Contantrum | Stay Entertained

Google Music Officially Released

2011-11-17T12:49:00.001+11:00

Here we have the full release of Google's challenger to the hugely popular iTunes.
Google Music was just announced here on the official Google Blog.
I encourage you to have a read of one of the above links and check it out.
The service is not yet available in my country yet...

You may be a bit sceptical about the service, as its really just exited "beta".
Here are some of the things that I can see being really good about this service.

When challenging titans in the online music store world like iTunes you have to think about catalogue.
So how many songs are there available to you in Google Music?
Over 13 million according to the Google Blog entry.

The store offers more than 13 million tracks from artists on Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, EMI, and the global independent rights agency Merlin as well as over 1,000 prominent independent labels including Merge Records, Warp Records, Matador Records, XL Recordings and Naxos. We’ve also partnered with the world's largest digital distributors of independent music including IODA, INgrooves, The Orchard and Believe Digital.

OK, so that is a great step in the right direction for the new service. The other competitors in the world of online music have similar sized catalogues. Most will state that they are "ever growing" repositories of music which I think is a good selling point. With a number like 13 million; Google, like the other online music services are offering us listeners practically all the recorded music we could ever want to listen to. The dream of a world wide, never ending online jukebox is now being offered by many companies wanting a piece.

The other side of the service is the Google Music Artist Hub. From what I have learnt of this so far, Google are putting a powerful set of features in the hands of artists. This, for me is a very important aspect of the new service.

Whether you’re on a label or the do-it-yourself variety, artists are at the heart of Google Music. With the Google Music artist hub, any artist who has all the necessary rights can distribute his or her own music on our platform, and use the artist hub interface to build an artist page, upload original tracks, set prices and sell content directly to fans—essentially becoming the manager of their own far-reaching music store. This goes for new artists as well as established independent artists, like Tiesto, who debuts a new single on Google Music today.

Well, there may be some exciting times ahead for the music industry and the internet. I am keenly awaiting this service to come out in my country and I'll be spending time of the coming weeks investigating some more.

I hope those of you who are using this service already are having a good time with it.

Contantrum
Stay Entertained - [Musically]

Cloud Music Streaming - Web Trends

2011-10-14T18:44:00.005+11:00

I have been noticing more and more, quite a bit of discussion of cloud services online.
In relation to music storage and streaming, there is quite a bit of news circulating with many new and current companies launching new cloud services.

My curiosity led me to looking at some statistics inside a few Google searches.
This is really just quite an interesting way to look at the volume of web content across a timeline.
I recommend heading over to Google Trends to have some fun with the data there.

Search term: Cloud Computing:

Search term: Music Streaming:

The Cloud - Our New Digital Life

2011-10-11T08:51:00.000+11:00

Ultimate inter-connectivity
in our digital lives is further becoming a reality. We are starting to say goodbye to grabbing out a USB flash-drive to transfer our work from one computer to the next. We are slowly moving toward saying goodbye to local storage all together. Some of us are adopting cloud computing faster than others, though. The thing with new technology is that it is often generates inevitable change in the world. So the people who can best adopt it will feel most adapted and comfortable, not to mention advantaged. This little blog entry is about my experiences so far in adopting cloud computing to my life. I'll just talk about my two favourite web-apps: Gmail and Google Docs.
I hope to talk soon a bit more about cloud based music services - they are not very available in my country yet....

For me it has all started with Google's Web-Apps. The Gmail app was my first instance of storing data in a cloud like fashion where I could access it anywhere. Desktop email clients just seemed like a clunky system where many things could go wrong. The introduction of web mail clients like Gmail meant being able to access your emails from anywhere in the world with ease. I can remember recently a relative of mine needing to get a new computer and worrying about all their email information (contacts, saved emails, sent emails etc.). They needed to "transport" all this data to a new computer. Again this seemed very clunky and un-streamlined. I remember setting up a Gmail account and I haven't had a single regret with managing my emails in an online environment. It seemed like a natural progression.

Google Docs has been a recent move for me. When I bought my current computer, I contemplated purchasing Microsoft Office with it. You might think that this is an essential piece of software to have on your computer, but I just couldn't justify the price knowing that Google Docs was free. I have been a big user of open source software like "Open Office" because it was free, Google Docs just went one better for me. So here I am now, doing all of my university assignments in the Docs cloud. Not once (since using the cloud) have I turned up to a class and realized that the piece of writing I had been working on was on a flash disk sitting at home where I had forgotten it.

Gmail and Google Docs are a couple of web applications that have really started me off in the cloud computing world. I highly recommend them. I personally have not yet adapted to storing photos online, mainly because I like to edit my photos in Adobe Photoshop quite frequently and I would require a much stronger internet connection to use online photo editing software like "Piknik" at a satisfying speed.

