The next shelf stores very different products so the three meat products can easily be picked up by mistake as they look like they are in the vegi section. Poor Tesco dont know where to put these meat products so they thought they would put them in with the vegi stuff. Right.

Ive told them three times. The last guy clearly didnt want to listen.

Im voting for a sainsburys to come to our town purely because these guys act like they think they have a monopoly in the area. They are arogant. A staff member was talking to the till girl I was at when packing today and heard her say, “oh look there’s that lady who complained about me the other day”. This sort of culture issue comes only from the store manager. The culture there is broken. If you chat to anyone who works there it doesn’t take long for any if them to gripe openly to a customer.

Nomad: again a wonderful DVD background, building & swelling sounds and beats.

Project Divinity
Here’s a track from Project Divinity that comes to mind. Floating. Gentle sounds and piano float across a soothing pulsing chord layer. Gorgeous. Check it out.

James Walker
A new guy here offering up his EP of three tracks. All gentle compositions with melody in the foreground but not in your face.

New guy Matthew Baute wakes us up to a gentle accoustic composition in Road To Clarity from the Harmony & Balance album.

More from Dan Pound. Motion Of The Stars comes from Dan’s prolific hand and continues in his style of dark but relaxing productions. A bit like dark chocolate, but not too dark !

Dan’s darkness works well in this concept of the night sky and stars twinkling within it.

Carl Matthews enters the top page this month with a collection of tracks that are contemporary and chilled. Perfect for sophisticated relaxed environments such as restaurants as we as the backing to CD audios and DVDs.

In the backgrounds of cafes and restaurants everyone will stop and ask who they are listening to. Listen to FiatLux to hear what I mean.

Now, I am missing some album art here but will be back to add them soon.

Next is Valgoldsack & our great find that you guys are clearly hooked on already, Jim
Butler !

Take care all.

Peace
Guy

Take a look at Jim’s latest, Deep Energy 3 here today. More on Jim’s music soon.

I met Matt, the man behind Ishq last year when i purchased a vintage synthesizer from him. We chatted about gear and ambient music of course and Matt gave me a couple if his CDs to take a listen to.

I now tend to listen to Ishq most of the time now when i am relaxing after a long day squeezing all the energy from my soggy brain.

Ishq’s music has depth that, as the best composers within the ambient music genre can do, draws you away from this world into another where the foundations and landscape are formed by the interplaying of melody, soundscapes and layers of instruments and sounds.

More about Ishq and other Ishq projects soon.

Eosmusic.com claim they are offering an innovative Internet streamed background music service to businesses such as hotels, retail and restaurants. Nice idea. Not only this, they are only signing up artist compositions that are not registered or are to have performing royalties collected via performing rights societies. So, royalty free music. This helps businesses afford music in their business environments without the cost of additional licensing requirements. Its a great idea and differentiates Eos From Musak holdings who they see as their main competitors, however it draws Eos into a new market that is very well established and can compete better than the established corporate world of performance royalty based music licensing. Simply enter ‘Royalty Free Music’ into Google or Yahoo and you will see there are some great music providers out there already well established.

So I do not agree that Eos Music is innovative for this reason and a few others which I will now explain.

EosMusic are not innovative with the Internet streaming model. For example, VoiceSolutions inc. have been using the Internet to stream to dedicated devices for a few years now.

Secondly, the subscription model for selling music to businesses and earning monthly fees for artists is also not new. Ambient Music Garden’s background music service has been offering a subscription model for a while, as has Voice Solutions inc. The model itself is a great way for businesses to rent music, rather than purchase music that they may not use in perpetuity. Additionally, as part of the deal with both Voice Solutions and Ambient Music Garden, a churn of the music collection is offered so that the collections remain fresh and never get dull to listen to as a client or as a staff member of a business.

Lastly, EOS Music is offering artists only 25% share of the music sales. We all thought Pump Audio was being a bit tough on its artists, EOS are really slimming down their potential artist’s income. The problem I worry about is that some artists who don’t understand the value of their music will think, ‘this is 25% of something I wouldn’t get normally’.

