The post SoundExchange’s Digital Radio Report Marks Largest Q1 Royalty Payout Ever appeared first on SoundCtrl.

Imagine a keyboard in which you can control everything from pitch and timbre to volume and vibrato, straight from the keys without having to control any knobs, buttons, or recording software. London-based tech design company ROLI has found a way to use touch-sensitive interfaces to create one of the most intuitive playing experiences a musician could ever dream of—the Seaboard GRAND.

The heart of this device is the SEA Interface, ROLI’s patent-pending platform technology used to build pressure-sensitive touch interfaces, which ultimately allows the keyboard to function in its unique design. With this technology in place, the keyboard enables the musician to bend and control the basics elements of sound manipulation directly from the keyboard’s rubber “keys,” or “keywaves,” as they’re called by the company.

Not only does this amplify the possibilities of straightforward keyboard music, but these sonic abilities could allow a Seaboard player to more naturally mimic the sounds of other organic instruments straight from the keyboard—a function not previously available from other standard digital keyboards.

An Award- and Investment Backing-winning Musical Device

With Seaboard’s SXSW debut came the first-place award for the event’s prestigious 2013 SXSW Music Accelerator. Evan Lowenstein, emcee for Accelerator, said, “The Seaboard is clearly the brainchild of a passionate visionary who found a way to capitalize on digital technology to open up a whole new world of possibilities for musicians.”

In response, Ronald Lamb, CEO of ROLI, said, “We’re thrilled to have won the SXSW Music Accelerator. ROLI is building new bridges between music and technology, and since SXSW brings together these two worlds in a unique way, gaining this recognition here is a tremendous validation of the remarkable work of the whole ROLI team developing the Seaboard.”

More recently, the Seaboard GRAND won the product category of the Design Museum’s 2014 Design of the Year Award.

In addition to being award-winning, ROLI and its Seaboard GRAND received a notable sum of investment backing by major companies and individuals. Just last month, ROLI secured $12.8 million Series A financing. Backers include the leader of the investment, Balderton Capital (investors for LoveFilm and Kobalt Music Group), Universal Music, FirstMark Capital (investors for Pinterest and Shopify) and Index Ventures (investors for Sonos and SoundCloud).

Clearly, this revolutionary device has turned the heads of music and media investors, and ROLI plans to use some of the money to advance its endeavors, as the Seaboard GRAND is only the first in a line of music hardware and software products that the company plans to develop.

Seaboard GRAND Specs, Features and Price

As for specs, the keyboards come with three continuous pedal inputs (1/4”), two balanced audio out jacks (1/4”), a stereo headphone out mini-jack (1/8”), 9-12V DC power in and volume control. They run on OS X 10.7 and above, and they can be controlled via MIDI and MDC. Features include Equator sound design and control mapping, continuous touch curve control, pitch curve control and rounding, real-time visual feedback, firmware updates and free upgrades to future software releases.

The Equator sound engine itself has a few unique features as well. They include FM and subtractive synthesis, multi-layer sample playback, user-definable envelopes, a comprehensive modulation matrix, independent dynamic voice control and effects, including delay, distortion and equalizers.

As expected, this product does not come for the price of a more traditional electronic keyboard. For the Seaboard GRAND Studio version with 37 keywaves, it currently comes at a price of $1,999, but for a limited time, after which it will increase to $2,999. The next step up, the Seaboard GRAND Stage with 61 keywaves, goes for $2,999 for a limited time, though once the keyboard is more broadly available, it will rise to $4,499.

And finally, the massive Seaboard GRAND Limited First Edition with a key range of A0 to C8, runs at a firm price of $8,888.88. Only 88 keyboards of this edition will ever be produced, and each will be engraved with the name of a single key, in honor of the traditional piano keyboard.

These prices come with a two-year full warranty on all Seaboard parts and expert support on-hand for setup and compatibility issues. Learning materials are also available through the ROLI website.

How This Device Can Change the Music Industry

So the question now is, why do such musical bigwigs as SXSW and the aforementioned investors, including Universal Music, believe in the abilities of the Seaboard GRAND?

Being able to intuitively control all the basic elements of sound right from the keyboard itself enables players to do much more than they could using other digital keyboards. It allows them to push the envelope of digital sound creation and take it into new directions not before envisioned or thought possible. Combining this keyboard with organic instrumental sounds and beyond will also revolutionize the future of digital music production as it stands today.

The device itself is not the only factor in its success—the hardware that makes the design possible will also be a crucial part of digital music development. The Equator sound engine, for example, can be applied to a limitless number of instruments and 3D devices. Also, the patent-pending, pressure-sensitive touch interface is a foundation for more keyboards and other instruments and devices that can benefit from such a powerful technology, which extends far beyond just musical instruments.

Clearly, the Seaboard GRAND has been recognized for its abilities and potential to propel the music industry forward, as well as any other industries that could harness its groundbreaking technology. While the keyboard may be financially out of reach for some, the sounds it can create, once also out of reach, might be just enough to make the investment worth it.

The post How the Intuitive Seaboard GRAND Keyboard Revolutionizes Music Creation appeared first on SoundCtrl.

It’s hard to imagine, much less desire, yet another streaming music player coming into the picture. Well, in the shadow of the Apple-Beats acquisition, how about a new music streaming hybrid with one of the world’s biggest companies—Google?

According to the New York Post, Google is reportedly in talks to acquire the music streaming platform Songza for a $15 million, a mere sum when compared to Beats Music’s price of $3 billion for Apple. Songza has not yet confirmed this rumor, and neither company has confirmed whether or not the deal is finalized, but the potential of this acquisition definitely impactful on the music industry.

Why Google Wants Songza

Google has several reasons to buy a company like the six-year-old curation prodigy Songza, seeing that one of its main competitors Apple made the same move just last month. Always trying to be in-line or one step ahead, Google knows it needs to step deeper into the streaming music arena sooner or later if it wants to see real success with its various music-related operations.

It’s true that Google already has the Google Play Store and Google Play Music All Access, so it’s not like the company has no foot in the door at all. But these offerings are weak in comparison to services such as Spotify, which has a $4 billion valuation, and Pandora, which has a market cap of $5 billion, according to the Post.

One of the main reasons that services like Pandora are popular is that Pandora has developed the Music Genome Project, the back-end of Pandora that came to fruition over 10 years of detailed music analysis. According to Business Insider, collecting data for one song can take 20 minutes. Pandora uses this 10 years of analysis to create an algorithm that allows users to listen to songs related in sound to the others in the playlist.

Where Songza differs is that instead of using this algorithm, it employs specially curated playlists that are based on moods, location, and activities. Google is looking to jump on owning a service like Songza to bypass the 10 years it would take to develop its own version of the Music Genome Project and to combine the features of Songza with its existing music services.

This includes YouTube, for which Google is creating a new, ad-free paid music platform (the controversy surrounding the licensing is under fire from independent labels, but this is a wholly other issue). This platform will undoubtedly benefit from YouTube’s stance as the single most popular music streaming service, even though YouTube, at least for now, plays videos rather than individual songs.

Apple turned to this similar type of music curation experience when it bought Beats Music last month, which also plays music based on location, who you’re with, what kind of music you feel like listening to, and so on. Apple CEO Tim Cook said that Beats Music is the first streaming music app service “to get it right.” Apple wanted to jump into the streaming game as the iTunes Store is slowly but surely falling out of favor as more users turn to streaming.

Surely, Google would not be far behind.

What This Means for the Music Industry

The music streaming services most affected by this arrangement would clearly be Pandora and Spotify (and any other music streaming service, for that matter). Though Songza doesn’t currently have as many subscribers or bring in as much revenue as either of the two companies, with the backing of Google, Songza could grow, and grow fast.

For one, Pandora and Spotify may be more agreeable with potential buyers, such as Amazon and Yahoo!. These two tech giants will be looking to follow in Apple and Google’s footsteps before they’re left in the dust, as they’ll need to remain competitive in the music streaming market.

Chances are, both Pandora and Spotify will carry a much more massive price tag than Songza. Also, if both platforms are bought, they will stipulate to not be affected much in terms of leadership and operations. Basically, they may agree to be bought out but only under the condition that they continue running as they are currently.

But what if these services do end up changing even slightly under the ownership of a larger company that buys them out—which could definitely happen after the Apple/Beats and Google/Songza acquisitions officially go down? Will Pandora and Spotify be forced to adapt curation styles more aligned with Songza and Beats, or will they be allowed to maintain their own algorithms? And if they are left alone in that regard, will those bigger companies enable them to have outside talent that could further improve those very algorithms?

In short, music fans have a very good chance that the streaming platforms they have come to depend on, after abandoning CDs and mp3s to an extent, could change once again, and listeners will have to adapt to those changes.

Would these changes be for better or worse? It’s hard to tell at this point. There’s no way of knowing whether Pandora or Spotify or any other decently sized streaming services would be willing to be bought out in the first place, let alone allow the larger company to change their current offerings in any way. But it’s something music lovers will need to keep an eye on in the coming years as ownership of these companies begins to change hands.

Whether or not Google will end up buying Songza is up for debate, and neither side has made comments to confirm the rumors reported by the Post. But with tech goliaths like Apple and Google taking one step further into the music streaming market, this could make some serious tidal waves in the industry as we know it.

