Top Digital Music Stories of 2007 - from WNYC's Soundcheck

On WNYC's  Soundcheck, WIRED magazine columnist Eliot Van Buskirk talks to John Schaefer & shares the business and technology developments that drove the music industry in 2007:

  or MP3 here

Van Buskirk's top stories of 2007, with the help from readers of his blog, Listening Post were:

• Radiohead's "In Rainbows" release
  
• Two major labels moved away from digital-rights management
  
• New royalty rates for Internet radio stir controversy
  
• The rise of ad-supported and sponsored music
  
• The dawn of the age of the connected music player
  
• The so-called "360 degree" record deal
  
• Album sales really drop off
  
• RIAA steps up campaign against file sharers, wins court victory
  
• Universal Music Group CEO reveals perplexing digital strategy [from Wired profile by Seth Mnookin]
  
• The return and re-imagining of the music video

Merry Xmas music lovers everywhere

PLAY

Courtesy of Elizabeth & Laurent at badaboo.free.fr

2007: The Year The Music Industry Broke?

It's been an interesting year for music biz: MTV just published the first installment of a  three-part series on the future of music, &  take a look back at 'what went wrong' and when in this article:  "Madonna Ditches Label, Radiohead Go Renegade: The Year The Music Industry Broke". MTV also posted this video & interviews with various industry notables:

The Future Of Music: What's Next? Experts weigh in on what the future holds, what makes a star and how the music industry changed this year. Are Things Really That Bad? Album sales might be down, but downloads, ringtones, ticket sales and other aspects of the industry are booming.

And WIRED magazine posted this  interview with Doug Morris, CEO of Universal: "Universal's CEO Once Called iPod Users Thieves. Now He's Giving Songs Away" with another terrific article from David Byrne, Survival Strategies for Emerging Artists — and Megastars (highly recommended - after all, as he says, 'what is music, anyway?': 

• In the past, music was something you heard and experienced — it was as much a social event as a purely musical one. Before recording technology existed, you could not separate music from its social context. Epic songs and ballads, troubadours, courtly entertainments, church music, shamanic chants, pub sing-alongs, ceremonial music, military music, dance music — it was pretty much all tied to specific social functions. It was communal and often utilitarian. 
  

Are we confusing 'recordings' with 'music'? Alternatively, what about the 'art' in 'virtual' record production themselves (eg, seminal works & 'paintings' like Sgt. Peppers,Dark Side of the Moon,etc). Jonathan Sterne's 'The Audible Past' (over at Sterneworks) is a great read - puts the very recent technological history of music into some perspective. 

Createworld 2007 keynote

This is an excerpt of the Music 2.0 keynote address on 26 November, to the Apple University Consortium (AUC) CreateWorld 2007 conference. The presentation features a recent case study in the Fullbright-supported iOrpheus: Art Among Us project (aka, the iPod Opera), held on the South Bank Parklands in August 2007. This involved the work of US Internet music pioneers William Duckworth and Nora Farrell, as well as students and staff from the Queensland Conservatorium and the Griffith Film School.  

A 10 minute documentary film made about the iOrpheus events was screened on state-of-the-art projection and 5.1 surround sound systems, followed by a live cross to New York to iChat with William and Nora. A transcript of the lecture and interviews is available at the Radio IMERSD site.

Reading Music in the Digital Realm

As an adjunct to the recent QCRC Twilight Lecture, I wrote a short piece called Reading Music in the Digital Realm for The Australian newspaper, published in the Higher Education feature on 28 November.

This also profiled the upcoming CreateWorld 2007 'Music 2.0' keynote as well as taking about the work we're doing at the Queensland Conseravtoirum in online publishing at Radio IMERSD. The full article can be read here on The Australian Higher Education website.

iOrpheus – The Movie

iOrpheus – the Movie was produced and directed by Masters (Honours) student Paul Davidson who led Griffith Film School student crews as part of a Community Engagement project. 5.1 sound production for DVD was completed in IMERSD by myself as part of a Music Technology (Honours) research training project. The film documents iOrpheus: Art Among Us (the iPod Opera), a concept developed by New York-based composer and internet music pioneer William Duckworth together with co-artistic director and technology developer Nora Farrell. Bill was a visiting scholar with Griffith University from June–August 2007 on a Fulbright Senior Specialist grant awarded for iOrpheus.

The project gratefully acknowledges the support of Griffith University’s DVC-Academic, Prof John Dewar, MacBook Pros from Apple Computer Australia, wearable sound systems from MusicLab, a state-of-the-art 5.1 surround sound PA system from Acoustic Technologies Electronics, and wireless network systems from Griffith Research Computing Services. Full production credits are listed over at the iOrpheus site.

