Music Technology
Alan Lomax’s Global Jukebox Goes Digital
Wednesday, February 1st, 2012The music Lomax collected has been available in 45-second snippets on the Cultural Equity web site for several years but is now being digitized in its entirety for streaming… Folklorist’s Global Jukebox Goes Digital- NYTimes.com. Share
Inside the Cell Phone File Sharing Networks of Western Africa (Q+A) | Motherboard
Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012Motherboard has a really interesting interview with Christopher Kirkley from Sahel Sounds about his release “Music From Saharan Cellphones”. A remarkable description of alternate music distribution systems. Inside the Cell Phone File Sharing Networks of Western Africa (Q+A) | Motherboard. Share
Cleaning records with wood glue
Monday, September 12th, 2011A picture and a discussion on Reddit about how to clean records using wood glue.
Got two turntables and two iPhones? You’re a scratchin’ demon DJ!
Saturday, May 14th, 2011From the clever folks at Stanford: A novel method of digital scratching is presented as an alternative to currently available digital hardware interfaces and time-coded vinyl (TCV). Similar to TCV, the proposed method leverages existing analog turntables as a physical interface to manipulate the playback of digital audio. Share
Updated: Google Music Beta – Request your invite
Tuesday, May 10th, 2011My last post was about the Amazon Cloud Player. Now Google has done the same thing. I am waiting for my invite. The About Google Music page has links so you can request your invite too. (US only for the moment) The video below gives a quick tour. Features include a playlist maker. It will [...]
Happy in the cloud – A few weeks with the Amazon Cloud Player
Saturday, May 7th, 2011Engadget has a good round up of the various online streaming and cloud music options: Streaming music breakdown: how Google Music and iCloud will affect today’s options. I signed up for the Amazon Cloud Music service the first day and I’ve been really pleased so far. 5 gigs free to start and then after I [...]
Could this be the stupidest, most ignorant, article ever written about Google, the web and cultural artifacts?
Monday, April 11th, 2011I mean, really, even for the Daily Mail, a consistently horrible rag, this is a real prizewinner: Google threatens to destroy not only pop sensation Adele, but Britains film and music industries | Mail Online. Share
5 Reasons Why the US Domain Seizures Are Unconstitutional
Sunday, March 13th, 2011After the recent arrest of a man for owning a site which merely linked to potentially infringing content, TorrentFreak has a well reasoned look at some of the constitutional issues surrounding the recent domain name seizures: 5 Reasons Why the US Domain Seizures Are Unconstitutional | TorrentFreak. Share
OT – The White House Asks: Whats Blocking Innovation in America? – Answer: IP Laws
Saturday, February 12th, 2011Groklaw is a very useful, very dense site covering the intersections of law and technology. PJ’s work has been invaluable in advancing understanding of the complexities of the ways in which law, and IP law in particular, influence the world we live in, the culture we consume and the technology we use to do it. [...]
NYC Subways making music – mta.me
Monday, January 31st, 2011Conductor: www.mta.me from Alexander Chen on Vimeo. Impossibly cool! NYC Subway trains API describes art on screen and has a fun musical surprise too. Speeds up over time and is different each time you launch. Run it in multiple tabs for even more fun. Requires scripting, flash, HTML 5 and sound. MTA.ME. Share
For the true vinyl fetishist: cool turntable laptop skin
Sunday, January 30th, 2011We don’t know anything about Perpetual Kid and this amazing skin appears to be out of stock at the moment, but we are sooo tempted… PerpetualKid.com: DJ TURNTABLE LAPTOP SKIN – TURNTABLE INSPIRED LAPTOP SKIN. Share
Video: Kids figuring out old gadgets are cute – also make us feel old
Saturday, January 15th, 2011In french, with subtitles. Hearteningly, one kid figures out turntableism right quick in a hurry… Share
Shock! Major record label does the right thing! (.. or does it?)