I'll be back with more on the cloud phenomenon I hope!

Stay Entertained [in the cloud]

Will The Emerging Music Streaming Services Curtail Music Piracy?

2011-10-09T11:22:00.000+11:00

And so it appears that with the world of cloud based music streaming services we may be seeing a solution to piracy.

Spotify is a subscription based “on-demand” streaming service. Spotify states on their website that their “music catalogue contains millions and millions of tracks and albums. It’s so enormous, in fact, that it’d take you 34 years of non-stop listening just to get through it. And that’s not counting the 10,000 new tracks we’re adding every day”. The Spotify software application is available to download on desktop computers and mobile devices.

With the service allowing users to stream millions of tracks funded by the occasional ad, or free of ads for a small monthly subscription fee, Spotify seem to be offering a real alternative to music piracy. Data just released by the Swedish music industry appears to support this theory.

Copyright and download blog TorrentFreak says that the latest quarterly report from Media Vision (in Swedish) generated for the industry association Musiksverige (Music Sweden) shows a 25% fall in music piracy in the country since 2009.

"Streaming services such as Spotify are now the most popular way to consume music. More than 40 percent of the participants in the survey now use a music streaming service, compared to less than 10 percent who say they download music legally. About 23 percent continue to pirate music, but this number is dwindling."

The report also observes why listeners are moving away from piracy.

"Looking at the motivations for people to switch to legal services, participants in the survey cited “the range of music that’s released” as the primary reason (40%). Other explanations were the absolute increase in available music (30%), and the fact that legal services have become cheaper (24%) and simpler (24%)."

It appears that services like Spotify have created a system that allows users some of the freedoms found in piracy for a small monthly fee. Being able to listen to music without having to pay directly for each song or album is a system of consuming music that shows some promise. It has been an outlawed practice for many years but now appears to be adopted into a more polished system that this time can be controlled by legal companies.

My Intentions < Your Interpretation

2011-09-20T13:52:00.001+10:00

The Death of the Author is a 1967 essay by the French literary critic and theorist Roland Barthes. Barthes's essay argues against traditional literary criticism's practice of incorporating the intentions and biographical context of an author in an interpretation of a text, and instead argues that writing and creator are unrelated. Thank the contributors to Wikipedia for this introduction. There are many layers to this idea of disconnection between the author and his/her work. The key word in today's post is "interpretation".

Put on some music, maybe find a track on SoundCloud - Here's one I prepared earlier:

Forget the Mission by Ross McCallum

I hope your enjoying so far, although you should now consider your interpretation of the music. I can say now that I intended this piece of music to be relaxing to listen to. Inevitably, I cannot predict or control the reaction that someone else gets from listening to the music. Whether this is a good or bad thing depends on the scale of my intentions as an artist or author. If there is an important cause that the artist is trying to highlight then a public's interpretation becomes quite important. Having said that, its very important for artistic creations to have multiple interpretations as the source of creativity is in essence this idea of looking at things differently.

Lets take another example from my collection of work: Break Down - Ross McCallum 2010.

He we have a piece of neo-surrealistic digital art. One of my intentions behind the creation of this was to create an artwork so full of abstract imagery that an observer would spend a lot of time trying to make up their mind on the meaning of the image. Too often do people see and image and decide on exactly what it means and move on to the next image. Symbolism has become to rigid for my liking, we live in a world where most of our visual communication is designed to be easy to understand. Unfortunately for art, there is that idea that a painting of a tractor in a field is just a tractor in a field. My challenge is to make art that is visually confusing. The best way to encourage extended observation of an image is to hide the meaning in the deepest recesses of the canvas. I challenge you to decide on a meaning for what you see above. I don't mind if you have or not, I can only hope that the abstract nature of the image is what makes it special.

Here's a bit of further reading: Wikipedia entry: Post-modernism.

Whatever the interpretation of this blog entry is, I can only hope that its good!

Stay entertained.

Awaiting The Battlefield 3 Theme Music

2011-09-12T19:37:00.001+10:00

Many people are currently anticipating the new addition to EA Games and DICE's Battlefield series. It has inspired me to look back on the first game in the series, Battlefield 1942. After watching a few videos on the internet, I remembered how inspiring the theme music was. You might not think that music in video games is a big deal but it is often one of the first things we hear when we load up the game. It needs to an exciting parallel to the visual aspects of the game. Also note that a game without great sound effects fails to make the game environment exciting and believable.

Back in 2002 with the release of Battlefield 1942 came a great piece of theme music. So much so that it has been adapted to many newer games in the franchise, remixed by fans and remains one of the most memorable things about the game for me. I have been browsing around the internet today finding a few of my versions of the Battlefield theme to share.

