Iron Maiden Finally Gets Their Own Video Game

Iron Maiden Finally Gets Their Own Video Game

Read this post and more over at Mashable

"Up the irons, fans. Eddie's got some quests to finish.

Iron Maiden's beloved mascot is set to star in his own free-to-play video game, Iron Maiden: Legacy of the Beast, and it's coming to Android and iOS sometime this summer. He'll visit many of the surreal landscapes pictured in the band's album art over the years, taking on different forms (and new abilities) with each location he visits.

Publisher Roadhouse Interactive and developer 50cc Games are working closely with Maiden's management to deliver an enjoyable experience for fans. The various worlds Eddie visits are enhanced by music from the band's archives, including previously unheard live recordings curated by longtime engineer Tony Newton and founding bandmember Steve Harris.

Billboard Debuts Charts For Music Trending Via Twitter, From Mashable

Twitter #Music is now chartable on Billboard

Link to article on Mashable

"Billboard debuted the Billboard Twitter Real-Time Charts on Tuesday morning. The four interactive music charts will rank trending songs from popular and emerging artists based on how often they are mentioned in tweets in the United States.

Twitter first teased this partnership in March, with Bob Moczydlowsky, Twitter's music head, describing it as "the new industry standard for tracking and surfacing the conversation around music as it happens."

The ranking system is a new music strategy for Twitter, which earlier this year shut down its Twitter #Music app, a short-lived service that launched in April 2013 but failed to gain mainstream attention in a market full of rival music apps.

Spotify Or Bandcamp? Growing Your Band's Presence

Enjoying her favorite new band

Not sure about how to get your music heard? Well this is where technology can be your best friend. Labels are just one route to make your music accessible, but with the amount of competition, doing more to engage fans is the optimal recipe for success.  

Creating email blasts, using services such as youtube and soundcloud to stream your music, along with promoting yourself on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are effective strategies, but you have to be on top of all content sources. In the article below, Mashable posted a great article on the differences between Spotify and Bandcamp. Dig in and find out where you as an artist could potentially have your music heard by a wider audience.

Check out the original post on Mashable

"We compared Spotify with Bandcamp, a service known for supporting emerging artists, to see why some artists and labels choose one over the other. 

Two different entities, the fundamental difference seems to be that the former caters to consumers, while the latter revolves around producers. 

Nevertheless, each service still has its virtues and downfalls, most of which depend on what kind of artist and label you are.

Spotify: Exposure

One benefit of Spotify is the exposure to a large audience. With over 24 million active users in 32 countries, Spotify is an easy way for artists to cast a wide net and make their music available, especially to listeners who may not otherwise actively seek out their music.

"Spotify is just so huge and everybody seems to use it,” says Andy De Santis, promotions manager of Polyvinyl Records. One of the handful of labels that has a Bandcamp page, Polyvinyl also goes through a distributor that posts its releases on Spotify. "It’s good to have your stuff up there just as recognition for bands.”

With both new and established artists on the Polyvinyl roster, De Santis says the label tries to put everything up on Bandcamp, while a distributor handles bigger services such as Spotify and iTunes. 

Bruce Willen, one-half of emerging band Peals, agrees that Spotify gives the band access to a wider audience. "Any way you can get your music out there for people to easily access it, I think it’s a good thing,” says Willen.

A music veteran himself, Willen was part of Baltimore-based Double Dagger for nearly a decade before forming Peals, which released a debut album earlier this year. Though the band doesn’t have a Bandcamp page, the album is available to stream on Spotify.

For many emerging artists, Spotify is just another way to adapt to the ever-changing industry landscape. 

"Spotify is good for me because it’s exposure, if anything.” R. Stevie Moore, dubbed a lo-fi legend, has been releasing albums on cassettes, CD-Rs and now digital formats since 1968. Moore has experienced the shifting music industry since before digital even took form. While he operates primarily from his Bandcamp page, which includes hundreds of releases, Moore has released a select few albums on Spotify. "Forget the musical industry, it’s a digital industry now. That’s the new music industry.”

Image: Flickr, Anna Vernon

Bandcamp: Profit

Bandcamp’s payout model is one of its most lauded features. Known for paying artists a hefty profit and cutting out the middleman, Bandcamp collects 15% of digital sales and only 10% on other merchandise. Compared to Spotify’s comparatively petty payout of less than a penny per stream, Bandcamp is a much more profitable option for artists who want to sell directly to fans.

"It doesn’t really make an incentive for musicians to distribute their work [via Spotify]. It’s not sustainable for people trying to make a living from making music,” Willen says. "I think it’s just contributing to the devaluation of art.”

While Willen believes Spotify provides exposure for emerging bands, it is detrimental for up-and-coming bands that have a solid audience but are far from Top 40 status. "Their stuff is getting out there, people already know about it, but it’s not really adding as much for them,” Willen says. To him, Spotify is more valuable for unknown bands or chart-topping artists who might get millions of plays.
Additionally, because Spotify only distributes via labels or distributors, independent artists have to find another middleman to get their music to the streaming service.

