This is Rew - Jewel of New York City.  She helped Bee with the song titled Party 2Nite in our song catalog.  We are currently thinking on making that a holiday song as it’s great for New Year’s Eve.  Rocks, open for genre interpretation, great party vibe. 

Since we worked that song Rew & Bee have gone on to start interviewing New York City area musicians and personalities.  Here’s a link to their YouTube page of many such videos.

www.youtube.com/rewandwho

Composers and lyricists make pitch to join TeamstersSeeing demand for movie and TV music growing and take-home pay shrinking, about half of a group of 400 sign up to band together with an unlikely ally.

Alan Elliott, from left, James DiPasquale and Bruce Broughton, shown in Broughton’s home studio, are among those working to organize TV and film composers and lyricists. (Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times / November 10, 2009)

David Carbonara has a gig many of his peers would covet: He writes music for the critically acclaimed AMC show “Mad Men.”

A former jazz trombonist, Carbonara loves his job and is grateful for the work. Yet even after he labors on 13 episodes for a full year, he says he won’t earn enough to support his family. A one-hour basic cable TV show like “Mad Men” pays $7,000 to $13,000 an episode, but at least half of that goes toward hiring musicians, paying for studio time, copying music and other costs that composers like Carbonara increasingly absorb as studios look to lower their expenses.

“You have to work 26 shows in a year to earn a living,” said Carbonara, a graduate of the Berklee College of Music in Boston who recently began work on an ABC drama without any idea as to when, or how much, he would be paid. “People don’t understand what we go through.”

Unlike most other workers in Hollywood, Carbonara can’t complain to a union about his pay rate or working conditions. That’s because he doesn’t have one.

In a heavily unionized industry, composers and lyricists are an anomaly in Hollywood. Along with production assistants, theirs are among the few remaining crafts not covered by a union contract.

Although conductors and orchestra musicians are covered by the American Federation of Musicians, composers and lyricists for television and movies are not represented by the AFM or anyone else. A group of them is determined to change that and is hooking up with an unlikely ally: the Teamsters.

About 400 composers and lyricists met in Burbank this week for an “information meeting” about joining Local 399. Artsy composers and lyricists would seem to have little in common with the brawny Teamsters, better known for representing studio drivers, location managers and, most recently, casting directors.

The tunesmiths had tried to join the Writers Guild of America a few years ago, but the union was then preoccupied with organizing workers in the animation and reality-TV sectors, and it suggested to its writing cousins that they approach the Teamsters, who are regarded as having more bargaining clout than the AFM.

“We are here to take advantage of a once-in-a-generation chance to rebuild our community and to redress the long-term health of our individual selves, our community and the craft of music for television and motion pictures,” Alan Elliott, a veteran composer and one of the key organizers of the union push, told his peers Monday night.

The Society of Composers and Lyricists, a nonprofit trade group that represents 1,200 composers and lyricists in the industry but does not have the authority to negotiate contracts, has not taken a position on the union drive.

Some composers and lyricists acknowledge that the proposed marriage with the Teamsters might appear odd. “We thought of the Teamsters like Jimmy Hoffa and crooked noses,” said James DiPasquale, a former president of the Society of Composers and Lyricists and a longtime TV music composer.

“We’re artists. Why do we want to be with that? We realized this is not your father’s Teamsters anymore.”

Although some at Monday’s meeting questioned the timing of the effort and whether it would succeed, half of those in attendance signed cards to join the Teamsters, the beginning of a process that could take at least a year. Two-thirds of working composers must agree to join the union before the Teamsters will take up their case. If employers dispute the claim, the matter could ultimately go to the National Labor Relations Board.

The board had previously determined, in 1984, that composers were “independent contractors,” blocking efforts to revive the former Composers and Lyricists Guild of America, which negotiated contracts in the 1950s and 1960s but dissolved after a disastrous strike in 1971 and a protracted and costly lawsuit by composers seeking greater control over their music.

“This is not going to be easy, but these people make such an important contribution to the making of motion pictures and television shows, and what are they asking for?” said Steve Dayan, business agent for Teamsters Local 399. “What everyone else gets on the set: health and welfare benefits and some sort of minimum pay standard and some basic working conditions.”

The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which negotiates labor contracts on behalf of the Hollywood studios, declined to comment.