The post Google & Songza vs. Apple & Beats: What Does This Mean for the Music Industry? appeared first on SoundCtrl.

Want to enrich your music festival experience? These days, you can have apps for just about everything you can think of, and navigating music festivals is yet another way apps are being put to good use. Many festivals are turning to apps to keep their attendees in the loop about any and all aspects of the event, but some are better than others. Here are a few different apps that you should consider downloading the next time this music festival comes around.

Ultra Music Festival

The app for 2014 had several new features in addition to the photo filters, Facebook and Twitter integration, artist lineup and a fan wall to communicate with other fans, which the app already had. Friend Finder updates your location every time you open the app and can be seen by everyone you share your location with. UMF TV allows you to watch exclusive videos of the festival content before the fest, and during the festival, this feature includes access to highlights and live streams. The Schedule Maker helps you plan out your Ultra experience in advance and shares your picks with friends. Discover helps you find out which artists people are most excited to see, ensuring you’ll learn more about artists you may have never heard of. Its 2015 app promises to also include user schedule and set times, in addition to plenty of other handy new features.

New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival

Also known as Jazz Fest, this festival’s app includes a variety of features to help you navigate this popular New Orleans event. Not only will you have access to the music lineup, which lets you see every artist and where they are playing, filtered by day and/or stage, but you can also customize a schedule for each day and easily add and remove artists as the day goes on. You can also go to Artist Info to read bios, watch videos, visit official websites or go to iTunes to download music from any artist performing at the festival.

In addition to music info and the schedule, you’ll also gain access to the food lineup, which contains a massive list of every food item available at Jazz Fest and which area you can find it in. You can even schedule what foods you want to eat at specific times. There’s a handy zoomable and scrollable map of the entire festival grounds where you can click on a stage to see its lineup for that day. You can also use social integration that allows you to take pictures, caption them automatically with the artist and stage info and send them to Facebook, Twitter or both at the same time.

Coachella

Perhaps one of the most high-tech of the festival apps, Coachella’s app allows you to fill in your social media and notification preferences, which include emergencies, ticket info and so on, and then uses that information to activate your wristband directly from your phone. It provides a user-friendly interface for seeing the artist lineup and schedule in several different formats: by grid, timeline or list, by day or by stage. It includes weather updates on the front page and other Fun & Essentials features, such as where to find charging stations, dodgeball and the fest’s infamous Ferris wheel. The My Coachella account you create will also enable you to update your status, post photos of performances and other events and tag your friends as well. Plus you have access to Eat & Drink which helps you navigate all of the vendors, attractions, retailers and other points of interest.

Austin City Limits

This year’s version with all of its updates hasn’t been released yet since the festival isn’t for another few months, but last year’s app should be an indication of what’s to come. You can browse the entire list of set times to know when and where all of the bands you want to see are performing, and you can add your top bands to a personalized My Favorites list that you can share with friends. Learn more about those artists and even discover new bands by going through descriptions and music videos, and you can even interact with the band and fellow fans without ever leaving the app. The Austin Eats & Art Market section provides both menus and descriptions of different restaurants and vendors throughout the grounds. Push notifications and alerts keep you updated on all of the latest happenings of the festival in addition to a few surprises along the way.

You’ll find many more music festival apps where that came from, though note that they will range in quality, especially when it comes to being slow and buggy. Try these out for a good taste of what app developers have made possible for boosting your fest experience and helping you enjoy every aspect of the event possible.

The post This (and Next) Summer’s Standout Festival Apps appeared first on SoundCtrl.

If you’re a musician in the US, there’s a good chance you’re familiar with the names ASCAP, BMI and SESAC. You also likely know that joining one of these Performance Rights Organizations (PROs) will help you collect royalties that you’ve earned as a songwriter.

What you may not realize is that the world of rights and royalties is incredibly complex, and in this increasingly global, multi-platform world, you might not be quite as covered as you think. In this article, we take a look at the royalties PROs can and can’t collect and demonstrate how a publishing administration partner like TuneCore Publishing Administration, in conjunction with PROs, can help ensure you’re able to get your hands on all the revenue your songwriting earns.

Performance is Just One Type of Right

The first misconception held by many songwriters is that copyright is a single thing – like a blanket – that covers your work. The reality is it’s more like a quilt, and if one piece of that quilt is missing, you may be left in the cold.

There are multiple ways compositions generate revenue for songwriters. Organizations like ASCAP and BMI cover one of them: the P in PRO, performance. While Performance encompasses much more than an actual stand-on-the-stage-and-play situation, it by no means covers all uses of a composition. It’s these other revenue generators that, if only work with a PRO, may represent earnings that are just sitting on the table.

What is Performance?

Performance quite obviously includes live public performances, but it also includes radio play and even having your composition played as background music in public place like a restaurant or hair salon. As a group, these are referred to as “Analog Public Performance,” and the royalties they generate are based on negotiations between your PRO and the radio station, TV network, bar, restaurant, airline, office, etc. using your composition.

Thanks to the Internet, royalties are also collected for “Digital Public Performance.” This category is then subdivided into Non-Interactive and Interactive “Streaming” Public Performance. Non-interactive services are those that don’t allow you to pick songs, create playlists or otherwise “interact” with the music. Pandora, iHeartRadio and Sirius XM Satellite Radio are examples of non-interactive platforms. Interactive service examples are YouTube and Spotify. For any of these uses, there’s no set royalty rate. Royalties are negotiated between the PRO and the other entity and are often based on a percentage of that entities’ gross revenue.

If the song you wrote is performed or broadcast publicly in one of these settings and you’re affiliated with ASCAP, BMI or SESAC, you can feel safe in the knowledge that they will collect on your behalf and pay you…at least in the United States.

US-based Organizations Cover the US

Copyright regulations are laws, and as such, they are codified and enforced in each territory. Much like how the NYPD won’t be giving you a traffic ticket in Los Angeles, ASCAP isn’t collecting for you in Germany. Or France. Or Malaysia. Those countries have their own “Societies” for the enforcement of copyrights and collection of royalties.

Fortunately, there is a measure of cooperation. ASCAP or BMI will work with the society in whatever country to get you paid, but again, this is just covering PERFORMANCE. So imagine you gave permission for your song to be used in the TV Show Breaking Bad. It airs in the US so your PRO collects any resulting performance royalties for you and pays you. As a result of the song being in the show, your iTunes downloads skyrocket, and again, your PRO will get you paid. But if the show airs in Germany, and as a result your song catches fire on Spotify in that country, you will only get a part of what you’ve earned – the performance royalty. You will NOT receive royalties collected as a result of the streaming mechanical or download mechanical. Instead, the society for the region will collect the money on your behalf, but because they don’t know who to pay, they’ll just sit on it. By contrast, once you’ve registered with a company for publishing administration, they will track rights and collect on your behalf worldwide.

These internationally-earned royalties can really add up, too. For example, TuneCore Songwriter Brian Crain, an ASCAP member, had distributed and even licensed his music for a few years before he learned that his PRO wasn’t collecting everything he’d actually earned. As soon as he signed up for TuneCore Publishing Administration, TuneCore was able to get $4000 in download mechanicals to him that had previously just been sitting in Canada.

Image via indie-music.com

“Performance” Covers a Lot, but Not Everything

In addition to performance, royalties and revenue are generated when your compositions are sold, streamed through interactive services, downloaded or when they are licensed for use in something like a TV show or movie. These avenues can be incredibly lucrative. But if you’re just relying on a PRO, the money generated by them may never make it into your pocket. In these cases, a publishing administration service is essential. In the past, these services were only available to the most elite tier of songwriters. Today, in much the same way that digital has opened the door to global distribution for all; any songwriter can get a publishing administration partner.

Mechanical Royalties

If you write a composition and someone copies, prints, covers or even transforms it into something else, they owe you a “Mechanical Royalty.”

Reproduction is one of the main ways compositions generate mechanical royalties, and these royalties are owed on every single CD, LP or other physical manifestation of that composition. As soon as that “thing” is made, the royalty has been earned. If a million CDs are burned but not a single one sells, it’s still a reproduction of a million units. Every time a sound recording is downloaded or streamed (interactively) on digital stores like iTunes, Amazon or Google, it counts as a separate reproduction, as well.

Mechanical royalties are also collected for “Derivatives” of your composition. An easy example of a derivative use would be someone doing a bossa nova rendition of your hip-hop song. While this transformation no longer counts as a reproduction, you’ve still earned royalties for the use.

According to the letter of the law, derivative works include any work based on one or more pre-existing works. This could be a translation or new musical arrangement but could also include a dramatization, fictionalization or even a movie version. A good and complicated example of this is “Born in East LA,” a movie that was derived from a Randy Newman composition that was derivative from Bruce Springsteen’s composition, “Born in the USA.” Every time the movie gets shown, Bruce earns mechanical royalties.

PROs like ASCAP, BMI, SESAC or SOCAN do not collect mechanical royalties. This means any revenue you’ve earned from streams, downloads (outside of the US & Latin America) and physical sales are not collected by ASCAP and won’t make it into your pocket. While the royalties will be collected per the law by places like digital stores that stream and sell downloads outside the US & Latin America, without publishing administration, they won’t know who to pay. The money, therefore, goes unclaimed. A publishing administrator, on the other hand, will register your information with these sources, song by song, and you’ll collect the mechanical royalties that you’ve earned.

