NodeBeat is the kind of experimental music application that’s thriving in the age of the multi-touch tablet. Its dynamic interface and sound are built on the foundation of free and open source software tools regularly covered here on CDMusic and Motion. OpenFrameworks, the Processing-like C++ library, handles the UI, as libpd, the embeddable version of graphical media environment Pure Data, manages the sound.

What you get is an open-ended plane on which you can graphically array sequences, far away from the standard grid, for generative and sequenced music. It’s good fun, which made it a hit on iOS. Developer Seth Sandler, working with Justin Windle, did a brilliant job. Then, earlier this month, NodeBeat made the jump to Android, with additional porting work by Laurence Muller. Android has been getting tablets that can hold their own — I’ve enjoyed my Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, for instance. But the platform has remained severely starved of applications in contrast to iOS, but at least in place of quantity, there’s some quality: this application being one, tools like Mikrosonic’s RD3 or Reactable orControl or Nanoloop qualifying, too. (I’m not delusional; this does not make it at this point any serious competition for iOS, but it does demonstrate potential for developers. And I’ve already had the chance to use Reactable and Control in live performance, personally.)

That is, NodeBeat was temporarily available on Google’s Android Market. Then, without warning, Google suspended developer Seth Sandler’s seller account. This led to an extended discussion with Seth, other developers, and myself as we watched events unfold, ironically on Google’s own Google+. (Yes, that Google product works, despite what you’ve heard.)

It’s back now, so please, go buy and review it if you get the chance. If you’ve got a compatible Android, you’ve got truly no excuse as it’s a delightful app, and it holds up even in the crowded iOS platform:
NodeBeat @ Android Market
http://nodebeat.com/ (iOS and all versions; there’s even a free, desktop version with source code!)

Okay? Bought it? Good. Now it’s time to talk about how bad this is for a developer.

The account suspension on the Market represents a series of obvious flaws. First, of course, it shouldn’t have happened in the first place – Google support eventually acknowledged the suspension was entirely random, “incorrectly suspended” in the words of support, with no other explanation.

Second, support was largely nonexistent. Days passed during which Seth was left without any information. (Amidst discussions of how “evil” or “open” Google is, I’d sometimes be happy just to see them seem something other than desperately rushed. And that seems to be the primary “Apple-fication” of the market – the company’s rivals now are so rushed to try to compete that they screw things up constantly. “Don’t be crappy.”)

Third, and most bizarre, the application stayed available but payment was impossible, leaving customers confused and unable to buy the app.

Now, horror stories like this weren’t unheard of in the early days of the Apple App Store, and I still hear – with, happily, much less frequency – complaints from developers about Apple’s store and approval process. Apple deserves credit for ironing out those flaws, but from the skeptical perspective of a developer, It’s hard not to draw the conclusion that you may want to consider distributing your software via more than one means. Even as Apple fails to allow that on their mobile devices, that means considering going cross-platform. That’s not a philosophical claim; from the perspective of a developer, you don’t want to be dependent on only one company. Feel free to disagree, but my experience has shown otherwise as I’ve watched developers get burned. (And it’s worth noting that while Google couldn’t sell Seth’s app, Apple could.) Technically, via Android, developers are free on the vast majority of devices to sell direct or sell via alternative stores; unsurprisingly, Seth submitted his app to the competing Amazon App Store and is awaiting approval there.

None of this, of course, excuses Google from a big customer failure on Android Market. And whereas Apple’s earlier hiccups occurred as it was the only game in town, Google is making an uphill battle even worse. With Amazon’s Fire on the horizon, there are two questions to watch: one, can Amazon deliver enough tablets to create the tablet market Android has thus far lacked, and two, will their store deliver a better experience? Meanwhile, Google continues to promise a better Market; it’s all I hear about at developer events, largely because it’s the primary complaint from developers. As tech pundits make largely-unsupported claims like “Android users don’t like to buy software,” as if they’re a bunch of degenerate freeloaders, I’d point to the often-inferior Market and frustrating hardware experiences.

But, let’s put it this way: in addition to the obvious range of iOS choice, yes, there are superb applications beginning to appear on Android. For that, I credit developers like Seth and his collaborators. Even as we push for better audio performance, some of those applications are already running exceptionally well on new tablets and higher-end phones. If you have one of these devices, you can fire these up and enjoy making some sounds. And because you can’t always rely on another vendor to get things right, having cross-platform, free and open source tools behind these applications means developers have the flexibility to adapt to a changing market, and to focus on creative design and not constantly reinventing the wheel.

Here are some notes on NodeBeat’s creation on our forums.

And let us know what you think of NodeBeat, or if you do have an Android device you’re using for music (or a Fire on pre-order, for that matter).

Indies, don’t fear the Apple. The world with Apple’s iCloud doesn’t appear to be that radically different than the one we had before. And that’s a good thing: the Web, not any one cloud sync service, is still the most revolutionary technology for connecting music to listeners.

