Sonic Jamming Signals

Category music videos
Iron's Maiden's newest release "The Final Frontier" hits the streets August 17th. According to an interview with Dave Murray from Billboard.com, "We breezed through the album, really. We actually finished it in six weeks. We were getting down a track a day — all playing together as a band, Bruce (Dickenson) singing, all in the same room, so there's a very live-in-the-studio feel to it. Once we finished a track we'd jump straight into doing some extra guitar bits. It was very quick for us."

Below is the track listing

01. Satellite 15....The Final Frontier (8:40)
02. El Dorado (6:49)
03. Mother Of Mercy (5:20)
04. Coming Home (5:52)
05. The Alchemist (4:29)
06. Isle Of Avalon (9:06)
07. Starblind (7:48)
08. The Talisman (9:03)
09. The Man Who Would Be King (8:28)
10. When The Wild Wind Blows (10:59)

Also released was a video for the title track on the Band's website. You can watch it here.


The Final Frontier - Director's Cut

Iron Maiden | MySpace Music Videos

Posted by Dave Gilmore At 9:34 AM Location Studio | Permalink | Comments (0)

Category music
According ot a report that came out of Norway in the past few months, those who use P2P file sharing applications to illegaly download music are more likely to buy music than those who do not use file sharing applications. Researchers at the BI Norwegian School of Management took a sampling of almost 2,000 internet users over the age of 15, and examined their downloading habits to come to this conclusion.

First they stated that users between the ages of 15 and 20 will most likely buy downloadable music over physical CDs, which should come as no big surprise. And of those users, the ones that participated in free trading of copyrighted music were 10 times more likely to go into online services like iTunes or Amazon.com and buy music as opposed to those who did not use P2P.

The lables aren't buying  into it, though. They say that music consumption has gone up, but revenues have gone down. The only way to explain this is piracy over purchasing.

What the lables are not taking into consideration by making this statement is the rules of the game have changed. The model they are used to no longer exists. When people were purchasing physical media they were purchasing the entire CD at $15 a pop. But now, people don't buy entire albums - they buy individual tracks. And the albums being produced the past few years reflect that. They try to produce a mass amount of single worthy material as opposed to an album experience. Led Zeppelin never released a single from any of their albums in the UK (their own country) and have still sold 300 million albums worldwide. But sales like that will never happen again. When you go to iTunes what are you looking for? The majority of people consume music on a song by song basis and not entire albums. Its no wonder the sales figures look different.

Another reason that the lables will never admit to as being a decline in record sales is that they are just putting out crap after crap that no one wants to hear, or are tired of hearing. How many bands can you get to dress the same and play the same sound before people just get tired of it?

These findings just support something I have always fealt. Case in point: a few years ago a friend of mine's little brother had never heard older Metallica (stuff before the Black Album). I burned him an MP3 CD of older stuff so he could check it out - equally as illegal as P2P in most cases. But this interesting thing happened afterwards... HE BOUGHT THE CDS! He liked it so much he went out and bought them. some might se this as a wash because he was just buying what I had alreay given him for free. But I didn't give him everything - only a few songs. So he liked it so much from the sample I gave him he went out and bought more.

The same ecosystem has existed for decades with fans. As a matter of fact, if Metallica's No Life Til Leather demo hadn't gotten copied a thousand times and eventually landed in the hands of some record exec they might never have gotten signed. How is THAT for irony? Fans have traded bootlegs and copies since tape recorders were invented. The bigger issue now is that we are all so connected with the internet that its easy for you to find something hosted on a machine in Turkey from your house in Van Nuys.

In the end, I think sales would go up if they stopped feeding us the same crap with every new artist that gets a record deal. And making more compelling ALBUMS instead of singles.

Posted by Dave Gilmore At 10:47 AM Location Studio | Permalink | Comments (0)

Category music recording
We all know that the world is more connected than ever each day. Almost every business type takes advantage of this connectivity. as a result of this high level of connectivity more and more people are working from home. Musicians are no different. Building your own studio these days is not nearly the cost prohibitive hurdle it used to be. A guitarist can now record a track in his home studio and collaborate with a drummer on another continent to produce music. One hurdle they have faced was the actual transfer of these tracks.between each other. These files are quite huge as they are raw, uncompressed audio mostly. And musicians were relegated to transfer files via FTP - even if they wanted to just listen to the track before actually working on it.

