David Emery OnlineThe Wheels Of Steel: An Ode To Turntables (in HTML)
I have been interested in the idea of building a turntable-based UI in HTML for years; however, the past presented a number of technical hurdles. Setting dreams of browser-based remixing aside, simply recreating the core design elements of a turntable was practically infeasible until the advent of CSS3. The features most notably missing from browsers involved drawing circles, rotation of elements and low-level control of audio. As of 2011, it's a pleasure to say that these features can be implemented almost entirely using HTML, CSS and JavaScript alone.
Seriously cool.
Visit ➔The Horrors at York Hall
More photos on Flickr.
Kaiser Chiefs ... but under your control
And so to The Future Is Medieval. Without any buildup, fanfare or whatever you want to call the pop equivalent of leaving Red Bull cans scattered around Leeds city centre, the successor to 2008's Off With Their Heads appeared on Kaiser Chiefs' website on Friday. In doing so, it effectively heralds the arrival of the world's first bespoke album. Ten songs from a choice of 20 for £7.50 – no more, no less – but what those songs are, and the order in which they run, is down to you.
An interesting variation of the “In Rainbows” model – I thought we were done with that, to be honest, as it’s a model that’s not actually very good at selling records if you’re not Radiohead…
Visit ➔
Facebook To Launch Music Service With Spotify
Facebook has partnered with Spotify on a music-streaming service that could be launched in as little as two weeks, sources close to the deal have told Forbes.
The integrated service is currently going through testing, but when launched, Facebook users will see a Spotify icon appear on the left side of their newsfeed, along with the usual icons for photos and events.
Well that would certainly be interesting. Presumably this would tie right into Spotify’s (eventual) US launch as well – I’d be surprised if Facebook would do a major venture with someone without US presence.
This comment by Spotify on the story is hardly much of a denial either.
Visit ➔Bronze
Bronze is a new non-interactive music format in which recorded material is transformed in real time, generating a unique and constantly evolving interpretation of a song on each listen.
The first piece of music available in Bronze will be Flesh Freeze by Gwilym Gold.
Interesting stab at the “music as app” concept – particularly of note as it’s not the traditional ambient electronic instrumental music that you normal get with this sort of thing – it has lyrics and everything.
Visit ➔Amazon Sells Entire New Lady Gaga Album For $0.99
We've seen deep discounting before from Amazon. But today the online retailer is hit new lows by offering a download of the new Lady Gaga album "Born This Way" along with a digital version of the CD booklet today only for just 99 cents
Now, I think there’s a reasonable debate to have over what the correct price of an album should be (and whether something more like £4.99 could work out better as a general price point, as some people have argued previously), but I think we can all agree that this just a little bit too low?
Obviously it’s a piece of marketing for the new Amazon CloudDrive service, but considering that it seems to have crashed due to demand I’d hardly say it was money well spent.
I wonder if all those 99¢ album sales count for SoundScan, and hence whether we’re going to see a crazy-high first week figure for the album in the US next week (which is do doubt going to be high anyway)?
Visit ➔Cloudy With a Chance of Music
I tried Amazon and it just made me depressed. Though I haven’t received my invite yet, the others who have tried Google Music have all said how pitiful it is. Rdio and Pandora are both fantastic at what they do, but the songs you listen to don’t belong to you.
Pretty good run down of all the potential players in the burgeoning cloud-based music market (european readers can replace Rdio with Spotify in this article for the same effect).
Visit ➔Independent Label Market 2011
More photos of the lovely Independent Label Market on Flickr here.
