Learn anywhere, anytime.
Honestly, I think you can learn just about anything from YouTube these days. Whether it be hotwiring a car or Organic Chemistry — YouTube has tutorials on it — and music is no exception. As a guitar player myself, I am constantly searching for cool new licks to learn via YouTube. This medium is best for learning things like:
Read more »
Amazon and iTunes dominate the $14.8 billion-per-year digital music market, but Google is trying to make a big impact on the industry with its Play store, which is available on all computers and Android devices. While Google Play is certainly a contender, a new infographic shows a rapidly changing, highly competitive industry. Google will need some serious advantages to succeed, and the Play service is definitely making some smart moves.
Read more »
There’s a new, potentially major player in the consumer music business.
On October 29th, Google announced that Warner Music Group agreed to sell songs through Google’s own Play service, a mobile store available on Android devices. The announcement is by no means a surprise, but it’s an important step for the growing music service: Google now has agreements with all three major U.S. music labels.
Read more »
Online music sales represent a significant portion of most musicians’ incomes, but until recently, digital downloads weren’t part of Billboard’s highly influential country, rock, rap, R&B and Latin charts. Recent updates to these charts add in Nielsen SoundScan digital download data, and many artists have seen a noticeable jump in chart rankings as a result of the changes. However, some music listeners and critics see immediate problems with the new additions.
Adding the digital data was a “perfectly logical” move according to Billboard, the top music sales tracker in the United States. However, crossover artists whose songs appeal to fans of more than one genre seemed to get an especially notable boost from the changes. Some analysts argue that this dilutes Billboard’s genre designations by raising the profile of these crossover artists.
Read more »
While music streaming services like Spotify, Rhapsody and Pandora have loyal listener bases, their content costs are easily outpacing their revenue.
According to a chart from Statista.com, Internet radio service Pandora’s year-over-year revenue growth was outpaced by content acquisition cost growths in the second, third and fourth quarters of 2012. In a year-over-year comparison of Q2 in 2012 and 2011, for instance, Pandora’s content acquisition costs grew by about 130 percent while the company’s revenue grew by slightly less than 120 percent. Growths in costs will likely continue to exceed growth in revenue in 2013.
Read more »
WhoSampled.com, the site that helps you add a whole new dimension to your enjoyment of music by letting you uncover the direct links between songs, is finally making the transition from your PC to your smartphone. Now you can access the site’s database using the WhoSampled iPhone app to figure out the origins of the samples in your favorite tracks no matter where you are.
The WhoSampled iPhone app does a good job of translating the most useful features from the site into a mobile application. You can easily locate all the samples, covers or remixes from the WhoSampled database that have a connection to any song in your playlist. You can even access the database for information on a song while you are still listening to it. If you find a new favorite song while tracking down the origins and influences of your music, you can add the new song to your favorites list.
Read more »
Jared Ficklin plays with visual representations of sound, often finding creative, artistic ways to show us how humans have an innate ability to “hear” visual waveforms and frequency diagrams.
Ficklin’s audio-visual inventions include several fire-based contraptions that intricately show how music affects physical environments. While these devices have no practical application, they’re ideal for introducing visual representations of sound in an exciting way. Ficklin also designed programs that show representations of music from different artists. The representations allow viewers to feel the music visually and could seriously improve the effects of closed-caption recordings by adding a more immersive visual element to broadcasts.
Read more »
Keyboardists have an almost unlimited number of tones and effects at their disposal thanks to MIDI technology, but until recently, guitarists haven’t had the same tools. A MIDI keyboard is a pretty simple instrument to build, since digital keyboards already track input information from simple key presses. Guitarists use bends, whammy bars and other tone-changing elements, which are tough to translate to a simple digital signal.
A new project from You Rock Guitar hopes to change that. The company already introduced one extremely functional MIDI guitar, the YRG-1000, and they’re currently trying to build funding for a professional grade MIDI instrument known as the YRG-Professional.
Read more »
Spotify has quickly emerged as the most popular subscription-based, streaming music service, eclipsing competitors like Rhapsody with its tremendous ease-of-use and its well-implemented social networking features. While the desktop versions of Spotify are extremely popular, the company only recently introduced an app for the world’s most popular tablet, the iPad. The new app is one of the most highly anticipated apps for the iPad, and fortunately, it’s a solidly implemented, full-featured way to experience the excellent music service.
Read more »
“Heroes get remembered, but Legends never die,” The Babe stated in the classic film The Sandlot. Turns out, with today’s technology, that statement has never been more true than in the music industry. And anyone who has ever questioned the mysterious deaths of some of music’s most famous legends, like Tupac, may be getting their “I told you so” moment after all. With a bit of clever visual effects technology, the music industry is now bringing their greatest stars back to life.
At this year’s Coachella Music Festival, Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg joined the stage with one of rap music’s fallen heroes, Tupac Shakur. The same team that did the visual effects for Brad Pitt’s character in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Digital Domain Media Group Inc., were able to create a lifelike Tupac who moved about the stage, interacted with his fellow performers, and even addressed the Coachella crowd.
The performance was not pre-recorded from any of Tupac’s concerts while alive. Instead, Digital Domain studied movements and physical characteristics from Tupac’s previous performances to create something completely original.
And while some have said the performance was a product of a 3D hologram, it was actually just a 2D image. In fact, it’s a visual effects trick that dates back to 1862 when it was first used as Pepper’s Ghost in a stage interpretation of Charles Dicken’s “The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain” at the Royal Polytechnic Institute in London, said illusion designer Jim Steinmeyer.
Read more »