Tom Davenport

My talk on HTML and web audio at the London Music Tech Fest 2013

Sat, 25 May 2013 16:08:21 +0100

I was invited by Mint Digital to talk at the London Music Tech Fest last Friday. With an audience full of developers and audio professionals, I wanted to highlight the growing potential for these two disciplines to collaborate now that HTML5 audio is supported in several major browsers.

There’s room for some early innovators to make a big name for themselves in this space, and after the talk I had a good chat with some folk at Ninja Tune, the Guardian and BBC Radio who want to experiment in this space. Mint Digital proposed putting on an audio-dedicated hack day, which could produce some real magic.

Here’s my presentation slides with a few examples of web audio in action, plus a few ideas for what could happen next.

Jonathan Ive on on how Apple names its products

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 15:02:59 +0000

I’ve found an extra clip from Jonathan Ive’s appearance on beloved British children’s programme Blue Peter, which you can see below.

He discusses how Apple approaches naming new products, and the psychological effect that those names can have on the design process. Barney asks how Ive would approach designing a lunchbox. His reply:

“If we’re thinking of lunchbox, we’d be really careful about not having the word ‘box’ already give you bunch of ideas that could be quite narrow. You think of a box being a square, and like a cube. And so we’re quite careful with the words we use, because those can determine the path that you go down.”

I found it on the iPlayer stream of the original blue Peter episode. It looks like the official BBC clip which did the rounds on mac news sites last week was an edited version which cut this out. A shame really, because this was the most insightful part, though I thought it was great to see how humble Ive was while being presented with his gold Blue Peter badge.

Here’s the full original segment where Ive gives extra feedback on work submitted by young designers:

Notice how Ive reacts to a design with a smart wristwatch… perhaps one day his smile will prove telling.

The noisiest Russian meteor video yet. My Russian colleagues at...

Fri, 15 Feb 2013 11:11:30 +0000

The noisiest Russian meteor video yet. My Russian colleagues at Ultimate Guitar found it.

Comparing code courses for Wired UK

Mon, 03 Dec 2012 18:43:00 +0000

I had three goals for 2012:

Write for the Guardian
Write for Wired
Appear in a magazine

The first happened in February, but for most of the year I’ve been busy covering rock news for Ultimate Guitar. Which is great, but it’s important to push forward with your goals.

Fortunately the last two were wrapped up in one turn, and just before the year is out. Today my work appeared in Wired UK for the first time on page 140 of the current issue. If you subscribe to Wired you will see more reviews from me which are currently ‘in the queue’.

Here’s a little snap of the Matrix-esque design (which I love, the first Matrix was a huge influence on my interests years ago):

Oh, and thanks to Adam Howard at We Make Awesome Sh for supplying the awesome code in the background!

#sonicmeet 7: Metropolis Studio

Tue, 18 Sep 2012 13:32:03 +0100

#sonicmeet 7: Metropolis Studio:

We have an exciting #sonicmeet coming up at Metropolis Studio in London next week:

sonicmeet:

We’re very pleased to confirm that the next #sonicmeet will take place on September 28 at Metropolis Studios in Chiswick, London from 7pm.

Get there early, because a limited number of people will be given a tour of their facilities which include four studios, two live rooms and some of…

BBC Goatse Prank, Again

Wed, 01 Aug 2012 23:30:00 +0100

There’s a competition to design a logo for The Now Show on Radio 4. I planned to whip up a quick Goatse prank, but someone beat me to it:

If you don’t know what a Goatse is, it’s basically a rude picture which was the basis of an early internet prank. The prankster would lay linkbait to something enticing (‘New Aphex Twin Album!’), but it would point to an unsightly NSFW picture called a Goatse. I’ll leave it to you to guess what the hands are doing.

You might remember a similar prank on a BBC Olympic logo competition a few years ago:

In other news, Gawker recently published an investigation into the man behind (or is that ‘in front’) of the original Goatse image.

Ignore Ive. In 2008, Apple said it's in this for the money

Tue, 31 Jul 2012 18:58:00 +0100

Jonathan Ive is widely credited with being the design genius who helped turn Apple’s fortunes around in the late 1990s.

As a propagandist, he’s underrated.

Today Wired UK posted comments from Ive on how Apple’s goal is not to make money, but to make good products. This would only be a fair comment for a design-centric company like Apple to make if it hadn’t explicitly gone on record to say the opposite.