There we have the original theme from Battlefield 1942. As I said before, it is one of the most memorable parts of the game for me. After playing one hour of Battlefield I would have the theme music playing in my head for the next two.

With the release of Battlefield 2 came some variations in the theme, this is my favourite which came with the Armoured Fury expansion.

As we progress along our Battlefield theme playlist we arrive at the 2142 soundtrack. This has its own epic atmosphere, and is just as brilliant.

Now lets have a look at some remixes! Here is a pretty popular one, it has quite an interesting mix of music styles in it. I think its quite well done.

To my pleasure, the theme has been adopted into a techno version. This seems to fit very nicely!

Here is a great piece of fan-made music that has launched itself to some popularity among all the hype for the new Battlefield game.

The build up to the release of the new Battlefield game has generated a lot of hype. So much so that I have spent all this time listening to all the versions of the theme music. The game appears to be shaping up to become quite a defining game in the FPS video game world. I'm very excited for the release, In the meantime I'm quite enjoying finding these versions of the theme music.

I hope you enjoyed this music / video game post.

What Makes A Great Blog?

2011-08-25T23:04:00.000+10:00

What makes a blog great?
To answer this question I decided to explore some blogs that appeal to me and decipher the art of desirability online. So what makes a great blog? For now, I've put it down to two things: originality and aesthetics. The things that attract you to a human being are often what attract you to a web-log. A blog should look and feel as much the part of the person writing it as possible. When we find a blog that really "speaks" to us, we like to visit them just like we would a friend. We might catch up on news and share thoughts on controversial or deep and meaningful topics. Finding blogs which interest you can be very exciting when you find "a match" - a great blog, a blog that "speaks" to you. The challenge is to find such a blog.....

Searching for a blog that interests you can leave you feeling quite overwhelmed which is why we have websites like Blogdire.com. It gives a sense of "the one stop shop" - someone has done all the hunting for us and chances are that we will find the "friend" we are searching for in one of the blogs listed.

I gave myself the challenge to find a few blogs that held great characteristics in originality and aesthetics. Of course this creates an overwhelming number of "results". I narrowed it down to Australia (my country) and music (one of my many interests). I came up with this after just a short time in "exploration mode" on the internet.

I've been looking around trying to find the best blogs and figuring out what makes them great....originality and an appealing aesthetic. I found a good list of blogs to read through on Waycooljnr. Coincidentally, I really enjoy Waycool's blog now after having a bit of a read. Music, marketing and social media are strong interests of mine.

Winning the award for originality is Faux Pas. The page also gets a mention in originality by having no real dominant heading at the top of the page. I quite like how there is no messing about, you just get straight into the content. I found their music that they had links to on SoundCloud to be quite interesting to listen to. I guess I can also say that I felt this was really interesting too. Something else that I thought was an excellent and rather cool idea is having a section in the side bar saying: "LIVE DANGEROUSLY...This blog has been going since 2005...click here for a random post". Something like this is pretty uncommon in my experience of blogs. Even if it were common practice to have a random post button on your blog, the wording was really cool I think. Below is an image of the site.

Winning the prize for appealing aesthetic is Scattermusic. The appeal for me is the rounded edges and thoughtful arrangement of modules. Although the first thing that I am attracted to is being able to "slide" left and right across the most recent posts and choose if I want to keep reading. The animation makes this process quite engaging. Having the page tabs at the very top of the page is quite a good choice on this page when there is so much on the home page without the tabs getting in your way. As you scroll down the arrangement is nicely evenly spaced modules. Another point that I would like to make is that the page doesn't just scroll down for what seems like forever as you would get on most blogs. The left to right slider allows for a lot of content to fit on the home page without clutter and endless scrolling.
This blog is very appealing to get into! Screenshot below.

In this process I have collected a lot of inspiration to help me improve my blogging and presence online.

Stay entertained [with blogging friends]

Contantrum

YouTube Music - Playlists, Charts, Local Concerts & More

2011-08-18T20:01:00.001+10:00

YouTube will now greet you with a page dedicated to music. The new page features "hand-picked" playlists, recommendations, local concerts and the YouTube Top 100 chart.
The new page in discussion can be found here.

Here is the promotional video for YouTube's very own new music page.

Hand picked playlists:

From what I have seen so far this appears to be a featuring tool to promote playlists of music that YouTube think you may like. It looks like these playlists may also be assembled by artists YouTube think you like [I like The Living End]
This could be quite useful for artists to direct their listeners to all of their music.
In the image above you see a list of genres which supposedly categorises all the music on YouTube. One problem I can see already is that there is no "Metal" section.

Recommendations:

From quite a small list of genres I selected jazz....I noticed a problem.