Licensing

If we go back to the example of the bossa nova rendition of your hip-hop song, we’ve already established that mechanical royalties will be collected on your behalf, but you may not ever receive that money. What we haven’t yet discussed is the fact that you have to give permission to the band in order for them to legally do the rendition in the first place. That permission – or more accurately, the licensing of your intellectual property – is another avenue to revenue. It’s also a road the PROs can’t help you navigate.

Licensing comes into play with more end uses than just our derivative examples. Use of samples requires a license, and as we’ve seen through lawsuits against Robin Thicke, Jay-Z, Moby, Kanye West and scores of other artists, failure to obtain the correct permissions can have costly results. Also in this category are things like mobile ringtones, printed sheet music, online guitar tabs and even lyrics posted online. Legally, anyone doing these activities without the proper license is in violation of the law.

In a lot of these cases, it’s completely plausible that the violators are unaware of their crime, but ignorance does not make them innocent. They’ve violated your rights and you could sue them. But first you’d have to find the unlicensed use, then you’d have to figure out how much it’s worth and then good luck actually collecting. ASCAP and BMI can’t help you here. A publishing administrator can.

[Closing]

We at TuneCore believe very strongly that Performing Rights Organizations are an incredibly important and necessary tool for songwriters and publishers. They are the watchdogs of the airwaves, so to speak, with the enormous task of collecting performance royalties from thousands of sources. However, we also see how this is a very different business than it was back in the days of physical media on brick-and-mortar store shelves. Now, both the media and shelf can be digital and the channel and audience can be anywhere in the world.

Every year, millions of dollars in royalties that are collected on behalf of songwriters by societies all over the world just sit, unclaimed, because the songwriter doesn’t have a publishing administrator locating and obtaining these funds. That’s why it’s crucial to have a publishing administrator in addition to your PRO, so your share of those millions of dollars makes it into your pocket.

Jamie Purpora has 20 years of experience in music publishing administration. Prior to joining TuneCore, Jamie helped make Bug Music one of the largest independent music publishers in the world, serving first as Director of Royalties then becoming Vice President of Administration.

At Bug, Jamie was responsible for overseeing publishing administration the company’s entire catalog, which consisted of over 300,000 copyrights. Clients included Willie Dixon, Muddy Waters, Iggy Pop, Stevie Ray Vaughan, The Guess Who, The Kings of Leon, Johnny Cash, Ryan Adams, Wilco, Tradition Music, Average White Band, Del Shannon and the Trio/Quartet Music catalog. Jamie also served on the Publisher’s Technology Board at the Harry Fox Agency for the last three years.

The post What You Don’t Know About Publishing May Be Costing You appeared first on SoundCtrl.

Although the app is a few years old to the music technology sector, Biophilia by multi-instrumentalist, producer, and all-around unorthodox thinker Björk continues to flourish in appeal and potential for use. Back in 2011, Biophilia was developed into a multi-sensory “album-app,” a handheld experience that integrated and complemented the Icelandic legend’s unpredictable, futuristic music.

Biophilia’s momentum is anomalous to the world of technology, even as far as music apps go. Not only has it remained one of the most original and boundary-pushing music formats of the last several years, MoMA has announced that Biophila will be the first mobile app to join the ranks of the museum’s permanent collection.

It is all too fitting that Biophilia is becoming an everlasting resident, with its own exhibition space in the Fifth Avenue fine art institution. MoMA is heralded for its pause-inducing and convention-defying exhibitions, and Biophilia’s unique integration of Björk’s music and an interactive format will certainly fit the museum’s bill.

MoMA will host Biophilia as the museum’s first permanent app exhibition.

Aside from the eccentric nature of Björk’s musical style, many museum visitors will have their very first interaction with Biophilia in an educational environment, rather than a musical or performative one. Bjork’s passion for interactive education is seen in her Biophilia Educational Program, which gives the app a dimension of character and purpose that extends far wider than simply looking at and listening to work by an individualistic musician. The program was just announced as having gained official approval for addition to many Nordic school curriculums and is funded by the Nordic Council.

Students use Biophilia in a Paris classroom.

Biophilia contains 10 tracks of music, each with its own thematic visual and interactive connections, depicting visual components and sonic metaphors that emphasize science, nature, and our own bodies. In congruence with the Biophilia concept of Edward O. Wilson’s book of the same name, which suggests homo sapiens have an inborn inclination for finding connections with other life forms and with nature as a whole, Björk choosing the title as her collaboration’s namesake feels too perfect as well.

While awaiting more news on the exhibition, you can download Biophilia now for $12.99 from the iTunes store or Google Play store.

Below is a promotional video designed to explain and highlight the app’s strength in the classroom.

Kira is an old school music nerd with a love for all things creative; always searching for music’s common ground. She graduated with an M.A. in Performing Arts Administration from New York University. Drop her a tweet @shadowmelody1.

The post Björk’s Biophilia Joins the Big Leagues of Art and Education appeared first on SoundCtrl.

Last week’s Governors Ball Festival in New York City saw an attendance of nearly 50,000 per day from Friday to Sunday. With a high demand for a massive lineup featuring Outkast, Jack White, and Vampire Weekend, a festival of this size is a hotbed for scalpers who resell tickets on secondary markets like StubHub for astronomical prices.

Fortunately, New York-based ticket reselling startup Lyte saw the opportunity to use its unique platform to benefit sellers looking to sell off their unused tickets and fans looking to find tickets right before and during the festival. On the Thursday before the festival, Lyte began buying tickets back from fans unable to attend and reselling them at face value to an eager waitlist of fans looking for affordable tickets. Lyte also allowed festivalgoers the option of selling and buying partial passes, is they were only able to attend one or two days of the festival.

Have extra #Govball2014 tix? Sell to Lyte pain-free THRU the festival http://t.co/e84yjDdNnh. + Waitlist is open to buy below face value.

— Lyte (@UseLyte) June 6, 2014

With over 1,000 unsold tickets sitting on secondary markets prior to the festival, and an estimate of at least 500 on StubHub alone, many New Yorkers missed the opportunity to attend the festival due to high ticket prices. However, Lyte’s solution offered fair, face-value tickets for eager fans, and outperformed sales on StubHub, paying ticket sellers up to 26% more than they would have earned after fees. Despite scalpers’ attempts to inflate the market, the chances of reselling tickets on StubHub after the festival began were as low as 1 in 10, and only as high as 1 in 3.

Lyte, on the other hand, responded to 100% of ticket resellers, with an 80% acceptance rate of Lyte’s offers. Lyte sold 100% of the tickets they bought back, at or below face value. From the angle of customer service, the average time to send offers to sellers was 8 minutes, at times as low as 2 owing to Lyte’s pricing automation.

Lyte’s platform has proven to be an outstanding alternative to the unfair practices of scalpers across StubHub and Craiglist. Music fans are often swindled for last-minute tickets, priced far beyond face value, as scalpers deceive buyers into believing tickets are far more scarce than they actually are.

Lyte’s technology will hopefully become implemented in venues across America, so that fans can easily exchange ticket ownership hours or even minutes before a concert at fair prices.

“We’re just doing it right,” says Antony Taylor, Lyte founder, “This festival is about New Yorkers enjoying great music. We want to see a packed house all weekend long.

Read more about Lyte and founder Ant Taylor, visit their website to sell your unused tickets, and follow Lyte on Twitter.

The post Lyte’s Last-Minute Governors Ball Ticket Rescue appeared first on SoundCtrl.

Like most new features, Amazon is keeping the news around this release relatively low-key. And without the entirety of the Universal Music Group catalog, Amazon is clearly uninterested in challenging the obvious competitors in Spotify, Pandora, and now Beats Music. However, Prime Music’s promotional catchphrase, “Your music collection just got a lot bigger,” is a bit of a stretch for those subscription-addicted patrons who have been signed up on the other competing platforms for quite some time.

Lack of volume (no pun intended) aside, it’s likely that Prime members will gladly stream tunes through the new service if they’re already shopping on Amazon’s mobile versions. It’s like supermarket Muzak that doesn’t suck.

The post Amazon Prime Music Launches With Modest Catalog appeared first on SoundCtrl.

Record store Vinyl Pimp offered what is probably the best description of how the night will go down:

“Imagine you want to send a message to a friend, nowadays you have a wide range of choices such as SMS, Twitter, Snapchat, Email, voicemail, Wassap etc. As you wish the recipient to savour this message, you take time to go to a letter press room to find the perfect font, colour/ quality of paper, arranging the metal letterings overnight by hand to form the message, making small adjustments as you go along. Finally 12 hours later you are happy to get it pressed and sticking it in the post.”

Perhaps the most exciting element of the evening is not each individual’s performance in the first half of the evening, but the synced six-way analog jam that will start at 2am. If knob-tweaking, patch-pulling, and filter-cranking are your thing, last-minute tickets are still available at RA.

Read a bit more about London Modular Alliance and their recently opened modular depot here.

The post London Modular’s Revue #2 Tomorrow Night appeared first on SoundCtrl.

Image via Spingineer

Do you remember when your friend would pull up in his T-Bird, pull out his record collection, you’d throw them on your record player, and just absorb new music all day long? Of course you don’t, unless you’ll soon be collecting Social Security checks. But maybe your father remembers a time like that. And maybe you remember sitting with him in the living room with all of his records scattered across the floor, so he could show you what listening to music used to be like.

