the API’s from Spotify and Rdio and checked them against a dataset of 5,000 popular albums from user-generated music review site Rate Your Music.
The results show Rdio coming out on top by a number of measures, despite the fact that Spotify is known to have a bigger selection overall. Several respected artists were only availble on Rdio, including Bob Dylan, Pink Floyd, Queen and Thelonius Monk. Both services have a ton of exclusive albums, but only Rdio can boast Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon or London Calling by The Clash.
Spotify (at 4.8%) had slightly fewer exclusive albums than Rdio, on which 6.8% of the albums were available exclusively. Nine of the 100 most popular albums were only on Rdio, while only one of them was exclusive to Spotify.
To be fair, Rate Your Music is probably not the most authoritative source of what’s popular. A more complex analysis might mash together datasets from Billboard, Last.fm and, if possible, Amazon user reviews to come up with a more comprehensive list of popular albums.
Not included in the study were services like Grooveshark and MOG, the latter of which does not make an API available to developers.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
YouTube Acquires RightsFlow – Easy Music Licensing For Video Creators – ReelSEO Online Video News
Dec 13th
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YouTube Acquires RightsFlow – Easy Music Licensing For Video Creators
ReelSEO Online Video News The following is an index of our more popular video search engine optimization (Video SEO, VSEO,… Many of us here at ReelSEO are still settling back into our routines following the awesome SMX West… We had the privilege of speaking with Bruce Clay … |
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