What worries me is why EOS think they need to take such a large share? is it that their overheads are so high? paying their managers too much for so little in return? or is it that the music is a ‘loss leader’ and that the devices used are costly to manage and maintain?. Well now, I think we may have caught onto something here. You see, EOS music is really just a new front for a music on hold device manufacturer. Stated from their website meta description:

“Applied Media Technologies Corporation has been an innovator at
utilizing electronic technologies in marketing applications. AMTC is one of the largest providers of telephone
on-hold messaging solutions. AMTC introduced the first compact disc and removable memory card message on hold
systems, as well as the first Web content distribution system for on hold messages.”

Their devices cost $299 plus install ($100) whilst the monthly music service is anywhere between $29.99 and $19.99 (depending on where you look on their site) which massively undercuts Musak holdings who they see as the competition). So it seems to me that AMTC see their new EOS Music venture as a way to shift more boxes whilst attracting businesses with a low monthly fee. Artists, they may think, are a dime a dozen.

The reality is that they are box shifters with a box shifting mentality as opposed to being built by musicians and business people who really understand the innovation that the Internet can provide (i.e. you don’t need a $299 device to do this sort of service anymore!).

Ambient Music Garden for example (although we have to stress that as one of our sponsors we may be accused of being bias, but then I have no doubt that you are intelligent enough to take this into consideration when reading this article) offer a subscription based service with no minimum contract period, a monthly fee and a new mix of a full 8 hours of music (churned to at least 1 hour of music each month).

Their artists earn a full 50% of the total gross earnings, so all costs of sale and distribution are apportioned to Ambient Music Garden themselves. To me that sounds like a fair trade. The partnering of musical artistry with Internet business accument in a fifty fifty split on all earnings, not just a minority share of part of the earnings. Fair Trade Music at its best.

Ambient Music Garden’s music is distributed to the business as mp3 files at 192kb/s which is the same quality as iTunes. The music is licensed for download and burnt to CD, or played on any music player the customer wishes to use. So by using existing equipment (be that an iPod, a PC or a Mac) the costs of playing music in a business is even cheaper.

You see, we may be so bold as to say to AMTC (EOS Music) that the Internet has moved the market on already. They are not innovators but followers of sort. Musak holdings is not your competition. They filed for bankruptcy protection (Chapter 11) in February 2009 so their focus is on financial restructuring, not market share growth right now. Not only that, without providing their artists with a fair share of the music sales and also relying on devices that are costly and unnecessary AMTC (EOS Music) are not providing businesses with value for money.

Those artists who understand the value of their music will look elsewhere to get better returns for their work.

We all are aware of the old dinosaurs we call record labels, but there is an
older creature lurking in the shadows; the performing rights society. They
have been, yet still act as if they are a monopoly in many cases and in
particular, in Europe.

This case came to court in 2005, whereby, “the main Spanish collecting
society Sociedad General de Autores y Editores (’SGAE’) sued Ricardo
Andres Utrera Fernendez, the owner of Metropol, a disco bar located in
Badajoz alleging that he had failed to pay SGAE’s license fee..”

(see the full article
about how musicians and music customers can be sure they can use royalty
free background music instead of music that have royalties due here at the
Creative Commons site)

Quite simply, the court rejected the performing rights society’s claims
because the owner of the bar proved in court that the music he was using was
not listed in the societies music and thus not managed by the society. An
important point here is that Fernendez was able to prove that he exclusively
used music licensed to him (via a Creative Commons license) that was not
managed by the performing rights society. Had he mixed both sources of music
he would no doubt have been found guilty & would have needed to pay the fee.

The Creative Commons article continues by stating,

“This case shows that there is more music that can be enjoyed and played
publicly than that which is managed by the collecting societies..

…As CC Spain project lead Ignasi Labastida said: ‘This decision
demonstrates that authors can choose how to manage their rights for their
own benefit and anyone can benefit from that choice, too. I expect that
collecting societies will understand that something has to change to face
this new reality.?’”

Performing rights societies say they are there to support and protect the
artist from missed revenues but even though they are ‘not for profit’ in
reality the only interest they have to heart is their own jobs.

Sure these guys do good for artists, and have done great in the past but my
concern is that they are deliberately reluctant and can become quite
aggressive with anyone that threatens their monopoly and so deliberately
restrict artists from exploiting new business opportunities. The protection
of their monopoly and the restrictions to artists are two very different
things that are often mixed up with their own protectionism.

