Digital Noise: Music & Tech

Shazam has been around for a few years now--CNET U.K. took note of the service back in 2006--but with today's launch of Apple's App Store, it could become a whole lot more popular. It has the potential to change how people discover and buy music.

Shazam lets you identify whatever song is playing nearby, tag it, and buy it directly from your iPhone.

(Credit: Shazam)

The concept behind Shazam is simple: whenever you hear a song playing and can't identify it--on the car radio, at a friend's house, at a bar--you activate the Shazam application on your mobile phone. It "listens" to the song for about 30 seconds, then sends a text message to your phone identifying the artist and title. Shazam's database contains audio fingerprints for nearly 5 million songs, so there's a pretty good chance of a positive ID. However, closing the loop with an actual purchase was hard--you had to tag the song, then consult a Web site to see your tagged item, then go to another service (such as iTunes) to buy it.

The version of Shazam for the iPhone 2.0 fixes this problem: once you've tagged a song in Shazam, you can launch iTunes directly from that tagged song and buy the song immediately. That's assuming you have a Wi-Fi connection to the Internet--iTunes doesn't let you download music over a 3G data connection yet. (This is weak, but it's not Shazam's fault. Once Apple, AT&T, and the music companies work out all the business details to allow 3G downloads, Shazam could become even more useful. )

Downloading Shazam from the Apple App Store is free for the time being. No charges are mentioned in the terms as far as I can see, but the company reserves the right to begin charging for its service later (after notifying users). Using Shazam from other phones generally costs half a U.K. pound (about $1) per identification, or 2 pounds (about $4) per month for unlimited usage, so a similar fee structure could apply to the iPhone version as well.

I wrote about OurStage a couple weeks ago: it's a battle-of-the-bands site that's actually worth looking at, as it requires no up-front payments to participate, seems very hard to "game" by stuffing the ballot box for your own or your friend's bands, and offers prizes of actual value.

Concert giant LiveNation will offer 300 opening spots on the OurStage Marketplace.

On Wednesday, the company signed a deal with concert giant Live Nation, which owns many top concert venues in the U.S. and has been signing so-called comprehensive record-plus-touring ("360") deals with acts such as Madonna and Nickelback. Under the terms of the deal, Live Nation will offer opening gigs in the new OurStage Marketplace.

With the Marketplace, bands can sign up to create a free electronic presskit, then submit them for these gigs--which include big arena gigs like the Punk Rock 2008 Festival at Colorado's Red Rocks and opening for the Allman Brothers at the 20,000 seat Comcast (formerly Tweeter) Center outside of Boston. Unlike OurStage prizes, which go only to winners of the head-to-head competitions, any act can participate in the Marketplace.

Long-term, OurStage envisions itself becoming a clearinghouse where emerging bands can connect with venues that need to fill spots. It's an interesting concept, but OurStage will have to amass a fair number of proven high-quality live acts--not just kids in bedrooms with Garage Band--to become a trusted source for venues. So far, I've liked some of the artists I've heard on the site, but not enough to write their names down. That points to a chicken-and-egg problem--a lot of artists probably feel they can get "noticed" in the traditional way, by making great recordings and playing lots of local shows, getting press writeups and radio play, and attracting the attention of A&R men and concert bookers. As long as OurStage is free, bands have nothing to lose by giving it a shot, but it will be interesting to see how entrenched the traditional gatekeepers of the music business really are. I'm betting these old institutions won't die away, although they might use online sources (such as OurStage and--more likely--MySpace) as one more way of discovering acts.

Watching this year's Fourth of July fireworks display in Seattle, I wondered (not for the first time) how they coordinate the fireworks with the musical soundtrack--the hearts exploding right at the climax of "Unchained Melody," or the long fizzy streamers during the theremin part of "Good Vibrations," for instance. Not surprisingly, software's the answer.

If you don't want to control the fireworks display from your laptop computer, this Firelite panel from FireOne will let you trigger up to 39 firing panels manually.

(Credit: FireOne)

The Seattle display was operated by a company called Pyro Spectaculars based out of Rialto, Calif., which reportedly uses a highly customized or home-built system to coordinate the music to the displays. But other pyrotechnicians might use combined hardware-software systems from FireOne or Infinity Vision.

FireOne's Web site gives some insight into the process of creating a display: the designer starts by creating an audio file composed of the songs that will be used in the display, then importing it into the software as a .wav file. Then, the designer selects from hundreds of shell types in FireOne's database, matching them up to specific points in the display--FireOne claims its software is accurate up to 0.01 of a second. The software puts a timecode on the music track, coordinates it with the electrical signals necessary to fire the shells, and outputs it as a file with the extension (of course) .fir. Of course, there's a manual option in case something goes wrong, as it did in Seattle's New Year's Eve celebration last year.

