GrindEFX

GrindEFX is back, w00t! Over at Techdirt, Michael Masnick highlights an interesting development in machine-generated music: a company claims to have created software that can recreate musical performances by famous musicians, living or dead.

As described on the blog, “Zenph Studio’s approach is to work out how the musician and the instrument acts and responds, then get a computer to play that track again as a real-time, real-life performance, which in turn can be recorded using modern techniques.”

It’s essentially MIDI on steroids. Zenph claims that through its software process, it can capture the nuances of any performer’s style and translate that into an algorithm to generate new recordings of old songs – or make entirely new songs that sound like they were performed by a famous musician.

Leaving aside whether this is a good idea in the first place – how long before we have Kurt Cobain hawking deodorant? - Masnick concludes with what I can only describe as an excellent law school final exam question -

So, now, take this software that supposedly can perfectly mimic a certain musician’s playing, and have it record a song. Say it’s a new song. Who owns the copyright? What if it’s adding John Lennon to a Rolling Stone’s song? Who owns the copyright? What if it’s an old song, updated in some slight way? Who owns the copyright? What if it’s just the same song but “remastered”? Who owns the copyright? The legal questions raised by this kind of software are going to keep copyright lawyers busy for a long, long time.

Being the slightly sadomasochistic law student I am, I couldn’t resist analyzing the issues raised in this situation. I am not a lawyer, and this article is only for general informational purposes; nothing here constitutes legal advice.

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On September 8th, Apple unveiled its latest ‘innovation’ to help prop up the recorded music industry – the iTunes LP. For only seven bucks more than a regular digital album, you can get some pretty pictures and liner notes. Facepalm!

But the story doesn’t end there.

Last week, Brian McKinney of Chocolate Lab Records told Gizmodo that Apple was charging record labels $10,000 in production costs to release an album in the iTunes LP format – and indie record labels need not apply. Apple later denied that allegation and said it is working on releasing the specs for the LP format and making them available to all, indie and major labels alike.

Regardless of the outcome of this “he said she said” tempest, it amplifies the silliness of the iTunes LP format itself.

Several web developers have dissected the format to find that it is essentially HTML, Javascript, CSS, and multimedia content – a website. For a little more than the cost of an actual physical CD, you get to save files to your hard drive that largely mirror content you can find online, from the artist’s website itself to Wikipedia, YouTube, and others. Read more…

Radio station to offer web streaming is not news. Web site to offer radio programming is.

CBS Interactive Music Group recently announced that it will begin offering music programming from Last.fm on HD radio stations in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and San Francisco beginning October 5th. The stations will effectively hand the broadcasting reins over to the crowd-sourced, music discovery site – bringing listeners “an eclectic mix of music aggregated and influenced by the service’s user-generated weekly charts, combined with live performances and interviews from the Last.fm studios in New York, and event updates.”

According to CBS, this is the “first time a music website has been transformed into its own broadcast entity.”

How to tune in?

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Last month we were all very excited when the guys at Spotify told us they had submitted their iPhone app to Apple and gave us a sneak peek [video after the jump]. Well yesterday, news broke out that the app has been approved and is ready to hit the App Store.

There were concerns that Apple may discard the Spotify app as it might lure music fans away from iTunes, but CEO Daniel Ek assured everyone that they had a good relationship with Apple; “We’ve a great relationship with Apple, think the iPhone is awesome and absolutely expect them to approve the app in the next few weeks.” He said.

As we’ve discussed before, the mobile app will only be available to premium users who pay €10 a month.

Now that the iPhone app has been passed Spotify can crack on with its launch in the U.S..

Spotify has almost doubled in value since a year ago, the Swedish company is now valued at €170 million ($250 million).

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First of all, I must apologize for my absence from the site in the last couple of weeks, I’ve been incredibly busy elsewhere and any time I got to put into the site was mostly taken up by “behind-the-scenes work”, hence the lack of activity on my part.

Back to business though and one story that’s been generating a frenzy this month is the new digital album format being developed by the major record labels and Apple (separately). Since rumours have been flying around for a few weeks now you’ve probably read or heard about it somewhere, I just wanted to play catch up though for those that haven’t heard and drop my 2 cents.