In 2008 music publishers were pressing for a 66% increase in digital royalty rates. Eddy Cue promptly stamped out their collective effort with this comment:

“If the [iTunes music store] was forced to absorb any increase in the … royalty rate, the result would be to significantly increase the likelihood of the store operating at a financial loss - which is no alternative at all. Apple has repeatedly made it clear that it is in this business to make money, and most likely would not continue to operate [the iTunes music store] if it were no longer possible to do so profitably.”

You could argue that Cue was specifically talking about why Apple was in the music business rather than discussing it’s wider product line. But then you’d have to swear to never to mention how Apple’s software and hardware is a tightly integrated product.

Sometimes I wonder if Ive has become just another product to wheel out as part Apple’s propaganda machine, but he’s running the risk of becoming a parody. I hope not, because nothing could be worse for Apple than seeing its poster boy fall so far from grace.

Too Metal to Pay Rent

Tue, 31 Jul 2012 13:02:14 +0100

Too Metal to Pay Rent:

Shocking story about a couple who were denied an apartment because the landlady found out that they listen to metal. Read on in their own words:

gotthatpma:

If you don’t know the backstory to this, my husband and I were recently denied an apartment in Toronto for the clearly stated reason that he plays in the metal band,Vilipend. This has been very heartbreaking for the both of us, not only because we loved the apartment, but the landlord made it a very long process to apply for the place and we invested a lot of time into ensuring that we had done everything we could to have a solid application. On two occasions we were told by the landlord, in writing, that we were the strongest applicants and that she had little to no reservation in renting the apartment to us. It was in our final (not to mention ONE HOUR) meeting with her and her mother that they asked Mike more about the band. Her decision to deny us the apartment based on the fact that his artistic outlet is accessible using Google was offensive and completely infringed on our privacy so, not to just roll over and take it, we felt we needed a strong response:

Read More:

Love this Whirlygig project in London where musicians play a...

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 11:14:08 +0100

Love this Whirlygig project in London where musicians play a live score to short films. Musicians include my university friends Tim Karp and Camilo Tirado. There’s a few familiar faces in the audience too…

A white board, some nails, and miles of black string.

Fri, 22 Jun 2012 13:40:00 +0100

A white board, some nails, and miles of black string.

Mike Dawes uses one guitar to play every instrument from the...

Fri, 22 Jun 2012 13:35:54 +0100

Mike Dawes uses one guitar to play every instrument from the Gotye hit ‘Somebody That I Used To Know’.

Via Jon Gomm, video by rpoland.

STEADYo (by Joey - 123jaera)

Sat, 02 Jun 2012 20:37:00 +0100

STEADYo (by Joey - 123jaera)

Love this photo of my homeland. itsthetalkingstove: Had such a...

Mon, 28 May 2012 18:04:42 +0100

Love this photo of my homeland.

itsthetalkingstove:

Had such a good day out on the bike today, there’s nothing better than cycling along English country lanes when the sun is out. I’ve only got 1 more week of full time work so I should be able to get out most days as of next Friday. I can’t bloody wait.

The first rule of Fight Club is…

Thu, 24 May 2012 00:32:00 +0100

The first rule of Fight Club is…

When April Fools articles come true

Thu, 17 May 2012 11:48:00 +0100

I almost sprayed tea over my iPad this morning when I saw this headline:

Doctor says emo hairdos could lead to lazy eye syndrome

A doctor has spoken out to condemn ‘emo’ haircuts with heavy fringes, saying that they could lead to lazy eye syndrome.

“If a young emo chap has a fringe covering one eye all the time, that eye won’t see a lot of detail. And if it happens from a young age, that eye can become amblyotic,” said Andrew Hogan, education director of the Optometrists Association of Tasmania.

Why was I shocked?

Because in 2011, I wrote an April Fools article for Ultimate Guitar about a fictional coalition of emo kids with lazy eye syndrome:

Emo Coalition Complain About Foo Fighters Film

A coalition of former emo fans have struck out against the Foo Fighters, saying their forthcoming 3D documentary will leave them out in the cold.

The problem began in the mid-2000s, when emo hit the mainstream and a trend of side-swept hair covering one eye became a fashion. Little did they know, their habit would leave them with a serious visual impairment.

