No other online music service has excited and galvanised support from enthusiasts and industry in the last twelve months more than Spotify. Its burgeoning popularity is set to explode thanks to the release of the the Spotify mobile application for iPhone and Google Android handsets.
The impressive app has a simple but clever “offline mode” which allows you to listen back to recent playlists. As its only available to premium subscribers, Spotify are pinning their hopes on enough people shelling out €9.99 a month to use it.
Another iPhone app which has impressed me this week is RJDJ, a reactive, real-time music experience which is best demonstrated by a video showing how dance act Kids on DSP utilised the format on their reactive music album.
Using RJDJ and the in-built microphone, the listener can change the album’s mood and textures. Sample your own voice over the track or the tannoy announcement in the train station and the RJDJ technology will take it, manipulate it and sequence it appropriately into the existing track. The album also gets louder or quieter depending on your environment.
RJDJ’s innovative technology falls under the umbrella of augmented reality which we’re going to be hearing much more about in the next six months.
One wonders what the likes of Miles Davis would think of such creative musical experiences, or a project in his honour called Kind of Bloop, an 8-bit or chiptune covers version of his legendary jazz Kind of Blue album made with 8-bit synths normally heard in vintage computer games.
The project was brought to fruition by Andy Baio and five chiptune artists with the help of 411 investors sourced through the innovative site Kickstarter.com. Those 411 backers pledged between $5 up to $100 through Kickstarter so they could seem the album become a reality and gain first access to download the album before it was initially released. Kind of Bloop raised over 400% of its target which was used to pay royalties, the artists and print CDs - quite an impressive feat for essentially, a novelty electronic jazz album.