Jason Shanley, an independent artist who records as Cinchel, says he went through TuneCore, a third-party distributor, to get his music on Spotify. TuneCore, however, requires a yearly subscription, the cheapest of which starts at $9.99 per year, not including other fees for setup. Other than the lag time, he says the payout was too low. "I’m losing too much money with an account there. I think I made $2 from it this year or something.”

Instead, Shanley opts to put most of his discography on Bandcamp. Even though he prices most of his albums at $1 or free, Shanley points to Bandcamp’s name-your-price model as an opportunity for profit from enthusiastic fans. "Maybe about 25% of buyers paid more than the minimum,” he estimates.

"I think there’s a psychology where if you don’t charge anything for it, people don’t think it’s worth anything," he says "But there’s a point where if you charge too much for it, then they don’t feel like it’s justifying that much of a cost.”

Josh Brechner, also an independent artist, notes that Bandcamp helps artists in giving their albums an optimal price. He says Bandcamp recommends charging around $4 for a five-track album. "But they’ll pay more if they like it,” says Brechner, who records under the moniker Visager. "In a way, that’s sort of like, ‘We believe in you.’”

Spotify: Convenience and Distributors

For bigger labels, Spotify may be a better choice to handle a large amount of input. Sub Pop, which has signed hundreds of artists since the ‘80s grunge heyday, works directly with Spotify but does not have a Bandcamp page.

"If we were to add our entire catalogue to Bandcamp, it’s a lot of content, it’s a lot of metadata,” says Richard Laing, Sub Pop’s director of sales. "To be able to manage that stuff, [Bandcamp] is not quite where it needs to be to work efficiently.” 

The label would also have to figure out a new way to pay revenues to the artists involved if they were to start using Bandcamp, Laing adds. "We need payment stream information in a certain way for us to be able to use it.”

For Sub Pop, this is the reason the label chooses Spotify over Bandcamp. "At the moment, [Bandcamp] is best-served for very small labels and self-released artists,” says Laing. "But for a label like us with hundreds if not thousands of releases, it’s not quite in-line with the kind of bureaucracy of a business as it grows like that.”

Bandcamp: No Barriers

Another major plus of Bandcamp is the lack of barrier to entry. Anyone can make an account and upload to his profile in a matter of minutes. There’s no need for a label, distributor or any middle man.

"Bandcamp is for grassroots-level artists,” says Moore, who records and uploads amateur and professional releases on his extensive Bandcamp page. "It’s worked out well for me.”
Because anyone can upload her own music without an intermediary, artists don’t have to wait around for their material to show up on the site either.

"You don’t have to worry too much about publishing. Any kid can do it; he can put it up on Bandcamp and then promote the hell out of it,” Moore says. "I’ve had extreme success with it. It’s right here in the palm of my hands. I don’t have to send out something that somebody else has to put up; I can do it myself. It’s perfect for DIY.”

Similarly, both Shanley and Brechner applaud the lack of restraint on Bandcamp. "For me, it happens whenever I want, in real time,” Brechner says. "They do everything they can to support small artists; they’ve built a platform around it.”

Image: Flickr, Blixt

Spotify: Multi-Platform and User-Friendly Capabilities

Spotify is a perfect example of catering to the audience. Not only are its slick mobile apps more convenient than Bandcamp's, but it also includes playlist features and more social integration. And with a bottom-up approach, this appeal to listeners is a crucial facet that affects artists and labels, as well.

"One of the core functions of a label is to connect music that we’re passionate about and help that music find an audience. Spotify as a service is incredibly easy for that,” says Laing. "A lot of people listen to it on their smartphone or tablet.”

Laing sees Spotify as just another part in the whole of music consumption. "I think ... what raises the profile and generates interests gives us the best chance of gaining more fans and more interest in that music,” he said. "From there, it’s up to us to serve those people in however they want to consume that music.”

Sub Pop's mission is to release its albums on channels where there are possible audience members. With the current segmentation of the market, it’s important Sub Pop is present on most, if not all, of these channels.

Some consumers will buy limited edition vinyl; others will buy a CD from chain stores; still others will listen to an album online. "I think it’s naïve to think that by not putting a record out there, that the excitement or power of a new Sub Pop record is going to change that behavior,” Laing says. "I think that’s backwards.”

Bandcamp: Flexibility and Engagement

In some ways, Bandcamp also caters to the segmentation of music consumption, but from the perspective of the artists. While most Bandcamp accounts host mostly digital albums, artists aren’t limited in what they can sell. They can list everything from physical record copies to other miscellaneous merchandise.

"It’s cool because younger bands can use Bandcamp as their central hub for everything,” says De Santis. "They can choose what they want to stream; they can sell physical stuff; tour dates get posted on there through Songkick.”