The group, indistinguishable with their incessant group hug and black clothing, say they want the Foo Fighters to only broadcast their film in 2D. When asked why they would even want to see a film about a regular non-emo rock band, they said “We don’t want to watch it. We just want the right to watch it.”

It was an old idea for The Onion, and includes one of my favourite lines:

“I’m crying now. I feel like my face is a bath and the taps are stuck.”

The Higgs Boson Explained (by PHD Comics)

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 02:01:50 +0100

The Higgs Boson Explained (by PHD Comics)

This parody of Google Glasses, the augmented reality headset due...

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 18:57:12 +0100

This parody of Google Glasses, the augmented reality headset due later this year, demonstrates exactly what we hope won’t happen to user interfaces.

Apple probably wants HD-AAC for iTunes Match

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 17:01:00 +0000

Yesterday I reported in the Guardian on Apple’s plans to upgrade its iTunes Match library to offer “adaptive streaming”.The theory is, anything you re-download (or stream?) from iTunes Match will be at the best quality available for your device or connection speed.

Now I think Apple is seriously considering HD-AAC as the file format to deliver this service.

HD-AAC is developed by Fraunhofer - the German folk behind AAC, MP3 and a bunch of other smart codecs - and the promotional guide to HD-AAC pretty much spells out the rumours in the Guardian post:

Songs stored on media servers in the HD-AAC format can be streamed to multiple devices at varying bit-rates. This maximizes the sound quality under difficult network conditions by matching the bit-rate to the available bandwidth.

It’s a great format too; lossless encoding of 24-bit audio up to 192KHz, a compression ratio of 2:1, and immediately compatible with AAC-enabled devices. That is, the entire Apple line.

This image shows how the iTunes server could store a 24-bit/192KHz file (left), deliver a lossless version to the consumer (middle) and even deliver a lo-res version if your connection speed sucks (right). Seemingly all from one file.

There’s no hard evidence Apple will use this. But when it starts asking for 24/96 iTunes masters, and we hear that it is working on an adaptive streaming system, this clearly fits the bill.

Composite lets you make scenery-inspired art with ease. It looks...

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 11:11:20 +0000

Composite lets you make scenery-inspired art with ease. It looks fun.

Spotify pays more than 1p per stream - sometimes

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 11:40:00 +0000

Spotify receives a lot of bad press for its tiny streaming royalties.

At the last #sonicmeet, I told a skeptical Mike Hillier that Vienna Circle, a band whose second album I have been producing, have seen streaming payments in the pennies before. Sure, it’s no flattering payment, but it certainly looks better than the £0.000125 that many artists receive per play.

I just received an updated copy of Vienna Circle’s digital stats, and checked back to see if I was utterly mistaken that Spotify, or indeed another streaming service, really can pay more than the hallowed penny for a single track stream.

If it can, then suddenly streaming becomes a reasonably viable platform for the long term.

Take a look at your own last.fm stats and see how often you’ve played certain tracks over the last five years. Then scale that up to your lifetime. If streaming royalties are, on average, over half a penny, the number of plays could ultimately earn the artist more a traditional sale.

It turns out that Spotify really can pay up to 1.4p for a single track stream (that’s £0.0138). Napster and MySpace can fare better, with Napster up to 1.8p and Deezer paying almost 5p. Please note, these are not standard streaming rates. Most are far less, but I haven’t seen other figures to show they can also be this high. I can only presume it is the result of a fully paying subscriber streaming the tracks.

So what is the average rate overall?

At 1,975 streams, the average pay per stream for Vienna Circle is £0.0043. A fan would have to stream a song 184 times in their lifetime to effectively pay the artist the iTunes rate (not including Apple’s cut).

Of course, these rates pale in comparison to regular iTunes sales. Streaming income would never have given Vienna Circle the opportunity to invest in a second album, and they wouldn’t be able to claim a profit from just streaming for decades, if ever.

All in all, it seems worth further analysis, so subscribe to this blog and I’ll post some detailed analysis later. The second album, due in Spring, will be tracked extensively and sounds much better, so its analysis should be quite insightful. Alternatively, sign up to the Vienna Circle mailing list to hear about their second second album - I think bassist Jack is preparing some great studio videos of Monkey Puzzle House for subscribers right now.