How far can iPads be taken when it comes to creating music? The answer seems to be “pretty bloody far” if we go by this video.
Guitarist George Lambro shows the kids how it’s done using a copy of GarageBand.
Hit “Play”, sit back and enjoy! And share the video with all your friends, too!
How Do You Sell Your Own Music On iTunes?
To think that once upon a time the dream of every musician was to have his own CD on the racks of record stores all over the country… now, his aim is to have it featured on iTunes. Yet, how many stop to think of what would it take to make it happen before doing anything? How many understand how it really works? I hope the text below answers that, and gives anybody something of a direction when thinking about selling his own music through iTunes.
The first thing to realize is that you are not going to work directly with Apple – the requirements for doing that rule most people out (IE, you must have 20 albums in your catalog – that is more than bands like The Who put out in their actual time together). No, what you are going to do is to work with Apple through an aggregator such as TuneCore or CDBaby. These are companies that work with Apple in order to ensure that the content which is featured on iTunes meet its actual quality standards, and they also take care of marketing/promotional duties.
In the case of the two that have just been mentioned (TuneCore and CDBaby – they are easily the two most popular aggregators around), you retain the rights to your music, and you also retain more than 90 % of the royalties for every sale (TuneCore actually lets you retain 100 % of every transaction). Aggregators also let you sell your music on other stores and services such as Amazon MP3, Spotify, MySpace Music, Zune, Rhapsody, Nokia, Amazon On Demand and (in the vast majority of cases) you are also allowed to market your music physically, and have it sold on record stores. Continue reading
Name: We Love Your Songs
URL: http://www.weloveyoursongs.com
We Love Your Songs is one of these community sites for new musicians that I have reviewed before, and that I will keep on reviewing until the end. I mean, such resources are terrific – young performers get a chance to nurture their talent, and fans get a chance to become familiarized with the ones who might as well become tomorrow’s stars today, when they were mostly unknown numbers. Plus, those who support a band locally get a chance to show their allegiance online more than easily
As in any other social site, users (IE bands and punters) have to sign up for their own accounts to interact among themselves. Once accounts have been created, it is very easy to upload media, and interact one-to-one both by commenting on what’s being shared.
And in order to elicit the best from bands (and to encourage fans to become even more involved) lots of different competitions are held on the site. Continue reading
Last week YouTube launched its Top 100 chart for music. It basically combines official videos from the likes of Lady Gaga and Jessie J. along with clips that have gone viral after being uploaded by users.
The chart (which is found on YouTube’s music page) is updated weekly, and the data is going to be stored. So, those of you who are up for tracking trends will have it made.
Right now, the chart offers no real surprises – Jennifer Lopez s at number 1 with “On The Floor”, Lady Gaga is at number 2 with “Judas”, Bruno Mars is at number 3 with “The Lazy Song”… and Rebecca Black is at number 10 with “Friday”.
Yeah, sure. As if she were going to have another hit song anytime soon…
Miguel Campal Playing Live.
Do you remember the post I published last month in which I announced that both Grubb and Miguel Campal had released their respective debut albums? Admit it, you do – it was the closest you came to an epiphany when reading a piece of music-related news ever since you learnt Paul was not dead.
Well, maybe not. But the bit in which I insulted Five For Fighting was fun.
Anyway, that eventful day I promised Miguel I would cover his album on MusicKO. And since I forgot to cross my fingers, now I find myself floating over a strange land, with a sequined showbiz moon keeping me company as I do the hard drive equivalent of spinning his record.
Leaving aside allusions to other artists, arbitrary jokes that only three people would get and quotations from “Chalkhills & Children” (which even less people would understand, notwithstanding I supplied the name of the song and linked to the album it was on), I must say that forgetting to cross my fingers when talking to Miguel was actually a very good thing.