Furthermore, Bandcamp lets artists customize their pages' design. "There’s no ads or clutter. It sort of feels like how MySpace was a long time ago for bands,” says De Santis. "Bandcamp just seems like the next wave of that, giving artists the control that they want.”

Shanley is doing exactly that. In addition to his digital releases, he also sells other merchandise, such as physical art. "It’s a storefront,” he says. "It’s almost like an Etsy site, where you can pretty much sell anything.” 

Even within digital releases, Shanley likes the flexibility of Bandcamp to offer various types of files. "I’m also kind of an audio nerd, so I like the idea of being able to download FLAC files instead of a simple 320kbps MP3 file.”

Along with this flexibility, Bandcamp offers detailed statistics that help artists with fan engagement. "It shows me where people are coming from, what songs they’re listening to, how long they’re listening to them,” says Shanley. "When they download stuff, I can get their email address and their ZIP code for some other kinds of ways to communicate with them.”

Finally, a primarily local artist, Shanley says Bandcamp is helpful in setting up local gigs. "It helps me to get something to my fans quickly.”

Different Audiences and Culture

So, Bandcamp or Spotify? While there are similarities between the two services, each still stands firmly in its own realm.

For example, Bandcamp’s users, by virtue of its service structure, may be more active listeners compared to those of Spotify, who may be more passive with Spotify’s continuous streaming layout.

Additionally, Bandcamp is built for artists, whereas Spotify caters more to music consumers. And even though the latter does affect the way artists distribute music, the two are still fundamentally different in their purposes. "For Bandcamp, it’s about being able to distribute and sell your music and connect with people in a different way than Spotify, which is more or less like free music, like radio,” says Willen.

While each has its pros and cons, both services can coexist in the world of digital music, at least until a new medium elbows in."

Get To Know Spotify

Streaming music is here to stay and is the absolute future of the music industry. Folks enjoy speaking on their love of vinyl records, but they aren't buying them in huge volumes across the board. Rather, they are streaming more music through a variety of mobile devices allowing for quick and easy access. Have a read over all things Spotify to insure you can find those rare and notable tracks that you need at every social occasion.

Check out original post on Mashable

"Digital music might not have the same allure as sitting down to listen to a record on your turntable, but what it lacks in atmosphere, it makes up for in convenience — especially when you aren't home with your collection.

It's been five years since Spotify publicly launched and shifted the music industry's focus toward streaming as a way to combat illegal downloading. While the streaming business model is far from perfect, even the most casual music fan should test out streaming while it's still growing.

See also: How Spotify Engineered the New Music Economy

If you're just dipping your toe into the stream, follow our beginner's guide and soon you'll be listening to Spotify's massive library without the worry of losing precious hard drive space.

Signing Up

As with most services, you can register for Spotify by connecting your Facebook account for optimal social features, or create an account with your email address.

Pick the subscription that suits your music habits. The prices are in USD, but the tiers are the same internationally: No cost will get you desktop listening interrupted by ads; $4.99 per month allows for unlimited desktop streaming; users who pay the premium $9.99 per month can listen on all desktop (via desktop app or web player) and mobile devices with offline syncing privileges on mobile (Spotify Radio is the only free mobile feature.)

Users at the premium tier can also listen to music at a higher bit rate, which is essential for anyone who has quality headphones or earbuds.

Image: Spotify

Before you start listening, check your preferences and privacy settings to make sure you are sharing as much or as little with the world as you'd like. If you connected your Spotify to Facebook but don't want to broadcast your tunes on your News Feed, uncheck the Facebook sharing option. Leave the Spotify sharing section checked to show up in your followers' feeds — this amplifies Spotify's social music discovery potential.

This page is important because you can choose whether or not to make your playlists viewable to the public as soon as you start, or make it public on your own terms. Also, you can opt-out of Spotify showing your top artists and tracks on your public profile, if you aren't one to brag about such things. Plus, you can connect your Spotify account to Last.fm so your scrobbles stay representative.

Organizing Your Music

Library and Local Files

In the left sidebar, you will find your Collection. Here, you can access local files (go to Preferences to manage the folders from which Spotify can import files) and music saved to playlists. The Library section puts all of this music in one place. By accessing the files found on your hard drive, Spotify acts as a one-stop shop for listening to all your music, meaning you don't have to open iTunes or another player.

Playlists

Playlists are Spotify's main draw. You can create your own by clicking the New Playlist button, or following and subscribing to other users' playlists. Bookmark an album by saving it as a playlist, too.

Image: Spotify

You can also set up a collaborative playlist among friends to prep for that that perfect road trip or party. Right click on a playlist to check off the collaborative option and share the playlist with your friends. This alt-menu also shows the option to change the privacy settings to "Make Public" or "Make Secret," depending on your preferences.

Image: Spotify

If you want to stay up-to-date with a specific user's playlist, click the green "Follow" button on the bottom of the top title bar, and it will save to your side bar. You'll get a notification when songs are added to the playlist.