Enter SoundCloud - a site geared towards music professionals that helps to solve some of these issues. BY streaming the tracks from the SoundCloud servers, collaborators can quickly sample songs and tracks to see if they are interested or get the general idea - rather than waiting for lengthy downloads to finish before hearing them. Users can also allow selected people to download the tracks completely, and there is also an analytics feature that allows you to see who is checking them out. If you want to, you can also use SoundCloud's embedded player to stram your content to the web on other sites. This lets listeners leave comments about the track at certain points in the timeline so the artist can get feedback on how its coming.

Posted by Dave Gilmore At 6:09 PM Location Studio | Permalink | Comments (0)

Category distribution licensing music the future
With the changing revenue markets for music and other forms of entertainment no one is denying that the rules have changed. Hollywood and the Recording Industry are (finally) starting to realize that the Old Ways no longer apply and they are fighting a losing battle by being overly litigious. Digital media is here to stay so they better find a way to monetize it or they will go the way of the Packard Car. Their current methods include subscription-based services, ad generated revenues and blanket licensing deals. But these are all new ways to fill the coffers of the labels and copyright owners. There isn't much talk of how THEY want to change how they pay the artists and performers.

Enter The Future Of Music Coalition . From their website:

Future of Music Coalition is a national nonprofit education, research and advocacy organization that identifies, examines, interprets and translates the challenging issues at the intersection of music, law, technology and policy. FMC achieves this through continuous interaction with its primary constituency – musicians – and in collaboration with other creator/citizen groups.

The FMC is looking out for musicians they say, and have released a set of principles they say will help ensure musicians and artists receive their due compensation in the changing market place. The labels will not be amused.

The majority of the document says that people need to share and share alike. To pull this off they suggest that artists be able to audit the labels and see all of the revenues in order to keep them on the up and up. One of the ways that the copyright holders (labels in most cases) are making money these days is through blanket deals with sites. They will give them access to the label's entire catalog for a blanket licensing fee. Same with advertising. The argument here is that every digital play, download and purchase can be tracked, so there is no reason that the labels could not see how much revenue per song they are earning. And the artists want their cut just like they get on a CD purchase or DVD sale that is tracked through SoundScan and ASCAP/BMI.

The FMC is also asking that the revenues from the deals be paid directly to the artist and not to the copyright holder who is then responsible for turning around and giving it to the artist in the existing model. The artist can elect to let the labels get the money and then redistribute it to them provided that the third party distributing the money to the label (MySpace, Youtube, Apple, etc) gives the artist a statement so they can be sure they are getting their share accurately.

Another interesting idea they bring up is a 3 year limit to revenues gained by the labels for distribution, packaging, production and promotion costs. There is no denying that the artist DOES need the label in the beginning. Its the label that pays for the studio, everybody's salaries, the promotion, the packaging, the distribution, the writing, etc. So they do deserve a cut. But the newer line of thinking is that after a file is made its done - you don't need to pay a guy to press more CDs, pay a guy to print more jewel case jackets, pay a guy to deliver the CDs to the stores, or pay a guy to stock the shelves. And after 3 years the promotion of the album is pretty much done. So, if the labels are getting paid by the third parties first, they would only be allowed to do so for 3 years after the work is published. After that the artist gets their cut directly.

While the indie scene is becoming more and more popular it is harder for them to complete and get licensing deals with places like Youtube or MySpace. The FMC wants fair play for the indie guy, too. They also want to make sure that payment is equal. If Beyonce gets 30 cents for every 99 cent download then the indie guy should get the same.

This is a big one that I've been yelling about for a long time. Artists should get a piece of the litigation settlements from copyright infringement lawsuits. Right now, the only people who get money back from one of these lawsuits or settlements are the copyright owners (read "labels" for the most part). The person who actually performed the song isn't getting a dime, unless they ARE the copyright holder. That just doesn't seem fair to me. The FMC also wants to extend this to international issues, which to me only makes sense.

There are a few more line items in the document that I won't bring up here - mostly dealing with accounting, auditing and transparency.

