Yay, it's time for another news roundup! I just got back from a few weeks out of town (apparently the universe did not like the fact that I was out of New York, and decided to get all pouty and start throwing around earthquakes and hurricanes - hopefully now that I'm back, things will settle down considerably).
Anyway, here's what's been happening lately in the digital music world:
- Not content to own all of our private data, Facebook is launching a music platform in conjunction with Spotify, MOG, and Rdio. It will apparently allow users "to listen to music from within Facebook.com," since it's not convenient enough to simply have music on in the background while you spend all day on Facebook. Interestingly enough, a Facebook rep apparently told Mashable “There’s nothing new to announce,” so take this one with a grain of salt.
- eMusic and The Echo Nest have teamed up to create a new streaming radio offering. It's an interesting mix of human-curated content (by the music nerds at eMusic) and computer-based playlist generation (by the tech nerds at The Echo Nest). If, like me, you feel that Brooklyn has been woefully under-represented in the musical arena, you might want to start with their Brooklyn station.
- The Atlantic has an interesting piece on The Loudness Wars and how they might possibly be over. Let your eardrums rejoice! The piece has an interesting take on Sleigh Bells
' use of extreme compression as a purposeful technique as opposed to a last resort to make a record sound louder than it really is.
- Not really news, but a useful roundup of Spotify playlist tools that help you create, discover, share, and collaborate on Spotify playlists. Enjoy them now before they implement streaming caps in the US!
- If you're feeling generous, take a look at all the cool SXSW Interactive 2012 panels that Echo Nest is proposing, and go sign up and vote for them! While you're at it, you might as well go ahead and vote for my panel, "Change Happens: Improv For An Unpredictable World." Thanks!
1 comment:
it was clear that sleigh bells were using compression to give their album a certain sound...but in the end, i found it nearly impossible to get all the way through the album. it was a fun at first, but made my head hurt and its lack of variety and range eventually just made it all noise.
if the loudness wars are really over - and i think we need more evidence on that one - i can't wait for the record companies to try to sell us ... hmm, un-remastered? ... versions of all of the albums they fucked up. especially the classic albums that have been "remastered" and butchered in the last decade. just think of the sales pitch: "now, with better sound than the original and correcting the mistakes from the version we suckered you into buying three years ago!"
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