If you're interested in pursuing what sounds like one of the funnest jobs in the universe, you can find out more at the Pyrotechnics Guild International Web site.

I had a charter family membership Seattle's Experience Music Project or EMP, which opened in 2000. But after a couple years, I gave it up. The exhibits didn't change enough to warrant a lot of repeat visits, our periodic out-of-town guests had all been at least once, and the promise of early alerts about live shows at the museum never seemed to come through. (The one show I really wanted to see, the Television reunion in 2001, was sold out before I was ever informed about it.)

Seattle's Experience Music Project

(Credit: Cacophony, Wikimedia Commons)

With a teenaged niece in town and my daughter just getting old enough to enjoy the museum experience, we decided to rejoin yesterday. After facing a few years of low attendance, the museum has made a lot of positive changes, like lowering prices for memberships and daily passes and offering free admission on one evening per month.

As part of this revamp, they killed MEG. Also known as the Museum Experience Guide, MEG was a portable device about the size of a portable CD player with a laser scanner, headphones, and an LCD screen. Visitors would point the scanner at a point on the wall and hear information about the exhibit and maybe some relevant music--for example, famous guitarists like Vernon Reid shredding one of the museum's rare guitars. Nobody loved MEG: they were awkward to carry and hard to figure out, and I always ended up putting mine down somewhere halfway through my visit.

Their replacement? iPods with jukeboxes of music from featured artists like Nirvana and Jimi Hendrix. Given that Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen established the EMP, you might have expected them to replace the MEG (which was built on Windows CE) with a Zune. But no--even though the EMP has held Zune-sponsored events and even had a few Zunes on display for a while, they've apparently decided to go with the industry standard MP3 player instead.

I had the opportunity to see Wynton Marsalis perform with the 15-piece Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra last night in Seattle, and it was an absolutely stellar performance, with great song selection (Marsalis's own "The Holy Ghost" was a standout) and some of the most incredible technical playing I've ever heard--they did Duke Ellington's "Braggin' in Brass," which contains a trombone part in which each player plays a note or two in sequence, together creating this fast complicated line. (Listen here--that part starts around the -2:06 mark.) I've heard from some jazz fans that Wynton's a little too stiff or formal for their tastes, but that wasn't my experience at all--he even walked back on stage for an impromptu second encore vamp with only the piano, bass, and drums backing him up.

I would have been happy to buy a recording of last night's performance by Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra (shown here).

(Credit: Wynton Marsalis Web site)

Jazz performances lend themselves to live recordings--setlists change nightly (Marsalis announces his setlist from the stage as the show goes on) and improvisation is the rule rather than a rarity. I would have been happy to buy a recording of this show or last month's Return to Forever performance. But so far, I don't see jazz musicians embracing the practice of recording their shows and selling them--something that's become pretty common with jam bands like Widespread Panic. A few acts, like Willie Nelson, even sell USB memory sticks containing a recording of the show right at the door as you're leaving.

Rights clearance might be one problem: most of the Marsalis set consisted of songs by other composers, some from the orchestra, others long-passed like Duke Ellington. Figuring out how to split the sale proceeds from a live performance among all these rights holders might be a problem--something that rock bands, who tend to perform mostly their own material, don't face. Then again, every Widespread Panic show contains at least one cover, and they seem to have figured out how to disburse the proceeds. So I hope the jazz world will begin to embrace on-the-spot live recordings soon--I want to give them more of my money, if they'll let me.

A few days ago, I posted about Instinctiv's Shuffle application for the iPhone and iPod Touch. It's an interesting piece of software that addresses a growing problem for some discerning listeners--how to get a meaningful playlist without having to program it song by song--but it only works on so-called "jailbroken" devices.

Instinctiv found Apple's iPhone SDK to be too restrictive for its needs.

(Credit: Apple)

Instinctiv's FAQ alluded to problems that made it impossible for it to use the iPhone software developer kit (SDK), but I was curious to hear more, and Monday I had a chance to talk with Instinctiv co-founders Justin Smithline and Peter Brodsky.

As Brodsky put it, "Apple's not really releasing an iPhone SDK." To paraphrase his explanation, the iPhone runs Mac OS X. Apple could simply have allowed developers to write applications to that platform--that's more or less how jailbroken apps work--and let the developers figure out how to distribute them. That's the traditional software development model.

Instead, Apple is trying assert tighter control over the iPhone by allowing only code-signed applications to run on it. The only way to get your application code-signed is by participating in Apple's iPhone Developer Program. Which requires--among other things--developers to use the new SDK.