Although demand for music has actually grown in the last three decades, since synthesizers and later computer technology have made it much easier to score music, composers and lyricists are taking home less money as a consequence of shrinking music budgets and a change in how they are paid.

The average amount of music in a one-hour prime-time TV show has doubled from 15 to 30 minutes per episode over the last three decades. But the total music budget per episode has been cut by more than 50% to $14,000 from $35,000, Elliott said.

Compounding matters has been the rise of so-called packages that became more pervasive in the 1980s and 1990s, in which studios began to ask composers to cover costs they previously absorbed, dramatically shrinking their take-home pay.

That has made it tougher for composers to earn a living in the business, says Alf Clausen, composer and songwriter for “The Simpsons,” who says the show is one of “the few remaining TV shows that picks up all of my costs and that treats composers with that old-time dignity. . . . I’m more worried about my son and all the young composers out there.”

Source: LA Times

Music: Too Expensive to Be Free, Too Free to Be Expensive

Alt-rock for the under-10sMilkshake, the Sippy Cups and other artists are creating cool music that connects with kids — and their parents too.

POURING IT ON: The Baltimore-based band Milkshake performs at the Grammy Museum. (Spencer Weiner / Los Angeles Times)

When Karen O was trying to compose music for the rumpus scene in the feature film adaptation of the beloved children’s book “ Where the Wild Things Are,” she would think about writing for kids — and run into a wall. “The first few versions kept falling prey to being upbeat and happy,” said O, the lead singer for the rock band Yeah Yeah Yeahs. “As soon as we’d start doing that, I felt specious, like I was writing for a Muppets movie.”

So the 30-year-old songwriter, who is not a parent and had never written anything specifically aimed at children before, stopped thinking about the audience. Instead, she focused on what she and the team of A-list indie-rock musicians she assembled did best. The approach worked. Singing in her reverb-free tomboy yelp, Karen O and the Kids’ playful songsprovide the expressive heart of director Spike Jonze’s emotional movie.

In the same way as Jonze’s movie and Maurice Sendak’s original book do, O’s soundtrack stretches our idea of what children’s media can be. “Kids respond to music that’s pure of heart,” O said. “They’re emotionally complex little human beings.”

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FOR THE RECORD:
‘Kindie rock’: In today’s Arts & Books, which was printed in advance, an article on rock music for children says the club Air Conditioned is in Santa Monica. It is in Venice. —

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Like O, a slew of musicians from the worlds of rock, folk, alternative, reggae, country and hip-hop are expanding the edges of what family music can and should sound like. Dan Zanes, Ziggy Marley, Laurie Berkner, Ralph’s World, the Sippy Cups, Justin Roberts, Elizabeth Mitchell and many more are creating for the under-10 set — and their parents — the sort of listening alternatives that grown-ups have enjoyed for years. As Dan Perloff, founder of the new Venice-based label Minivan, said: “There’s a lot out there that’s not Disney.”

Kids stages have sprung up at major festivals such as Stagecoach and Lollapalooza. Moodsters the Shins and hip-hop band the Roots have contributed songs to the new album “Yo Gabba Gabba! Music Is Awesome!,” based on the popular Nick Jr. TV show. Ozomatli, Los Lobos and the Decemberists are all putting on family shows. There’s even a groaner name for some of this music: kindie rock.

Kindie rock is subject to many of the same charges of eliteness and boutique trendiness as its “parent” genre, indie rock. But at their best, the new makers of music for kids offer live and recorded cultural experiences that parents can share with their offspring without suffering the aural equivalent of having pigged out on cotton candy. They also provide kids a way to understand music that’s not as distancing as taking in a big show.

“If kids just wanted to go to a spectacle, they would go to the Ice Capades,” said Mikel Gehl of the Baltimore band Milkshake. “You have to realize what makes this different.”

Zanes, widely considered the daddy of this scene, doesn’t call what he does kindie rock or even kids music; he calls it all-ages or family music. And he says it’s not new but timeless. A dozen years ago, when his daughter was 3, he began looking for “the music I grew up with: Pete Seeger, Leadbelly, Woody Guthrie. They drew from a variety of traditions and made records that sounded like they were recorded in the kitchen. I thought I would find an update of that, or I would never have made an album.”