I became acquainted with a really, really fine album in the shape of “Espiral” [Spiral] – an album which is a worthy addition to the imaginary of works detailing how resolution is circumstanced by emotional frailness (try Lucas Meyer’s “Un Accidente Feliz”, and Laura Chinelli’s “Historias de Invierno” for good related listens). An album where the singer manages to turn dejection around, and make it become the kind of beauty that only experience can name between smiles. An album that is “dark, yet glowingly alive”, to rip off some bloke that wrote the preface to a book by Joseph Conrad I once bought in a moment of madness.
Miguel released “Espiral” two months ago, in an online-only edition. And since Miguel adheres to Bob Dylan’s dictum for living (IE, “money don’t talk, it swears”) he decided to make it a free download.
“Espiral” is a pop/rock album in the most vivid sense of the word. Musically, it connotes the work of tunesmiths like Paul McCartney and Noel Gallagher, with a clear debt being paid to the production techniques used in works by either. And the vocal melodies in particular remind me a lot of Blur at its finest.
The lyrics themselves are good in relation to the music, IE neither distracts from each other, and their concomitance is dexterous (the processed ballad “Michi” and the spacious “Deseos” [Wishes] are very organic examples). Yet, they are functional in terms of form. Continue reading
Back in 2008, Facebook launched a page for musicians. There, both established and up-and-coming acts were promoted in a bid to make new convert along the way.
At least, that was how things looked on paper. The truth was that MySpace was still the prevalent social site for musicians and music lovers to interact.
Fast forward to the year 2011, and the landscape has been drastically modified. The future of MySpace looks grimmer than ever, and Facebook is going from strength to strength. Its latest incursion into the world of email has met with interest and even outright enthusiasm in some quarters.
And now that MySpace is sinking in the rear view mirror, the Palo Alto company is aiming for the one trophy it could not only take from it back in the day: being the network of choice for musicians. Continue reading
Name: RecooME
URL: http://www.recoo.me
We all know the place to look for playlists online is Last.fm, but those who want to try something a little bit different are well-advised to give this website a try.
RecooME is a social network for the sharing of music and songs. Here, people can recommend these songs they can’t get out of their heads. And these recommendations are what give this site its edge, as people not only follow each other around and see what they are listening to, but also rate what others have shared.
The objective of all this sharing and rating is to eventually let people figure out which the best songs within any given genre are. The idea is that the playlists arrived at on RecooME are nothing but a vivid snapshot of the tastes of people at the moment in time they were created. Continue reading
Max Mathews (1926 - 2011).
The man who was unanimously regarded as the father of digital music passed away last week. Born in 1926, Max Mathews was a relentless innovator in the world of computer-generated music.
Employed at Bell Laboratories, he both created devices and wrote software applications of which the most popular was probably “Music” (1957). That software basically allowed an IBM 704 mainframe computer to play short jams.
Mathews passed away at his home in San Francisco on the morning of April the 21st. I have embedded a short video below in which he talks about the future of musical instruments. This video was actually shot last year at SF MusicTech Summit – it is one of his final major public appearances.
To think I used to laugh at the audio capabilities of handheld devices
like the GameBoy way back in the ’90s, when I had a Commodore Amiga
500…
It serves me right.
But I am sure that someone can grab a good old Miggy and put this
gentleman to rout. Got a bet? I’ll meet it.
"Espiral" By Miguel Campal
“Espiral” [Spiral] is the debut album of Miguel Campal (download link), a Uruguayan musician and producer who is better-known around this pleasant side of the globe as the guitar player for Grubb.
Obviously, that name might mean nothing to you in the States (in the same way that normal folks here have no idea who Willard Grant Conspiracy or Drive-by Truckers are) so a few quick facts are in order:
1) They play a mixture of rock, funk and soul, and they play it well.
2) They issued an 8-song EP in 2008, including both studio recordings and live cuts.
3) They have just issued their first full-length studio album. It has 11 tracks, and it can be downloaded for free on their website. (The same goes for their debut EP.) Continue reading