Who was it that said it is hard to convince a man if it means he
will loose his job?

Go check it out here:

Webweavers
Clipart For Background Music.

As long as you can create and have the stamina to continue to develop your
skills and talent, you will be able, with modern technology to create a
potential masterpiece.

Autechture recently said that it would be good for everyone to have the same
tools to hand, giving everyone who is keen to make music the same potential
as each other. I agree.

In addition, I can see that there is a lot of talent out there that whilst
they create great music, wont get their heads above the everyone else’s and
achieve some form of recognition.

The article at
chron.com (now disappeared so replaced with Wikipedia’s page and reference to the chapter 11 event) about Musak Holdings, an infamous supplier of background
music.

“Long-standing debt” ($320 million in assets and a debt of $465 million).
The article states ” a slew of store closures is also at fault, executives
said recently, as the continuing recession causes struggling businesses to
cancel their Muzak accounts.”

Well, I can see a lot of stores are suffering and closing in the current
economic downturn but there are others who are looking at ways to reduce
their costs and are looking at more cost effective ways to provide music to
their stores. Royalty free background music is of course, perfect for this
since it does not have attached to it the additional cost of performing
rights royalties due for every play of a track. Quite simply, the price you
pay up front for the license enables you to use the music with no additional
royalties due. Not only are businesses finding this a way to reduce costs,
but also a way to get a music publisher on board who can gather the right
music to fit the business need.

The Internet, of course, enables businesses as well as consumers to look for
new suppliers who can provide better products and services and this will
continue with the background music market this year with background music
becoming available from royalty free libraries who are primed for providing
businesses better deals with even better and targeted music.

Unfortunately, like most large corporates, they only see the change when it
hits the numbers at board level. Im sure the guys talking to the customers
on a day by day basis have heard the same story for a while, but for that to
penetrate the well furnished board room hang outs is another matter.

Today’s business music market looks very different to it was when Musak
Holdings started out. Whilst most of the innovation that has taken place in
the music industry has been high profile there has, and will continue to be
much innovation in the following few years.
Just watch.

In an article titled,“Music For Supermarkets” located at everything2.com Xwiz describes the creation and distruction of this album so that there was only one album ever produced.

I wonder what it sounds like in a Supermarket. Supermarkets, as we all know
don’t have an environment that works well for listening to music. However
that challenge is the one for the sound team and the music composers who
work on compositions and masters that can be heard and enjoyed whilst the
tinkle of shopping trolleys collide and the music bounces off every
reflecting surface from entrance to checkout.

Ambient Music Garden. Music for healing and therapy products.
Electronic Music Library. Complex sync licensing made simple.
Background Music Library. Music to back your business.
Relaxation Music Garden. Just listen & relax.

We are currently building up our assets and will be bringing news and comments along the way from the world of music that is here for supporting your business by welcoming in your customers, making them feel good and doing this at a more cost effective way than traditional royalty performance society routes.

Today you can see our catalogue at Ambient Music Garden where we will soon be launching our subscription service for renting music that is cleared for background use with no additional royalty licensing requirements.

We only offer chilled and feel good music. So if you like Rock, Urban, Country then there are some great other people out there that can help you better. Anything chilled, relaxing, ambient, downtempo, chillout, lounge or nu-jazz, please check us out first.

Please keep in touch & thanks for reading

I read somewhere recently a guy just stuffed midi tracks into a DAW and put up instruments and just listened to the results. That’s how he got his inspiration going. I worked on something this morning and found by accident a really nice twist to something.. So it seems to me that it can be fun to just experiment sometimes :O)

I too have felt this when composing. Once I dragged a drum midi file and put it on a lead instrument by mistake and found that the result, albeit quirky, was fun and inspirational.

Composing can be hard to keep up as a professional writer, constantly looking for fresh and new creations. Sometimes the accidents can take you down a road that you never would have thought of consciously to do new things that are not your usual mode of composition and so are exactly that which you are looking for, fresh and new creations.

Musicians rarely create something and give it free for anyone to use in any way whatsoever. They may give away music as part of a wider promotional plan to create earnings from sales these free versions attract, of from earnings for giving permission to use their music in specific ways, which is called licensing. Check out Creative Commons for more details on the most popular way that artists offer up their music. For example, they may offer their music free to listen to only in non commercial situations. But if you want to use their music for a business use then they will want payment for the use of their work.

