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Loads of Downloading Recent publications have been packed with information about digital music: tips about how to make the most of downloads, the technologies that make it work, how new artists can get themselves found, and how you can actually end up PAYING for silence. Some highlights of the recent press barrage:
Downloaders can buy 63 seconds of complete, studio-quality silence from Apple's iTunes Music Store. A 1995 release from Ciccone Youth contains the track "Silence," which the group describes as "a version of John Cage's famous silent composition 4'33", only speeded up." The curious can get a free, 30-second preview that has been described as "very representative of the rest of the song." Because of the way albums are cut into individual song files for sale, some other releases have unintentional silent tracks for sale. This occurred with an album from the hip-hop group Slum Village, and of course even the accidental silent tracks were labeled "explicit" to indicate the presence of profanity. One user was prompted to create a nine-track playlist of silent tunes, which would cost $8.91 from Apple, whose piracy protections would require you to limit your listening to only 3 computers. Apple has responded to the hubbub by silencing some of the silent tracks. Read the New York Times article about silence Experience John Cage’s "Silence" Browse the Ciccone Youth album
A new product, Audio Hijack from Rogue Amoeba, is a utility for Mac OSX that records the audio output of applications that normally do not create audio files. This includes Internet news and music broadcasts, which now can be caught and saved for later, as well as stand-alone synthesizer emulators, audio-file players, and others. Learn more about capturing your streams, from Rogue Amoeba Read a review in Electronic Musician or a MacWorld story on how to use Audio Hijack
When you pop a CD into your web-enabled computer, a complete track list magically appears, including artists, titles, play times and (sometimes) composers. Where does the information come from? Business 2.0 magazine explains "The Magic Behind the Music" by profiling the company Gracenote, whose core product is CDDB (compact disc database), which stores and retrieves all this information. Up to now, CDDB has worked by recognizing complete CDs, using the number and length of tracks as a fingerprint that it could look up in a database of user-supplied track details. A recently unveiled service will identify individual songs by looking at unique patterns of the 1s and 0s that represent the song's audio content. Learn more by visiting Gracenote and reading their CDDB product info Read the profile in Business 2.0 [non-subscriber access limited]
Musicians, how can consumers find YOUR music online? And how would they even know they should be looking for you? Record companies and promoters are still taking care of those responsibilities, but some tech companies are betting that computers will help artists get found. Electronic Musician magazine recently spotlighted MusicMagic Mixer, a product from Predixis. The program is available for Windows, with Mac OSX and Linux versions under development. Predixis maintains a server with an extensive database of recorded music (over 500,000 titles so far). For each song in its database, Predixis' has applied special analytical algorithms to measure 35 characteristics the company has determined to be important in figuring out whether or not a person likes a piece of music. Once you have their Mixer software on your computer, you point it to your own music library of ripped tunes, which it analyzes in the same way. Then it creates playlists of songs that it thinks you would like, but that you don't yet have, based on similarity of those 35 characteristics. How well does this work? You tell us: share your experiences at vibrations@museumofmusic.org Read the "Getting Found" article in Electronic Musician Visit the Predixis company
While legal music sites are growing, rampant piracy of file swapping remains a concern to the music industry. Audible Magic has been touting a new technology that it claims is a "file swap killer." According to the company, its technology can identify copyrighted songs and block illegal downloads. It's still being tested, but their early demos are apparently "turning heads in legislative offices." Read news about the "File Swap Killer" or visit Audible Magic’s Replicheck site
WIRED magazine reports that two NYU students found their little MP3 players too isolating and antisocial, so they built their own MP3 boom box. Starting with the gutted-out chassis of an 80's urban classic Lasonic TRC-931 boom box, the pair added some computing power, a 30 gigabyte hard drive, Linux, and Wi-Fi. Party on! At a wireless hot spot outside New York's City Hall, they recently demonstrated how they could simultaneously blast music to the masses, serve files to nearby downloaders, and receive tracks posted by listeners. No word yet on whether their "Bass Station" will be commercially developed. Read the WIRED magazine article |
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