Before recording the first of nine CDs of family music (his newest, “76 Trombones,” will be released Tuesday), Zanes led the rock band the Del Fuegos. He admits that when he started making family music, “a lot of people felt sorry for me, like it was a big step down.”

“But actually, it was a huge step up,” he adds. “I feel like I’m working at a much higher creative level than I ever have.”

Many other leading kid rockers have previous or double lives as adult musicians. Peter Himmelman already was an acclaimed singer-songwriter when he made the kids record “My Best Friend Is a Salamander” in ‘97. They Might Be Giants make youth-themed albums for Disney and grown-up alt-rock too. Members of Milkshake played the Lilith Fair as Love Riot, and members of the Moldy Peaches, the Mekons and Medeski, Martin & Wood have all dabbled with family music, generally because they have become parents.

“Established musicians really taking the plunge doesn’t hold any stigma anymore,” said Berkner, who’s throwing a pajama party at downtown’s Orpheum Theatre on Nov. 28 and at Long Beach’s Terrace Theatre on Nov. 29. “There’s such an air of agreement that it’s really important to bring your kids up on music.”

Paul Godwin of the San Francisco band the Sippy Cups calls the explosion of family music part of the growth of “conscious parenting. We’re grateful to be parents and want to share every wonderful cultural experience with our kids.”

Milkshake and the Sippy Cups both incorporate clowning elements — goofy props, colorful costumes — into their shows. A Cups concert is like “Romper Room” meets a rave. Their music is bright, riffy psychedelic rock; along with such original tunes as “Use Your Words,” they cover the Ramones and theRolling Stones. At the band’s recent show at the House of Blues, the entertainers wore crazy glam outfits, and kids and parents sat on the floor, playing with giant beach balls and confetti or dancing, hippie style.

Himmelman, a former Minnesotan who has lived in L.A. for years, represents the other end of the kid-rock spectrum: He’s a straight-man troubadour who talks to his young listeners like they’re grown-ups. He sings about trampolines, candy and baseball but rarely cracks a smile.

“Somebody had an idea you’re going to make a kids record and dumb it down,” he said. “Kids aren’t dumb. You’re never as intelligent as when you’re a kid. I try to be careful not to adopt this oversized adult posture. I’m writing exactly the same way as I write for adults, except I’m careful to write about subjects that children will have a context for.”

Regional bands

There’s a considerable difference between the Sippy Cups and Himmelman, but that divide might reflect the cultural split between San Francisco and Los Angeles, given how regional family music can be: Zanes reps multicultural New York, while Milkshake are alt-rockers from Baltimore. It’s difficult for most acts to gain national attention, though, unless they are lucky enough to get face time on Nick Jr. or Playhouse Disney (like Zanes, Berkner and Milkshake have). Touring doesn’t quite work the same way it does for most adult-oriented acts; after all, who’s going to take their children to a show on a school night?

Nonetheless, an industry is sprouting up around the explosion of family-friendly acts. “People are very savvy in terms of the creativity that comes out of it, how they connect to their fan base,” said Minivan’s Perloff, who’s also launching a live family series at the Santa Monica club Air Conditioned with a concert today by the Hollow Trees.

Karen Rappaport, who has worked in children’s entertainment for years, founded Muddy Girl Productions, which books the kids stage at Stagecoach and many other L.A. shows. She says the biggest issues for the genre are CD distribution and finding places to play. CD Baby and NewSound are favorite online outlets for kids albums; many artists also sell CDs at toy stores and other children’s retailers.

“It’s shaking the trees of the music industry to get them to pay attention,” Rappaport said.

There are striking similarities between the current rise of what could be called alternative kid rock and the rise of alt-rock in the late ’80s and early ’90s. Both have grass-roots bases in local scenes and DIY aesthetics. Both see themselves as oppositional to a more corporate entity.

Himmelman, who has an online kids show, “Curious World” (at www.peterhimmelman.com orwww.landofnod.com), says music like his is the last stop before the prepubescent pop that’s the Disney Channel’s stock in trade, which he describes as “the disappearance of innocence and wonder.”

For Zanes, family music is about parents sharing a love of listening to and making music with their children. While he bemoans the lack of cultural diversity in the new wave of kids rock, he’s happy that it’s developing the thematic and aesthetic complexity already seen in books and movies.