For anyone familiar with both Dubstep / Electronic and Jazz genres the highlight will make sense.
For those who don't know, Skrillex music is just about the opposite genre to the other music on this "Jazz" page.
So straight away there is a flaw in this recommendations system. I am sure this kind of thing can be fixed in no time, I have no concerns there. However, what worries me mainly is that it will be very difficult to please everyone with the recommendations system.
I have seen countless arguments about what genre bands fits into in YouTube comments. What I can see happening is an expansion of these types of arguments flowing into the recommendations system.

Local concerts:

So here we have a list of upcoming concerts near me that YouTube think I might be interested in.

I think this is a great feature personally, I recall many occurrences where I have been listening to a band on YouTube and deciding to find out when they are playing near me next. I cannot see any downside to this, what I would to see is a link to a nearby concert linked to the artist your currently watching.

YouTube Top 100:

This is essentially a chart like any other - it is based on popularity. In this case, the most watched videos hit number one.

This looks like a pretty bold step, it shows YouTube becoming more and more synonymous with our music entertainment.

I'm looking forward to seeing how this pans out!

I have a first look / reaction video on YouTube here.

Stay Entertained.

Leave your comments and let the discussion begin!

Portable Music - Disconnected

2011-08-17T21:17:00.006+10:00

What is so uninteresting about the natural sounds of the world?
Whether you're riding public transport or sitting around, why is it so necessary to "plug" our ears into our favourite music?

Unreal sounds:
So much of the sound we pump into our ears today is just a re-creation or recording of another sound. You might eat breakfast while listening to the news on the radio. Then leave for work, catch public transport and plug in your mp3 player. Finish work, more mp3s, arrive home, television, stereo and maybe computer. In one day, that is a lot of time spent with your ears away from "reality". Reality being the sounds produced not by speakers.

Virtual reality:
It may be difficult to entertain the idea that listening to an iPod is virtual reality for your ears. Our ears are designed to listen to our surroundings and collaborate with our other senses to perceive the world. It is no wonder that we can be easily disorientated while listening to music on our portable music player. When you plug speakers into your ears you place one of your senses in a different space to some degree. From my perspective it is like wearing some kind of image projecting goggles. Of course we place more importance on our sense of sight than our sense of hearing.

Unplug yourself:
Something interesting is the criticism placed on spending many hours in front of a screen playing video games. Is it not similar to spending many hours a day with your ears in the music world?

The sound of the world:
I haven't owned a mp3 player for three years and have never really felt the need to. Aside from humming music to myself on a long walk home, I find the sound of the world around me usually suffices for entertainment.

Are we getting bored of reality?

Leave your arguments and objections in the comments!

Stay entertained [aurally]

Be sure to check out Nick Dilorenzo's new article: Sharing Is Caring

Google+ [Plus] Add Games

2011-08-13T14:01:00.004+10:00

I've just noticed something new on that social network we are seeing rapidly filling up. Games are now a part of Google's "Plus" social networking service!
The popular names including "Angry Birds" are there meaning this has some potential to take off. However, it seems like just another place where you can play games to add to the massive list we already have. Take Angry Birds for example, you can now play this game on mobile phones, computers, consoles, web browsers and social networks. Games on Google+ might be a great idea to challenge the dominance of Facebook in the area of "social games". Although, at this stage I can't see much of what advantages G+ is offering, maybe a neater interface. Google Plus (which is still in its days of testing) looks very promising as a successor to Facebook. Adding new features like this as long as they are well integrated will be very positive.

In the future I would like to see Google+ implement some musical ideas, maybe music profiles and music players etc. That would be pretty Myspace though... Exciting times! Stay entertained [Socially]

Counter Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) Announced

2011-08-13T03:08:00.003+10:00

12 years after the release of first (now legendary) Counter Strike game there is news of another instalment in the franchise.

The following is from a page on the Steam website:

About the Game:

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS: GO) will expand upon the team-based action gameplay that it pioneered when it was launched 12 years ago.

CS: GO features new maps, characters, and weapons and delivers updated versions of the classic CS content (de_dust, etc.). In addition, CS: GO will introduce new gameplay modes, matchmaking, leader boards, and more.

"Counter-Strike took the gaming industry by surprise when the unlikely MOD became the most played online PC action game in the world almost immediately after its release in August 1999," said Doug Lombardi at Valve. "For the past 12 years, it has continued to be one of the most-played games in the world, headline competitive gaming tournaments and selling over 25 million units worldwide across the franchise. CS: GO promises to expand on CS' award-winning gameplay and deliver it to gamers on the PC as well as the next gen consoles and the Mac."

CS: GO is being developed by Valve in cooperation with Seattle-based Hidden Path Entertainment. The title is targeted for release in early 2012 and will be playable at this year's PAX Prime and London Games Festival.