Musicians are not hard to understand, they just want payment for their hard work. They are passionate people who love what they do. Consider (for example) a bricklayer. He would want, and need payment for his work so he can pay his bills and earn a living. Unless he is doing it for charity or as a hobby.

Royalty free music is music that is offered for sale whilst the artist retains the ownership of his or her music. Royalty free music offers the music to customers with terms that will not need additional payments for usage after purchasing the music in the first place.

Royalty Free music will be sold and therefore licensed for specific uses. For example an artist may only offer you the right to use their music within dvd productions or presentation backgrounds and not for TV broadcasting. The use of their music in certain conditions will also require different fees depending on use. For example to use a piece of work in a major international film will probably be more expensive than using music for wedding background music understandably. Expect the amount of effort and quality of the music production will also be relative, i.e. a musician will probably work on a range of remixes and edits for a film production whilst a piece of music for backgrounds in presentations will be as is.

So, back to copyright.

If you wanted copyright free music you are effectively asking for ownership of a piece of music. Now that’s expensive. Say an artist has taken a week to create a piece of music. He / she is skilled and earns well at their art and so they don’t come that cheap either. How much do you think a piece of music would cost to own? Well some people do actually want to have the exclusive right to a piece of music. Take for example a signature tune. You will probably going to play this a lot. Take for example the Intel signature tune, all 2 seconds of it. Just to own that piece of music outright would have costs tens of thousands of dollars. Had they licensed it, Im sure it would have over time cost a lot more.

But if you just want a piece of music for a specific project, for a given number of production units, within certain boundaries (i.e. time and countries for instance) you wont need it for all the other reasons you would have access to if you owned the copyright. So, its going to be dramatically cheaper to just purchase the right to use the music in this way only, and for no other use. Take that tens of thousands of dollars and knock off approximately three of those zeros and that is the difference.

So, forget looking for copyright free music, cut to the chaise and check out royalty free music for your project today. Go somewhere that has a good collection of the specific genre you are looking for and listen to a good range of pieces from different artists. Develop a dialogue with the music library and ask them as many questions as you need before feeling happy that you will get exactly what you want.

Here at Ambient Music Garden we are ready for you if you are looking for royalty free ambient and downtempo music. We don’t do much else but pride ourselves in the music that we do offer. Please take a look when you have time.

Click here to check out our ambient relaxation, chillout and downtempo music.

Creating Ambience is only partly achieved by creating the physical environment of a resturant. Music is required to create that background ambience that is not intrusive yet provides mood and feeling for the resturant.

Engaging music on the other hand will detract from the connection people will have with each other at a restaurant. So it is a challenge to get this right for many today. Traditional music is also not the first choice for many country cuisine restaurant owners. Some now are choosing a style of music that is more in keeping with the tastes of their customers rather than choosing traditional music that does not always appeal the their customer base.

Here at Ambient Music Garden we offer a wide range of ambient relaxation music that is downloadable instantly and can be used via a mp3 player or burnt onto a CD. Using our Royalty-Free Production Music License we allow restaurants to use our music within their premises without additional performance fees that resturant owners will incur over time.

Click here to view Ambient Music Garden’s Royalty-Free category. But don’t forget all categories hold royalty-free music, the royalty free category only presents the most popular chosen pieces for business use.

Music, particularly ambient music, provides an opportunity to create emotionally engaging drama when connected with the acting of a play.

Ambient music can evoke emotions from sadness and fear to happiness and relaxation. Using Ambient Music Garden’s range of categories drama clubs can browse, listen to and choose to download from a range of different artists and styles.

Using our Royalty-Free Production Music Licence, drama clubs and theatres will be licensed to use this music in public performances as well as interludes.

Click here to view Ambient Music Garden’s Royalty-Free category. But don’t forget all categories hold royalty-free music, the royalty free category only presents the most popular chosen pieces for business use.

Music for web sites and also for Flash projects within web sites is a different challenge from the graphical artistic lead design of most web sites.