Updated: commenters online read this as complaining, so let me clarify: cloud sync has already had unfair expectations placed on it. It remains a no-brainer for Apple to implement. The question is, from an artist’s standpoint, what expectations should you have about the impact of the technology on what you’re doing. In the short term, some of those prove to be more limited, and now that there are some details, it’s worth analyzing those details.

I expect developers granted an early test version of iCloud and music will be breaking their NDAs shortly so we hear more details, but here’s what we know.

The Service: Useful, Maybe, Just Not Earth-Shaking

I think Apple’s value proposition is stronger than Google’s or Amazon’s. It looks far more complete, far better-designed, and genuinely usable.

On the other hand, like those other services, what it actually does remains relatively conservative:

Automatic sync – if you buy from iTunes. iTunes’ cloud service will work with files manually synced to iCloud, or with purchases from iTunes.

Benefit from being in iTunes’ store catalog, even if your listeners don’t buy there. For US$24.99 a year, Apple will “match” your music from other sources to entries in their iTunes Library – and “upgrade” them to 256 kbps AAC (though for people buying in FLAC format and the like, that’s not really an upgrade).

Sync files locally. Reportedly, Apple will offer streams and downloads alike. That means at least downloads are an option for people wanting higher-quality files. Just how this works is a bit unclear while we wait to test it. It’s not entirely clear why some reports (like TuneCore) suggested Apple had streaming capability; they have confirmed that instead they synchronize files locally prior to playback.

Sync anywhere you want, as long as it’s made by Apple. iTunes for Mac, iTunes for Windows, iPod, iPhone, iPad. Actually, in fairness, that’s relevant even to players other than iTunes – even the recently-released, open source Miro can talk to your iTunes library.

Don’t get me wrong: it looks like Apple is unveiling the first really viable cloud music service. That shows some serious ongoing leadership from the company that popularized the desktop player that’s still #1 today (iTunes), popularized online music buying with an online store that’s still #1 today (iTunes Music Store), popularized the mobile player that’s still #1 today (iPod), and maintains a nice, healthy chunk of the mobile market (especially if you look at all iOS devices together).

As of today, Apple’s still setting the bar for everyone else. It’s just that, in contrast to the revolution unleashed by iTunes and iPod, the results may not be as seismic this time.

Outlook Cloudy

Let’s review: we’ve waited a long time for online sync. And here’s what we’ve got:

Different services for different devices and different stores. Buy your music from Amazon, Google, and Apple? Own an Android smartphone, an iPad, and a Windows PC with Winamp? You can look forward to beautifully-integrated solutions for … each of those. Separately. Great.

No clear benefit for music makers. Digital Music News points to the folks at Beyond Oblivion. They note this service will simply sync people’s pirated music:
But Wait: Isn’t the iCloud Just Reinforcing Bad Habits?

Because even if rights owners are properly licensed, this is merely making billions of stolen music files more accessible. And that’s supposed to be a solution? “We can’t enrich the music industry, we can’t enrich artists, we can’t enrich life, society and culture by continually going to the same 5% who already pay for the music,” Beyond Oblivion CEO Adam Kidron said this morning. “We have to go to a new market.”

I’m not the sort of person who is kept awake at night by thoughts of piracy, but look at this the other way – in contrast to Apple’s initial unveiling of the iTunes Music Store, I don’t see any clear evidence that this will encourage people to buy more music. Not yet, anyway. Your best hope is that somehow this fairly modest sync ability will encourage people to buy more music, likely from iTunes (or Google Music for their Android, or Amazon for their likely-upcoming Amazon tablet). But that’s a stretch, and likely to be a drop in the bucket compared to the ongoing slump of the CD.

Hello? Anyone? I’m the Web? Did you forget me? Although it’s not as mind-bogglingly inexplicable as it was with Google, Apple seems to have forgotten the Web. Apple themselves pointed to the growing popularity of the camera on the iPhone, but ignored in the keynote the reason for that popularity – the ability to spread your photos with Twitter, Facebook, Web apps, Instragram, and the like.

For a service that takes music online, there’s really no ability to use that online information to share what you’re listening to, or get recommendations from other people. Nor is there any kind of API that would allow artists, labels, and creative developers to help build an ecosystem – even though such an ecosystem would potentially benefit music.

In fact, looking to rival Google, YouTube is far more relevant to getting your music out and actually generating new listeners and fans there than this cloud service is.

From a purely business perspective, the cloud so far looks surprisingly barren. It’s a huge gamble that some modest sync features – themselves designed to remove obvious, counter-intuitive annoyances – will make online music listening any more popular, or help musicians earn more from their work.

Winners, Losers, and Vinyl

I’m awaiting a response from Merlin, the folks who represent a huge share of independent labels, and who have protested their treatment in the licensing process.

