MusicTech Rewinder - Issue #55

Happy Friday,

before you read this week's news, here are a few discoveries I have made in the last few days.

1.) The Pudding, one of my favorite websites on the web, has created the Live Music Analysis Tool. They dived into the vast discography of live-recorded albums on Spotify to satiate the desire to catch a live-show during those times. You can search for artists, and find the live tracks that stand out the most compared to the studio version. You might even find someone new that you just have to see.

2.) Wikipedia is a constantly changing platform with hundreds of edits occurring every minute. Now you can experience that dynamism as ambient music: Listen to Wikipedia. Additions, subtractions, and new user signups to the site are tracked as they happen and represented as different tones. Bells indicate additions and string plucks indicate subtractions. Pitch changes according to the size of the edit; the larger the edit, the deeper the note. Green circles show edits from unregistered contributors, and purple circles mark edits performed by automated bots. You may see announcements for new users as they join the site, punctuated by a string swell. I listened to it the soothing sound of knowledge the entire day yesterday. :)

3.) Ever wondered why metronomes are such an amazing tool for musicians and why gadgets like the Soundbrenner Pulse are such a success, check this video in which Veritasium explains why and how spontaneous synchronization appears all the time in the physical world.

Enjoy reading this week's music tech news and have a wonderful weekend.

Cheers,

Matt

You will dizzy yourself if you try to find today’s criteria, the organizing principles we use to categorize. Genre can be determined by historical period (regency) or geographic location (westerns); by how tightly it cleaves to established reality (fantasy, magical realism, science fiction, true crime); by what psychological needs it satisfies in us (mystery, romance, thriller); by how it uses language (poetry, essay, novel, play).

Irving Azoff and a coalition of artist advocates are pushing a California law that would let acts get out of recording contracts after seven years without penalty.

The controversy around Tramp Stamps shows why the nebulous term ignores the industry’s faults and blames musicians.

As the music industry deals with royalties on an increasingly global scale, we examine the need for more multi-territory & global licensing.

MIDiA recently explored the concept of the social studio and the more sophisticated tools for creation that are being embedded in social media platforms. It did not take long for this to go from concept…

Spotify often gets contrasted with Bandcamp in order to explain the challenges of the music streaming landscape: low per-stream royalties versus much larger commissions on sales. The intensity of that discussion has moved all eyes […]

Porter Robinson's Secret Sky is a new benchmark for what VR is truly capable of.

as music companies and creators explore new ways of sharing their music and connecting with audiences, particularly through live-streaming, they must also rethink building and monetizing fandom.

I’m a big fan of music, and for about 8 years now, I’ve exclusively used Spotify’s platform for listening to music and podcasts, discovering new music, and collaborating on playlists with friends…

A new finance company targeting the music industry unveiled its services earlier this week, with former AIM chief Alison Wenham and veteran artist manager Tim Clark among its advisors.

P Oliveros article on women composers; discography. This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, September 13, 1970.