As new media hits web sites nowadays it is still critical for web designers to create consistency and continue to attract the attention of the visitor. Breaks and interruptions to video feeds are common but yet risk loosing visitors to other sites and attractions at the blink of an eye.

Using compressed mp3 formats does have its challenges with quality but this is a balance with the need to offer a continuously playing piece of music to all the target customer’s bandwidth profiles.

Flash provides a great way to embed mp3s and stream or download them right from the browser. Many websites look to applications outside the browser to play a piece of complimentary music however in this way the site owner looses contact with the customer and hands over the web site’s experience to an additional application. With Flash you are able to keep the continuity.

With Ambient Music Garden music many are of a long enough length that shorter pieces with varying versions of the same piece of music can be presented to the customer depending on where they are within the website’s ‘funnel’.

Additionally, using Ambient Music Garden’s commissioning process (use the Contact Us form on the home page), website owners can have a piece of music created specifically for their website. Added to this, requesting specialist audio engineering skills that Ambient Music Garden has, specially compressed audio that enables a much lower file size for the respective length of track can be achieved via Flash. Flash can be used as a multi-track player that will enable up to eight tracks of audio to play.

Therefore there is a choice of each track to be compressed differently according to what can realistically be achieved. Additionally, repetitive pieces of audio can be looped whilst other pieces of music introduced and faded out. The end result is that the listener will hear a long piece of music at a higher quality than can be achieved through simple streaming of an mp3. This reduces costs as bandwidth requirements are reduced too.

Click here to view Ambient Music Garden’s Royalty-Free category. But don’t forget all categories hold royalty-free music, the royalty free category only presents the most popular chosen pieces for business use.

Using Royalty Free Production Library Music Within Your Business Project

Royalty Free Production Library Music is a great and cost effective way to create a professional finish to many business projects from digital media to bricks and mortar.

New retail outlets that want to present a calm and relaxed environment can quickly gain that atmosphere with a piece of relaxation music or a collection collated and downloaded as mp3s to then play within their store.

Not only stores but professional services waiting rooms, galleries and restaurants all benefit from the atmosphere and mood settling that relaxation mp3 downloads create.

As they are royalty free, they are not chargeable once the initial purchase price for the use associated with the licence has been made.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royalty_free

The price, different to simple listening at home, reflects the business use and that the piece of music will be publicly heard by many within a building over time, and also within digital projects over time as well.

Digital projects require ambience as well. Since digital design companies are able to create stunning graphical and video productions for clients there is a powerful need to compliment this visuals with music that matches the feel of the video.

By using a royalty free piece from Ambient Music Garden you will be able to request different formats for use in your editing stage to meet the quality needs of the client.

Music on hold and websites require a higher compressed file for different reasons. Although many telephone networks are now digital, they are still analogue for the last part of the journey to the customer’s office or home. This means that the quality of audio is still at a compromised level compared to all digital networks using fibre optic.

Prices at Ambient Music Garden for purchasing music for business use are dependent on the length of the track. The longer tracks can often give more variations to a track to then use in slightly different ways across a production. Additionally, the length of a piece will mean that it will be able to cover longer productions from end to end without any sound editing required.

Pricing for royalty-free production library music usually starts at around $40 per piece. This is reflects the value that a piece of music will have on a business project.

An artist that is willing to have their work associated with business ventures can use this market to create a career in creating music for business use in an industry where creating a career is nowadays somewhat challenges by the changing purchasing behaviour of consumers and the in ability of record labels to keep up and monetise new market opportunities.

Click here to go to Ambient Music Garden’s most popular royalty free music mp3 download category. But you can also browse all music at Ambient Music Garden and choose the Royalty Free Porduction Library License to use our music in your business project.

“We’ve had some interesting success so far even though we have not publicised our commercial licensing business”, said Guy Lewis, founder of Ambient Music Garden. “Businesses are finding our music catalogue perfect for online browsing and downloading for their own business projects. We have businesses using music for PowerPoint presentation background music, Flash embedded music projects, web sites, background music for retail outlets and also for DVD & CD projects. There are many other uses for music and Ambient Music Garden has geared up for them with the new category.”

“However you don’t have to choose music within the Royalty-free category only, that only presents our most popular music for commercial use. Check out all the categories of Ambient Music Garden as almost all our music is available for commercial licensing as well.”