Developers can download the SDK for free to see whether they're interested in applying to become an official iPhone developer. But Instinctiv says the SDK was useless to them because it doesn't provide a way for applications access the music library. (One of many restrictions it imposes.) According to the Instinctiv co-founders, this is not about protecting users from badly written apps--it's possible to write an "approved" app with the SDK that degrades performance on the iPhone--but is being done strictly for business reasons.

I'm not a developer and am not qualified to evaluate this claim. But even if it's correct, so what? Apple spent a lot of time and money creating the mobile phone that everybody wants, and absolutely should be able to control the user experience, enforce exclusive arrangements with its carrier partners, and extract fees from third-party application developers.

But this strategy works only as long as there's no viable competition. Right now, there are plenty of other mobile platforms that third-party developers can write applications for--Symbian (which Nokia recently bought in its entirety and turned open source), RIM's Blackberry, and Microsoft's Windows Mobile just to name three. But those platforms either have inherent flaws--the Windows Mobile UI comes to mind--or the devices they're used on don't have the combination of style and features that the iPhone is becoming known for.

Google's taking the opposite approach of Apple, building its Android mobile phone platform on open-source software such as Linux and promoting it heavily to third-party developers. Instinctiv is bullish on the platform, and has already designed a version of its Shuffle app for Android.

But I'm pretty skeptical about Android's chances of changing the world. When buying a phone, are consumers really looking for a large choice of applications? No. They're looking for a cool phone that does a few things very well, and a service provider that offers reasonable service in the widest possible range. The iPhone has the edge in hardware design, it has most of the features and applications that most people want, and while AT&T's service isn't perfect, neither is anybody else's. Android might have been great five years ago, going head to head against Symbian and Windows Mobile in their infancy. But competing against the iPhone's unified array of hardware+software+online services will be a tough task for any company.

Update: there is a lightweight browser plug-in that lets you play song samples without having to download and install the full Rhapsody client. When I tried the MP3 download service yesterday, I was unable to play the 25 free songs in that browser window--it only let me play 30-second samples. Today, using the same username and password, it started my 25-song count. So my major complaint with the service has been solved. Kudos to Rhapsody.

Amazon was first out of the gate with a comprehensive MP3 download store last September, and they've steadily upgraded the site since then. I'm particularly happy they changed the search interface that mixed in MP3 downloads with physical CDs and other products. Now, when you search for an artist's name on Amazon MP3, the default search setting is for MP3 downloads. As it should be.

Yesterday, I couldn't play my 25 free samples within this lightweight browser plug-in. Today, I can, eliminating my only major complaint with the service.

(Credit: Screenshot)

Even so, MP3s are just another product to Amazon, which is why I welcome the entry of RealNetworks' Rhapsody into the market. Rhapsody is my favorite of the subscription services I've tried, and I know several big music listeners who are devoted fans. The company understands how to curate and package music.

Rhapsody MP3 launched today, and it's very straightforward: songs cost $0.99, albums $9.99, everything's in DRM-free MP3 format, and you don't need the Rhapsody player or any other specialized software application to buy songs. (Like Amazon, Rhapsody offers the option of downloading a small application that automatically adds songs to iTunes. Unlike Amazon's equivalent, this download manager can also add songs to the Rhapsody Player and the Real Player, which apparently is still used by somebody somewhere. But it doesn't support the Windows Media Player, while Amazon's does.)

Rhapsody's store also has one huge advantage over Amazon's: you can sign up for the free level of the Rhapsody subscription service and stream 25 songs per month in their entirety. No more guessing whether you like a song based on a 30-second sample.

As my fellow CNET Network blogger Rick Broida already noted, if you're one of the first 100,000 to create an account--which means giving them a credit card number--before July 4, you get a free album.

A follow-up to my previous post on Qbox: they fixed whatever was preventing the player from playing songs embedded in MySpace pages, and I can now happily recommend it anybody who frequently listens to music on MySpace, Bebo, or YouTube.

As the Qplayer plays this Sigur Ros video from YouTube, I can conduct a search for a friend's band, and add songs from their MySpace to my playlist. The only drawback: search results appear in a separate window.

(Credit: Screenshot)

A quick recap: the Qbox Web site lets you conduct searches for artists across MySpace, Bebo, and YouTube simultaneously. When results appear, you click a small play button on the Web page and the Qplayer launches and begins playing the song or video. You can conduct other searches and add them to your currently playing list, mixing audio and video in whatever order you like. The service is interesting because--like many younger music listeners--it makes no distinction between multiplatinum artists and your best friend's garage band. As long as they're on MySpace, Bebo, or YouTube, they're easily available from Qbox.

