From the The Future Of Music (June ‘06) - New Artist Model: It used to cost a lot of money to record and promote new music. Artists struggled like hell to find a patron to support them (i.e. a label). Everything was controlled and only a few artists became stars. That was the major label system. Most artists learned quickly when the recording advance money ran out that they needed other sources of income like performing, songwriting and the sales of merchandise to survive.

The new artist model says anybody can make and distribute a recording. It is much less expensive to make a record today and recorded music is only going to become less valuable to everyone over time. The real hard part is promotion. The true nemesis of the artist is obscurity. There is a glut of music out there and the situation is only going to get worse. This is the reality of the future of music, abundance and saturation. Continue reading

From Genome Technology Online July 30, 2007: If a Patented Gene Appears in a Song, Who Gets the Royalty?

Sure, genetic music was the out-of-left-field offshoot of the Human Genome Project, but we can’t deny that the field — such as it is — has shown surprising longevity. If you have a free minute, check out this newly issued patent. It covers “music generated by decoding and transcribing genetic information within a DNA sequence into a music signal having melody and harmony,” according to the abstract. The inventors listed are a couple of lawyers (hence the title of this post). Continue reading

For my inaugural post to this blog, I’d like to write about something I’ve been thinking about lately, and hopefully begin a discussion on it. Namely, what to make of geotagged audio samples and recordings. In case you’re not familiar with the term, geotagging is the practice of assigning geographic coordinates to a piece of media like a recording or photo as a form of metadata. In one incarnation, such as on the Freesound project, geotagged samples are layered over Google maps, allowing one to zoom in on any spot on the planet and potentially find samples tagged to specific geographic locations. As numerous startups and one very large corporation (beginning with a ‘G’ and ending with ‘oogle’) have realized, the commercial potential of geotagging is huge. But we hear less about its scientific potential and, of importance here, its aesthetic potential. Continue reading

French-born, Barcelona-based sound designer and artist, Philippe Faujas presents Kiln, a multi-form sound artwork presented as downloadable software, online flash composition and presumably as a physical installation (?), composed with sounds from SoundTransit.nl, where selected cycles of audio interspersed with silence, play back from multiple speakers in a darkened room with concert seating. The sounds are all creative commons licensed. Included are:

Derek Holzer (Binaural Tunnel Study, Binaural rainstorm, Seto song) * Yannick Dauby (Bats-Echolocation) * Planktone (Industry 2, Windmill) * Cedric Peyronnet (Fences And Wind) * Dallas Simpson (Binaural Environmental) * Nick Mariette (Wisdom Tooth Extraction In Binaural) * John Tenny (Desert Wind In The Hall) [via Sonic Surrounds]

Introducing the Commons Art Diagram! Download (1.5MB). This package contains the diagram in these formats: .ai, .pdf, .eps, .svg, .gif, hi-res .jpg and hi-res .png. This new art diagram illustrates how different forms of creativity — on being funneled through the CC process — arrive at the place where the ‘art happens.’ This diagram is the second in a series of “art diagrams” that MTAA began with the Simple Net Art Diagram.

Splice Re-Mixes the Music Mashup.

A new social music mixing site is re-thinking interactive audio. Splice, which is still in beta, is a community site that encourages users to submit raw sounds. Users can then build songs out of each other’s sounds. Each creation can be remixed, rearranged, deconstructed and completely re-worked by anyone else in the Splice community.

Splice’s coolest feature is the browser-based sequencer. Songs are assembled and mixed without ever leaving the browser. You can also see details about the users who contributed each track as you mix. Continue reading

Launched in 2006, Wandering Ear is a net.label dedicated to releasing field recording-oriented audio from around the world. The concept is deliberately open-ended to accommodate the unexpected. Wandering Ear is co-curated by Nathan Larson and Mike Hallenbeck.

All Wandering Ear releases are available for free download in 192kpbs MP3 format individually or packaged using WinZip. All content is subject to the copyright of the respective artists. Full permission was explicitly granted for inclusion on the Wandering Ear website. Wandering Ear releases are free to download under a Creative Commons License for personal use. Commercial usage is prohibited unless individually negotiated with the respective artists and Wandering Ear. Continue reading

DEAF 07: STEIM :: Thursday 12 April 2007 :: Start: 22:00 :: Admission € 10 : Location : Arminius, Rotterdam.

STEIM is the Amsterdam centre for research and development of instruments and tools for performers in the electronic performance arts. STEIM presents a night packed with a broad selection of essential live steps into hybrid electroacoustica. It’s all about meaning-machine interactions, emerging economies of breath and radio waves, composing the now; the merging of studio and live, of composing and improvisation; enchanted neurons; electric body energy versus the wall plugs, the state of musical impact, embedded instruments, the decisive moment of push, riffs, licks, grooves and other celebrations of sound and sounds. STEIM hosts the pioneering work of Atau Tanaka, Mazen Kerbaj and Takuro Mizuta Lippit (djsniff) – STEIM’s new artistic directors for the year 2007 – together with composer, musician, instrument designer and long time STEIM-director Michel Waisvisz. Continue reading

In his 1995 film Telephones, artist Christian Marclay spliced together snippets of actors from Hollywood films answering phones. Apple contacted Marclay, he says, to get permission to use the concept for a new iPhone ad (above) debuted during the Oscars. Continue reading