Click Here To Go To Ambient Music Garden’s Royalty Free Production Music Top Page Here. Don’t forget to check all the other categories for royalty free music for business use. Just change the license option at the bottom of the page to purchase the music for business use.

Ambient Music Garden:
Using our Royalty-Free Production Music License you can use our music as background music in powerpoint presentations, in retail, galleries and restaurants, on-hold music, Flash & website music, music for commercials, music for video games, film music, and music for video / dvd production.

Why Flash Is Infinitely Better At Delivering Music Across The Web Than MP3.

Introduction

“…it is Flash that arranges the audio and adds functionality that enables the music file to go further than an Mp3 can ever do”

Flash has been around now for quite a while. And whilst innovative Flash artists have primarily focused on designing and engineering some jaw dropping animated creations Flash has for many, slipped into first place as the technology of choice for delivering audio alongside web site content.

Why is this? Why doesn’t everyone know about Flash’s ability to create a better user experience? Well, within this document I explain why it really is better and why your next website refresh should include Flash embedded music at minimal overhead to your customers.

Flash Background
I won’t go into the history of Flash here (you might well loose interest) so lets just say it had humble beginnings yet was seen by a few far seeing individuals who took it to the next stage from where it captured the imaginations of zillions of web developers, web artists & animators.

I can remember in 1999 being excited by MP3000 produced by CleverMedia which is an online tool for creating your own mix of a range of beats, melodies and sound effects. It is still a fun interactive music tool that holds its weight many years after it was first created. This shows clearly that given good design Flash has an astonishing ability to last even while technology continues to change around it. Dont forget, this little app is nearly 10 years old and still is pretty cool.

As Flash developed over the years there were a number of technical improvements that enabled even better delivery of sound along side the animated creations. Once such advance was Flash’s ability to deliver more control of audio and multi-track playback.

So Why Is Flash Better than MP3s?

Whilst many gain competitive edge by adding music with Flash technology to their sites, those outside the Flash community with little awareness continue to use mp3s. So why is Flash as a proprietary technology standard still so compelling?

Well for a start, perhaps I should clarify one thing. This argument focuses on why you should deliver your music using Flash that has compressed (for example) a WAV file into mp3 and delivered via a Flash file. The Flash file would have the suffix ‘.swf’. So Mp3 technology is still in there compressing the audio yet it is Flash that arranges the audio and adds functionality that enables the music file to go further than an Mp3 can ever do.

The following is a list of the key benefits for you the website owner.

Quicker Than The Equivalent mp3 at being downloaded:
This is where Flash saves the day. Imagine having three instruments that were the equivalent size of three loops. Instead of playing three loops one after the other, with Flash a professional Flash developer & composer will be able to construct a piece of music that mixes these three different parts of the same music and multiply the variants of the same tune to as many as twice that amount. So instead of getting three 10 second loops you will have a total of a whole minute of music for the same time it takes to download 30 seconds of mp3 based loops.

So, with that in mind you can consider using an intro that allows your customers to view your welcome page for 30 seconds. Then you might feel you would like to draw them further in to view product pages for example. So, you could consider turning off the repetitive loop, implying to the customer that they have seen all that there is to see and its it time to move on. Once in the product area you may want to consider using a full one minute (for example) music track that loops gently in the background with a quieter volume.

Customisation
You can create a control interface specifically tuned to your customer’s tastes as part of the object that has the audio embedded or linked to it. You don’t need to be restricted to the audio players on the market such as RealPlayer ®, Windows Media Player ®, Winamp ® or QuickTime ®. What if you choose to deliver your audio via one of the player specific formats and many of your customers don’t have the ability to play them? Simply create your own player in Flash knowing that 97% of the world’s connected browser users can then view and listen to your audio. In terms of design and appearance, literally, if you can imagine it, you can create it and it will work in all the known browsers to the modern world (and perhaps some others on other planets too). There are many Flash Players for sale if you wish to purchase one instead. There are lots of fun designs out there to meet all needs.

Interaction
As mentioned above, you can even get your customers to choose the mix of the audio file they are listening to, lift the base, lower the snare for example, remove a loop or make a choice over a number of loops. Give your customers this sort of control and they will be back for more and more.