As you grew up, your TV and radio informed you of new music. Today, more often than not, it’s the Internet and apps: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube. What hasn’t changed is the ability to discover new tunes through word-of-mouth and live concerts. But the experience is processed a fine sieve of email, smartphone notifications, social media, or app-technology to suit your tastes and preferences. We rely on a delicate balance of mathematical algorithms and human music lovers to help us wade through the glut of artists, labels, and media companies, all competing to leverage their exposure.

We have more ways than ever to develop, discover, digest, dissect, distribute (and re-distribute) music. $9.99/month can get you just about everything under the sun, streaming right to a device that’s always on your person. You can track your favorite bands via Songkick. Check out recent set lists on setlist.fm. Identify a song (and a wealth of other info) with Shazam. Share your sounds with the world on SoundCloud. From illegal torrents to digital purchases, free albums to streaming music libraries, it’s an exciting time to discover new music.

But back when vinyl records were the baseline for audio lovers, they had their own world too. Their own music scene. The excitement of grabbing a flyer for a concert, the thrill of the literal word-of-mouth, the joy of leafing through lyrics, admiring album art, and curating their physical collection of 33¹⁄₃ and 45 rpm LPs from their local record stores. And years from now, the evolution of music discovery will bring us to new, exciting paths.

Whether you’re indie, metal, pop, folk or punk, you can reflect on past nostalgia, enjoy present technology, and look forward to future experiences. It’s an exciting time to be a music lover.

But, hasn’t it always been?

The post Human vs. Machine: The Shifting Charm of Music Discovery appeared first on SoundCtrl.

There’s no denying that music streaming is here to stay and is slowly but surely replacing mp3 downloads (2013 was the first year mp3 sales dropped below streaming sales). Now that streaming has become a popular platform, more companies are looking to capitalize on music listeners’ interest in it. As a result, two models have arisen as different ways to appease customers with personalized playlists and music discovery tactics.

Algorithm-based services, such as Pandora and Spotify, are now contending with expert curation services, such as Beats Music and Songza. Both are slightly similar but differ in ways that may sway users one way or the other. Will one type of playlist creation beat out the other?

How Do Algorithms Work?

Algorithms and expert curation have similarities in that they both involve picking songs that relate to one another in some way. But the difference is who or what decides which songs are related and how they are related to each other in various situations.

Pandora uses specific algorithms that present playlists based on songs’ similar musical traits. The basis of Pandora’s catalog, the Music Genome Project, consists of 400 musical attributes that cover everything from melody, harmony and rhythm to form, composition and lyrics.

Pandora’s catalog constantly grows as it signs on more artists and their songs, each of which take about 20 to 30 minutes to analyze and be added to the catalog. From there, users make a selection based on genres, artists or songs, and Pandora generates an ongoing playlist with songs that have related musical traits based on the Music Genome Project analysis.

Algorithms are sometimes shunned for not creating “satisfying enough” playlists that are too computer-based rather than curated with a real person behind the scenes. Musical trait matching can feel robotic after a time, and it may be a bit harder to discover new music that you might like, versus playlists that run more smoothly than a computer-generated ones.

What About Expert Curation?

Beats Music, on the other hand, has a team of curators, who also analyze songs based on various musical traits. But instead of entering them into a database that chooses the playlists’ songs for them, the curators are the ones who actually create the playlists and decide which songs will go with others.

Users have compared Beats Music to the days when music magazines like Rolling Stone, Pitchfork and alternative publications were a key part of music discovery, where actual humans were behind the selections published for your reading pleasure and for you to either buy or download the album.

Beats has a few different methods of helping users discover music. Just For You offers curated playlists and albums based on any genre you choose when you first click on one of the genre bubbles in the app. Highlights are selections directly from Beats Music staff. Find It is a browsing tool for Genres, Activities and Curators. And finally, a unique addition to Beats, The Sentence allows you to fill in a sentence with a location, mood, the people you’re with and a music genre to generate a customized playlist.

Beats Music has its own naysayers who feel that the service doesn’t have enough of a social component with information about friends’ selections and playlists, which for many users is a primary way that they discover new music. Algorithm-based services, such as Spotify, depend heavily on this type of discovery and devotes entire pages and sidebars to it.

But Is There Actually a Blend of the Two?

Where it gets a little cloudy is that Pandora actually does involve some professional curation at the start, and Beats does use its own tailored algorithm.

The Music Genome Project worked for 10 years to create the base from which Pandora began the algorithm that allows it to play different related songs. With that project, experts analyzed each song before filing it in Pandora’s massive catalog to then be chosen from by the algorithm it uses. So at least at the start, Pandora does employ a bit of expert curation to catalog the songs based on characteristics. But in terms of music discovery, the algorithm takes it from there.

Beats, on the other hand, does actually use an algorithm based on certain genre choices to create the playlists users listen to. But the difference between its algorithm and Pandora’s is that Beats’ is based on a playlist of songs linked together directly by a curator rather than a playlist generated by a catalog of songs organized by similar musical traits.

Founder Tim Westergren in Pandora’s early days.

So Which Is Better?

Ultimately, deciding which is better is entirely subjective and could go either way depending on user experiences. They both have their advantages and drawbacks, and some might find that they enjoy the playlists on either one better than the other. Because both sides have free versions to try before committing to any type of subscription, users can try both to see which better suits their tastes.

So which version will win out in the end? Or will they remain on an even platform and split the user base? Only time will tell as Beats Music is bought by Apple and Songza is potentially bought by Google, which will give the two streaming services leverage and a larger talent and user base on which to grow.

Will yet another streaming model come into play sometime in the future that blows both of these models away? With the constant evolution of the music industry these days, you just never know.

Good ol’ crate digging ay Spacehall, Berlin. Image from unchiensanluki

The post Human vs. Machine: Algorithm and Expertise appeared first on SoundCtrl.

I’m sure there’s hardly an active internet user today who if asked, would actively elect to use a search return less thorough than that of Google. However, regardless of search engine preference, it’s just “type and hit search”—a quick, easy and reliable set of actions to find the content of the average web surfer.

The more someone searches and surfs, the more the user acquires a stacked history that informs future surfing sessions. This is the case for just about any search query, but when music is specified, is an artificial algorithm’s influence over “what we may like” really helpful in terms of putting new music in front of our eyes and under our mouse cursors? Will we genuinely investigate, listen to, like, and possibly become a full-fledged fan?

Where the general influence and return of search data and music recommendations are concerned, I would say things are more or less enjoyable and helpful depending on where time is spent on the web. Twitter makes recommendations for my accounts, many of whom are artists and bands, which is probably and logically due to my content being music focused. Since overall accounts take priority over the content of tweets, Twitter seems to leave its users a little breathing room to the extent of an algorithm coexisting with a freedom of choice.

You could argue that this is the same with Facebook: regardless of how many suggested/sponsored posts regularly appear on the newsfeed, users either click and listen, or they don’t. However (and this is where algorithms as a general tool can falter and fight among each other) the immediacy of change in what a user sees on Facebook—whether as a post or sidebar ad—makes its recommendation and curation power feel too forced. It feels too inorganic or unnatural to encourage expanding your musical horizons. One wrong click on  a Monday surf session and the platform or website in question will for days tell a user they ought to like this person/brand/album/concert, before that data phases out of rotation.

Where I see humans having a continuing edge over general history and data-affected curation is a better inclusion of balance, restraint, and spontaneity. Think of it like the stream of a regular conversation. A chat that starts about a visit to the beach ends in a discussion about the disparity between heavy metal’s lyrical content and nations’ global economic status. If no one explains how things went from one to the other, jumping directly between these topics would lead to abrupt non-sequiturs, incurring confusion or frustration for any onlookers.

Image via Gallo Images/Thinkstock

That’s where data-based curation seems to still lack some finesse. People still have to engage with a link or a streaming file or an artist page in order to learn more and potentially become a fan. But algorithms and anything with a “you may like this” premise can only make suggestions based on what shows up in a database or list from a platform. This makes the presentation of new music very definitive rather than gradual, unlike the natural change of topics in a normal conversation. Algorithms lack the ability to incorporate segues and the incremental transitions to connect those segues. Right now, artificial curation focuses on providing content that has already been engaged, without knowing why, or without factoring in how often.

For even more finely tuned curation/ad suggestions for bands or albums, again, the digital can only go so far into accounting for your preference for “X-band” and the artificial placement of “Y-band.” Perhaps the two outfits are listed under the same genre, BPM, or record label, in front of your eyes and ears. If “X” and “Y” turn out to indeed be similar in genre, the recommendation will feel more organic and likely increase the chances of the newly suggested artist’s music being engaged. Even then, this method of curation relies on a stepping stone mentality and doesn’t account for the spontaneous outliers and blind explorations that humans still like to make and promote, as is evident in rising artist features, blog mixes, or potpourri playlists. (Record of the Day is a great example of this and it is one of my favorite go-to sources for discovering new artists that I end up following and watching develop over time, should their music gain traction.)

Perhaps if artificial and programmed curation is eventually able to negotiate between the “six degrees-esque” suggestion system, and remain unaltered by the incorporation of outlier artist explorations, human curation will be given a stiffer run for its money. Presently, history-based curation will continue to offer a pattern of very similar music, or any content where Facebook is concerned. On the other hand, human-powered curation outlets can choose to take a week to highlight an unexpected album or band without grossly throwing off the expectations of its listeners/readers/followers.