The DVD can be ordered from the Queensland Conservatorium Research Centre and also is part of the collection at the Australian Government's National Film & Sound Archive.

Music Two-point-zero

I presented a one hour public lecture for the Queensland Conservatorium Research Centre, entitled . The "idea of a music two-point-zero" represents some more thinking about the independent musician vs.big media conundrum, and gratefully draws on the work of Lawrence Lessig and Henry Jenkins

"Music two-point-zero:

How participatory culture is reclaiming knowledge,

power and value systems from the inside out"

The abstract goes like this:
In the last decade, the Internet has served to enable the explosion of social networking. From MySpace, to YouTube and Wikipedia, participatory culture has transformed value systems, undermined notions of authority and power, while simultaneously creating new pathways for autonomous creativity and innovation. In this lecture, Paul Draper discusses these phenomena and suggests a higher learning imperative for what might be considered ‘music 2.0’, that is, for independent musical craft set in authentic contexts which continue to redefine 21st century artistry.

The lecture is available as a PDF transcription, a streaming Quicktime movie and vodcast at Radio IMERSD, or from the Apple iTunes Store.

Contribute, Communicate, Collaborate

I wrote a new paper about net-based knowledge economies for music-making entitled, "Contribute, communicate, collaborate: the Internet as Workplace in the Digital Arts" as part of the AUC Academic Developer's Conference "Contribute, Communicate, Collaborate".

This was held at the Royal Pines resort on the Gold Coast, Queensland from 23– 26 September, 2007 and was nice to catch up again for colleagues from 38 member universities in Australia and New Zealand. I also worked on the on the peer review panel and it was engaging to see the range of material and different kinds of thinking coming from creative institutions, academics and technologists. The full set of published papers can be accessed from the AUC Conference proceedings here.

Democracy 2.0

I had the pleasure to be invited and speak on a panel at the Creative Commons AU forum, "Democracy 2.0: YouTube + Myspace as tools for political engagement”. Held at the Judith Wright Centre in Brisbane's Valley precinct, the event was timely and charged, especially with the Federal election on the horizon, we saw some entertaining, often puzzling examples of on-line migration by our political leaders. Also some terrific mash-ups and social commentary from communities around the country.

You can head over to CCau if you want to register and get more involved. Thanks to Elliott Bledsoe (Vibewire Inc.) and Professor Brian Fitzgerald (Faculty of Law, QUT) for a great event.

Musicians Genesis

Apple Inc. are running a case study and overview of our work here at the Queensland Conservatorium. Entitled "Profiles in Success: Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University", the feature examines how we use Apple technology on-campus, to encourage creativity and streamline our workflow.


Overall, Apple technology has been a pleasure to use and maintain and it would be fair to say that it makes for an essential core element of our approach to learning environment design - not an easy ask when you consider that recording studios are usually operated and designed by a small number of experienced specialists in highly customised environments. In our case, we need to scale this for around 100 or so undergraduates. The full case study can be accessed on Apple's Higher Education site here.


Apart from MacPros, iMacs and Laptops, being a music institution we also make fair use of iPods, but also now Apple TV. We have three units around the Conservatorium main building, which sync to iTunes from one of our Mac Pros in IMERSD. Here we subscribe to and keep copies of all of our movies and podcasts, which are then automatically distributed to the Apple TVs in various student tutorial locations. For more about how we've been using Apple TV, the AUC's Wheels For the Mind recently ran a feature in the Winter 2007 issue, available here as a PDF.

National Music and Film Conferences on South Bank

A great Conference season, here at Brisbane's South Bank in July. The national conference of The Australian Screen Production Education and Research Association (ASPERA) was held at the Queensland College of Art from 27-28 June.

And the Queensland Conservatorium Research Centre hosted the national NACTMUS (National Council of Tertiary Music Schools) Conference, 'Music in Australian Tertiary Institutions - Issues for the 21st Century' shortly after, from 29 June-1 July 2007). The papers and proceeding of the conference are available here at the NACTMUS site.

I enjoyed writing and presenting papers at the events, both the examining aspects of how our music technology students use technology as social networking and learning tools. The paper from the NACTMUS conference is available as a PDF, Students doing the driving: How undergraduates use ICT to enhance reflective practice, peer review and collaborative learning. 

iOrpheus (the iPod Opera)

I'm looking forward to the arrival of William Duckworth, in collaboration with the Queensland Conservatorium Research Centre as a prelude to the iOrpheus; Art among us digital arts project – a public opera based on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice and written for and with South Bank Precinct in Brisbane, Australia. William is a New York-based composer and internet music pioneer who will be a visiting scholar with Griffith University from the beginning of a June on a Fulbright Senior Specialist grant awarded specifically for this project. He is a Professor of Music at Bucknell University and one of the leading composers of web-based music.

