What does it mean to “master for iTunes?” Apple tripped that question with the launch of a suite of utilities and sound-processing algorithms intended to master music for their codecs and software, rather than more generically as would be done with the CD. More significantly, what does it mean that an increasing number of music listeners experience all music through Apple’s software as the final gateway to their ears? In our first look at this issue, we welcome guest writer and producer Primus Luta (David Dodson). He tests this issue the only way that really matters: with his ears.

There’s so much to say, in fact, that almost each line here of David’s conclusions is up for potential discussion and debate. That to me isn’t a red flag for posting – quite the opposite, it’s an invitation. So we consider this the beginning, not the end, of this conversation. -PK

The announcement of Apple’s new Mastered for iTunes suite caught me at a serendipitous time, as I prepped the first release on my new label.  In fact, the day of the announcement came right in the midst of reviewing masters for the release.  It’s an interesting situation for a compilation release, in which styles range from ambient to muddy beats.  Finding a good balance that keeps them all flowing together is an art in and of itself.  But it would seem Apple has that all solved with their Master for iTunes droplet.  Drag the high-quality files to the droplet, and presto-chango — out come files that all play perfectly in iTunes.

Well, that’s the claim, but is it mastering or encoding?  To their credit, in the documentation Apple explains that their 32-bit process manages to encode from high-res audio without leaving a dithered footprint.  Ed.: “Dithering” is the addition of adding small amounts of noise to compensate for errors that can occur in downsampling from greater bit depth to less – it’s used in image processing as well as in sound. According to Apple, their use of greater bit depth in the intermediary file prevents aliasing and clipping, and thus they don’t need to use dithering. -PK Apple’s tools aren’t the only way to do this. Most pro audio editors can achieve the same, but often people are ripping MP3s or AACs in their media players, so it is an important distinction.  It still begs the question: why go down to CD specifications,  especially while making the point of noting their process results in a quality better than CD’s or CD rips? Ed.: The greater bit-depth is only an intermediary file; eventually delivery is not only compressed, but at specifications set by the CD. Greater resolution and bit depth are limited to the mastered files, not to what the listener ultimately hears.

The most important question, though, is how does it sound?  If you send a song to be mastered, you expect in general to get back a song that sounds different than the one with which you started.  Generally, this difference is in perceived overall volume, but also can include changes to dynamics and other touches.  So what changes does the Master for iTunes droplet make to your files?  Well, none: it just encodes them.  They describe the process as such:

The Droplet creates an AAC audio file from an AIFF or WAVE source file by first generating a CAF (Core Audio File) rendered with an iTunes sound check profile applied to the file. If the sample rate of the source file is greater than 44.1 kHz, it’s downsampled to 44.1 kHz using our mastering-quality SRC. Next, it uses this newly-rendered CAF to render a high-quality AAC audio file. Once the final AAC audio file is generated, the intermediary CAF is deleted.

The key part relating to how your files sound is the “iTunes sound check profile applied to the file.”  Rather than changing the volume gain in the file, metadata information is used to tell the playback device how to play it.  What the documentation does not tell you is what or how this information is determined.

Reviewing masters involves listening on many different systems.  I like to listen on studio monitors, a small boombox, a consumer surround sound theatre system, laptop speakers, desktop computer with headphones and, of course, in a portable media player with various headphones.  I’ve also added a cloud-based stream to that mix — and doing that is what brought me to the experiment I conducted.

I uploaded a test master to the the cloud and was comparing listening to it and iTunes, when I noticed a rather huge discrepancy in volume.  At first, I figured they were just set to different levels, but upon checking both were at their max.  So I went to play my reference song, which currently is the title track from Monolake’s new album Ghosts (I tend to try to keep my reference material relatively contemporary.)  The volumes on this track between applications were more or less the same.  Meanwhile, my test master, which was playing pretty much on par with the Monolake track from the cloud, played significantly lower in iTunes.

That was when I remembered Sound Check.  I wasn’t on my normal listening computer and never bothered to see if Sound Check had been enabled, but sure enough, when I looked the preference was checked.

Ed.: I actually had some difficulty getting a solid answer, but consulting with Apple-following journalist Jim Dalrymple of The Loop, we believe that the default setting is off in iTunes for Mac and Windows and on iOS. If someone has a different answer to this, I’d love to hear it. What you can tell about it is what Apple has documented in support document HT2425, namely, Sound Check operates track-by-track, not album-by-album, operates in the background, and computes and stores non-destructive normalization information in ID3 tags. It works exclusively with .mp3, .AAC, .wav, and .aiff file types, and gain increases occur before the built-in iTunes Limiter. That also means you should consider the iTunes Limited as part of this process.