Play Queue

This option is ideal for when you aren't listening to an album, since queuing up a song via the right-click menu will place it after the track you are currently listening to, and will interrupt a record.
When listening to a playlist or playing music in the background, the queue is great for accommodating requests and spur of the moment sing-a-longs with friends.

Sharing and Discovering Tunes

In the last year, Spotify has significantly amped up its social and music discovery features to keep up with its competitor Rdio, which prioritizes social discovery.

Following

Image: Spotify

Spotify lets you follow friends, artists and organizations (follow Mashable's account here!) to see what your network is listening to. You will get a notification when artists you follow add music to their catalogues.

The social feed lives in the right sidebar, and at the top Spotify will make recommendations to follow, including Facebook friends or artists your friends enjoy. This feed will show what your friends are listening to right now, songs they've added to playlists, new playlists they've created, tracks they've starred, and playlists, songs and albums they've shared on Spotify.


If you didn't register your Spotify account through Facebook, you can still search for friends and organizations via the search bar.

Sending and Sharing Music

Image: Spotify

You can highlight your favorite music in Spotify's social feed by sharing via the button on artist, album or playlist pages, or the right-click menu. Write a message and check your connected social networks if you want to share to Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr, too.
The Send tab on the right of the box allows you to send music to individual users in a private message.

Discover

The Discover section is filled with custom recommendations based on your music history. If you are stuck picking out something new to listen to, you can get lost scrolling down this page.

Image: Spotify

In addition to suggestions of new artists deemed algorithmically similar to ones you already love, Spotify will remind you of albums and songs you haven't listened to in a while. Sometimes the recommendations don't feel right, but the algorithm can only improve the more you use it. Unfortunately, there is no option to reject or modify suggestions at this time.


If you are unsure you might like one of Spotify's suggestions, hover over the album art until a play button appears. Then click it and hold down to preview the song.

This will interrupt whatever you are currently listening to, but once you let go of the play button, your song will resume. It is not the smoothest listening feature, but it can come in handy, especially when browsing to make a playlist.

Apps

Spotify's unique apps can also help you find music when you aren't feeling inspired, or you'd like a change of scenery. Some apps will tell you the lyrics of the song you're listening to, others will provide you with a review, and a few will show you what is trending on the charts, web and social media.
We recommended the following apps: Pitchfork, This Is My Jam, Domino, Twitter #Music (formerly We Are Hunted), Any Decent Music?, Blue Note, TuneWiki and Billboard.

Radio

Spotify Radio functions like a typical Internet radio service. You can create stations by artist, song, album and genre, and upvote or downvote songs you love or hate. Spotify Radio is free to use on the mobile app, even if you aren't a Spotify Premium user.

Mobile

Image: Spotify

Spotify's mobile app is a pared-down version of the web player (tablet apps more closely resemble the web player), from which you can select playlists to download for offline listening, to save your data usage. This is only available for Premium users.

Another feature exclusive to the mobile app is Browse. This saves you the trouble of coming up with a playlist yourself, which is helpful when you're out and about while using Spotify on your smartphone.
Now that you've completed your crash course on Spotify, get streaming!

Mashable composite image: iStockphoto, akindo

Is Jeff Bezos The Future Face Of A News Leader?

The sale of the Washington Post to the CEO of Amazon, Jeff Bezos is quite interesting in a plethora of ways. Amazon disrupted the e-commerce system through fast shipping and a never ending assortment of products. Ebay once reigned king online, but feels dated in comparison to the power of the Amazon market place. The variety and options for items, far outweigh ever having to go to an actual store, for absolute convenience. 

As a independent record label working our best to help bands gain a foothold with new albums, there are many lessons to glean from Amazon and Jeff Bezos. One of the primary goals of Rusty Knuckles Music is that we will succeed in the long haul. I don't operate in the mindset of a get rich quick scheme, as it lacks a true end game. Calculated risks are what I enjoy and I don't gamble on frivolous endeavors such as the lottery, slot machines or poker tables. I calculate numbers and ideas on a plan of action with albums and the right individuals. Music is a tangible product that people truly need. They may not know it until the right song comes on, but music is our heart beat.

By focusing our goals on the long haul, success is measured and attainable. Our content, such as this particular news feed, is based on the elements we enjoy in parallel to the music that is being distributed. The bands within Rusty Knuckles Music focus on the long view, as a one hit wonder is the music industry of yesterday. Commercial radio and chain music stores aren't our audience. They could have been, but that time has come pass and new media is our voice, loud and clear.

Our infrastructure is based upon being honest with the bands, customers, vendors and most of all the relationships we create within our network. One great aspect of the network is the ability to find truth in what is being reverberated. I see this almost as a form of detective work in the need to find the elements that have a semblance of reality. Don't forget this is the entertainment business and "Fake it til you make it," is definitely lived and practiced by many along with endless name dropping. Those notions are as shallow as a kiddie pool and as believable as buying a coffee farm in Belize, from your spam account.