Performed on iPods, mobile phones, and laptops, along with interactive installations and live performers, iOrpheus will take place on Friday, August 31, 2007 in the streets, parks, and promenades of South Bank. All sounds—iPod, mobile phone, and laptop, as well as live performers and interactive installations—are broadcast live into the park, either with portable speakers, fm transmitters (with appropriate receivers and amplification), or, in the case of fixed locations, plugged into a common board with its own sound system.

Thanks to Griifth's DVC-Academic, Prof John Dewar for his support of this project. I look forward to working with our partners who will be centrally involved in the technical aspects of this production: thanks to Apple Computer Australia for their MacBook Pros, MusicLab for their portable audio systems, Acoustic Technologies Electronics for their 5.1 surround PA as to be featured in the Sound Garden, and to Griffith Research Computing Services for the networking and wireless systems on South Bank – roll on August.

New Album of World Music

In April-May of 2007, I'm back in the IMERSD studios with Huib Schippers, recording and producing a new album of world music, featuring extraordinary performances of the sitar, tabalas and tambura. We aim to have the album completed by mid year, with around four CDs worth of music to be whittled down to one (!) for a release on Tall Poppies records.

One exciting aspect of the project is that it will be the first to utilise the recent refit of the studios, funded by a recent research grant win and industry partnership. The album is being recorded at 176.4kHz sample rate, utilising SSL, Amek and Manley pre-amps,

Wagner, Neumann and Coles ribbon microphones, and will be mastered through Dolby SR and Revox tape (Huib has been disappointed with CD releases for the sitar, citing the work of earlier vinyl productions as being the best available. So, looking forward to seeing if this production can't meet his exacting standards). The album is is also the first to utilise IMERSD's new Digitising ICON, 32 fader console.

Catering for Creatives

The inaugural AUC-Griffith Digital Arts conference 'CreateWorld06' was featured in the Autumn 2007 edition of 'Wheels for the Mind'. Entitled 'Catering for the Creatives', the article features the work of around 100 creatives from around Australia. The PDF edition can be accessed here. 

More about CreateWorld 2006, including audio recordings and Blogs can be found at the CreateWorld2006 Wiki.

AT Professional Partnership

I'm pleased that we are developing such a good professional, teaching and research relationship with this wholly Australian owned and Queensland based sound technology manufacturer, AT Professional. They design and produce a stunning array of products, including the newly released Sierra Studio monitoring range and the state-of-the-art Blackbird Line Array sound reinforcement system.

We've just installed the Blackbird  system in one of our premier performance theatres, the Ian Hanger Recital Hall. This is a difficult space because it has to respond to a wide range of sound reinforcement demands - from large university lectures, music theatre, jazz and rock, to classical music and external corporate hire. The Blackbird system is just outstanding in all settings and we are thrilled to have such high quality sound in the venue.

Likewise, staff and students enjoy having access to the quality and performance of Sierra Studio 5.1 monitoring in the music technology area's recording studio A.

QCGU music technology Recording Studio A

Harry Lloyd-Williams (CEO AT Professional) & Paul Draper

Collusion Record Release

Hybrid arts ensemble Collusion has signed their debut album In Depth to Australia's Move Records. In late 2005, I produced and recorded these stunning musicians in the IMERSD studios. The project features first-release works by renowned international composers Paul Stanhope, David Schiff, Gerard Brophy and others. Look out for In Depth (MD3310) in the record stores and forthcoming national tours by Collusion.

Collusion also performed recently at the Creative Commons Australia live showcase, ccSalon as part of the Creative Commons Industry Forum held on 29 November 2006 at QUT's Creative Industries precinct in Kelvin Grove, Brisbane:

Collusion performing with a backdrop of audio/visuals by Andrew Garton

from Toysatellite live as part of the ccSalon. Photo by Ray Allen

AUC CreateWorld 2006

I was privileged to be part of the organising committee and presenters for CreateWorld 2006 (CW06), arranged by the Apple University Consortium (AUC) in conjunction with Apple Computer Australia and Griffith University. This highly successful 2 day conference was designed specifically for higher-education academic and technical staff in the digital arts disciplines. CW06 was hosted on 5–6 December 2006 at Griffith's South Bank campus, across the facilities of the Queensland College of Art, the Queensland Conservatorium and the Griffith Graduate Centre.

The conference featured a wide range of academic and technical presenters from the University and industry sectors as well as hands-on technical workshops. Sessions include presentations of new media work, techniques and approaches in practice-led research fields including photography, cyber-arts, music, e-learning, film, animation and design. A full range of conference outcomes including podcasts, blogs, photos and presentations may be found at www29.griffith.edu.au/createworld

del.icio.us: digitalarts, conferences