“Of all people, young people deserve to have options,” he said. “There should be a lot of choices. Music can be such an integral part of being a human being and learning [about] the world around you. That’s really where we can learn about life and death and the natural world and feelings and friendships.”

 

 

Source: LA Times

Would Anyone Pay for MySpace Music?By Paul Bonanos | Saturday, November 14, 2009 | 9:00 AM PT | 
Speculation arose this past week that News Corp.-owned MySpace Music is considering moving to a paid model, as the cost of free streaming is making its current model unsustainable. News Corp. digital chief Jon Miller expressed some interest in such a move in an onstage interview conducted by paidContent’s Rafat Ali in Monaco on Thursday, noting that he believes in the “freemium” music model conceptually, even if a practical and sustainable version hasn’t appeared yet. (The audio and video are out of sync, but the segment concerning MySpace begins around the 7:15-minute mark, with deeper discussion of MySpace Music after 12 minutes.)

But even if the freemium model does work for music — and I’m far from convinced that it does — MySpace is so far behind in terms of user interface and experience that it’s hard to imagine the company launching a compelling paid product. A primary reason Spotify has garnered attention is its user interface, and the emerging battle for the music subscription marketplace will likely hinge on a compelling user experience. Consumers already know plenty of places to find free music, and historically they’re only liable to open their wallets for a superior experience. MySpace, however, isn’t seen as a premium provider of anything — and MySpace Music is viewed as a place where clutter and advertising are tolerated in order to get something for free.

What could MySpace deliver that people would pay for? Neither charging to hear music that used to be free nor crippling the free service by taking away music from people’s playlists are very good options, and violate the 10 commandments of freemium. Building a premium ad-free desktop, browser-based or mobile service would merely put MySpace in more direct competition with Spotify — which is having its own troubles satisfying content owners — and other music subscription services that are still seeing more experimentation than customer traction. And for a company that’s already admitted it’s long stopped innovating, MySpace would have to overtake more nimble competitors to draw users to a paid music service while overcoming the perception that it’s a messy-but-free one.

Asked if MySpace Music is nearing profitability, Miller told Ali, “On an operating basis, it’s getting there, but no, because of the payments to the music companies,” adding that he considers a paid model “something to look at.” Fourteen months after MySpace Music’s launch, with the four major labels on board as equity partners, time appears to be running out for its free ad-supported model. It’s worth revisiting Om’s remarks from back then:

This article also appeared on BusinessWeek.com.

Source: Gigaom

The corn wagons have been coming up and down the street in front of my home for the past 4 days. They carry tons of corn to the mill. Caught some of them on video. It is a slow and late harvest this year. I hope bountiful. Illinois farmers feed a LOT of people.
Corn Harvest Down Main Street November 2009

Songs2Share Chicago | MySpace Video

Precious Maestro (Song To God)

Songs2Share | MySpace Video

The Lyric Holy Trinity: Writing a Breakthrough Lyric by Wayne Cohen

Wayne Cohen is a veteran multi-platinum selling ASCAP hit songwriter, producer, educator, and owner of publishing/production company Stand Up Songs. He also teaches individual and group songwriting tutoring sessions at his NYC Stand Up Studio and via Skype.

Obviously, a hooky melody is what draws people to a song, but an emotionally riveting lyric is what keeps them coming back time after time.  In addition to a compelling story (which I’ll talk about later) there is a holy trinity of three elements which – to me – are absolutely paramount; this holy trinity is needed for a lyric to be engaging and interesting enough so people don’t turn you OFF.  So after you go back to work on your current song, ask yourself, is your lyric:
 
1) Universal  (Does the story express a universal emotional truth?)
2) Real  (Is it a simple, fresh, street expression of that truth?)
3) Urgent (Does the song takes place in a single emotional moment, and does the protagonist own that emotion? Does every line of the lyric come from the same emotional place?)
 
So, how did you do on the holy trinity checklist?  Unfortunately 1 or 2 out of 3 ain’t good enough if you want to have a breakthrough song.  But do not despair – you can make 3 out of 3 every time if you follow a few simple steps.
 