I’m also hoping to hear more from services like TuneCore, who, for an annual fee, allow unsigned artists to get their work on iTunes. (I’m testing this as an artist and as a journalist myself.)

My bet: the one winner here is TuneCore. Artists may now have to pay the $50-a-year “tax” (erm, make that “service fee”) to TuneCore just to ensure their music will work with iTunes Match – and that people eager to buy cloud-ready music can. Don’t get me wrong: TuneCore provides some valuable services, but irrespective of what they offer, we’ll see whether this winds up being something that brightens independent artists’ day — or is just a pain in the … uh … cloud.

And all of this…

I…

I’m, sorry, I feel a blasphamous, snarky comment coming on. Oh, screw it. Turn to your blogger side. Filters off.

Vinyl records right now are more relevant to independent musicians than cloud sync.

There, I said it. I’m not even sure if I agree with it, but I might, and at least it sounds damned good.

The Good News

Maybe it’s time to stop looking to big companies like Amazon, Apple, and Google to chart the future course of music. Maybe the biggest platform doesn’t come from any one company, or any one, shiny device.

Maybe it’s just the Web. After all, it was the Cloud before anyone thought of calling things the Cloud.

I’ll believe in it, until I go to — borrowing Jobs’ words — that great, big hard drive in the sky.

CNET has a terrific interview with Rio Caraeff of Universal Music Group’s eLabs. Caraeff is a new breed of record exec – the kind of people we’d actually want running the industry. He’s a software guy and a mobile guy.

UMG digital chief on iTunes, DRM, and Android [CNET Digital Media]

The record industry has clearly seen the light on DRM, so that’s not really news, except that now you can see them saying it in public (and I imagine there has been long-running internal lobbying from those in the industry who got it long ago).

The news for me really what he has to say about the mobile space – his expertise. On iPod, he says what we don’t need is more proprietary alternatives: “I don’t think having more devices and more proprietary software or hardware in the market is the right answer.”

But most encouraging to me is how bullish he is on Google’s Android platform – and the fact that the proof is already available in the numbers available now. It seems the Web world is attracted to whatever is shiny, new, and not-ready-for-primetime, so bloggers last week forgot about Android and moved on to Palm’s (not-shipping) WebOS and Palm pre. That’s all fine and good, and WebOS certainly follows some of the same trends Android does, but let’s not lose focus just yet, right?

Universal worked with Amazon on their integrated Android store, and the results sound very impressive.

…now Amazon will tell you that Android is their single largest source of downloads from any third-party partnership that they’ve ever done. It’s a tremendous amount of consumption that we’re seeing once you integrate it seamlessly into a user experience that’s elegant and easy to use. It’s not 10 clicks. It’s very elegant and easy. We’re starting to see consumption increase significantly.

It’s early days on Android. There’s not that many out there on T-Mobile, but even with the small amount out there, they’re downloading and purchasing a ton of music over the air on T-Mobile.

This to me points to some encouraging signs:

Android has an edge for developers. Note that from a development, user experience, and deployment perspective, the Android platform was a big part of this success. You couldn’t do an Amazon store on the iPhone.

Android has legs. None of that would be meaningful if it weren’t translating to sales. But this says to me that the open Android platform can be a successful outlet, without necessarily needing a middleman like Apple. And it suggests some positive things for, say, developers selling software (or musicians doing weird, 99-cent generative music games) on the platform.

Mobile sales in general could be big for music. The whole problem for the record industry isn’t all that complicated: it’s that one medium (CDs) has been shrinking in dollar figures faster than its successor (online music) has been growing. So the industry just needs new growth. It’s encouraging to see that that could mean just selling music at reasonable prices, free of DRM. That’s a huge change from the previous plan, which appeared to be slicing 30 seconds out of a track, calling it a “ringtone,” and charging more than you would for a single.

There’s plenty worth checking out in the whole story. But this does make me feel even more excited about Android and what’s possible. The Amazon store is amazing: you buy and download tracks over the air, and then bring them back to your machine. Sure, you can do that with iTunes, and finally iTunes doesn’t have DRM on its tracks. But Amazon was able to come onto the device as a third party (working with HTC, Google, and TMobile). With Apple, the only way to get tracks back on your computer is to go through their iTunes conduit. With Amazon, you can do whatever you like. And the underlying stacks that enable the app are all open source, from the APIs to the developer tools. That’s a pretty marked difference.

Having a different mechanism for selling music could also mean that the UMG of tomorrow is very different from the UMG of yesterday. It’s certainly encouraging to think there are people at the company who see technology in the way a lot of the rest of us do. But this could also mean new opportunities for independent artists and smaller labels – and greater opportunities for everyone making music.

We’ll be looking more at the Android platform in 2009, and other trends in mobile. Now I just need to get myself a G1.