I must say that I am really excited about this, every LAN party I have been to in the last 12 years has been made something incredibly fun thanks to CS. It's a unique game in my opinion, its strong team - play characteristics have made it timeless.

I can't wait for more information.

500 Readers

2011-08-12T18:39:00.002+10:00

I am really new to the blogging world and today I got to 500 all time page views on my blog.

SO I would really just like to say THANKS!!! to all my readers!

Have a great day!

HTC to Upgrade with Beats by Dr. Dre

2011-08-11T21:58:00.009+10:00

In today's world it comes as no surprise that many of us now spend a lot of time listening to our favourite music on our phone. With the current technology we can see why there's no longer a need to carry around your phone and you mp3 player. Now the problem has been that until recently, listening to tunes on our phone has not been a massive priority. Where our conventional portable music carriers would be a device designed for excellent sound quality, our phones have been designed for efficient transfer of information. For this reason, until recently you would buy more expensive headphones for your mp3 player but your phone would remain just a phone.

HTC (A major "smart-phone" manufacturer) on August 10, 2011 set up a deal with Beats by Dr.Dre, a brand created by musician Dr. Dre well known for producing high performance headphones.

From a press release titled "HTC and Beats by Dr. Dre set to introduce a new era in mobile audio":

HTC® and Beats™ have been working together to create superior mobile audio experiences for consumers, which will result in a line of HTC devices integrated with Beats sound innovations, available this fall.

As I stated earlier, this comes as no surprise to me given the fact that our technology keeps moving towards new forms of integration every day. To me this is a bit like when cameras became integrated with phones, we saw more advanced photo technology built in. And now, listening to music on phones has gained enough popularity to merit a 300 million dollar investment in Beats technology.

This is great news for mobile phone music listeners and especially HTC fans.

This is quite exciting, I'm looking forward to learning more.

VITABIT - Cover Art

2011-08-11T17:05:00.001+10:00

This is an update relating to an earlier post [VITABIT Music].
Above you see what should be the finished cover art for VITABIT's new CD.
Feedback is welcome.
I made this using my own photography and edited in Adobe Photoshop.

VITABIT on SoundCloud

Latest tracks by VITABIT

Old-School Pirates

2011-08-10T20:27:00.002+10:00

I had a thought today about piracy once again. Yesterday, it was music piracy but today I want to have a look at the equally concerning software piracy. I want to break down an idea I had that looks at piracy as a generational thing. Also, think about the onset of mainstream software piracy around the time of computers becoming more available for everyone. Discussion will centre around what has changed over the years in attitudes as well as technology.

The rise of computers:
If we think about generation Y (probably a lot you people reading this) and the world of the computers we grew up in, we realise a few important things. A few important things that I believe affect our attitudes about computers and the piracy of software today. Essentially, many of us "gen-y" grew up in the midst of the "turn of the millennium" During this time, we witnessed what I consider the first wave of home computers as we know them today. I for one, was about five years of age when I used my first computer (a home computer). Essentially, I got myself all tangled up in the computer world around the time that it came to pass that mostly everyone I knew had a computer of sorts in their home.

"As many machines as you wish":
So think back to the software in these times, most of the software I ever used with the old Windows 95 was bundled with the computer itself. More interestingly, consumer software (being relatively new) had little or no copyright restrictions. Recently, I was looking through the archaic remains of a box of software we found with an old computer in the shed. I don't recall what the game was, but essentially there was a clear message in the licensing agreement that "after your first installation, this software may be subsequently shared and installed on as many machines as you wish" - or something along those lines. This game was quite old, possibly late 1980's judging by the type of floppy disk that contained it. I concede that into the 1990's when PC gaming became more of a market copyright regulations became important to publishers.

"Burn me a copy":
What I would like to highlight now is that copyright "protection" barely existed in this time. Essentially, people would be able to use pirated software for free after doing no more than DUPLICATING the original. Conversely, to use pirated software today the process requires TAMPERING with the original. What we are talking about here is cracking, hacking or any other word you want to use for making paid software "think" it was paid for.

Back to the "gen-y" perspective:
If the large community of pirates today are "gen-y" people then I like to think that for them it doesn't feel like a big deal. The move from duplicating software to tampering with software has perhaps been easy. Perhaps it feels like not much has changed; same job new process. I personally think that there is a possibility that growing up in a world of "easy" piracy leads to a more relaxed attitude to the practice in today's world.