Unless algorithms start surveying users to determine why an individual engaged with a random album of polka favorites on Facebook, Amazon, etc., (and who would even take the time to fill out questions every time they clicked something music related?), in my opinion the bluntness of artificial curation will remain the primary “weakness” of data-sourced curation against human music selection and suggestion.

Brooklyn’s Northside Festival will feature a panel this week titled “Human v. Machine: Music Curation in the Next Century,” including Nue Agency’s Jesse Kirshbaum, producer Just Blaze, Syd Cohen of Next Big Sound, and Erika Elliott of Summerstage. 

Kira is an old school music nerd with a love for all things creative; always searching for music’s common ground. She graduated with an M.A. in Performing Arts Administration from New York University. Drop her a tweet @shadowmelody1.

The post Human vs. Machine: Big Data and the Artificial Recommendation Engine appeared first on SoundCtrl.

Dziga Vertov’s 1929 Man with a Movie Camera is one of the first instances of modern media commentary on humans’ relationship with technology. The film employed a variety of new film techniques to arouse interest and fascination with modernism, bringing people closer to the technology that would rapidly integrate into daily life. Part propaganda for Marxist ideals of society and part experimentation in futuristic art, Vertov’s film predicted only the slightest elements of how deeply integral technology would become to human life.

Now, culture and technology are inseparable—any artistic commentary on the matter is redundant at best. We’ve seen and read the dystopic fictions by Rand, Orwell, and more recently Ishiguro, that as high-schoolers and college students, seem only like grim, exaggerated harbingers of an eerie, homogeneous future.

Alas, we’ve arrived; and it’s just as grim as it is joyous. We need not pick our own music, books, or movies with best friend computers and phones making spot-on recommendations, removing ourselves from the curatorial process, paradoxically reminding us that we have a right to choose. For every bit of mechanical recommendation, there is a purported human hand gently pushing us in a direction in which we are more or less likely to wander.  We blindly trust the ingenuity of companies that sell headphones, ad space, and cell phones, because by adding one layer of technology to our lives, we can ignore a multitude of others.

We’re in an era of access, which opens up the market for both limitless discovery and blatant corruption. Spotify is one of the most brilliant platforms of the decade, but also leaves artists pennies as payment for thousands of plays of a song—precisely why you won’t be listening to Four Tet, Thom Yorke, or Colplay on Spotify. As these issues are analyzed, tried, and reconsidered, we risk upsetting the delicate balance of a system that offers us an opportunity to consume more music than ever in the past while slighting the people that make it. It might not be so bad to shake things up.

Image via Mashable

That being said, we owe ourselves a good look in the mirror to reflect on our habits as consumers and arbiters of taste. Music is human, because art is a natural human expression with or without a robotized industry, and we still have the grace of intellect and emotion guiding our interests. It’s great that our eagerness to share music at unthinkable rates enables programs to do the heavy lifting, sifting through 1s and 0s of data that link one song to another. Still, Spotify, Pandora, and iTunes lack the focused and personal recommendation of an experienced musician who’s been gigging for 20 years, a music writer now paring down a title for best search engine optimization, or a record shop owner struggling to keep the lights on.

Technology is the transparent connector that keeps the music industry afloat, but the next seminal hit won’t be picked by record executive using Twitter to find a needle in a stack of wires—it’s the fans and their passions that are responsible for the technology affording any function at all. Despite the algorithms, music genomes, and metadata, a good piece of music isn’t interlaced with a bunch of hashtags.

One day, Artificial Intelligence may drop its first name, much like an artist’s eponymous reintroduction to the world. But the question that remains is whether hit scoring, Twitter A&R’s, and child-like supercomputers will replace the gratifying, empowering process of discovering new art on your own. For now, we’re in the clear. The numbers show that vinyl records are still popular amongst music lovers, and there seems to be no shortage of record stores in metropolitan areas these days. Tactful curation is still king, and it’s part of the reason why the culture of DJ’ing is currently at large. Computers can’t match the speed of our attentions and our emotions, nor can they predict and decode our network of  relationships. Maybe they will catch up, but we owe it to ourselves to trust our 200,000 years of musical instinct.

Brooklyn’s Northside Festival will feature a panel this week titled “Human v. Machine: Music Curation in the Next Century,” including Nue Agency’s Jesse Kirshbaum, producer Just Blaze, Syd Cohen of Next Big Sound, and Erika Elliott of Summerstage. 

The post Human vs. Machine: Balancing the Mechanization of the Music Industry appeared first on SoundCtrl.

While many of the music industry headlines of late have revolved around heavyweight business partnerships (here’s looking at you, Beats, Billboard, Apple, Twitter, and Shazam), the ever-important subjects of copyright, licensing, royalties, and the companies trying to better those sectors shouldn’t be left on the back burner.

The rise of companies like TuneSat and SongLily, and endeavors like MusicMark, do help keep these kinds of discussions alive and well. However, with music usage incorporated into so many different mediums and activities, efficient uniformity for tracking and proper payout remains a taxing effort for the industry. Tracking “performances” of tracks in nightclubs is a growing issue that has been difficult to tackle, especially where play retention and accuracy is concerned. In Germany, a country known for its widespread clubbing culture, matters concerning copyright, licensing, and payment are controversially handled by the national PRO, GEMA. GEMA’s relationship with the German nightlife scene is currently tense around changing regulations surrounding payment for performances.

GEMA’s strict publishing rights prevent YouTube plays of major content.

Now there is a system currently in testing that may prove to be the next step in smoothing over music usage in clubs—and what better place to take that effort than in one of the world’s capitals of nightlife, and most tightly written royalty and licensing regulations?

Geo Tracking Identifier, or GTI, is a new project based in Germany nurtured by the music tech firm Future Audio Workshop. The current procedures and processes upheld by GEMA for cataloging much of the song play in nightclubs often leaves songs misidentified or unintentionally unnoticed because of the less direct routes by which GEMA analyzes meta and play data of the music that makes it into club rotation. This results in lost payments for artists and lessened confidence in the overall system, which is no good for a PRO already under the lens of public scrutiny and disapproval for highly conservative stances toward ‘the free and accessible.’ The aim of GTI is to strengthen the connection between nightclubs and PRO priorities so the current state of affairs with analysis and payment becomes less problematic.

Hardware testing at Berlin HQ… pic.twitter.com/a5hJJgErQt

— Geo Track Identifier (@GeoTrackID) May 26, 2014

There are four major components to GTI’s processes:

Hardware Interface: An inconspicuous and cost-effective box is installed in a new club and continuously analyzes the music played within the venue. Going from there, data is sent to other segments of the GTI system running in the cloud.

Fingerprinting: After receiving the play data from the box interface, GTI’s system creates and utilizes its own audio fingerprint of the music being played. The fingerprinting system for GTI is designed and calibrated to contend specifically with music that gets melodically modulated, as is often the case with DJ sets.

Matching & Identification: Next in the process, GTI combs through a wide assortment of cataloged tracks, across many genres, to match the new fingerprint. At present, the system on average successfully identifies more than 90% of the tracks that get fingerprinted and the success rate is continuing to grow.

Analysis and Reports: Last but definitely not least, the information GTI acquires is placed in an encrypted database and kept securely away from public access. Here is where PRO’s like GEMA are able to then more accurately distribute the appropriately accumulated fees to the respective artists in question.

Berlin’s Prince Charles nightclub.

Right now, the main trial of GTI is being conducted at the popular Prince Charles club in Berlin.

Already boasting a success rate of nearly 100% certainly bodes well for initial confidence in GTI’s methods, and if it survives and takes hold in Germany, the potential for a “detangling movement” with music ID confusion amidst the US’s own club scene might be on the horizon in the near future. Any step that effectively condenses another piece of the heavily segmented license and compensation junction is progress for the music business as a whole, even if it takes a while to become a national or even global trend.

GTI is currently looking to engage with anyone interested in learning more about or using its system. The company team can be contacted for these purposes directly on their official website under “Contact Us.”

You can also follow GTI on Twitter @geotrackid.

Kira is an old school music nerd with a love for all things creative; always searching for music’s common ground. She graduated with an M.A. in Performing Arts Administration from New York University. Drop her a tweet @shadowmelody1.

The post Geo Tracking Identifier: Cleaning Up The Nightclub Performance Royalty System appeared first on SoundCtrl.

Make of it what you will, but the electronic dance music (EDM) market is steadily growing amidst a decline in attendance for other music genres. Clubcast is taking advantage of a market of EDM fans who are, anomalously, willing to pay to live-stream exclusive sets by the genre’s top performers.

The Clubcast platform uses minimal-loss video compression and HQ audio for its streams, ensuring the highest quality for streams across the globe. With the new platform, artists could open a new source of revenue by “playing multiple venues, countries, or continents at the same time,” while cutting the overhead costs of traveling to secondary markets.

Jamie Olsen, the lead investor in Mixify’s recent funding, drives the point even further by saying, “It also has enormous potential for DJs to be in four different continents in the one day. A New York DJ could start their Friday morning off with a live set into Sydney, Australia, followed by shows into Asia and Europe, all before it even gets dark.”