Control
You can create a flash player to control your music; you can create controls for pan, volume, play, rewind, stop and forward. You can create a list of audio files to play; you can even create animations and buttons that trigger the audio files if you want to create an interactive experience between music and animation for your customers.

Efficiency
Flash compresses the audio files and provides options for streaming and downloading that provide the designer with choices that match the needs of the content and end user. Additionally, because with all Flash content, once it is downloaded it can be replayed again and again, designers and engineers are creating cleaver long play musical and audio pieces that are a fraction of the original WAV, AIFF or MP3 (or other!) file size. These Flash designers compress files according to the dynamics of the audio and create highly accurately synced loops that work with each other to create layers of music much like how each musical track would be arranged within a modern computerised Digital Audio Workstation.

Ubiquity
Even thought Flash is owned by Adobe and is not open source 97% of all browsers connected to the Internet have the Flash Player plug-in installed. The player comes as standard within many browsers and is quick and easy to upgrade to the latest version of Flash. So, whilst still proprietary as a standard (it isnt an ‘open standard’ in the same way as mpeg is for example) it hits all of the user base of Internet connected surfers that you will want to turn into customers. The 3% that don’t use Flash aren’t interested in seeing graphics or listening to music.

Compelling
Flash provides many digital designers and artists with an incredible creative tool that they use to blow the minds of web users. They have been achieving this for many years and will continue to do so for many years to come.

Summary And The Future
What does Adobe need to do now to develop Flash’s audio capabilities? Whilst the features of today make Flash compelling for audio delivery many of the Flash audio community are frustrated by the lack of audio features within Flash. Here are a number of features that would greatly enhance Flash’s ability to deliver audio more successfully:

1) Make mp3’s loop seamlessly. Currently if you add an MP3 into Flash and publish it, Flash will create a small gap before replaying the mp3 file thus destroying any loop’s effect. The only way around this today is to avoid importing mp3s, import WAVs (for example) and have them compressed down to mp3 format for publishing. Bizarre but true.
Adobe get features like that into Flash when Flash needs this functionality to achieve perfectly synchronised loops.

3) Audio Plug-Ins: Link with the music community so that Flash is opened up to the plug ins available to add more richness to those who do not have access to more complex Digital Audio Workstations such as Bias Peak and other Adobe products.

4) Make synchronising easier: some developers find some sound files (mp3 or WAV format) go out of sync over time when there is no reason. This feels like a bug.

5) Making Movie Clips within movies playable within the stage whilst being developed would avoid developers having to work blind on a lot of audio / visual synchronising. There are some Flash components for sale that achieve this but are not part of Flash as standard.

Copyright Kesseny ltd 2008 All Rights Reserved except for:
Flash® (a registered trademark of the Adobe Corporation). &
MP3000: Copyright © 1995-2008 Clever Media. Note: Clevermedia gave permission to reference thier work when Ambient Muisc Garden was named Ambient Music Garden.com
RealPlayer ® 2008 RealNetworks, Inc. Patents Pending. All rights reserved. RealPlayer, is a registered trademark of RealNetworks, Inc
Windows Media Player Microsoft is either a registered trademark or trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.
Winamp ® is a registered trademark of Nullsoft Inc.
QuickTime is a trademark of Apple Computer, Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries.

Ambient Music Garden & Flash Soundtracks are trademarks of Kesseny ltd

www.Ambient Music Garden.com

First Things First: Royalty Free Use

Ambient Music Garden music is royalty free so you are able to play the music as part of your professional therapy sessions and group meetings. It also means you are able to play the music in shops and galleries if you are connected to one as part of your therapy environment. Normal CD music requires you to pay the royalty collection agency of your country a fee that can be the cost of 10 to 15 Cds per year for this privilege.

Playing Ambient Music Garden music via your computer

If you have a low noise computer such as a laptop you can simply  play the music via your computer using your chosen music player such as Real, iTunes or Windows Media Player. We would recommend in this case using some reasonable external speakers that plug into your headphone socket. There is usually a choice for sale at computer stores. The better ones will power themselves and so give off a better sound. The better the speakers the more effective the music will be to your client. Normally computer speakers are weak at playing the lower sounds in a song so please bear this in mind.

