First Augmented Reality Music CD :: Latrama :: Love & Projects :: from musikame on Vimeo.

Want the CD as object to come alive again? Here’s yet another approach: make it into an input for webcam-based augmented reality.

The album “Love & Projects” by Latrama uses the packaging to trigger augmented reality “DJing” of the playlist. Put the CD in front of your webcam, head to a browser-based tool, and you get turntable controls for playing the album live, complete with scratching, pitch, delay, filter, and volume controls. There are more downloads available, as well.

Of course, this raises the question of why you actually need the CD, given the experience is online – but then, it’s the problems with this concept that are to me interesting, themselves; working out the tension between the old (CD) and new (Web, webcam augmented reality) is where a number of opportunities lie.

The “augmented reality CDj” was developed by Madrid-based interactive shop Musikame. Musikame has been busy, re-imagining a clock face as a DJ tool and building a browser-based tool for DJing with SoundCloud tracks:

Clock DJ from musikame on Vimeo.

For SoundCloud DJing and mixing (via Sonic State, over the summer):

http://soundcloud.musikame.com/

And here’s a project that mapped Facebook faces to a wall of photos for a festival. (Take that, new Facebook profile page!)

musikame @ REC Madrid 2010 from musikame on Vimeo.

Updated: Via comments, here’s what Theo den Brinker (SoundCloud) did with that player app:

While Mac blog TUAW calls on Apple to kill optical drives (does Apple need that kind of encouragement?), the shiny digital compact disc and the album in general still have their devotees. Sure, album sales are down. Sure, digital downloads are in. But look beyond business or practicality for a moment at these exotic hand-constructed musical objects, and what you see is sheer love. A hand-constructed CD or vinyl album is a gesture of making music for someone, not for the ether.

I raised the issue early last month, and readers responded with lots of examples of handmade records, which I round up here. (And yes, practical, it’s not – a number of you complained that hand-construction is a lot of work. It’s clearly best kept to small runs, but then, I think that’s part of the point.)

Also, last month at NYC’s wonderful Culturefix, a handful of us got together and constructed some handmade discs. It’s definitely something you could do at an album swap meet with other artists and DJs in an afternoon or evening, and it makes the swap feel more meaningful. Pics at top; I hope we do more of these.

If this is the way the CD goes out, I think it’ll go out with style. And whatever the trends in the larger world, who’s to deny you your tangible album, really?

(About the end of the CD – I can tell you that demos, album reviews, music bought at shows, and the like are still very much tangible. Until flash memory is cheaper than CDs, I expect that’ll remain the case.)

First off, a vinyl album – but the process of hand-making these vinyl jackets is already lovely. moni writes:

We hand sprayed album covers for Ruoho Ruotsi’s Hmmm … album (De’fchild Productions release 003) Different colors were used to make each one a little bit different. Hard work, but rewarding. These came out nicely!

The electro-pop band Miaoux Miaoux did a custom run of 100 hand-knitted CDs to benefit Cancer Research and Maggie’s, available for a donation. They also included full-color artwork:

http://miaouxmiaoux.com/album/knitted

My favorite of the round-up is the work of Atlanta-based artist magicicada, who makes handmade boxes full of “surprises” – exquisite photography and unspecified collections of nine songs, packaged in a box made of mud. He also performs music live. (Thanks for the tip, tender vittles!) More images on his site:

http://magicicada.com/

Mugison makes his own CDs, as viewed in this lovely timelapse. (Thanks, Derrida! I assume not that Derrida, but…)

Hey, they’re flat, they’re round, they’re absurdly cheap, they store a good hour of lossless audio, and you can actually hand them to someone. There’s something to be said for that. Now I hope someone takes on the idea of using generative algorithms to make one-of-a-kind album covers en masse.

Previously: Reclaim the Album’s Soul: Tips for Handmade CD Artwork, Make One Sunday

You hear the repeated chorus: music in the digital age has become meaningless and valueless, like turning on water from a tap in the middle of Rome. But, quietly, a movement is stirring that is reclaiming the value of music. Armed with nothing more sophisticated than markers, paper, collage materials, and imagination, they send mixes of music like grade school Valentines. Heck, they even use the mail. It makes the album more personal than it was even in its golden, mass-produced age.

Many of the practitioners in this case are returning to the cassette and mix tape. But I was also interested in handcrafting cases for demos, for your own music, and for mixes of Creative Commons-licensed and netlabel materials. Instead of just swapping behind our avatars and usernames on SoundCloud, it returns us to the glee of playing with markers and exchanging face-to-face.