The post Mixify Launches Clubcast to Livestream Electronic Music Events  appeared first on SoundCtrl.

In addition to unique travel programming, PTA will include programming that spotlights music events and music culture around the world. The upcoming series A Day Off, will be shot by photographer Noah Abrams  and take viewers behind the scenes with musicians travelling between gigs. The network’s advisors are no strangers to the world of music and entertainment; the group includes Cornerstone Agency’s Jon Cohen, music photographer and filmmaker Danny Clinch, and music executive Marc Geiger.

PTA represents a new channel in the world of OTT, or over-the-top content, or media offered over the internet without utilizing providers to distribute the content (like cable companies and ISPs). Find out more about PTA at www.thePTA.com and check out the upcoming programming on YouTube.

The post New Travel Network PTA to Include Original Music Programming appeared first on SoundCtrl.

NYC-based music publishing company Round Hill Music is currently on a roll, signing new publishing deals left and right. The company is constantly adding to its robust back catalog of music and artists, which already includes several Beatles songs, such as “I Saw Her Standing There,” and a variety of music from Katy Perry, Carrie Underwood ,and Cee-Lo Green to Bon Jovi, Aerosmith, and Frank Sinatra. Round Hill Music also retains exclusive signings with indie bands like American Authors and writers who have written for such big-name artists as ZZ Top, Faith Hill and many more.

This full-service, creative music company is primarily focused on developing a wide-ranging roster of talented writers and music artists, and closely working with them on a daily basis to ensure each and every song becomes as valuable and in-demand as possible. Round Hill Music is dedicated not only to its roster but also to the way the company handles each client—with personalized creative attention that goes above and beyond what can be found at other music publishing houses.

Round Hill Music has recently announced some exciting news that proves their ability to continue increasing their reach in the music publishing industry. It acquired the publishing rights for the entire song catalog of multi-platinum-selling hard rock band Tesla, who Josh Gruss, founder and CEO of Round Hill Music, describes as “one of the most iconic bands from the hard rock era of the late eighties and early nineties.”

The company penned another exclusive music publishing deal in April with songwriter and producer Trey Bruce, an important part of the Nashville songwriting community. He’s written hits for such artists as Shelby Lynn, Randy Travis, Faith Hill, LeAnn Rimes, Carrie Underwood, Gary Allen and Reba McEntire. His first venture into television also resulted in an Emmy for Best Song for the track, “Where There’s Hope.” Round Hill Music also recently announced that they have once again boosted their roster with Icelandic quartet Bloodgroup, recipients of the esteemed Kraumar award, with whom they upgraded a sync-rep-only deal to a co-publishing deal.

With more on Round Hill Music, its inner-workings and the state of the music publishing industry as a whole, Michael Lau, COO of Round Hill Music, took the time to let us pick his brain and shared his thoughts on these topics.

SoundCtrl: Based on your experiences with Round Hill Music, where do you find the music publishing industry currently? Is it in a state of flux? Has it stagnated? What are some of the latest industry trends you find your company having to adapt to?

Michael Lau: The music publishing industry is continually adapting to the change in the income model, from mechanical heavy to digital streaming and synch. There is still money being made on single and album sales and that has improved on the digital side recently, but the emphasis has changed, at least for now. The latest trend is to find artists that have very synch friendly songs. We are in a very interesting time as a great synch placement can translate into people buying/downloading the song, leading to growth in mechanical royalties.

What type of technologies do you think have had the most effect on the music publishing industry in the past decade? What effect(s) do you think these technologies have had?

Some technologies and services that I feel have the most effects are:

Streaming music services – caused the transition from the, “buy what’s on the menu,” to the, “all-you-can-eat-pay-one-price” buffet model. Instead of the songwriter(s) making the .0911 per song, they are chasing the micro pennies that are generated by a single stream of their song. The music publishers, PROs and NMPA are fighting to increase the streaming rates. I’m hopeful that in the coming years this will change for the better.

Audio Detection – service such as TuneSat monitor television and can detect plays of music within television shows, commercials, etc. This allows for writers and publishers that have music performed on television to do the following: make sure they are getting paid properly through the PRO’s; to catch any synch license that may be continuing to be used outside of the agreed upon term, to catch infringing uses of their music that have not been licensed, etc.

Shazam – services like Shazam allow for music discovery that can lead to additional streams on Pandora, Spotify, iTunes Radio, Beats, etc. and hopefully purchases of that music.

YouTube – YouTube is one of the largest sources for people to listen and discover new music. But, what it also allows is for any music used that has been properly vetted can be monetized and via ad revenue (i.e. commercials, ad banners, etc.)

Round Hill Music’s Chris Caswell performing with Daft Punk, Pharrell, Nile Rodgers, and the legendary Stevie Wonder for the 2014 Grammy Awards.

How are you using technology at Round Hill Music in your own music publishing efforts? Do you see new technologies in the pipeline that could move Round Hill, or the industry as a whole, forward in publishing operations or strategies?

There are many aspects to how technology can and is used at a publishing company like Round Hill Music. We utilize one of the industry standard IP and royalty systems that allow us to easily send and receive data to and from our foreign sub-publisher, as well as royalty data from sources that pay us. With this, we will soon provide our clients a portal whereby they can download their statements in various formats, as well as provide some really amazing online analysis tools. We also utilize a creative system that I’ve developed over 20 years which our synch and licensing team uses for day-to-day music searches and pitching to clients. I used to license this system to other music publishers a few years ago, but I decided to make it proprietary once I joined Round Hill Music. This system can communicate with all of our other systems, making it a huge time saver.

We do utilize TuneSat for all the reasons I stated in my previous response. We subscribe to Digital Rights and utilize their technology to scrub ISP’s for infringing users of our music. From the YouTube perspective, we also utilize a company that has amazing algorithms that can identify and monetize YouTube user generated content that uses music in our catalog.

A few things off the top of my head that could really push the industry forward, which would also affect the ancillary industries in a positive way would be: a unified rights database (something that they have been trying to get off the ground in Europe); synergy between the many different services that are popping up now, it’s getting a bit fractured now and bringing them all together so you can get unified data would be amazing; further development of audio fingerprinting technologies and monitoring services.

You recently signed on Nashville songwriter Trey Bruce. What types of technologies do you foresee your company applying toward his music publishing career? Are there certain technologies that are better suited for particular artists, such as Trey, than others—such as different technologies for different genres?

We would utilize all the above. There really isn’t anything specific from a publishing administration and creative standpoint. I’m not talking about what he would use for his creative process, just from an A&R and synch pitching perspective.

What about the music publishing process has changed for artists due to the influx of technology? For songwriters? For music publishing companies themselves?

In general, technology has changed the “time to live” aspect of song delivery and accessibility. Thanks to technology and how systems are able to communicate now, you can deliver a catalog with thousands of songs from a particular writer, and it can be ingested into the publishers internal systems, then quickly sent out to the PRO’s, sub-publishers, etc. extremely quickly. This is important as the sooner it’s out there, the sooner you can collect royalties. In addition, the sooner it’s in your systems, the quicker you can be pitching it to artists to get cuts as well as for synch opportunities.

Where do you think the music publishing industry is heading in the future? Do you foresee technology playing a large role in that future? 

Technology will play a tremendous role in the future of music publishing. With the examples of current technology I briefly mentioned here, to new advances that are already in the creative pipeline, the music publishing industry will benefit from the creation of new income streams to better collections processes.

The post Interview: Michael Lau, COO of Round Hill Music appeared first on SoundCtrl.

The international and instantaneous connectivity of the Internet is ubiquitous, and there are but a few breakthroughs on the web that ever cause a newsworthy fuss. Speaking of ubiquity, we’ve seen as many audio-visual applications as can possibly fill the inflated music tech sector — it’s been done to death. But what if these two commonplace technological foundations were combined, refreshed, and simplified in an app that embraced change through simplicity and minimalism?

This is precisely what makes the recently launched Listen to Wikipedia iOS app so appealing—there is little more than sight, sound, and interconnectivity. Yet, as Wikipedia grows in its ongoing quest to compile the information of the world, so does the app itself.

So how exactly can we listen to Wikipedia beyond uploaded audio samples on individual entries?

Listen to Wikipedia is a mobilized version of a desktop-based page of the same name, which is one part of the blog Hatnote.” Run by Stephen LaPorte and Mahmoud Hashemi, Hatnote is devoted to cultivating “a collection of perspectives on wiki life.”

The project is fairly straightforward and enjoyable from the moment the page or app loads. Right away, users hear sounds and sustained notes that represent different changes to the collective Wikipedia database. Visually, the screen is awash with circles of varying colors and sizes. Recent changes to entries for Wikipedia databases in multiple languages (33 in desktop and 32 in mobile) can be checked off, and simultaneously shown and heard. Additionally, when circles appear on the screen, the title and respective language typography of the Wikipedia entry is displayed and can be clicked, taking the user right to the exact page with the given edit(s).