I look at folks such as Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson in the business world as a compass to follow. Understanding that the sale of the Washington Post is a brilliant end game strategy is exactly what I enjoy reading about and look forward to how the company evolves as a respected news source. 

Thanks to everyone that has purchased items from us, had a cold beer and talked shop at a show and most of all to all the bands we work with. These relationships separate the wheat from the chaff and build a strong and nimble community.

Check out the article on Mashable.com

The face of news might change for the better, with new leadership at the Washington Post

"What's intriguing about Jeff Bezos, who purchased The Washington Post this week, is not that he's a digital guy or that he has a lot of money — though both certainly help — but that ever since he founded Amazon, he’s specialized in the long view. 

The company lost money for nine years, and Bezos continues to prioritize long-term investment over near-term profit. That's how great, enduring companies are created or transformed — by building strong infrastructure, products, brand and relationships with customers. And to their credit, Amazon shareholders are rewarding this strategy and vision. They know there will be time enough to see returns on these investments, returns that will reflect the massive value Bezos is building.

By contrast, too many news companies have been paralyzed by the tyranny of short-term horizons. Media executives under-invested in digital not because they were stupid but because it was actually more rational for them to focus on slowing the decline of their traditional revenue lines — more rational, that is, in the short run. In the long run, of course, that thinking is suicidal. 

At way too many newspapers, we've seen a decline in the quantity and quality of journalism — the kind of reporting that keeps in check government officials and others with power, the kind of journalism that's as vital to the health of our democracy as it ever was. One indirect measure: The number of newsroom jobs dropped from 52,600 in 2007 to 38,000 in 2012, according to the American Society of News Editors.

As bleak as the industry sometimes seems, the news media can be profitable — but only if companies better serve their customers, transform their business models, and alter their financial time-horizons. That includes having the kind of patience that Bezos demonstrates at Amazon. Outlets that cut back on basic services — especially reporting — will improve their near-term quarterly profit, but squander the future.

At Amazon, Bezos didn’t just “crack the digital code” in a technological sense; he understood how the Internet changed the economics of serving consumers. And while he looked at the long run, he also pursued the long tail. Amazon mastered the capacity to provide products and services not only for the big sellers but the smaller ones, and not only for buyers who want to buy the biggest selling products but also consumers with unique interests. He did this, for instance, by deploying technology to improve the economics of low-volume sales. With infinite shelf space, he built a business that offers everything to everyone, something you couldn't do in a store — even a big box retailer.

Implicit in the mastery of the long-tail strategy is the idea that a big company can serve each customer with precision, in part by deploying sophisticated data analytics and in part by using technology to efficiently deliver good service to small numbers of people. That is an anathema to some in “mass media,” but news outlets need to embrace that approach if they're to serve readers with enough value to regain relevance. 

For instance, when a newspaper writes a series about local schools, it provides the same information to every reader. When a newspaper creates a searchable database about the quality of local schools, and gives each reader the ability to select the variables they care most about, then the paper is tailoring the reporting to each reader. One database creates a thousand stories. 

This is not to say that a news outlet's strategy should be to offer everything to everyone, but there are no doubt opportunities for the Post to offer more news and information to more people — for example, by becoming the world's leading news outlet covering policy and politics, not only in Washington but in capitals around the world, and covering more topics more deeply. Sure, that would be expensive, but the relevant market for Internet companies today is the world's population, not just the U.S.'s — why not the same for news outlets? 

Newspapers, like TV stations, never got away from the artificial boundaries drawn by their distribution technologies — for newspapers, the reach of their physical distribution and for broadcasters, the reach of their antennas. Now they can imagine distribution patterns focused on topic or audience rather than just geography.

News organizations have to figure out ways of serving a wide range of readers and viewers, and in deeper ways — not merely pitching to either the lowest common denominator or the most affluent (the two safest business models). Financial journalism is doing well, as are celebrity slideshows. 

What’s hurting is labor-intensive reporting on whether, say, city hall is squandering money, the zoning board is ruining a neighborhood, or police are killing innocent people. This kind of reporting takes money, patience, and the belief that these civically worthy endeavors will create such good will with the customer (and local businesses) that the company will benefit in the long run.

Finally, Bezos is an intriguing media mogul because he’s succeeded at getting consumers to pay for things — as he did with Amazon Prime, a monthly subscription that includes unlimited free shipping, an online video service and more. For decades, the newspaper publisher has focused on gaining advertisers. 

Now, publishers must be just as focused on creating products that readers or viewers will pay for. Although most of the debate has centered on paywalls, media should contemplate a much wider range of products: hosting events, publishing e-books and Kindle singles and streaming footage of high school sports, to name a few. News media need to be asking themselves: Why didn’t we invent Angie’s List, Monster.com, fantasy football or other products that are generating revenue in areas that newspapers used to dominate?