How to express a universal emotional truthSome examples of universal emotional truths include heartbreak, restlessness, attraction, etc… But it’s all in how you say it.  Look at your lyric; is it in the passive or active voice?  If it’s passive, take the same song idea and flip it from passive to active. For example, you could say ‘why don’t you come back,’ but I would rather say ‘I want you to come back’ because it’s not passive and blaming.  And let’s say you want to express that ‘life is falling apart’ or you’re ‘falling off the edge of a cliff’ and ‘never going to recover from this heartbreak.’  Whatever it is, really go for it and don’t just say ‘I can’t stand this’.
 
It doesn’t have to be in first person but it’s definitely more dramatic and compelling to say things like that in the first person rather than ‘when are you going to come back,’ ‘why didn’t you come back,’ ‘it could have been so much better if you had blah blah blah…’ There can be a passive part of the song, could be the bridge, however people aren’t generally drawn to songs that are passive.  There are so many different forms of entertainment competing for your audience’s attention.  Changing from the passive voice to the active voice can make your lyric much more immediate and appealing.  A listener will be engaged way more if the protagonist of the song is passionate about what they are expressing as opposed to blaming the other who the protagonist is singing to.
 
So, ask yourself: Is your song’s emotional story universal? Is the theme of the lyric consistent?

 
Keep it Real
This is so important!  I like to imagine myself as the character in the song, and I really try to forget about everything else in my life.  If somebody’s calling me and inviting me to a gig or whatever I try to ignore all of it and just think, “what is that person in the song going to be thinking about?”  Whether it’s ‘wish fulfillment’ or how ‘things feel different now…’ How’s that going to feel?  I find it’s a lot easier to come up with the lyric ideas if you are literally that character of your song.  Its method acting that I find works, much better than saying to myself, ‘hmm now I have to write about such and such a subject’ which I find NEVER works.  You’ll never get there if you think about it.  You need to feel about it.   The lyric has to sound like someone would actually say it, or it will not connect with people..
 
You have to live in the soul of the character.  Even if I’m in a different moment in my personal life – which is usually the case – I want to complete the song I’m writing from the point of view of the character.  Living in the character is of paramount importance, and it’s gotta be 100% believable.  It’s gotta be that every line in the lyric says ‘this is who this person is and this is where they are in their life.’  Because when a person hears something on the radio or in the car or an mp3, it’s gotta catch them that way, and you never know where in the song you’re gonna catch them. They may be tuning in to your song in the last line of the pre chorus, they may be turning it on the last line of the chorus, or in the bridge – you never know.  Anybody should be able to flick on your song at any point in the song and GET it. So your job is to grab and keep ‘em for the whole ride.
 
It’s a challenge, because when you’re writing a lyric you don’t want EVERY line to stand out.  Obviously, if you have a good idea for a title, you need to set it up and support every lyric – and every lyric idea has different requirements.  But there are key points – like the first line of the song, and the chorus – that have to be breakthrough lyrics.  However, if you give your audience too much to absorb all the time it can be mental freak-out time.  There have to be moments of stand out lyrics and then other supporting lines.  For example, the lyric right before the chorus could be a good point to write something simple so that the chorus stands out more.  The lyric in that place usually needs to go down easy, to keep the song balanced.
And if it comes naturally, by all means make it ‘street.’  Adele’s song ‘Chasing Pavements’ does this well.  But be careful, it’s gotta be real or it will fall flat.  It doesn’t have to be ‘street’ to be real, and if it’s not, it better be a really vivid cool expression of your universal emotional truth.  If I’m going to sing along with a chorus, I want it to be an emotion I can identify with which is fleshed out by the lyrics of the chorus – even if it’s something simple as my song “Better Off Alive.” It’s not particularly ‘street’ but it is an edgy restless twist on that old phrase ‘better off dead.’ Here’s some of the lyric and a link to the song, sung here wonderfully, by artist la Sara who I recently produced two songs for:

BETTER OFF ALIVE (W. Cohen/M. Harwood)

I WILL NEVER BE AFRAID
THERE’S NOTHING IN THE WAY OF MY GOOD TIMES
TURN IT OFF CAUSE NOW I’M TURNING ON
ALL THE CLOUDS ARE GONE CAN’T BEAT THIS BLUE SKY
JUST LIKE A DESERT THAT TURNS INTO A WATER STREAMTHERE’S SOMETHING IN THEN OUT THAT MAKES IT A BRAND NEW ME
NO POINT IN BLAMING YOU ‘COS SOMETIMES WE MAKE MISTAKES
JUST GOTTA STAND UP AND SAY

CDs are fine things for listening to and archiving, but they’re bulky. Think of all the shelf space you could free up if that digital music resided on one little hard drive rather than hundreds of boxed-up plastic discs. It’s a commitment, but putting all your music on a computer has advantages besides space savings.