Alternatively some more modern Hi-fi’s will have an input socket that allows you to connect your computer headphone socket to your hi-fi so that you can play your music via a better amplifier and speaker combination.

The complications with this method will tend to focus on sourcing the right stereo cables and plugs along with finding (possibly) the AUX button on your player.

Playing Ambient Music Garden music using a CD

Perhaps the less complicated method is to burn a CD of the tracks you have purchased in the order you choose and use a home or portable hi-fi / CD player.

Burning software is available online or at your local computer store. Ahead Nero and Roxio Toast are two that are popular. You may already have something on your computer that burns CDs for you so check before you purchase something new.

How you burn your music onto a CD depends on what type of Cds your player can play. For instance, older CD players will not be able to listen to mp3 formatted Cds. So, when you burn your music you will need to choose another format and clearly the only format suitable for older players will be the standard CD-Audio format that is the format that Cds from the shops come in.

Finally..

Ambient Music Garden provides the above information to help you get started with integrating Ambient Music Garden music into your therapy sessions. We can not support your technical issues as these sort of queries can be varied and can we are not set up or have the time. Ambient Music Garden provides music as mp3s because it is a universally standard format that will work across the world. If you do have any queries about this information of any other questions before you start then please use the Contact Us page to send us a note.

What is Royalty Free Music?

Royalty Free Music is music offered for use without the professional user needing to pay additional costs for using the music within their own line of work, just the initial purchase price.

Don’t get the term ‘royalty free music’ mixed up with copyright. Copyright is about the ownership of a piece of music. Each artist will aim to retain the ownership of their piece of music unless they specifically sell it, or hand it over to a record label as part of their contractual agreement (although this is changing with the entry of net labels such as Ambient Music Garden.)

Music you hear on the radio costs the radio stations for each broadcast. Music you hear within a film production has to be purchased specifically for film making. Music played in the background of shops and galleries requires additional costs to cover royalties. However Ambient Music Garden music is royalty free so you can play our music within your theraputic sessions without being charged any additional costs.

Each piece of Ambient Music Garden music is licensed to an individual for their use within their own theraputic work and also for those that are self healing. A different agreement is required where the piece of music is going to be used with large audiences or for large health organisations. This agreement is included within the terms and conditions of sale.

Musicians are protected by international treaties that enable them to collect money from users of their work.

There has never been a better time to try to go it alone as opposed to sell your music via a record company. Clearly record companies do offer benefits still, however for the smaller circulation musicians the Internet offers a fantastic opportunity to get access to a global market (although I have to stress here that Ambient Music Garden does not currently market to the whole world for security reasons).

Within the western world I have all probably witnesses and even been involved in the increased acceptance and interest in alternative therapies. In addition to this, ‘alternatives’ have become ‘conventional’ & increased their popularity even more.

With broadband so available now in western countries alternative and conventional therapists looking to music to enhance their client and customer’s experiences now have a great opportunity to browse and download a better range of music to suit their needs than that which is physically available on CD in the small genre collections at the local music shop.

Additionally those of us who want to use music to assist in our own healing or simply relaxing or meditating can browse and buy so much easier online. As one artist put it recently, “…this is a type of music that is traditionally hard to obtain…i.e. sifting through endless whale song Cds and Tin gongs down ur local record shop!”

Holistic therapy seems to me to becoming a strong competitor to hairdressing for like-minded young people entering college today. Each one of these new therapists needs quality music to suit their therapy style.

Additionally, music therapy within conventional mental health trusts is coming of age with new initiatives to support a range of mental health problems. So, although Ambient Music Garden today focuses on the single therapist, and the license that is sold covers single therapists there are opportunities to sell to larger organisations.

I think this also gives a signal about what I can achieve together. Avoiding stereotypes of fluty meditative tapes with comically patronising voice-overs I have the opportunity to create a new direction for therapy music.

Today Kesseny has released some of his current music on Ambient Music Garden as 128kb/s versions for free.

Check the free samples below or click here to go directly to the free mp3 download category at Ambient Music Garden straight away!

SimogenJo (Calm) Free Mp3 Download. Here’s a Sample of the full piece.

The higher quality mp3 versions remain at a low affordable download price also.

September Morning

Here’s one more for you all!

September Brown

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