As soon as I disabled it, the volume was consistent across players.  This inspired me to test how Sound Check was affecting other files, and so, going through my iTunes library, I built up a sample set of 25 songs to test the effects of Sound Check:

- = Sound Check turned down the volume
+ = Sound Check turned up the volume
null = Sound Check had no effect on volume

This was all done by ear, and while my ears aren’t what they used to be, I’m willing to guess if you tested, your results would be similar.  Ed.: You should also be able to investigate the actual ID3 data, but in this case, perceived volume may be more interesting anyway, and the effect isn’t necessarily subtle.

About halfway through, I thought it’d be good to confirm these findings with numerical tests, but then I started noticing a pattern.  Almost everything gets turned down, some more extremely than others — the most extreme example being the Nine Inch Nails track.  The two tracks that get turned up are both archival recordings, and so it makes sense that they are at a lower volume.  The vinyl rip from Pharoah Sanders would likely have gotten turned down, as well, save for the fact that vinyl rips are re-mastered to raise their volumes.  Same goes for the live Stevie Wonder boot.

The stand-outs are the ones which Sound Check has no affect on, each of which was released within the last two years. The Tori Amos track comes from her last orchestral album.  Because of the result, I tested two other selections by her on either side of the advances of digital technology, both of which get turned down.  The track “Blood Roses,” like “Night of the Hunters,” features no drums but still gets turned down, as the mixing for the album is definitely rock-influenced and so the harpsichord falls on the loud side.

Stellar OM Source’s track is of the ambient drone variety, also without drums.  But the Monolake track is techno, full of drums and crunching distortions, yet it remained unaffected by Sound Check. (It’s also worth noting that the Powell track, which also has prominent drums, is only barely turned down by Sound Check.)  Because “Ghosts” is one of my reference tracks, I had previously done an analysis of it. I noted that, despite peaking at the max of 0 dB, its RMS only averages out at -14.5 dB.  I’ve done this type of analysis for a number of modern tracks and this is unusually low.  Typically, drum- and bass- heavy tracks manage to hit around -10 dB RMS with some going as high as -6 dB RMS.

The results for the Monolake track led me to hypothesize that what Sound Check was actually doing was applying an RMS limit on tracks of around -15 dB (with a +/- that I haven’t calculated yet).  Anything below that gets turned up and anything above that gets turned down (with the precaution that turning up never results in clipping by going above the 0 dB max).  This was confirmed when I normalized one of my test master’s to an RMS of -15 dB.  This version of the track, when played in iTunes with Sound Check enabled, played at the same volume as with Sound Check disabled.

Where an object of mastering is to create a version of a song which plays at the optimum level across playback devices, where iTunes is understood as rapidly becoming a primary application for playback, and where Sound Check is often enabled as a preference in iTunes, it stands to reason that those producing masters today should be working to create versions of songs for which Sound Check does not need change the levels.  As such, mastering for iTunes can be understood as creating a quality master which has an average RMS of -15 dB.

Prior to this, the primary barrier for the levels of a master was the 0 dB max limit to prevent clipping.  Within that, the RMS levels could fall anywhere, which is the freedom that gave way to the loudness wars. The so-called “loudness wars” refer to the increase in compression to produce greater perceived loudness, as tracked over the rise of big FM radio and the CD through the 80s, 90s, and today.  Two songs with a max of 0 dB can have extreme differences in volume based on the RMS.  Production and mixing tricks, especially with the heavy use of dynamics processors like compressors, can squash a song, allowing the overall volume to be raised incredibly.  Using these techniques, it’s entirely possible to create a mix (not a master) which has a max level of -4 dB but an RMS of -10 dB.  If you master that track, raising the max, to 0 dB, the RMS level will push close to -6 dB.  When this file is played in iTunes with Sound Check enabled, however, it’s going to be turned down to -15 dB RMS which will be below the -4 dB max level that it started with.

The potential of adopting this as a standard is an end to the loudness wars as we’ve known them.  As the above example shows, doing everything you can to push a song to the max ends up having the opposite effect.  So rather than worry about loudness, producers and mixing engineers can return to focusing on getting good, clean mixes of songs.  Mastering engineers can also worry less about pushing the volume to the max and focus on bringing the best out of the mixes.

Incidentally, the system for producing tracks that comply to this have long existed in the mastering world, thanks to Bob Katz and the K system of level metering.  Using the K-14 system of metering for mastering (and producing and mixing) can ensure that engineers are not pushing their mixes too loud.

There are, however, some negatives which can be attributed to the adoption of such a standard.  Because of the headroom afforded by digital, in the last decade, the creative use of volume has increased.  ”Loud” has new musical meaning, and the tools utilized to maximize loudness normally in mastering are being introduced during production to create effects.  An example of this is the pumping effect of side-chain compression on drums.  This can be quite appealing creatively even when (and perhaps because) it pushes to levels of distortion.  Creating this effect without clipping is easily managed with a limiter at the end of the signal chain.  However, creating this effect below -15 dB is not so straightforward, and the results won’t necessarily be the same.