The good news for Bezos is that he's acquiring one of the strongest traditional news businesses, certainly measured by commitment to principles of journalism and the value of hard reporting. (And Don Graham, the chairman and chief executive of The Washington Post Company, saw the digital currents coming and kept the ship afloat and sturdy through a tough storm — no small task.) It’s exciting to see one of the men who made his fortune in the digital disruption turn his attention to reinvigorating one of the potential casualties of that turmoil. 

We don't know if Bezos bought the Post as an act of altruism or business genius, or something in between. What we do know is that, at Amazon, he learned, and taught, the right lessons. “The three big ideas at Amazon are long-term thinking, customer obsession, and willingness to invent,” Bezos said recently. Precisely the ones the news industry now needs."

Motorcycle Helmet With Fully Integrated Navigation System

The future is limitless with the possibilities of fusing technology within our daily construct. With Google Glass now a reality and with a dash of Top Gun, you can now purchase a motorcycle helmet with a fully integrated navigation system. The project has been given a million dollar grant for research now they need to make it a reality. For extended road trips, this is something we could enjoy for sure.

Link to post on Mashable 

Check out their Indiegogo page


"Using high-tech dashboards, drivers can reference navigation systems and voice control in the comfort of a quiet car, but motorcyclists still don't have an effective, high-tech solution. Referencing maps requires a roadside stop, and GPS systems can be distracting.

Now, the team at LiveMap is looking to fund a project that would bring built-in navigation and augmented reality to helmets. Think Google Glass in helmet form.

The motorycle helmet, which is currently listed on crowdfunding site Indiegogo, comes with technology and features so powerful only fighter pilots currently have access. The project already has the financial backing and support from the Moscow Department of Science and several other Russian organizations, but LiveMap is looking for additional funding to get it up and running.

Similar to F-35 fighter jet helmets, a colorful, translucent picture would project onto the visor and create a clear, unobstructed view. It would come with its own interface — not iOS or Android — and prevent users from watching videos or playing games while riding.

The view inside of the helmet using technology for real time driving navigation akin to fighter pilot helmets

For long drives, the motorcycle helmet features two 3000-mAh batteries, a microphone for voice control that keeps both hands focused on driving and a digital compass for head movement tracking. In case a motorcyclist runs into trouble, the command "help" will notify local authorities.

LiveMap plans to ship the helmet in August 2014, with a price tag of $1,500 for devices purchased in June and $2000 for those purchased afterward. If you don't want to fully invest in the technology but still want to give it a try, you can donate $100 to the fund to try on a head set at an upcoming LiveMap promo party in the future."

Digital rendering of motorcycle helmet with fully integrated navigation system

 

Lights, Camera, Comic Book Revolution

Ever read a comic book or good novel and imagined the music that should be in the background to make a scene come to life? Why yes, we have done it many times and often think on the concept as music is the soundtrack to life. It is damn cool to see that Marvel Comics is teaming up with a company called CORD to help bring action and sound together.
Check out the article on Mashable.com

Image provided by Marvel Comics

"We’ve all seen enough comic book movies to know that the right soundtrack can intensify or deaden the action. The same could be true of more traditional, albeit digital, comics. Add a music track and it could be a whole new experience. At least that’s what Marvel Digital Comics hopes to accomplish with Project Gama and its aural enhancements for everyday digital comic books.

“I was more skeptical than the next guy about the notion of providing a score for a comic book,” said Marvel Editor-in-Chief Axel Alonso. On the other hand, Alonso said he’s not the only one who’s had the experience where he's reading a comic book and listening to iPod and then ”suddenly there’s synergy.”

Set to debut later this year but introduced here at SXSW, Project Gama is a collaboration between Marvel and music-planning company CORD.

Set to debut later this year but introduced here at SXSW, Project Gama is a collaboration between Marvel and music-planning company CORD.

Alonso described the music as “non-lyrical,” and said it’s integrated into the reading experience. Although it is “event driven,” it does not speed up if you “flip” through the digital comic more quickly. Marvel calls it "adaptive audio."

Comic book authors are, apparently, already on board. Some have already suggested audio tracks for their comics.

There’s no extra cost for soundtracks on the digital comics that typically cost 99 cents per issue. Plus, Alonso knows these are early days, describing Project Gama’s upcoming launch as a maiden voyage and promising, “We’ll get more sophisticated.”

Rise of the Digital Comic Book

While Alonso couldn’t share exact numbers, he told me digital is the fastest-growing part of the business. “Digital is exploding. Marvel has always been a forefront of innovation. We want to find as many ways to get comics in peoples’ hands as possible.”

As a result, Marvel also announced updates and enhancements to its existing digital offerings, including an expansion of Marvel's sporadic Infinite Comie series to a weekly run featuring multiple chapters and key Marvel characters. The first one will be Wolverine: Japan’s Most Wanted, which should launch on July 9, and like all upcoming Infinite series, features 13 chapters.