A brief overview; Apple announced they were working on a secret project which was given the name “Cocktail”. The idea behind Cocktail is a single file download that would include songs, videos, artwork, lyrics and liner notes for an album. This new format would presumably work very nicely alongside their iPod line and the new Tablet rumoured to be released later this year. Apple apparently reached out to the majors (Sony, Universal, Warner and EMI) for a partnership, however the majors decided instead to team up and develop their own competing format – CMX – which would, again presumably, require its own supporting player.

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Mashable reports (by way of Boy Genius Report) that the Apple’s upcoming release of iTunes 9 mayinclude several exciting new features, including some kind of Last.fm integration.

Details are unclear, but it is possible that this integration may include support for Last.fm’s Scrobbler, allowing listening data from iTunes users to be added to Last.fm’s ginourmous database. Again, this is only a guess based on a rumor.

While it is currently possible to manually add the Last.fm Scrobbler to iTunes, native inclusion will greatly increase the amount of data available to Last.fm’s recommendation system. Check out “Finding New Fans With Recommendation Systems” for why this is a good thing for independent musicians.

For independent musicians on Last.fm (and if you’re an independent musician who’s not on Last.fm… what are you waiting for?), this development offers a lot of potential. Any iTunes user who listens to your music will soon be reporting data to the Last.fm recommendation network about similar artists and music – leading to more users discovering your music. And there are literally hundreds of millions of iTunes users worldwide.

Not only that, but iTunes is included with the iPhone. Apple has sold over 20 million iPhones since it launched in 2007 (5 million last quarter alone). With three-quarters of iPhones users listening to music on their phones, independent musicians may soon find breaking into the mobile music market just a little bit easier.

Wow, this is my third article about Spotify in less than a week. I’m happy it’s getting attention though, I use it everyday and think it could just be the future.

So what has the European streaming service done this time? It has submitted its iPhone app to Apple! It was only last week I was saying how it needed to hurry along with its mobile apps because that’s where its strength and mass appeal is.

The iPhone application will be restricted to Spotify’s premium users, who pay £9.99 a month for an ad-free service and higher quality streaming. So users of the free service will have to upgrade if they want to stream on their iPhone.

Probably the best feature of the Spotify app is the ability to stream over Wi-Fi and 3G. This means even when there is no Internet connection available, you can still stream music offline through 3G (see video demo after the jump).

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An article on CNET yesterday highlighted a lack of support and investment for digital music start ups recently.

Music industry veteran and now venture capitalist at Venrock Associates David Pakman said “Investors lost a lot of money in this space.”

“What the music industry never encouraged or even allowed was building an ecosystem around its product,” he added.

I couldn’t agree more with Pakman. Music labels have shunned digital music services since they started cropping up over 10 years ago. Instead of embracing new technology and, as Pakman put it, “building an ecosystem”, the industry has sued the pants off every digital start up it could get its hands on.

Mike Masnick says “Given that (likelihood of getting sued or getting a deal that makes a profitable business impossible), is it any wonder that entrepreneurs are shying away from any sort of digital music startup these days, in favor of opportunities with no obsolete gatekeepers demanding huge chunks of whatever revenue they might one day make?”

By now you’ve heard of Twitter. You may have checked out the site, maybe even signed up for an account. Perhaps you’ve even twitted a couple times yourself.

But if you’re like most people I’ve talked to, you’re wondering just what all the hype is about.

You’re asking, “WTF do you do with Twitter?”

Do not worry, you’re not alone. For every Ashton Kutcher out there, there are thousands asking themselves why they would want strangers “following” them in the first place. Nielsen Online reported earlier this year that for every 10 people who sign up for a Twitter account, only 4 continue to use it after a month.

I’m no Twitter evangelist – I’m not here to say you have to have a Twitter. But I do use it daily, and have found it useful. And after hearing so many of my friends ask “Why?” when I mention I Twitter, I thought it would be helpful to answer that question in more depth.

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Rock Band, Guitar Hero and Singstar have become huge in the video game market over the past few years, and for a very obvious reason; everybody wants to be a rockstar. But Rock Band are about to take a big step, they’re becoming a distributor.

The Rock Band Network, which will launch in beta next month in the US, will allow musicians to turn they’re songs into playable, Rock Band tracks. Not only that but they will be able to sell their songs to other Rock Band users for a price of their choice (between $0.50 and $3) and take a 30% cut of each sale. These won’t just be cheesy, polyphonic versions of your songs, this service will allow you to take the digital master of your song and turn it into a gameplay track (video after the jump).

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