In the end, I doubt that many of these will happen soon. I know the FMC will push for all of these to take effect, but in reality I don't see the labels agreeing to much. What I do hope will happen is that this gets the "lets throw as much stuff at the wall and see what sticks" effect. Maybe not all of them will go into play, but maybe a couple will. And this would (and should) be considered a step in the right direction

Posted by Dave Gilmore At 6:02 PM Location Studio | Permalink | Comments (0)

Category music recording

WARNING! Extreme Audio Geekiness Ahead!

There is this thing going on in the recording and audiophile communities called The Loudness War. This has to do with some of the recording techniques implemented in recent years that are causing audio tracks to sound less dynamic and more muddy. No, were not going to get into the CD vs analog argument here. This one has nothing to do with the medium itself. It has to do with engineers using compression and cranking the volume up to be as loud as the next guy so he gets noticed. Let me explain.

When recording, engineers use a process called compression. It can be either a hardware compressor or plugin in the audio software. It's main purpose is to make sure that one track is not way louder than the others. Its so when the vocalist lets out that glassbreaking scream he's not so dominant on the mix that you can't hear anything else. So, inherently, this reduces the range of sound in a recording (range being the lowest level of volume to the highest). There is no way around it, it has to be done. Compressors have been around for a long time so they are nothing new. But misused it can be abused. So what's the problem?

In most people's eyes (or ears rather) louder is better in the sense that it grabs you more easily. So, you want to grab the listeners ears you turn up the volume. And since everyone else is doing the same thing you have to, too. Else your track sounds wimpy and weak compared to their loud monster. In essence, when they use compression in this way they are keeping the louds loud and the softs loud as well. So you lose that dramatic range. Paul Lamere has a pretty good post that brings up lots of numbers and analysis.

This video gives a great example of why this is a problem.



OK, OK. I know there are bigger issues in this world to think about. But this is annoying. As the video shows, by doing this the engineers have taken the EQ and volume control away from you, the listener. Metallica's newest CD, "Death Magnetic" is a good example of this. Yes, I know, metal is loud. And I love my metal. But its loud and distorted and all at the same level with little range and it sounds bad.

Go listen to your stuff and let me know what you think. And remember - just because it's "remastered" doesn't mean it sounds better

Posted by Dave Gilmore At 12:19 AM Location Studio | Permalink | Comments (0)

Category distribution music

Last month in the Digital Media Revolution we talked about tunecore - a new service that will distribute your digital music to iTuens Amazon and many other online retailers for a fee. Recently, WaTunes has announces that it will provide the same service entirely for free. WaTunes will help independant artists get their tracks listed in places such as Best Buy, iTunes, and Amazon and the artist will get 100% of the royalties. Sound too good to be true? How does WaTunes plan on making money to keep their doors open? CEO Kevin Rivers says they are planning on spinning off a social network where fans can buy tracks and ringtones through its storefront that will also be ad driven.

With a plethora of other social sites like MySpace Music, Pandora and Last.fm it is hard to tell what newWaTunes can bring to the game. But free is free - doubtful they will have problems atracting artists if their name gets out there.

Posted by Dave Gilmore At 8:41 AM Location Studio | Permalink | Comments (3)

Category iPhone music
There are lots of cool apps in the various mobile app stores but SMule's Ocarina takes things to a whole different level. Ocarina is the brainchild of Ge Wang, an associate music professor at Stanford. He runs the Center for Computer Research in Music and Accoustics there as well as co-directs the Stanford Mobile Phone Orchestra (MoPhO) and the Stanford laptop orchestra, which uses anything electronic it can get its hands on to make music.

Ocarina emulates an ocarina flute for the user, allowing you to blow into the mic of the iPhone and press the virtual valves on the screen to emulate the sounds of the instrument. Its even smart enough to recognize changes in the strength of the breath and you moving the phone around to change pitch and attack.

Wang said he did not write the app for musicians in mind but wrote it to unlock expression and creativity in all of us. And plenty of people have given it a go. Its been downloaded over 700,000 times from the iTunes store, and hundreds, if ont thousands, of YouTube videos are available of people playing songs.  They have even posted instructions for certain songs on the site so you can jump right in and get playing.

Here's one of my favorite YouTube videos for Ocarina. Its Wang playing the theme from The Legend Of Zelda

<object width="560" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/RhCJq7EAJJA&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/RhCJq7EAJJA&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"></embed></object>

Posted by Dave Gilmore At 1:00 PM Location Studio | Permalink | Comments (0)