The future generations:
Some may be thinking that this goes to show that there is no way to stop the piracy issue. However, as per usual I believe the solution in problems like this is a change in attitude. The next generation of pirates will be growing up with sophisticated copyright protection technology. To create an interesting analogy, Imagine a world containing thieves that could steal from a shop knowing that security systems were not invented yet. Now imagine decades later when people still have the same urges to steal but know that the activity is difficult and the chances of being caught are very high. Essentially, where shops have enhanced security to stop thieves, the software industry have done the same. I believe that this will ring true in generations to come. Software piracy will diminish, just as robbery has diminished with the increase of security. As it stands today, there will still be many pirates determined to access their software for free because their attitude has not changed. I do believe that in the future attitudes will change.

Once again, thank you very much for reading!

If you found this interesting I would love for you to share this with your friends or leave a comment.

So stay entertained [legally as always, I hope]

Contantrum.

One music pirate - A drop in the ocean

2011-08-09T21:02:00.007+10:00

^Image from: http://www.methodshop.com/gadgets/tutorials/downloading/pirate.jpg^

Today we continue our journey of thought into the wild seas of music piracy. It's the wide spread phenomenon that for the most part has eaten away at the music industry we used to know. Illegal sharing of music has existed for as long as music has been recorded. However the practice became a more frequent phenomenon with the rise of digital music files. Until the 21st century music as a product was transferable on much fewer formats.The equipment and patience required to duplicate music on older formats such as vinyl kept piracy at bay. However, its the portability of music in modern times that makes piracy such an easy activity; USB flash drives, laptops, P2P file sharing, direct downloads, mobile phones and basically any other portable memory you can think of.

A drop in the ocean:
The illegal sharing of music is punishable by law in most countries, although the practice is so wide spread that the chances of being caught are minute. The unfortunate side of the discouragement of the music piracy is that the process involves quoting statistics about how big the problem is. In order to stop people from downloading content illegally, you tell them that they are taking part in an illegal practice that is creating a huge problem. The way I see it is, people break laws when its something easy to get away with. Why do people share music with their friends illegally by burning a CD? They have the piece of mind that it is extremely unlikely that police with break down their bedroom door and catch them in the act. So when statistics like 18% of Australia's population are released in an article in The Herald Sun newspaper, I wonder if that adds to people's sense of security being "a drop in the ocean" or "one in thousands".Reasoning goes to show that if it is very unlikely that people will be caught then more will join on, strengthening this notion.

The article mentioned above is old, but the problem is not. I found this more recent article in The Age quite interesting as it portrays music piracy as not being as damaging as once thought. The fact remains however, that if people never pirated music and paid for all their music, there would be a lot more money in selling recorded music. It does in fact seem plausible that the "war on piracy" led by the major record companies has stymied their sales. The idea that not embracing the new technologies and chasing a problem that is out of control has damaged the industry is an interesting proposal.

Guilt as a weapon:
Reasoning in that, besides guilt there are not many reasons that weigh up in someone's mind telling them not to illegally download their music. Guilt is definitely the strongest attack in this situation. Punishment involves guilt and repercussions. If the likelihood of being caught and prosecuted (repercussions) are low then all that is left is guilt. If you knew that your favourite lolly shop down the road would go out of business if you stopped paying for chocolate would you do it? This just brings up all kinds of subjective ideas behind what makes someone feel guilty about their actions. Many will reason that the artist or record company gets enough money as it is and they don't need more. Unfortunately for the music business there are all kinds of rationales like this that can be conjured in ones mind. If you can easily enough brush off your conscience the act of stealing and have relative piece of mind that you won't be caught then there is not much to stop piracy.

I'll be back with more on this.

As always.
Stay entertained [legally]

YouTube For Emerging Artists

2011-08-07T12:44:00.086+10:00

Here is part 2 to the music industry technology series!
We continue with the series still following the exiting world of the internet. Our music industry revolves around a number places on the internet. I don't feel that we have fully covered YouTube yet, so lets continue with that.

YouTube for emerging artists:
Look at YouTube as a product with a list of features for the music industry. At the top of the list is the ability to "broadcast yourself" - the YouTube slogan. This is naturally what all emerging artists want to do, they want to "get out there" and be noticed. The video medium for communicating music is very effective for emerging artists. Artists
backed by record deals and all kinds of professional productions can produce very high quality sounds.
The "bedroom studio" over the years has become more affordable for musicians, but my point is that putting yourself on video has many advantages. Using video in their self-promotion allows them to create the feel of performing live to an audience (maybe it is a video of a live performance). Point being that it feels very genuine to watch someone's musical performance on YouTube and this is what can generate some popularity. For those who don't have enough influence in the industry to gig every week, YouTube allows people to "perform" to many more people with no more effort than setting up a camera and doing what they do best.

