Tag: digitalmusic

On the beat with the BBC

I had the pleasure of attending the BBC’s on the beat conference.

The conference was in beta state as LJ Rich announced at the very start. It is a example of the way the BBC is changing. More people within are able to push the organisation the way it needs to go. More risks taken, more gained for the general public.

Beta or not, it was a good afternoon with speakers from across the music industry. Each panel was backed up with somebody from the BBC.

The sessions were centered around the audiences, discovery and metadata. The keynote was given by Mark Mulligan, whom I gather is well known for his blog and writing about the future of music.

It was interesting to hear how the music industry has parallels with the film industry.

Artists need to ‘find their popcorn’

In the audiences panel it was interested to meet and hear from DJ Charlie Sloth and  Shazam. There was also a interesting reflection between the Charlie’s focus on the BBC Radio 1xtra audience who may not own a hifis and use their phones for music discovery. Against a talk by Jeff Smith from BBC Radio 2, with audiences who still buy CDs.

In the Metadata session which included Music Brainz, there was a debate about the lack of metadata  in music and they only scratched the surface. When it came out that theres not really a well used standard for music classification.

To which I tweeted…

In who’s your music dealer? with  Spotify, PingTune, BBC R1/1Xtra, the question of algorithms for discovery came into call. But even more interested was the power of the DJ to bring forward music unlike anything else. Something the music algorithms fail at.

The event was top and tailed with musical demos from many companies and our own BBC R&D UX team showing off the scalable documentary. However there  was also, LJ’s impromptu’s play on the piano.

…and live music which I thought was odd, however I really enjoyed the quite unique voice of Layla, one of the many artists who signed up with BBC Introducing.

All excellent stuff and ultimately reminded me that DJ Hackday needs to happen… Love to team up with BBC Music to consider the future of participation, remixing and music discovery from a slighly different standpoint.

The future of digital music? Space for the DJ?

BBC Music on the beat

Thanks to Simon for pointing this out to me. I am very interested as I mentioned to BBC on the beat team.

I’ve been pushing for the future of Djing for years and I thank Mozilla Fest for letting me run something a while ago. One of the outcomes was stem based djing, we called it 8 track. I always felt like we were just scratching the surface and there were many other scenarios which needed to be explored. I especially like the quantified club. I wonder about the line up, it seems very singles music driven rather than looking at mixing/djing. I do wish Mixcloud, Pacemaker and Mixxx were all coming along too!

See you in London?

Where is spotify for dj mixes?

I see Spotify is  updating its linux users with new features first… But I still wonder where and if there is interest in a spotify for dj mixes?

A while ago I wrote about the differences for soundcloud vs mixcloud then went on to write about mixcloud. I highlighted these as problems with mixcloud…

  • The ability to license content including creative commons
  • Allow people to download the mixes if the dj allows it, like soundcloud do…
  • Allow alternative versions of the same mix (this could be a nice pro feature, pro users get access to the transcoder)
  • Add the ability to comment on sections of the mix and the whole mix if they want to
  • Groups are a good idea (they work well on flickr and soundcloud)
  • Spend a little more time on the design of the site if possible

The download one was always a problem. Something which strikes at the heart of mixcloud’s licensing and something spotify seemed to have solved too.

So I wonder if mixcloud will ever release a desktop client or if anyone else will jump in and do it first?

Digital Music is not a loaf of bread which can be stolen

In a long series of things which I've been meaning to blog for a while. I saw this on Torrent Freak.

Singer/songwriter Jeff Tweedy is part of the growing group of artists that understands that there’s more to music than selling pieces of plastic, and suing your fans.

In an interview with Wired Magazine (from a while ago), Tweedy said:

A piece of art is not a loaf of bread. When someone steals a loaf of bread from the store, that’s it. The loaf of bread is gone. When someone downloads a piece of music, it’s just data until the listener puts that music back together with their own ears, their mind, their subjective experience. How they perceive your work changes your work.

Jeff Tweedy is the leadsinger of the popular band Wilco, that won two Grammy’s back in 2005. He doesn’t consider copying and remixing as evil, but as a way to facilitate creativity.

On the official website of the band from Chicago we even see a link to the BitTorrent tracker where Wilco fans actively share high quality recordings.

Treating your audience like thieves is absurd. Anyone who chooses to listen to our music becomes a collaborator. People who look at music as commerce don’t understand that. They are talking about pieces of plastic they want to sell, packages of intellectual property. I’m not interested in selling pieces of plastic.

For those who are interested in the copyright debate, here’s a presentation by Larry Lessig titled “Who owns Culture“. The presentation served as an intro to conversation about p2p and free culture by Jeff Tweedy and Larry Lessig (audio link).

This all comes at a time when EMI music CEO and Chairman Alain Levy tells an audience at the London Business School that the CD as we know it is dead. And to top that, the IPPR released a study on why copying of CDs and DVDs for personal use should be legalised.

IPPR Deputy Director Ian Kearns said:

Millions of Britons copy CDs onto their home computers breaking copyright laws everyday. British copyright law is out of date with consumer practices and technological progress.

A recent survey among 2135 British adult consumers shows that most people don’t even know that they are breaking the law. Of all the people that participated in the survey, 55% said that they have ever copied CDs onto other equipment. However, only 19% actually knows that this behavior is illegal.

Well what more can you say? Three interesting stories in the downfall or change of the music industry.

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