If you’re in New York, we’ll be making our own musical packaging and then swapping records, starting with a 4:00 pm workshop on this Sunday 10/10/10 at the Lower East Side’s cozy (and tapas- and drink-stocked) Culturefix NY:

RSVP + location + Facebook; stay for the party, live music, and swap at 7p

But wherever you are, perhaps this Sunday you can make some handmade music.

Here’s a look at some of the work being done, via a Flickr group entitled “Handmade Mixes,” in a Flickr slideshow:

Group founder Samantha Saturday talks to CDM about her techniques, and gives us some crafting tips. Keeping it simple makes this manageable, too, in case you’re planning a handmade, limited edition-run of your next EP.

Tips for materials:

For collaging works I always keep a shoebox of paper scraps and snippets from newspapers, magazines, flyers, basically anything that can be glued or taped down. Keeping all your supplies close at hand is a huge help. Personally I make all my cases completely from scratch, but sometimes starting out with a pre-made CD sleeve and building on top of it is a great way to start.

My best advice is to keep the process fun and to not put too much pressure on yourself to make something totally awesome. If you just let it happen it will be awesome no matter what. There is no right or wrong way to do it.

What to bring to a workshop: (including ours on Sunday!)

Bring mixes specifically for the event and some paper, magazines, glue, snippets, or what have you to share with the workshop.

I talked to Sam about some other ideas, too…

Tell us what you’ve been making.

All of the works I have made are either for friends or for mix trades organized in different places around the internet, such as blogs and Swap-bot [an online-organized swap meet]. For every mix I make, I also create a collaged, cut & paste cover. Some are simpler than others, but I always try to make something nice to house all this great music.

In general I put so much effort and time into making individual covers for every mix because I feel that with the digital age music is starting to lose some of it’s specialness. There’s something about having album artwork to accompany the music you’re listening to. Now you don’t really get that with digital downloads and I miss that. I think it’s the same for a lot of the people who are so dedicated to creating unique artwork.

Who are some of the other people you’ve found working in this medium?

Jane Boston (Stab Heart zine) and Bianca Jagoe (Goodnight Little Spoon) are the first that come to mind. They are both pretty big swappers in the online and mail art community. I’ve sent to and received mixes from both of them and I adore the love they put forth in their creations.

Additionally some of the people that have really stood out to me are Richard Gallon [Flickr] and Evey in Orbit [Flickr. Richard creates really well-crafted covers for his cassettes. On the other hand Evey has a much more cut-and paste approach to it. Even though their techniques are very different I love the range that can be expressed because it's such an open medium.

I created the Flickr group Handmade Mixes for people to share their handmade covers, since it seems like every other mix group is mostly computer-generated works. Most of the people who contribute are people I invited, but a few other people are popping up here and there, which is so exciting! Everyone in the group does a great job and it's really inspirational to see that there are lots of people out there who make their own covers, too.

Introduce us to one of your favorite mixes.

My mix "We're the Heirs to the Glimmering World" is definitely one of my favorite mixes that I've made, both because of the music and the cover art. Usually if I'm feeling a little down I will make a mix to focus my mind on something else and that was definitely the case with this mix. It's one of the most elaborate covers I've made.

You mention on one of the Flickr images that some of these mixes came from getting together for an in-person swap.

[That's] Mix Share Swap hosted by Bianca Jagoe of Goodnight Little Spoon. I found out about the swap from Jane Boston’s blog. If you keep your eye out, there are a lot of mix swaps like this around the blogosphere. Anyone could sign up, then you were assigned two random people you would send to from the list and you received mixes from two different people. It’s a great way to share music and connect with other people.

Any thoughts on how you translate the personality of a music mix to the visuals on the handmade packaging? (It’s an age-old question, of how to make something visual out of the auditory and ephemeral.)

When I make a mix the music, of course, always comes to mind first. After, and sometimes during, compiling a mix you listen to it and different themes or a general feel to the music will come forward and I think that’s where ideas for the packaging first start to form.

Everyone has their own aesthetic and although it sounds cliché it’s definitely about putting together what feels right. Sometimes the cover doesn’t necessarily tie in directly with the music, but generally I think there is something in the sub-conscience that drives the creation. Also, the handmaking process is a lot different than say, someone creates a cover on a computer. You’re connecting with the mix on a tactile level and that alone comes through in the visuals.

More inspiration:

Check out Sam’s Flickr: Handmade album
and the Handmade Mixes group on Flickr (which I hope will also apply to original music, CC-licensed music)

All images courtesy Samantha Saturday.

Below, some of Sam’s favorites from her group.