Advice for emerging artists on YouTube:
Think of any popular video you have seen on YouTube (I mean the extremely popular). The term gimmick has never been more relevant but in the good sense of the word. Unique, new and exiting - these are the words I would recommend thinking about when trying to promote yourself anywhere on the internet. YouTube is essentially a sharing site, and so to find success your content must be something that people want to share.
Something I'm about to share now shows how being special and different creates a YouTube classic.

Four Hands Guitar:

Four Hands Guitar is a video by two Québec musicians, Antoine Dufour and Tommy Gauthier. They uploaded the video on July 19th, 2007. An except from Antioine Dufour's website:
"With now six albums of original material released to critical acclaim, two live performance DVDs, and more than 25 million views on YouTube, Antoine Dufour has emerged as a young star of fingerstyle acoustic guitar, building a worldwide reputation for innovation and creativity". I'd like to highlight that with 25 million of his listeners we can assume "discovered" him on YouTube, we can say that creating something unique and entertaining for YouTube can be the secret to global success for some.

I'll be back with more about the influence of technologies on the music industry. As of such, we will be focussing on our wonderful internet music world.
See you then.

Contantrum.
Stay entertained.

YouTube Copyright Controversy

2011-08-06T11:19:00.014+10:00

Welcome to part 1 of the Music Industry Technology Series!

We begin the series by looking at the music world today. The music industry is now so ingrained into our digital lives, that for most of us we could look up to our bookmarks bar now and see at least one link which we follow to find or listen to music. Whether it be YouTube for the latest music videos or iTunes for adding to our collections, we can safely say that the way we (as consumers) access our product is now a firm part of on-line culture.

The internet revolution and YouTube:
The internet music industry cannot be covered in one post, we will be observing one key player at a time. Today's will be YouTube. It has become the place for many to look up "that song" that their friend recommends, and the place to upload your videos from "last night's gig". All in all, the beauty of YouTube in the music is its ability to showcase new talent as well as serve as a platform to find new music.

Copyright concerns:

Most of the music industry controversies on YouTube seem to relate to issues of copyright. A user uploading a video will see this message: "Do not upload any TV shows, music videos, music concerts or advertisements without permission, unless they consist entirely of content that you created yourself". In the result of lawsuits filed against YouTube a lot of unauthorised content was stripped from the video sharing site. Many videos which included backing music from popular artists had their audio removed. This, along with the distribution of more blatant breaches such as "rips" from music DVD's put YouTube and its users in a difficult position.

Just looking back now, I found a few videos of people ranting about the copyrighted material being removed from their videos. Of course there were some "fair use" appeals granted here and there I believe, but for the most part YouTube was in a predicament.

iTunes / YouTube connections:
Something I find interesting that emerged after this was the appearance of links to the iTunes music store on videos that contained music. In a way, it looks like YouTube today has found ways to cooperate with the big players in the music business by offering compromises. When millions of hits are collected on your content at an unauthorised level you have to consider making some kind of deal to benefit from it rather than remove it completely. That's how I see this anyway.

I think in some ways all this controversy shows that our music industry is evolving with technology too fast for our legal regulations to adjust to. We will cover more on the legal side of things another time.
The other element of YouTube I want to highlight is the power it can give to emerging artists.
In this entry, we covered just a fraction of the controversies that have connected one of the web's most popular site to the music industry.
In the next, we will look at YouTube as a tool for emerging artists and how that (as a technology) as affected our music.

As always,
Stay entertained.

Music Industry Technology

2011-08-06T00:50:00.011+10:00

New technologies are often the catalyst for exiting changes in all kinds of industries. The music industry stands out for me as an industry that has rapidly evolved with new technologies for better and for worse. I would like to highlight "for better and for worse". We will cover more on this idea soon but first I want to give you an idea of what will be coming up on this blog.
Thanks for reading!
Stay entertained!

Google Plus - A New Social Networking Site

2011-08-05T16:15:00.009+10:00

Hey, so you have probably heard something about Google's new ambitious social networking project. You know those little "plus 1" buttons that appear next to all Google search results now days? Well they are a particularly interesting element of Google's take on online social networking,

The +1:
What do these "plus 1" buttons mean? If you have a Google profile, you can basically rate any link on the internet. This is really similar to the concept of a Facebook "like", but on a larger and more open scale. I can see this wider application very valuable in two ways. Obviously, it lets your friends know what pages you thought were worth recommending. But, with Google being the "web search giant", imagine the practical applications for measuring relevancy and popularity. The most recent statistic I read was that the plus button was being hit 3.2 billion times every day. There are always people's suspicions and reservations about Google data mining. However, I think we could possibly expect to see search results taking an impact from the amount of plus 1's pages have. Not only that, I can imagine that with the information we provide in our profiles, it could even become as advanced as higher results coming from people of similar interests to you "+1ing" a page. This is all speculation on my behalf, but hey what are blogs for?

