David Emery OnlinePapa Sangre – who needs graphics anyway?
This game is an impressive technical achievement. It uses a binaural sound engine to place the player in a three-dimensional sound stage when using headphones. Binaural recordings are made by placing a pair of microphones in a position which corresponds to the position of our human ears and can be extremely effective
Love the concept of this iPhone app – it recreates a 3D world without using graphics, just using sound. It’s amazingly – almost freakishly – effective.
Visit ➔Giving it away.
Kayne West' cover for Vman magazine, comes with a dollar stuffed in Yeezy's mouth, wow.
Sometimes we joke at the end of an unsuccessful campaign that we might as well have just stapled £10 notes to the CD and it would have been just as profitable…
Visit ➔Spotify should give indies a fair deal on royalties
Last year, major labels Universal and Sony received more revenue from Spotify than any other Swedish music service or digital and physical record store, according to local newspaper reports.
The news came as a surprise to many independent labels and to Swedish songwriters, as their royalty statements tell a very different story. It appears that not only do the majors own shares in Spotify, they – and their artists – also get much better streaming rates than the indies. Some of the indies threatened in early December to withdraw their music from Spotify in response.
An interesting look into the ridiculously complex and convoluted world of music licensing and monetization; should give you a grasp on some of the reasons why new music services struggle to get legal (in short: it’s really complicated to do).
Also, from where I’m sitting all this talk about Spotify not making labels/artists money is rubbish – would any label be signed up if that were true?
Visit ➔Ikea Robotics
Adam Lassy has made a video that neatly sums up exactly the future Russell has been talking about. And it's as amazing and terrifying as he predicts. IMAGINE! A table that "expects feedback"
I love “the future is now” tech like this:
Visit ➔Readability’s new service
Today, they launched an entirely new Readability service: you pay a small fee each month, and they give most of the proceeds to the authors of the pages you choose (by using the Readability bookmarklet on them, or adding them in other ways). It’s a great way for readers to support web publishers, big and small, directly and automatically.
A really interesting concept; I can never see it supporting a proper business model for publishers, but it’s better than nothing.
Visit ➔MTA.me
At www.mta.me, Conductor turns the New York subway system into an interactive string instrument. Using the MTA’s actual subway schedule, the piece begins in realtime by spawning trains which departed in the last minute, then continues accelerating through a 24 hour loop.
Lovely stuff, and a great example of what you can do these days without using Flash. I’d love a London Underground version as a screensaver…
Visit ➔How much more participation can you handle?
Suddenly digital is *everything* and everyone believes that social media has the power to turn boring crap into gold. Every product and every single brand wants to 'engage' users in a massive participatory experience. Especially if they're utterly dull. Obviously, you've got a Facebook page by now so you can 'be part of the conversation', but by now you've discovered there's very little to say if you're a brand people don't care much about or a product you put on food to make it taste better, or something clean your home with, or scoop up poop.
Facebook pages are the new microsites.
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Uni' Lever Downloads
Sony and Universal’s announcement last week that new music will be released to the public as soon as its played on the radio has really put the cat among the pigeons.
Have they thought this one through?
Very interesting article by Steve Lamacq about this whole “put singles on sale digitally at the same time as you go to radio” issue. Interestingly this is the way the US market has worked for a while now, although radio works quite differently over there.
My take: I think it would be great if we move to this model, as if you hear something on the radio it’s a little silly you can’t buy it but probably can download it for free; however, I’m not sure if it will necessarily get wholly embraced by the industry.
Visit ➔