“immolate yourself“ unites ten tracks with the aim to give the term electro pop a new definition for 2009. although each track has its own story to tell, together they paint a bigger picture that encapsulates the telefon tel aviv sound. arguably the albums standout track “helen and troy“ was in fact the last track to be finished and in a way marked the studio climax. as telefon tel aviv state, “we knew, after completing this song, that we were in fact finished with the record“.

It’s a sad time, but I can’t think of any better way to honor someone’s memory than to hear their music. Thanks to both of these creative artists for that gift.

immolate yourself CD order page

There’s a massive misconception of digital formats, that somehow if something’s digital it’ll last forever in a pristine state. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth: because digital formats are so intolerant of any error, they’re actually more susceptible to physical harm than analog formats. (If you don’t believe me, compare a vinyl LP with some scratches on it to a CD with a single scratch.)

Now, the question is, how dedicated are you to proper care and feeding of your discs? Enough to care whether you’re handling your CDs and Blu-ray discs according to an internationally-recognized standard published by the International Organization for Standardization (better known as ISO … not IOS)? Got 108 Swiss francs burning a hole in your pocket and want some unusually dry bedside reading?

ISO 18938:2008 addresses the issues of physical integrity of the medium necessary to preserve access to the recorded data. These include:

• use and handling environments, including pollutants, temperature and humidity and light exposure
• contamination concerns
• inspection
• cleaning and maintenance, including cleaning methods and frequency
• transportation
• disasters, including water, fire, construction and post-disaster procedures
• staff training

I kid, of course – I imagine there could be some utility to this document for people who depend on optical storage and want this sort of official document. I will say, though, ISO – any thought of releasing a free executive summary for everyone else?

New ISO standard gives recommendations for care of optical discs [iso.org]

Proper care and handling isn’t the only challenge facing optically-stored digital information. The materials from which discs are made don’t last forever. (They don’t bio-degrade, either, but what they will do is fatigue and age to the point that you can’t read the information on them or return them to the Earth, ashes to ashes style.)

So, I’m curious, optical experts out there? What do you recommend for care of optical discs? And for long-term archiving, what sort of options do people have?

Since this week has become Unplanned Unofficial Vinyl Week, I might as well keep going. Vinyl with printed timecode is just one path. Here are two examples (one recent, one upcoming) of products that have found other means of connecting digital sound to the turntable. If a product like Traktor Scratch or Serato Scratch Live represent the maturation of the integrated vinyl + hardware + software solution, these two tools virtualize the turntable experience in other ways. And they demonstrate just how much control technology can change in music, turntable or no.

The Numark X2, above, as pointed out by beatfix in comments, is a hybrid of two approaches. It’s a conventional turntable (meaning you can actually hook it up to an amp and hear something, which isn’t the case with timecode-encoded vinyl). But it also uses the turntable to manipulate an MP3 CD. Now, obviously, Numark has missed the obvious next step: why not transmit control data to a computer instead of a CD? The X2, with a street well below US$1000, isn’t new; it’s been around a couple of years. But I’m still waiting for the concept to be applied to a computer output. (Anyone?)

In the opposite direction, the Stanton Control System, unveiled at NAMM in January and due to ship in June, does away with the turntable. The deck, the SCS.1d, simulates the feel of a turntable with a high-torque motorized platter and even a motorized pitch fader. Personally, I love this — and think it could be a sign of other, non-DJ controllers with tactile feedback. (You heard it here first. Uh … but I do expect that to take a while, as tactile control design is hard.)

But the turntable has some control features of its own: trigger pads, LCD scribble strips, encoders, transport controls, and preset triggers and navigation keys. They look a little odd, honestly, on a faux turntable, but it does save some space and gear.

The SCS.1m on left is a traditional mixer control surface with LCD "scribble strips" (reminds me a bit of the Novation keyboards) and endless encoders with a light-up ring (as we’ve been seeing various places.) The mixer controller is also a FireWire audio interface with mic and phono ins and dedicated headphone out, plus a footswitch input. That might win the hearts of some Ableton Live users who aren’t necessarily DJs.

This answers what Stanton has been doing post-FinalScratch. With that system defunct, what the Control System does is get you into whatever software you happen to choose. It works with Traktor Studio (the non-Scratch version of Traktor), Ableton Live, Deckadance, and MixVibes.

Cost: US$1499 for the deck, $999 for the mixer. And you can see the problem — a real turntable might be cheaper. But then, given what DJs make… hey, even a few VJ gigs might make it worth it if you really wanted it.

Part of why I find all of this interesting, even without being in the market for such a device myself, is what it says about controllers. The DJ market ought to be fairly predictable at this point, theoretically. And yet here are two examples of products that suggest that even conventional DJing, with a pre-defined set of basic techniques and hardware, can become unpredictable with the addition of a computer. As people struggle to define what a controller might look like for a laptop artist or musician using software like Ableton Live, I think the possibilities become even more wide open.