Now, I don't doubt that this is some privacy concern for someone here or there. I don't particularly want to enter that debate, but I myself like the improvements to search results based on "relevant" information.

First look:
So aside from this global +1 element, what we have is quite a fresh looking social networking platform. I have been using it for 2 days now (just giving it a good beta test) and I really like it. I have sent the occasional piece of feedback about a bug here and there, and I like feeling apart of something new. In terms of features on G+, there is a focus on practical uses, organisation and fine tuned control when desired. It's focus is to compliment the natural way ways we like to communicate with our friends, family, colleagues and so on.

A brief summary of the features I see as important in G+:

Circles is a feature that allows users to categorise their friends as they see fit. The advantage of this is that when sharing a new post, you can designate what circles of people you would like to share with.

Circles are the central idea behind the Google Plus project. They are the main drive behind the mechanics of all things G+. Google have really centred in on the problem that people don't just have "friends". Most of us don't always want to share something and have it go to all your "friends". We want to share particular news with particular "circles" of people in our lives. Facebook has followed this idea with the inclusion of "Facebook groups", but it feels out-dated in comparison to "circles" on G+.

+1 Button is something that has rolled out all over the Google search results as mentioned before. Within Google Plus, users are able to see on their profile, a tab showing history of the pages they have "+1'd". They can decide to make make this visible to others or keep it to themselves.

Sparks is a tool on G+ which involves entering your interests and from that Google generates a news feed for that interest.

Hangouts allow users to congregate online for a simultaneous video chat.

Google Plus appears to be the growing extremely rapidly. It will be interesting to see how well it challenges Facebook's dominance. If you want to read a bit more about the competition between G+ and Facebook, here is an interesting statistics info-graph.

For anyone who wants to follow me on G+: This is my profile.

Emotiv - Computer Brain Interface

2011-08-05T16:14:00.006+10:00

Something interesting I became aware of yesterday, is the new Emotiv headset. Specifically, the EPOC neuroheadset. This is basically the technology of direct thought interface with computers jumping into the consumer market at $299 US dollars. As a very simple analogy for this: its like using "the force" [star wars] to use your computer.

The headset's features include:

Limited edition design
14 saline sensors offer optimal positioning for accurate spatial resolution
Gyroscope generates optimal positional information for cursor and camera controls
Hi-performance wireless gives users total range of motion
Dongle is USB compatible and requires no custom drivers
Lithium Battery provides 12 hours of continuous use

The current list of applications for this device include working with: photos, games, accessibility and research tools. From what I have seen already, it appears that they are aiming for a slice of the game market already with game downloads available on the website. The product was publicly demonstrated at a game developers conference in 2008. In the demonstration the player of the game would virtually move pieces of stone with their mind to re-create stone henge. More recently in 2010, another demonstration was given at the TED conference. This demonstration can be seen on this YouTube video.

Mentioned in the presentation is the idea that listening to music with this technology opens up a door for some very interesting developments. Consider a library of 3000 songs, it is unlikely that we would go through and rate songs out of 5 or even categorise them in any more advanced way. This technology could mean that because the headset can read that you are enjoying (or not thereof) a particular piece of music, it can try to understand what songs to play or recommend to you. And this type of system could be implemented across the entire spectrum of what consumers do in life. With a broad statement like this, we can tell that the concept of this new technology is too large to compress into one article such as this. Imagine going to the cinema watching a film and automatically from your brain data, a 1-10 rating is submitted to IMDB. Imagine a story (be it a movie or a game etc.) that changed when you got bored of it.

So I must end this post with the classic POSSIBILITIES ARE ENDLESS cliché.

Please leave your interesting comments and philosophical views in the comments section below!

Contantrum.

VITABIT Music

2011-08-05T14:44:00.005+10:00

Its been quite a late night for me, working on a logo for a Melbourne musician "Vitabit".
I don't know who else gets this, but doing creative work always seems to work well late at night.
This is true for me at least.
I have a theory that late at night when you are tired the way in which you think changes a bit. For most of us our activities in the day rely on logical and methodical thinking.

Above is the simplistic, modern design my client and I have come up with. If your interested, this was designed under the name RM Art and Design.

And it's later in the night that we want to relax and inevitably go to bed.
It seems that in this tired state late at night we no longer operate as logically and methodically. And instead the creative side of thought seems to remain strong. I don't really want to try and prove anything I've said with science. It's just an observation I have made that at this time of night logic fails where creativity triumphs.
Perhaps, it is our tired mind that is ready for dreaming telling us something. Who knows! An interesting idea nonetheless.

Vitabit is an emerging artist who's creating some great sounds so I thought I would put in a link.

Vitabit music on SoundCloud:

Latest tracks by VITABIT