Here is a breakdown of the main color size and sound scheme:

Audio

Bell tones: Entry additions

Plucked strings: Entry Subtractions:

Pitch variation: Edit size (The higher the pitch, the smaller the edit)

Sustained string swells: A new contributor has joined

Visual

Green circles: Unregistered Wikipedia contributors

Purple circles: Automated bots

White: Registered Wikipedia contributors

Circumference: Edit size

Blue banner at page top: Information on new contributor that has just joined

This app runs in real-time and the tones that play seem to revolve around a pentatonic scale. While the experience might initially feel very passive, it can be a fascinating way for onlookers to both observe and make sense of shared knowledge without being overloaded by a rapidly moving stream of words. The presentation of these changes as sound actually provides quite the opposite experience; despite the continuously occurring edits, the music does not result in severe clashing or jarring cacophony, but a melodically pleasant, infinite stream of tones. The act of passively observing while actively listening suddenly makes “web-based audio/visual” feel intriguing all over again.

Listen to Wikipedia‘s iOS app was built by Brooklyn-based programmer, Bryan Oltman and holds some similarities to Maximillian Laumeister’s Listen to Bitcoin project.

Listen to Wikipedia is available to download for free from the iTunes App store.

Anyone who develops for Android can also get in touch with LaPorte and Hashemi, as they are interested in working with anyone who wants to create a similar app for the platform. You can also see another example of “audiolyzing” Wikipedia entries in our recent profile of the Seattle-based band Netcat.

Note: A previous version of this article stated that Listen to Wikipedia was based on the Listen to Bitcoin project. While the two share some common elements, Listen to Wikipedia is not based directly on the latter.

Kira is an old school music nerd with a love for all things creative; always searching for music’s common ground. She graduated with an M.A. in Performing Arts Administration from New York University. Drop her a tweet @shadowmelody1.

The post Listen to Wikipedia: The World’s Information as Minimalist Music and Visuals appeared first on SoundCtrl.

In a single year, the value lost on paying royalties for pre-1972 music was nearly $60 million, half of which would be earned by artists directly.  Music recorded during this era accounts for roughly 15% of the music played on digital radio, which includes some of the most influential music of Motown, R&B, jazz, soul, rock & roll, and pretty much every musical style that influenced pop music since.

The Project72 Campaign is pressuring Congress to pass the RESPECT Act (spearheaded by congressmen George Holding (R-NC) and John Conyers (D-MI)) which would demand that digital radio companies pay out royalties for pre-1972 music, under the statutory license issued by SoundExchange. SoundExchange was also at the forefront of a lawsuit in August 2013 against SiriusXM radio for underpaying royalties between 2007 and 2012, as well as fighting the Internet Radio Fairness Act in November 2013. 

Project72 is urging music lovers to write to Congress via their website at project-72.org, and to share their thoughts on social media using the #RespectAllMusic hashtag.

The post Project72 Campaign Launches to Ensure Fair Pay for Legendary Artists appeared first on SoundCtrl.

While there are many reasons why someone might like or dislike a new song, genre labeling is one factor that consistently explains listeners’ tastes.

On Tuesday, a new dimension of analysis for our collective song preferences was launched, with the introduction of the Twitter/Billboard Real Time Music Charts. Quite similar to Twitter’s pre-existent “Trending Topics,” music aficionados everywhere now have the power to affect what tracks, artists, and albums sweep across screens around the world — from the gigantic mainstays to the fresh, up-and-coming via the Trending 140 and Emerging Artists charts, respectively. The former measures in up-to-the-minute tracking of songs shared in the U.S. and can also be viewed in a 24-hour total summary. The latter measures U.S. shares of newer artists over 24 hour spans and both are analyzed and compiled via the appearance of common hashtags like #nowplaying or #np “John Doe, Song Name” #track, #song, #listen, #listening.

The real-time aspect of these charts is a magnified version of a trend-to-preference correlation. If  several artists start submitting songs that include a specific instrumentation or style and those songs start to repeatedly appear on charts like Billboard/Twitter, regardless of those songs being from different artists, stylistically similar songs flooding the charts can indicate a preference in public listening. The influx of US-altered dub/”brostep” synthesizer-charged tracks (regardless of an artist’s base genre designation) and the rise of heavy bass lines in Top 40 music is a more current example.

What though, would the very idea of music trends look like if our understanding of, and relationship with, personal genre preferences could be manually or arbitrarily manipulated?

The publishing platform and journal network, Frontiers, recently posted a clinical case study that outlines research on musical preference and concludes musical preference can be manually affected by “deep brain stimulation.” Work done with a male participant referred to as “Mr. B.,” involved implanting electrodes that were programmed to affect a specific area of Mr. B.’s brain called the nucleus accumbens, or “Nacc.”

First assessed were Mr. B.’s original tastes with regard to musical styles and music listening in general. Then, following different stimulations and incorporations of certain music styles (specifically the music of Johnny Cash), the researchers assessed and could suggest with enough confidence to publish that Nacc stimulation played a noteworthy part in Mr. B.’s new affinity for Cash’s music. The study’s implication of affinity stems from behavioral observations that include Mr. B. venturing to acquire all of Cash’s music and video performances and furthermore, not finding the music irritating, even after years of continuous and virtually exclusive playback.

Returning to today’s taste trends, it is hard not to wonder what the very term “trend” would come to mean if science progressed to a point where preference becomes as easily changed as the shirt we decide to put on in the morning. If your best friend say is, let’s say, really into jazz and you find it boring but you want to spend time together, change your brain preference and voilà — now you will both have a thoroughly good time.

Just short of a full dive into Issac Asimov-level science fiction, the above hypothetical scenario is simply one of many for where music preference could be headed. Acknowledging however, that taste trends and musical/sonic preference are indeed intertwined regardless of whether humans start poking at our minds, the real question is which side of the coin will affect, and possibly drive, the other first (think chicken v. egg)? Occasionally, Twitter’s users will work from a single tweet upwards, to create buzz around questions, people, and topics they want, and do so with relative ease if the topic is important enough to them – it’s not only about what happens in the news. Subsequently, might “the people” be the ones to start strongly influencing what artists and music get the most attention on a grassroots level? Or will the corporations win out, with companies like Billboard and Twitter setting real time trends on the path to be the next commodity of “big data” analysis, channeling that data for calculated new (or old) musical styles and then affecting what we see, talk about, and eventually trend? Sure seems like a one heck of a cycle –we just don’t know who’s steering quite yet.

Kira is an old school music nerd with a love for all things creative; always searching for music’s common ground. She graduated with an M.A. in Performing Arts Administration from New York University. Drop her a tweet @shadowmelody1.

The post Trending: Your Brain and the State of Musical Preference appeared first on SoundCtrl.

You’d be remiss not to recognize Twitter‘s cultural influence. It’s a platform that single-handedly…well, 255-million-handedly, measures local, national, and global states of affairs instantly and democratically. Save for the few countries with governmental crackdowns on social media, including China, Iran, North Korea, and now Turkey, Twitter is the realtime measurement of the pulse of the internet. Not to digress, the microblogging service has become ubiquitous in all sects of society, with a huge influence on and reflection of the shape of the music industry.

The word “industry,” to be clear, denotes the production, dissemination, promotion, and consumption of music and its effects, as not suggest composition, creation, and artistic music production.  Today’s music industry continues to sink its roots deeper into the soil of trending data, harvested in fields of news feeds, blogs, and social media shares inundated with weeds and the occasional, refreshing cultivar. Highlighting the influence of this data, Twitter recently partnered with Billboard to create a real-time chart that tracks the popularity of songs from hour to hour.  The chart feels frighteningly similar to a stock ticker, inflating confidence for labels and PR companies, while exciting the fans that invest time supporting their favorite new artists. Titled the “Top 140,” the Billboard Twitter chart has created a system of measurement that more than foreshadows an impending bubble of pop music successes, it may very well portray the hubris of the music industry at large.

It’s hard to find a distinction between the words “trendy” and “trending,” the latter of which is more aptly suited to bursts of social media presence, the former to cringe-worthy memories of your high school apparel. So what musician in today’s industry wouldn’t want to be a trending artist? And what musician, unblinded by the perils of trapping label deals and a lack of artistic integrity, would want to be trendy? The words have become more synonymous over the years, as trending topics in the news and on social media shift as rapidly as adolescent tastes in music and fashion.

It’s disconcerting that these charts, along with certain record labels that intend to use this data to sign up-and-coming talent, will inspire a generation of young musicians to use Twitter as their primary outlet on the road to success. The Billboard Twitter chart offers a daily emerging talent list for artists that have less than 50k followers and have never broken onto the top 50 of Billboards “Hot 100” chart, but the message is the same: if you can garner enough attention on Twitter, you too can get earn a place on the Billboard chart.

We’ve created an industry where popularity is more easily achieved than monetary success, a point to which some would argue properly places value on music and not money. But the landscape stretches far beyond the tensions between art and commerce. We’re at risk of plaguing the industry with relentlessly hopeful artists that could take a by-any-means-necessary approach to procuring a fanbase, good musician or bad musician. We’re giving influence to those who exploit a system where virality trumps merit, before merit begets attention. And this doesn’t consider the worrisome potential of labels pumping money into street teams, PR companies, or engaging fans on Twitter to boost an artist’s visibility in exchange for rewards.

This doesn’t imply that the real-time charts are inherently bad, but it’s important to realize that data is meant to be analyzed in context. Billboard is a reputable outlet for music data and news. And Twitter is unarguably one of the most powerful social and political networks that the world has ever seen. But those reputations could easily work to manipulate the influence the two superpowers have over modern culture, even if their intentions are good.

