Kill Rock Stars released a new video for Deerhoof’s This is God Speaking, done completely in flash animation by Akiko Carver. Ryan Catbird of MBV puts it best: “A short, unusual video for a short, unusual song.”
Read the director’s comments and watch the video after the: Continue reading...
At the 2009 International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP) in Taiwan, UC San Diego electrical engineering Ph.D. student Luke Barrington presented a new model for music analysis (pdf) that can capture both the sound of a song and how it changes over time. The system is being used for a new search engine, dubbed Google for Music, and users would search for descriptive words, like “mellow jazz”, instead of song titles, album names or artist names. Read more...
ReverbNation announced today that 1000 of its 400,000 artist members will be able to participate in a new revenue generating Sponsored Songs program, reports Hypebot. The program will pay participating musicians $0.50 per free download. In essence, they will be paying musicians to release their music for free.
ReverbNation’s plan is to embed small advertisements within the digital cover art that is displayed every time a given song is played, and thus, spread ads virally, like the music itself, over file sharing platforms and social networks. Continue reading...
Sony is jumping into the online music distribution market, as sources told CNET that Sony is attempting to deal with other major recording companies to provide music downloads through the PlayStation Network.
This comes after Sir Howard Stringer, Sony Chairman, President and CEO, said that the company can compete with iTunes by providing “something that Apple can’t” and will “grab that opportunity before Apple begins to provide support for other hardware and blocks [Sony] out.” Digital music served on the Playstation Network seems to be the answer. Read more...
Future Boy presents the 8-Bit Megamix (direct link), a two hour collection of chiptune electronica made for Kokoromi’s recent Live Game Sounds event this month in Montreal. You can download the Megamix and other mixes of different genres at the Boy 2.0 Blog for free.
The mix offers a tasty sample of low-bit music, and features tracks from Bit Shifter, Freezepop, and Anamanaguchi. Uncommon composition, coupled with the nostalgic sound of old video games reproduces an era; the 80’s and 90’s when the world was introduced to the mesmerizing ballads of Tetris, Megaman, and Mario Bros. Here’s a video from 8-bit electro-jazz band YMCK: Continue reading...
Listeners of Pandora’s Internet radio service can now view lyrics to songs while they play, thanks to a deal between Gracenote and Pandora announced yesterday. Pandora has 27 million registered users, and is looking to be profitable by 2010 through advertising.
“Lyrics are the most-requested piece of music-related information, and they are integral to the music experience,” said Ross Blanchard, Vice President of Business Development for Gracenote. “Now, through this agreement, Pandora users will have easy and direct access to the largest and highest quality database of authorized lyrics available in the industry.” Read more...
Live video streaming site Mogulus has reinvented itself, with a new website aptly named Livestream.com. The service allows anyone to stream live video, and has stiff competition with similar sites Ustream and Justin.tv. Browsing the new design of the site, I discovered the “music” channels section.
At the time of writing this, I’ve so far listened to live rock jamming on Worm Radio in a garage-like setting, a live house mix by a real DJ on Club Groove, and real jazz from central Florida at Jazz On Edge. I wonder when top-selling signed artists will adopt this sort of live streaming model. Continue reading...
Brooklyn band Grizzly Bear performed two songs from their album Veckatimest, due next week, in their UK TV debut on BBC2 show Later… With Jools Holland. They will be appearing tomorrow (May 20) on the Late Show with David Letterman.
Watch the live performance of “Two Weeks” and “While You Wait For The Others” after the cut: Read more...
TuneUp, an iTunes plugin that provides artist names, genres, track numbers and cover art for you music collection, is launching a new user interface today with some added features. Since its launch in 2008, TuneUp has over 200,000 registered users, and you can try a free version of the software at tuneupmedia.com.
Launched in 2008, the plugin does what you don’t have time to do: it homogenizes your entire iTunes library. The free version corrects 100 songs and downloads 50 album covers, but the “Gold” version, purchased for $30 or for an annual subscription of $20, give you unlimited access to the Gracenote Global Media Database of more than 100 million songs. Read more...
Depeche Mode is tearing up European charts, and electronic music resource Beatportal has invited its readers to send in remixes of the popular group’s song Peace. Beatportal is selling the track’s samples for $4, and user submissions have spanned seventeen genres, including psy trance, minimal, tech house, dubstep and drum and bass.
The best part is, you can go to the Beatportal website, and listen to all of the submitted tracks for free. The band have agreed, for the first time ever, to let the public remix one of their songs officially, and starting next week (May 26), you’ll be able to comment and vote on your favorite. Continue reading...
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