First and foremost, building a media server gives you access to all of your tunes from anywhere in your house. You’ll be able to search for songs and play them back whether you’re in your kitchen, living room or your home office, regardless of where in your home your media server sits. If you’re extra savvy, you can also set up your server to be accessible over the internet.

Wherever you access your music, it can all be indexed and sorted, shuffled and mixed, shared, streamed and more.

This page is a wiki. Got extra advice on methods, tools or hardware? Log in to add your own text and images.

What You’ll Need

A computer with lots of hard drive space

A local area network, preferrably wireless

A Squeezebox or similar music player, like a Roku or Apple’s Airport Express (optional)

How to Proceed

1. Allocate space

The first step is to set aside a big chunk of storage space for your music files. You may want to dedicate an entire hard drive to this purpose. If it’s an external hard drive, it can travel with you; but with the right server software, that’s unnecessary. Because the file formats we’ll be using are standard, you can make decisions about the software later.

Tip: Go big. Set up a system you can keep filling for years to come. Dedicate 500GB or more. Or, if you want to spend a little more, get a storage system that’s easy to use and to upgrade like a Drobo.

2. Choose an encoding format

MP3 is the most famous format for encoding music, and as such its advantage is that it can be played on pretty much every player in the universe. But it’s neither the best-sounding nor the most compact. FLAC files are losslessly compressed, meaning they sound exactly as good as the CDs they come from (and indeed CDs can be reconstructed exactly from FLAC files), but they take up much more storage space than MP3s do.

Which you choose depends on your needs. If you choose MP3 (or Ogg, or another lossy encoding format) you also need to decide on a bitrate. The bitrate determines the amount of music information that gets captured when you rip your music to a digital file (in the next step). The higher the bitrate, the better the sound, but the bigger the file. Make these important decisions before you commit your entire music library to a format you don’t like.

Tip: Again, think as big as possible. Better to rip at a higher bitrate now while sacrificing some hard drive space than be stuck with lower-quality music files down the road.

3. Rip the music

Exact Audio Copy on Windows

This is the time-consuming part. The most convenient tools are the hands-off ones that allow you to just put in a CD, wait for it to be ripped, encoded, and tagged, then just take it out and put in another.

On Linux, abcde is very good. On Windows, Exact Audio Copy is highly recommended. On Macs, you can use iTunes if you fine-tune its encoding preferences, but xACTis much better.

Each CD takes several minutes to rip. Afterward, you may need to correct the tags with a tool like Picard. The easiest approach may be to pay a neighborhood teenager to feed the discs into your computer one by one.

4. Serve it

Armed with a ton of digital music on your hard drive, serve that music on up.

Install the free SqueezeCenter software on your music server and stream away. You can stream to any computer on your network either through the browser or using software like iTunes or Winamp.

For serving music elsewhere in your home, a Squeezebox is a great tool — it hooks up to any stereo, where it’s controllable by a computer or by a remote. It’s a financial investment, but the sound is great, and it can do lots of very cool things, from smart analysis and mixing, to on-the-fly correction for the acoustic quirks of your listening room.

Apple’s Airport Express has an audio jack to plug your stereo in. Once connected, you can play music from any computer running iTunes on your local network.

You can also serve your music around your network using iTunes. The application, a free download from Apple, has local library sharing built in. Just set up iTunes on your server and enable sharing in the application’s Preferences. Your library will show up wherever else iTunes is running on your LAN — look under the “Shared” menu in your sources list.

Another alternative to iTunes is FireFly Media Server. You can download the source and compile for your *NIX based system. It has a slick web interface that allows you to customize to your heart’s content. The added bonus is that it will show up in your iTunes source list as a shared library which takes the extra step out of running iTunes on a Mac or PC if you choose to run your media services on *NIX system.