While Infinite Comics' panels and talk bubbles make them feel like comic books, they’re also fully designed for mobile consumption, taking advantage of wide screens and gesture-based navigation. I've read a number of comics and graphic novels on both the Amazon Kindle Fire HD and Barnes & Noble Nook HD, and while the experience takes some getting used to, the graphics and guided navigation are fairly immersive and satisfying.

Despite the rapid growth of digital comics, Alonso is not worried about print comics. “We see it as being complimentary to print. “ He even believes digital can “potentially to drive people toward print.”

Alonso compared the shift to music, and said comics are quite different. In music, “aside from hippies who wanted liner notes, there wasn’t much difficulty getting them to shift” to digital, said Alonso. Comics are different, he told Mashable. It’s about holding a comic or graphic novel in your hands. “We’re talking about art.”

You can learn more about Infinite Comics here.

From the Start

If you’ve never tried reading comic books on a mobile device, now might be a good time to start. Marvel is also launching a SXSW promotion: Marvel #1. From Sunday March 10 through March 12, the publisher is offering over 700 free, digital Number 1 titles for dozens of fans' favorite characters. They’ll be available on iOS and Android devices."

Spotify Is Working To Make Music Discovery More Personal, From Mashable

The way we explore and enjoy digital music is going to become quite a bit more interesting in 2013, especially on the Spotify platform. I personally enjoy the service and use it to find new music or peruse older albums, I don't currently have loaded onto Itunes. The new features which are highlighted below from an article on Mashable will open up quite a few new possibilities and further cement how much Pinterest has changed the way we view information online.

Find out more tech and music industry info from Mashable

Spotify gets more personal in 2013

Spotify has plans to make music discovery more personalized and more social.

We've always classified discovery as Spotify's Achilles' heel. Because Spotify's catalogue is so large, finding new music or rediscovering old favorites is difficult.

For a time, Spotify was happy to relegate discovery details to the service's desktop apps. And while Spotify will continue to leverage those apps in helping users find new music, discovery will now be an intrinsic part of the Spotify service on all platforms.

The new features -- which will start rolling out in January -- are the most significant product upgrades that have hit Spotify since the service launched in 2008.

Check out this video to get a look at what the company wants to do.

The Follow Tab

The core to Spotify's new experience is what it's dubbing the Follow tab. Think of the Follow tab as Apple's ill-fated Ping service, but done correctly.

In a view that looks similar to Pinterest, users can get real-time info on music their friends and influencers are listening to.

More than just showing the activity of your Facebook friends, the Follow tab is designed as its own network of sorts for Spotify users you want to follow. 

The Follow tab will also be a way for influencers, celebrities and artists to share their tastes and song picks with an audience. Just as bands can share their favorite photos to Instagram, they can share their latest albums or their picks for what bands they dig on Spotify.

The Discover Tab

The second component to the next Spotify update is about music discovery. This tab will show users relevant artists and playlists based on what they have in their library, what the people they trust listen to, as well as listening history.

The Discover tab pumps in info from Songkick, Tunigo and Pitchfork to deliver information such as reviews, nearby concerts and related or similar acts.

Other New Features

Spotify is also rolling out some other improvements. One of the biggest is "Collection," which is just what it sounds like. Rather than having to create a playlist for every album you want to save, you can just add it to a collection instead.

Rival services such as Rdio and Rhapsody have used the collection motif successfully for years so it's great to see Spotify catching up.

Spotify will also introduce audio previews -- a way to briefly hear a new song before deciding if you want to move away from the song you're playing now.

Another big move for artists is that Spotify will now offer mobile push notifications for new album releases for artists' users follow. For us, this has huge potential for artists and labels who want to use Spotify as a promotional strategy to work alongside traditional retail and digital releases.

The Future is Now

The Follow features will first appear on the desktop version of Spotify in the coming weeks. In the new year, the mobile apps and the new web app will get the features as well.

When we spoke with the Spotify team, it was clear that everyone involved was excited about what the advent of true social discovery could mean for the service. With more than one million paying users in the United States and the support of artists such as Metallica, it's crucial that Spotify move quickly into personalization and discovery.

Soundslice Will Revolutionize How Guitarists Learn From YouTube, Repost From Mashable.com

Who wouldn't want to learn how to play guitar and to be able to do it in an easy manner, such as learning it through youtube. The more technology progresses the cooler the apps become, along with new innovative ideas. We are true fans of adding new arrows to the quiver and a tool such as Soundslice, just might help the budding guitarist, go from good to great.

View original post on Mashable

Learn how to play guitar through youtube, via soundslice

"As of yesterday, there were only two ways to learn guitar music from the web: Googling a tablature file and emulating another guitarist on YouTube. While both are easier (and cheaper) than buying a book of sheet music, they are not without tedium.

Tablature files (or “tabs” — a simplified guitar notation in plain text format) are aggregated by shady content farms with strong SEO and dubious quality control. YouTube videos provide audio and visual instruction, but require patience and the ability to “read the fingers” of the performer.