But then, that’s the fun of it.

I just want to see more high-torque motors in stuff.

Trent sez: “Buy all these music formats from meeeeeeeeeee!” Photo: Jenna Foxton.

Artists are known to mouth off a bit about the Future of Music and Digital Distribution and whatnot, but Trent Reznor is putting his money — and not money — where his mouth is.

Nine Inch Nails Menu of Ordering Options for Ghosts I-IV

via Mashable: Practice What You Preach: Nine Inch Nails Gives Away New Album

And they certainly have their bases covered with their new album “Ghosts”:

• Get the first volume of the album free on torrent sites (or via the NIN site)
• Pay US$5 for a download of all 36 tracks (take that, Radiohead!)
• Get a 2 CD box set for US$10 (which also includes immediate full download of the tracks)
• US$75 gets you the 2 CDs, a data DVD with the digital tracks, and a Blu-Ray disc with 96/24 stereo and accompanying slideshow
• US$300 Adds four LPs on vinyl, two prints, and Trent’s John Hancock — limited-run 2500 pieces

I think they should have just kept going. You know, $800 gets you cassette tapes, Pro Tools session files, 8-tracks, surround sound. $50,000 adds an IMAX film (projector not included) and one of those little plastic mini records. $500,000 adds a DIY planetarium show, plus a special Buddha Box edition and a low-power FM radio transmitter so you can self-broadcast the album. $1 million and you get a Jaguar pre-loaded with a specially-signed sound system that plays the album, plus reel-to-reel multitracks. $500 million and Trent comes to your house, brings his studio rig and console, and re-records the album for you in your living room.

Before you assume the downloads are worthless, though, even the torrent file includes PDF “liner notes” and 320 kbps MP3 files. Buy the download and you have an option of either FLAC lossless or Apple Lossless audio — something I know readers here have complained about.

There’s only one problem. The fact that musical superstars are experimenting with various formats amounts to great research into what people may want. But if you’re not a Nine Inch Nails junkie, this is all awfully … well, complicated. For lesser-known artists, it seems like finding just one or two solutions that make most people happy is a better route, and it’s not clear what those are yet.

I’m personally most interested to see how the torrent thing works. Then again, with bandwidth costs plummeting, serving up your own audio — even lossless audio — becomes a viable option for artists and small labels. And so far, the torrent doesn’t seem to be cannibalizing the for-fee options, as NIN’s site says they’re experience high volume of traffic and orders. If enough people spring for the higher-cost options, the free versions may pay for themselves.

By now, you’ve likely heard that Apple’s iTunes Music Store has taken the #2 spot in music sales — all music sales – right behind retailer giant Wal-Mart. This tends to lead to one of two somewhat gloating reactions from Apple advocates. One is a sort of “rah, rah, go Apple!” attitude. The other is along the lines of “hurrah, discs are dead, go throw your CDs in with your eight tracks and vinyl while we leap into the future!”

A typical sentiment comes from Scott McNulty on The Unofficial Apple Weblog: “I have an iPod, an iPhone, an Apple TV, and I manage all my music with iTunes as I am sure many, many other people out there do as well… “

Eep. Any votes for “I have a Sony Cassette Walkman, a cheap mobile phone, a … TV, and I manage all my music on my bookshelf”? Is that more boneheaded nostalgia?

Of course, it wasn’t supposed to be this way — any of this.

First, it’s hard not to notice that Apple’s success involves a somewhat Borg-like approach to media consumption. All Apple gadgets, all Apple software. Ironically, even Windows users — the people Mac users had for years railed against as overly conformist or beholden to Microsoft-branded stuff — use a variety of listening gadgets and happily reject the clunky Windows Media Player for Winamp, Mediamonkey, and foobar2000, among others. Brand loyalty aside, what if you want other control over cataloging, encoding, and mobile listening? It’s your music collection, after all.