Qbox has the concept right, but the overall experience is a little more awkward than it could be--you can conduct searches from the player, but the results appear in a separate Web browser window. Then, when you select an option like "play" or "add to player" from the Web page in the browser, it adds the song back to the Qplayer playlist. I'm not sure why this back-and-forth has to exist, given that Qplayer is basically a modified Web browser--why not just display the search results window in a separate tab within the player? It also has an annoying habit of asking you if you're sure you want to close the player every time you try to shut it down--unnecessary dialog boxes are a pet peeve of mine. But I trust this is just a first iteration, and I'll be keeping track as they improve the service and the software.

A fascinating article in the current issue of the Harvard Business Review calls into question some of the now-accepted wisdom about the long tail.

I've been very satisfied with this relatively obscure compilation of Ethiopan jazz tunes (mostly by Mulatu Astatke). But I've had far more conversations about blockbuster recordings from the likes of U2, and those conversations are valuable to me in their own right.

A quick refresher: the long tail theory, popularized by Wired editor Chris Anderson, says that as digital distribution drives distribution costs to zero, businesses will be able to profit by stocking enormous numbers of obscure titles. These titles, which may only sell one or two copies a year, are the tail of the traditional demand curve--the "long tail."

The HBR study, by Anita Elberse, analyzes data from online music and video stores and suggests that digital distribution has actually had the opposite effect: while more titles are available than ever before, consumers are flocking in ever-greater numbers to the handful of very popular titles at the head of the demand curve.

Interestingly, consumers who buy both types of titles actually find the blockbuster titles to be more satisfying.

Why is that? Is it because the cream rises to the top, meaning that the most popular titles are necessarily some of the best? Tastemakers in the music industry would have you believe so, and at least one company, HSS, claims it can analyze songs with software to predict whether they'll be hits or not.

But I prefer an alternate theory: most people are sheep. (Not me, of course. Or you.) But seriously: a Columbia University study that I've cited before suggests that there's very little link between the objective "quality" of a song (as measured in a control group where none of the listeners could see other participants' ratings) and its popularity--the more popular a song appears to be in a particular subgroup, the more popular it becomes. The popular songs in one group had no relationship to the popular songs in another group.

Here's a nicer way of putting it: objective quality is impossible to measure, and people are driven by social inclusion--the desire to be accepted as part of a larger group, which defines itself partially by the media it consumes. This is why every indie rock fan between the ages of 25 and 35 in Seattle was listening to and talking about Outkast's "Hey Ya" when it came out. That song was unusual because it crossed over to lots of subgroups, paving the way for a humungous national blockbuster album. But in Seattle, the same thing happened for The Postal Service and the first Arcade Fire album, too. All of that music was good--there's a certain quality baseline below which something just won't become popular. But social inclusion is a huge reason why those songs and bands rose above dozens of others that were of more or less equal quality.

Given the tendency of people to flock to the big hits, Elberse recommends that producers do not change their business models to cater to the long tail. For the music industry, that means labels should continue to bet on a few releases each year, and market the heck out of any that show a glimmer of popularity. They may not sell 10 million records like they did a few years ago, but a few million-sellers per year can still support a hits-driven business, making it capable of taking chances on hundreds of smaller artists. At the same time, she recommends that retailers who want to appeal to hardcore customers--the ones who spend the most money--should stock the obscure stuff (I'd call that the Amoeba Records model), but keep costs for it as low as possible, and assume that the big hits will still draw most people into the store.

Instinctiv de-randomizes the random shuffle function on iPhones, but only if you "jailbreak" them first.

(Credit: Instinctiv)

A couple weeks ago, I pondered if early adopters of the iPod and other MP3 players were starting to lose patience with the random shuffle function. Too much black and white, not enough gray.

Almost on cue, start-up Instinctiv came out on Thursday with its first application, an iPhone and iPod Touch application called Instinctiv Shuffle that will derandomize the random iTunes-shuffling feature.

Instinctiv Shuffle uses an algorithm similar to that developed by Pandora and other taste-tracking sites to select the perfect song to play next--like having a professional DJ sift through your collection.

There's a catch: Instinctiv Shuffle works only on so-called "jail-broken" iPhones, which means that you have to download the right firmware (version 1.1.4), then download and run another piece of software called iLiberty (or take matters into your own hands, if you have the technical sophistication to do so).

Doing this has risks: Apple's been known to release software updates that disable third-party applications and prevent unlocked iPhones from using alternate cellular networks. Instinctiv apparently didn't want to be bound to certain limitations in the iPhone SDK.