Monday, January 10th, 2011From the press release: The American people, through the nation’s library, will receive a post-holiday gift of vintage sound recordings from one of the world’s largest recording companies. The Library of Congress and the Universal Music Group (UMG) announced today the donation of more than 200,000 historic master recordings—many long out-of-print or never released—to the [...]
How we discover new music today
Saturday, September 18th, 2010We Twitter-follow someone we already like. They follow someone they like and then R(e)T(weet) something he says: We follow the link in the tweet and get to: http://www.collapseboard.com/song-of-the-day-177-agent-ribbons Where we learn about a new band we’ve not heard before. And we get to hear them on videos we’d not seen before. We learn that there [...]
Guess What, Court Says You Might Not Own That Record You Bought
Friday, September 10th, 2010Wired.com’s excellent Threat Level blog has a post called Guess What, You Don’t Own That Software You Bought. It’s all about the federal appeals court saying today that software makers can use shrink-wrap and click-wrap licenses to forbid the transfer or resale of their wares, an apparent gutting of the so-called first-sale doctrine. How might [...]
Internet Killer is Still Alive – Won’t you please help?
Monday, February 22nd, 2010A while back there was a leak of an EU memo referring to a particular chapter of the proposed ACTA treaty. Now the actual chapter in question has leaked. The reliable Michael Geist has a reasoned analysis: Michael Geist – ACTA Internet Chapter Leaks: Renegotiates WIPO, Sets 3 Strikes as Model. Yes, his analysis is [...]
MOG – Perfected steaming online music gets close, really close. Must try.
Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009Just a quick break from the salt mines (making my way through a large collection of CDs, with an interesting jazz collection in the wings) to strongly suggest that you check out the new features of MOG. MOG has been around for a while in the music blogging/socializing sphere and they have just launched a [...]
Could it be that Bass Culture is in trouble?
Saturday, October 10th, 2009Wayne&Wax has several posts and discussions jumping off from this post: Mobile Music & Treble Culture. With the proliferation of bad sound on iPods and phones, can we see a march towards treble in the way we consume music? Here are parts twoand three of the string. It’s an interesting exercise, thinking about the ways in [...]
Audio researcher’s “Fidelity Potential Index” pits mp3 against vinyl; science or pseudoscience?
Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009Devin Coldewey over at Tech Crunch has a report on an Audio researcher’s “Fidelity Potential Index”, which pits mp3 against vinyl; science or pseudoscience?. The original report is here: http://www.enjoythemusic.com/Magazine/manufacture/0909/, it includes many caveats… Share
VLC player hits 1.0 – Best multimedia player anywhere
Tuesday, July 7th, 2009The single best media player for your computer, VLC, just hit version 1.0 today. If you have ever had trouble playing media on the web, this is the one for you. It plays everything. I’ve never hit anything it can’t play. Also, it takes up waaaay fewer resources on the computer. It does not load [...]
Obama Administration Declares Proposed IP Treaty a National Security Secret
Saturday, March 14th, 2009SO, get ready to have you ISP monitor your traffic on behalf of the RIAA and to have your iPod checked at the border… (Obama Administration Declares Proposed IP Treaty a National Security Secret | Threat Level from Wired.com.) Perhaps we should start a service where people can upload pictures of their record collections so [...]
What is your sampling epiphany?
Wednesday, March 4th, 2009An unofficial compilation of tracks sampled by Massive Attack showcases the group’s aesthetic through the songs that informed it – and provides fans with the thrill of discovering the originals. http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2009/feb/26/sampling-epiphany-massive-attack (Simon Reynolds at The Guardian, UK) Share
The Deceptive Perfection of Auto-Tune
Saturday, February 7th, 2009Unusually cogent discussion of AutoTune on Slashdot. Including notions of “authenticity” in music. Slashdot | The Deceptive Perfection of Auto-Tune Can we at least agree that too much use of *any* musical “trick” can become annoying? Share