But more importantly, iTunes has itself become a kind of Wal-Mart for music: a retailer so large, it starts to impact the rest of the business and stifles variety. And that wasn’t the vision for online music distribution; supposedly we were all going to be rid of major labels and one-size-fits-all outlets. So, that’s the bad news — the good news is, iTunes’ giant presence may be the best thing that ever happened to music sales. Here’s why:

• Apple’s dominance scared the record industry into dumping DRM. Lots of ink has been given to Steve Jobs’ “Thoughts” memo, which called for eliminating DRM because it’s bad for consumer. But iTunes’ DRM-free music initially cost more and covered less — and Apple was beaten by others to going entirely DRM-free. The real reason major labels dumped baked-in protection was they realized adding DRM to music gave the iTunes/iPod combo total control over the market, and they (rightfully) feared an Apple-dominated music world. Without DRM, you use any player and mobile device you want, meaning you don’t have to buy it from any one vendor. Little wonder that many labels went to nearest rival Amazon first. Dropping DRM wasn’t for the consumer; it was a competitive move.
• Sales of music aren’t down; they’re just moving from physical to online media — then back again. The “sky is falling” argument from labels generally comes down to this: physical media sales are down enough that they’re wiping out the benefits of explosive growth from online sales. Physical is down, online is up, and online isn’t yet making as much money as physical sales did at its peak. But that money is going to legit, online sales, not piracy. And that’s a big relief to the rest of us; the labels can be left to figure out how to make money on the new format. Meanwhile, just as Radiohead offered a premium physical-CD for its best fans….
• The CD isn’t dying — it’s just becoming a luxury item. Bloggers have been comparing the death of CDs to the death of vinyl. Maybe that’s the right comparison, but “death” isn’t the right description — for either one. First, there are still billions in CD sales, so don’t expect CDs to go away any time soon. In fact, the CD could rebound slightly if CD sales outlets and labels can find a way to adjust their business model and releases for this new music listening market. One fair bet: make CDs a luxury item. Just ask vinyl. Vinyl has made a resurgence among hard-core aficionados and DJs, people who love its sound, its packaging, the community of people around specialized retailers — all things that could also be true of CDs. The numbers may be small, but if independents can pick up big margins in little markets, who cares? Take the money and run.
• iTunes’ embrace of a Wal-Mart audience means opportunities for other online retailers. I’ve got two words to sum it up: American Idol, for which Apple is now an official sponsor. Apple has traded in its indie cred for big music business. And tastes in music are more diverse than ever. That means iTunes has nowhere to go but down, as stores like Beatport, dancetracksdigital, Other Music, Bleep, Deutsche Grammaphon pick up specific genres and retailers like Amazon work to win out with unique features and varied content. Apple’s likely to remain healthy, sure, but competitors have both the reason and the opportunity to fight back.

Nothing against Wal-Mart — I’ve bought the odd item there. Or Apple — without Apple, I expect we’d still have bungling majors building broken services of their own, like the pre-iTunes, DRM-laden Napster reactionary stuff. But music lovers benefit from choice. And I think Apple’s very dominance, alongside the death of DRM, could paradoxically let that choice happen.

But let’s be clear: no matter how much you like Apple, one retailer, one store, and one mobile device is not a formula that helps music or encourages innovation. It means one company controls pricing, one company controls assortment, one company decides what margins go to music labels, and one company decides what features you want. That’d be a bleak picture, except I think what Apple is doing is carving out a market it won’t be able to continually dominate — meaning the “one” in all of those will disappear soon. You know, like the eight track.

(photo top right: ktpupp)

Suffice to say, we at CDM discourage pirating music. I should hasten to add, though, that we’re also generally opposed to terrorism, illegal firearms, and narcotics — just in case there’s any doubt. According to a training film produced by the National District Attorneys Association and Recording Industry Association of America, and leaked on the Interwebs (doh!), these things typically go hand in hand.

In the course of the film, the producers do stumble upon an interesting solution to the issue of sagging sales of physical CDs:

“There are some sayings in certain parts of the jurisdiction when you buy a CD, ‘would you like it with or without’,” Walters adds. “The ‘with’ is a CD enclosing a piece of crack or whatever the case may be. We, continually, in working with law enforcement, find that these locations have everything from handguns to large quantities of narcotics.”

Reviewing the RIAA’s “Reefer Madness” for the digital age [Ars Technica]

Wow, free crack with my pirated CD? This lends an entirely new layer to our ongoing coverage of the future of the compact disc.

All of this seems doubly peculiar when mixed with the RIAA’s anti-piracy campaign, which has been largely directed at online music piracy. It’s hard to squeeze in narcotics with a torrent.

But, since I know a lot of our readers are from outside the United States and have a terrifyingly skewed opinion already of, say, life in New York, let me say, for the record, I have never gotten a free handgun with a CD. Really. I am right now not hearing a stream of bullets being fired. I also weigh less than five hundred pounds, and I don’t own an SUV. I can take you to some cool record stores in town, and I promise the discs are both legal and drug-free. And we’re spending CDM’s donation drive proceeds on bandwidth and servers, not my crack habit. Come visit America. Once you clear that whole fingerprinting / retinal scan / whatever, it’s a good time. Okay?