One of Jinzora’s many available skins

Serving your music over the internet is a bit more complicated, since it will require you to tweak your broadband router a little bit. There are many ways to do it, none of them too difficult. You can serve music over the web if your computer is set up to run as a web server. If it’s not, install Apache and PHP (all-in-one installers exist for Windows and Mac OS X) then download and installJinzora, a free application that indexes all your music and makes it available through a web browser. 

In the Future

For years we’ve been restricted to accessing music from our cassette players, CD players, and MP3 players. What’s next?

Soon your music library will go beyond the walls of your home. Music streaming software like Simplify Media allows you to play your music from anywhere there is an internet connection. your iPhone, your laptop. Even radio is changing. Sites like Last.fm and Pandora allow you to play music you own, and music similar to your interests for free.

There are many artists who feel that music is a gift to be shared. Because music is becoming easier to listen to using devices you already carry, perhaps that dream is closer to reality.

Source: Wired.com

4 Ways Live and Digital Music Are Teaming Up to Rock Your World

Music fans are increasingly watching live concerts without gassing up cars, driving to venues, or paying for expensive tickets and convenience fees. Music webcasting has shown promise for over a decade, but the stage is being set now for an online live-music renaissance.

YouTube webcast its first-ever live full-length concert last Sunday: U2 at the Pasadena Rose Bowl. It brought in 10 million viewers worldwide in addition to the 100,000 who attended in person. A spokesman said that makes it the biggest event in the site’s history.

Billboard followed suit with the launch of Billboard Live. Sony has big plans to beam shows to its movie theaters over satellite, and interactive features are bringing online viewers closer to the mix, and sometimes into the mix.

Live music and digital music are opposite sides of the same coin. People listen to digital music alone, while concerts are about physical proximity to musicians and the crowd. Developers are finding a new middle ground, although it took a little longer than some of us thought.

Live Concert Webcasting

The audience for live online music has grown substantially since the Tibetan Freedom Concert drew 36,000 viewers in 1996. Live-music webcasting director Marc Scarpa, who helped stream the Tibetan Freedom Festival and co-created of the MySpace Live series, says the internet will soon realize its live music potential.

“‘Live’ music is going to have a renaissance now — the technology is proven, there’s more broadband penetration, people are now realizing that, from an advertising perspective, it can be monetized,” said Scarpa. In addition, today’s users, accustomed to Twitter, Facebook, live blogs and the general quickening of our culture “want entertainment and information in a real-time environment.”

Don’t expect to be able to watch any show you please. Licensing issues delay rollout on the scale of the music video. There’s no standard deal for getting the rights to stream a live show. Each one-off production requires extensive negotiation involving just about everyone attached to the songs and the venue.

Billboard Live streamed this R. Kelly show to web browsers and iPhones.

“It would be incredible if there were a database out there to streamline the process, but unfortunately, there isn’t,” Scarpa said, adding that music publishers in particular tend to hold things up. The rules can sometimes be bent for live shows that only air once, but usually “it’s a manual process,” he said, “e-mail, phone calls, and in a lot of cases the artist has to personally approve things.”

Straight trades between rights-holders and producers have improved the situation somewhat. In return for allowing an outside company to webcast a show, rights-holders often receive the right to sell the resulting recording, and could restream it online as part of a video-on-demand offering.

A Google spokesman said YouTube, which also streamed short live performances from the Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival in late August, plans to webcast more full-length shows like the live U2 concert on a case-by-case basis. But Billboard launched an ongoing concert series, Billboard Live, with a live R. Kelly show from Dallas that let fans choose between four high-bandwidth Microsoft Silverlight streams using partner OWLive’s technology. IPhone users watched the show in near-real time through an app using iStreamPlanet’s first-ever bandwidth-adaptive HTTP stream of live music to a phone. Billboard plans to do the same for shows by David Archuleta, Daughtry, Alicia Keys, Usher and others.

“Having been to about a billion concerts in my life, I can’t imagine anything replacing that energy,” said Billboard publisher Howard Appelbaum. “That said, it’s pretty exciting — seeing it from different camera angles is great. It’s not going to replicate the sound in the venue, or that palpable energy level that goes on, but it bridges the gap.… It’s way better than looking at still shots on a website about what happened at a concert, or reading about it. I think it’s going to find its own sweet spot with the consumers.”