We shouldn’t let numbers blindside us into believing that Twitter, of all places, offers a definitive rundown of who’s hot and who’s not. If anything, the charts offer some transparency into just how fickle modern consumers’ tastes are (in one hour alone, I watched Iggy Azalea jump from who knows where to #1 on the chart, as Ne-Yo was knocked swiftly from #3 to #20). Twitter and Billboard recognize their own potential as omniscient tastemakers — it’s the same kind of trickle-down popularity to which many of us have grown accustomed and ambivalent. But as the industry approaches the height of a transition in music consumption, we shouldn’t tilt the already shaky platforms that underpin the future of music and artists.

The post Question Everything, Including Billboard Twitter Charts appeared first on SoundCtrl.

DELOOP comes in two models — the SPORT edition constructed of waterproof ballistic nylon, and the DELUXE edition constructed of full grain Nappa leather, in smooth and quilted variants. The interior of DELOOP has ample space and compartments for carrying a variety of personal belongings, including cell phones, credit cards, flash drives, and additional cables. Plush lining and strong EVA padding make the universal headphone case an obvious winner amongst the flimsy bags and cases that often come included with even more expensive headphones. The mesh shoulder strap and A-frame shape of the bag make it easy to wear as an accessory, as well as fit into larger bags without shifting around during travel.

Founded by Wil An, Ton Choi, and Yen Lim, Orbit Concepts’ goal is to bring well-designed, comfortable products to the culture of music that they love. Inspired particularly by the culture of vinyl DJing, Orbit is creating comfortable, intelligently-designed solutions for the customized gear and tactile objects that are inseparable from playing and experiencing music. 

Orbit Concept’s Kickstarter is offering a number of rewards for pledging, including a branded USB key, a portable battery bank, and multiple combinations and versions of the DELOOP headphone bag. The highest pledge level receives a DELOOP as well as Orbit’s popular Jetpack DJ bag. If you’ve invested in a pair of quality headphones, you should certainly consider investing in a smart, protective case.

The post Help Kickstart DELOOP, a Luxury Bag for Premium Headphones appeared first on SoundCtrl.

By Brian Parker

In trying to introduce an album that combines elements of ambient, experimental, jazz, and classical music, all of the verbal options seemed esoteric at best. Music that exists in this realm often has an unfortunate “intellectual” air that deters even the most enthusiastic of self-proclaimed music lovers. But for netcat, a three-piece experimental/improvisational outfit based in Seattle, complex composition, customized technologies, and sharp musicianship culminates in compositions that shoot down the preconceived notions of such styles, with music that is strikingly approachable and emotional.

David Balatero, Brandon Lucia, and Andrew Olmstead began playing together at The Racer Sessions, a series of improvisational performances organized weekly by a collective of explorative musicians. Balatero and Lucia actually met years earlier through the same computer science program at the University of Washington, where the musical concept for netcat was first born. The philosophy seems deceptively simple, “What if we could take network traffic and turn it into sound?” This concept evolved into a performance piece featuring a setup of eight laptops communicating simultaneously on stage, with the musicians configuring the network, pulling cables, and finding new ways of refining and curating the sound — hardly simple.

The refined performance piece would become netcat’s first song of the same name, appearing on their debut album Cycles Per Instruction. The album combines each member’s computer programming acumen with their skill on conventional instruments: Balatero on cello, Lucia on drums, and Olmstead on synths. The result is a human, natural expression, seemingly devoid but full of electronic and computerized elements. The atmospheric qualities of many of the sounds — pads, drones, noises — seem perfectly harmonious with the rawness of tactile instrumentation.

Cycles Per Instruction comprises code developed by the band, each informing a different mode of performance by the members. Some code are set off and continue generating sounds infinitely, while others respond generatively to their environments. For example, “The Internet is an Apt Motherfucker” features a code that interprets the syllables of a chosen text (in this case Wikipedia articles) that creates a sonic gibberish that sounds like eerie, chattering human voices.  Lucia explained that the details of the code were fine-tuned extensively to achieve convincing familiarity. “The stat model has nuance and we iterated on it to make it sound more and more convincing, and we processed the sound to vocode it. There’s a component that helps us understand the sentiment of what people are saying.”

netcat relies heavily on their classical and jazz backgrounds, and part of the creation of Cycles Per Instruction involved improvisation sessions that challenged the musicians to create structure amidst the programming on the album. Balatero posed the question, “If we’re going to have a 20 minute piece, how do we create contour?” which provides the basis for netcat’s critical level of musicianship on cello, synth, and Chango, a playable, light-controlled computer synth developed by Lucia. This approach to improvisation allows the band to harness the computers’ randomness thoughtfully, creating a futuristic and emotive conversation between man and machine. “We give it a framework, and it makes choices as data flies by. And so do we as human improvisers,” says Balatero. “It’s a theme that comes up throughout the pieces — the computer and humans are playing at the same time,” says Lucia.

While netcat’s Cycles Per Instruction is available on the popular digital avenues, the band wanted to democratize the release format in an entirely novel way. The band put the code for the album on GitHub, the online software development collaboration platform, which programmers can build out and re-create the album piece by piece. For non-coding musicians, many of the synths on the album are available for download as well, which can be used as standalone instruments or integrated into DAWs. The complexity of recreating the code is a point of enthusiasm for the band. “We were thinking about complex ways of releasing the music that would complement the amount of complexity in the music…You have to  do a bit of work, and you can feel a bit of the work that we put in when we were doing the hacking up to getting it built,” says Lucia. “You can feel the process.”

There are multiple philosophies and concepts woven together in Cycles Per Instruction: improvisation, computerization, democracy of software, building and breaking technological barriers between artist, art, and audience. But through the mystified intricacy of computer programming, netcat creates a really solid, beautiful piece of music. As the band says, “netcat is an accessible, familiar approach to the complexity of computers.” netcat shows us that computers can reflect of our own dedication to organizing thoughts and ideas, and the result, if successful, leaves behind a product that transcends the medium altogether.

Check out netcat’s Cycles Per Instruction on BandCamp, take a stab at the code on GitHub, and dig in to the other artists on their record label, Tables & Chairs.

 

The post The Organic, Computerized Complexity of netcat’s “Cycles Per Instruction” appeared first on SoundCtrl.

New social network Dropp.fm was created by founder Parker Lieberman in an effort to help people discover, collect, curate, and share new music. The service eliminates reliance on license services to experience and share with friends, while making it simple to collect custom record collections via third-party hosts such as YouTube and SoundCloud.

The social network features a news feed, much like Facebook, but is described by Lieberman as “Pinterest for music lovers, making organizational sense out of vast music collections amasses all over the web while introducing users to a host of new music they would never ordinarily discover.” Dropp.fm’s beta version hits today, so we exchanged emails with Parker to talk the new service’s functionality, who it’s for, and what’s next just in time for its release.

SoundCtrl: What type of person is dropp.fm tailor-made for? Who else will find that the platform aligns with their love of music and technology?

Parker Lieberman: One of the main challenges when developing dropp.fm was designing a system that would be useful for every type of music listener, not just the heavy or light listener. The final design of the site allows any type of music listener to experience great new music. The heavy user can utilize all the features that dropp.fm has to offer and the light listener can simply log on and click play.

What genres of music and/or artists are most extensively catered to, covered, or loved by users and the platform itself?

Dropp.fm bucks the tradition of classifying music by genre or artist and this really opens the system up for discovery. Dropp.fm is all about trusting the people you follow to share great music with you regardless of genre or artist.

Can you define the words “lasting musical experience” from your mission statement: “The mission of Dropp.fm is to enable lasting musical experience among our users, clients, and coworkers.”

A ‘lasting musical experience’ is one that goes past just the initial experience of listening to a great piece of new music. Its taking that initial listening experience and growing it into a conversation with the person who shared it with you and then maybe even to seeing that artist or band with that friend and having all of that be possible because a song was shared on dropp.fm.

How much does trending play into what a user has the fastest, easiest access to? Are non-trending tracks also easy to be exposed to?

Trending is a tertiary component of dropp.fm. The first part is the newsfeed which, just as in any other social network, shows you all the new music that your friends have dropped. The second component to dropp.fm is profiles, where you can view your own playlists of dropps or go and check out anybody else’s playlists. And finally, the last component is the popular page which shows users what is trending across the network, but even more so shows users who is dropping music that the whole dropp.fm community is enjoying.

What’s next for Dropp.fm?

I have big plans for dropp.fm, but right now the only thing I am focusing on is building the best user base of music fans in the world and thats enough of a challenge.

The post Interview: Parker Lieberman, Founder of Dropp.fm appeared first on SoundCtrl.

Bop’s embeddable playlists are optimized for a variety of blogs and social network formats, including WordPress, Tumblr, Medium, and Squarespace. As Bop links to any existing instances of a song across YouTube, SoundCloud, and other streaming services, the playlists never run the risk of broken links or missing tracks if content is removed from its hosting site.

While bop is in the works to create a native iOS app, they’ve created a mobile web version of the service that fits within the dimensions and functionality of the iPhone screen. Simply navigate to bop.fm on your phone, and use the service as you would on the web.

Finally, in a collaboration with Apptui, bop has a proprietary wireless remote function that allows operation of the web player with a unique interface. This allows you to control bop over a Wi-Fi signal in your home or office without running between the computer and other spaces.

Visit bop.fm to stream music on the web or on your phone, and visit Apptui to download the remote control app.

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