AP - A lawyer for Phil Spector said in a court document filed Wednesday that the music producer maintains he did not kill actress Lana Clarkson and is not responsible for her death.
AFP - Microsoft plans to release a new version of its portable Zune music player later this year featuring a touch screen, Web browser, Wi-Fi connectivity and high-definition radio receiver.
I know it seems like all I’ve been blogging about these days is , but there have been several other cool things going on in the past couple of weeks. And the free live album from is totally one of them!
Released as a “thank you gift” to their fans, the album is entitled , and features live versions of some of and company’s rockingest tunes from their last few albums. I’m not usually a fan of live albums, but, I gotta tell ya, this one soars. Their live version of is so awesome, it gives me goosebumps. Every. Single. Time. Seriously, it’s amazing!
And at this price — that would be, I repeat, zero dollars! — how can you lose? I mean, the worst thing that could happen is you download the album, hate it and delete it. Easy peasy. But, trust me, you will not hate this freebie, amigos. So, download a copy for yourself and enjoy!
Free software, a webcam, and some stickers printed on an inkjet can turn any object into a real-world controller. That’s what Paul Rose of and his team did with a soccer ball (translation for the civilized world: football). The software is powered by the same framework used for the reacTable, but in this case there’s no table and no projector: just a ball.
Institut FATIMA uses a Fussball as (des-)controller for triggering drumsamples. The camera detects the symbols on the ball, kicks numbers into the sequencer, the sequencer matches goals. The goal is always music. Software used is reactivision and ableton live. Do it at home.
As it happens, reacTIVision just got a significant update, with more improvements planned. You can read up on the full details on Create Digital Motion:
Martin Kaltenbrunner, co-creator of the framework (and the reacTable), has some tips for working with tangible interfaces and music, and where to find more inspiration.
In addition to TUIO, reacTIVision also has an alternative MIDI mode, where you can map the appearance of fiducial symbols to note ON and OFF events, as well as their X,Y and rotation angle to a control channel value. Quite a few people have been using this for the creation of cheap web-cam based MIDI controllers.
Using TUIO, you have more alternatives though, you can currently use Max/MSP, Pure Data, Quartz Composer, Processing, Java, C++, C# and so on to receive the object & finger tracking data. Here are a few cool musical projects, that have been built using reacTIVision:
Patrick H. Lauke (patch pictured, from Flickr) has a that shows some of the basic workflow for combining the free patching environment Pd with TUIO and reacTIVision. He cautions:
this may not be pleasant from a musical point of view, but it only serves as a first test for further experimentation.
Hopefully this gives folks some ammunition if you’re getting involved in the tangible interface hackday! [ | ]
The digital music market has been taking a battering on two fronts: Where record labels have hammered digital content companies for upfront advances in order to use ‘their’ content, for example video, those same companies have been hammered at the back end by the licensing societies for the use of that content.
So, in summary, as a content aggregator or provider you pay up front to access the content and then again once the public has consumed that content. Somewhere in the middle, you as the content provider are meant to monetise that content to pay off both ends and maybe make a slice for yourself. Tough challenge when advertising is thin on the ground and those same music labels don’t even use online advertising much.
The only content provider of note to score off of music was MTV (many years ago) and the labels are damned sure that mistake (i.e. music videos for free) will never be repeated!
That has meant providers have needed big pockets and big balls in order to take a punt in the music space. Many, including big names like Yahoo! and AOL in the UK have retreated licking their wounds and deciding to focus on Money, Cars, Property, other Entertainment instead. Leaving an increasingly sickly UK music scene.
Now, the game may be changing and getting a little easier as the from an extraordinary 0.22p per track to a more manageable 0.085. The likes of Pandora and YouTube (though that was more a spat directly with the labels) were also part of that retreat and so, hopefully not too late, the PRS is opening the door just a crack to allow a little light into the squeeky tight business models for online music providers.
The content companies *may* come back but given the continuing squeeze on their budgets as advertising drops off the cliff, it might be quite some time before they come back to thinking about music. Once burned, twice shy indeed.
UPDATE: Tto get its house in order when it comes to pan-EU licensing, which has also been a huge blocker to digital music businesses reaching an economy of scale to match US rivals.