That’s why Soundslice is a revelation for self-taught musicians. Built on YouTube’s API, it’s a transcription interface that syncs tablature and videos so players get the best of both worlds. You can also play the video at half speed (without changing the pitch) and loop small sections if you’re trying to pin down a tricky riff. Everything functions in your web browser or iPad — there’s no software or apps to install.

While these tools are outstanding in their own right, the big promise here is in creating a rich trove of living, accurate guitar tutorials for everyone on the web to enjoy.

“My goal was to make something for myself, to make transcription less painful,” the site’s founder Adrian Holovaty tells Mashable. “I’d spend hours transcribing stuff, either on paper or in lousy text files, then I’d come back to it later and have to re-listen to the music to make sense of my own tab. I started to think, it would be so much easier to learn if the tab were synced with the original audio.”

SEE ALSO: Play a 3D-Printed Acoustic Guitar Made of Plastic   Holovaty has been working on this project for the last three-and-a-half years, and is no stranger to the web startup world. He launched EveryBlock, a network for “microlocal” journalism, in 2007. It was acquired by MSNBC.com in 2009, and Holovaty stayed on, working on Soundslice in his spare time. He left the company in August looking to do something new, and ended up focusing on the music project. “This is actually the third incarnation of Soundslice. The first version was in Flash and used MP3s, the second version was a really bad HTML5 MP3 version, the third works only on YouTube.”
Soundslice uses YouTube’s official HTML5 JavaScript API, which allows developers to control videos using their own interface. Users can work from any YouTube video, not just their own. The transcription editor UI is similar to multi-track recording software. Add a track for chords, tab notation, song structure (chorus, verse, bridge) and start plotting.

Drag the length of the note on the string and add the fret number. Space bar will start and pause the video. You quickly realize that Soundslice adds a temporal dimension to tablature without need of time signature or measures. If the community takes off, it could fundamentally change how the Internet thinks about, creates and shares this kind of notation.


I asked Holovaty about the potential for Soundslice to become a social network.
“It can become a commons for user-generated musical annotations and transcriptions,” he says. “At the moment, social interaction is very limited — you can see other people’s annotations and see all the other videos they’ve annotated and that’s it. But obviously, there’s a ton of potential to do more.”

Holovaty envisions the classic 20/80 split — 20% of users will create the content for the other 80%. “Originally I imagined it to be for relatively advanced musicians, but I’ve already seen some simpler stuff come through the system. Never underestimate the power of bored high school or college students who want to learn music!”

SEE ALSO: Fender’s iOS-Friendly Stratocaster Guitar Comes to Apple Store   Why would someone painstakingly transcribe a song into tablature and give it away for free on the Internet? The fact is, people have been doing that for years. “If you’re already doing the work of transcribing something — which is very labor intensive — you might as well do a tiny bit of extra work to make an incredible synced video thing. The end result is just so much better than a text tab, and it benefits other people who want to learn that tune in the future.”

That work will also be connected to your Soundslice account. Savvy transcribers might sync their own videos to teach, thus generating views and ad revenue from YouTube’s partner program. There’s a lot of potential for power users.

Quality Control of UGC

Current tab repositories are a cluttered mess. A song might have 20 versions, each with its own errors or embellishments. Quality control of user generated content can be a challenge, but Holovaty sees two potential modes.

“I’m considering both a revision-control model (like GitHub) or a Wikipedia model,” he explains. “What would make more sense for annotations: “branching” changes where everybody owns their own data and accepts pull requests, or a more shared wiki-style thing where anybody can edit anything, with revertible history? I’ve been thinking about it for a long time and am still not sure.”

Business Model

The other challenge for UGC networks is monetization.

“I’m planning to add a pay-for version, where you can upload your own tracks as opposed to relying on YouTube,” Holovaty says of his future business model. “Plus, you’d get some niceties like a graphical waveform display, more fine-grained slowdown and an automated first-pass at the transcription (which would be imperfect but at least a starting point). I’d also like to talk to music education companies who might want to pay me to embed the interface into their own sites.”

Regarding that automated transcription, Holovaty is experimenting with software created by The Echo Nest — algorithms that power music analysis apps like Spotify and iheartradio.
Turns out, auto-generating sheet music from a complex recording is still a long way off. It’s a computational feat akin to sentient artificial intelligence, says Holovaty, who has been studying this kind of technology for some time.

“The Echo Nest has some nice APIs that make automated guesses at the underlying musical information in an audio recording,” he says. This means that a human could provide the framework for the transcription, and an algorithm could work from that to fill in the gaps, speeding up the process. Holovaty hopes to include this in future paid accounts.

For now, he and his designer PJ Macklin (the only two people working on Soundslice at the moment) are looking forward to seeing what users create, and adding features based on feedback. “Next up is the long list of feature additions and improvements. And of course, paying the bills and getting people to use it!”"

Thumbnail image courtesy of Dylan Adams, Flickr.