The first Billboard Live show, promoted only on MSN, was responsible for Billboard.com’s second-highest day of traffic to date. Appelbaum said he thinks the licensing negotiations will be easier the next time around, because everyone involved stands to benefit — even concert promoters (the theory being that online shows whet the audience’s appetite to see concerts in person).

Josh Engroff, vice president of digital for Billboard, expects smaller, long-tail bands in addition to stars like U2 to make this part of their strategy. “‘Utube’ pulled in 10 million viewers because they’re U2 and the technology is there,” said Engroff. “But more and more, bands that haven’t been discovered yet are touring more, and ‘live’ is more a part of what they’re doing. They’re not just making CDs, they have to go out and gig a lot. For artists like that it’s also interesting, because they can extend their presence beyond the venue they’re in.”

Live Concert Interaction

The next step is for fans viewing a concert remotely to interact with a show within the venue, putting messages on the stage or even sounds in the speakers.

Deep Rock Drive has been experimenting with letting bands play between massive monitors that show online fans’ reaction to the music in real time, and said it might let fans at home cheer between songs using their own microphones. The payoff for interacting with actual venues rather than that company’s cyberstage is potentially even bigger.

“Instant participatory engagement is becoming key to the consumption of online entertainment, and the only way to do that is to make sure it’s live,” said Scarpa. “The key is participation in live events. That’s something you can’t do with a television broadcast.”

Current implementations let online viewers vote on set lists, appear in the webcast if chosen to be a host, and send in videos of themselves watching the show. “If Linkin Park is your favorite band in the world, you send in a video [of yourself talking about the show and] after the performance is over we can have a couple of these real-time video comments included in the show.”

In addition to the six to 10 cameras that shoot webcast concerts, Scarpa has been experimenting with pulling live video from showgoers’ cellphones and incorporating that into the webcast, and he plans to let the remote audience collaborate musically with bands, contributing riffs or mixes that play over the venue’s sound system.

‘Live’ Music in Movie Theaters, Living Rooms

Sony Club Dates (website offline) strikes a happy medium between the solitary experience of watching a show on your computer screen and the experience of attending it in person, by piping live or prerecorded shows directly to movie-theater screens. Fans watch them together in a surround-sound environment that does the music a lot more justice than your desktop computer speakers do, and at a much higher bandwidth. Tickets cost $10 to $15.

At this point, Sony has experimented with one live and some taped concerts, but once this pilot program is complete, the company plans to beam live shows to theaters bysatellite, selling tickets and sponsorships.

“We’ve converted [theaters] to a digital platform, using digital projectors and a connected environment as we move into the world order that exists today,” said Mike Fidler, Sony senior vice president of digital cinema solutions and services. “Most of the theaters’ demographics are really aligned with music demographics — close to 70 percent of the people attending theaters are under 30 — and so what we thought we’d try to do is bring these events during the week … and do it with emerging or emerged bands.” He said 3D could be the next phase.

Sony’s first such event featured an Aug. 20 Third Eye Blind show viewers could watch in theaters Oct. 22. Up next is Creed, who will appear “live” in some of Sony’s 4,000 theaters nationwide Nov. 19.

Once the program is up and running, Fidler told us, Sony will deliver the shows in high-definition directly to its Bravia line connected televisions, the company’s Blu-Ray players and possibly the Sony PlayStation. He said the concerts are “exclusive to Sony from the theatrical release to this video-on-demand program on the Bravia network.”

Just-in-Time Live Recordings Sold at Shows and Online

Showgoers can buy professionally recorded concerts as they exit a venue on USB stick, CD, DVD or as a digital delivery. While by no means the first, EMI launched a major initiative in this area Wednesday: Abbey Road Live, which builds on the legacy of Live Here Now, which was launched by EMI’s Mute Records label in 2004, and forms the core of EMI’s nearly-real-time live music sales program.

“We’re offering fans the ultimate encore,” said Simon Miller, EMI senior vice president of new product development and the company’s live division. “Being able to take home high-quality recordings of a show they’ve just seen is something we’re seeing great demand for from music lovers, and it’s also a service that artists and labels are very interested in.”

Screenshot: Girl Talk performs in 2008’s All Points West virtual tour.

Source: Wired.com