For the mastering of multi-song projects there are other issues.  Over the course of an album, dynamic shifts between songs can help to carry the mood of the project.  One wouldn’t necessarily want all of the tracks to have the same -15 dB RMS; ideally, that would be reserved for the loudest song and the others mixed under that accordingly.   It presents a challenge, but it is manageable.  What’s nice about this type of limit is that, unlike the 0 dB max limitation, going over it does not necessarily result in destructive clipping, so there’s still a dynamic range within which to work.  It’s also worth noting that the Sound Check process can be applied to an album to ensure consistency in listening.

One has to hope that, should this become a standard, new creative ways of working within these parameters will be born.  To be clear, -15 dB RMS, while not the loudest, can sound great for a great mix.  Just listen to the Monolake track if you want proof.  Getting people to adopt to it is a challenge, but I think the incentive to adopt will be there once artists realize that the more they push the volume, like their mother, the more Sound Check will turn the volume down.

As a footnote, I thought to test how Sound Check treated what was previously considered the most perfect album from a mixing mastering perspective – Steely Dan’s Aja.  In iTunes, Sound Check turns “Peg” down.  So it’s not just your bass heavy-beats that could be affected by this.  Also, it’s not just iTunes and not just Sound Check.  Replay Gain is a similar tool found in other media players.  Spotify also has similar limiting for its streaming services.  These things will likely show up in more playback applications as time goes on so adopting to this now is a pretty safe bet.  Sure, your tracks may not sound the loudest when tested without these services, but with good mixes, they will still sound good, regardless. “Good” is far more important than “loud.”

I’m still on the fence, though.  In general, I’m not a fan of auto volume control.  Adopting a mastering standard that caters to them just seems wrong, even if I am (for the most part) on the side of ending the loudness wars.  And, again, on the creative side, I’m very concerned.  A decade of loudness wars in many ways has changed our sense of sound possibilities, and signals pushed into the red — well, I kind of like those, when they’re done creatively.  People talking about the loudness wars are usually talking about traditional rock and pop music being squashed and absent of dynamics.  But we’re at a point now where there are other genres for whom pushing into the red can be seen as more valuable than dynamic range.  It’s a completely different school of thought and need not be shut down (or turned down) because of an antiquated sense of norm.

You can follow David Dodson on Twitter. http://twitter.com/#!/primusluta

We’re interested to hear what you think.

In two ambient works, musicians Cory Allen (Austin, Texas) and Marcus Fischer (Portland, Oregon) chart connected sound worlds mined from shared samples, in a sweeping opus of a musical environent. Released yesterday on February 22, coinciding with birthdays of the artist and Chopin, it generously has the you’ve-just-got-to-buy-this price of US$2.22, well worth adding to your downloaded collection.

The first track is nothing if not womb-like. It begins with a warm, pulsing hum, delicate tones peeking above the blur. Then it gradually succumbs to binaural fuzz, producing a whitened atmosphere of timbral architecture, an eneveloping mist punctuated by soft, insistent ticks. The second track feels more expansive, a trip on an alien sea that begins with creaking, ship-like wooden planks and sails into waves of sound and ringing timbre. With the arrival of the piano and strings in the second track, there is a renewed sense of musical groundedness: this is not just an endless drone, but a set of extended gestures.

There is a regular sense in the sound design of tonal centers, of lines and connections and progression behind the spray of sound. Accordingly, our friend Marc Weidenbaum, whose blog disquiet has been a compass for online releases of ambient and experimental music, has contributed some thoughts on just that topic of congruity in notes for the album. He fits those, of course, into 222 words:

The Internet is a congruity engine. The ceaseless churn of online databases aligns any two or more things found to have in common any one thing.

Cities with similar names require clarification from mapping systems. Faces of people with similar names appear together in image searches, forcibly conflated into one extended family.

Congruity is especially powerful regarding individuals with the same birthday. Factors such as seasonal attributes and development relative to classmates are widely accepted to explain perceived similarities between individuals otherwise born years, even centuries, apart.

Two / Twenty Two by Cory Allen and Marcus Fischer occurred because the two musicians acted on their shared February 22 birthday. Both live in cities considered artistic outposts in otherwise rustic states (Allen: Austin, Texas; Fischer: Portland, Oregon), both have professional experience in visual design, and both explore gentle sonic psychedelics that bring texture to what might otherwise be termed ambient. All coincidence, certainly.

Allen and Fischer stacked the deck in congruity’s favor by providing each other with a set of samples from which to devise new music. The result is two rough fragile recordings. They have the burnish of delicate objects that survived significant tumult. As for the tremulous piano in track two, perhaps it’s a nod to Chopin, who was, according to various databases tracking such things, also born on February 22.

Marc Weidenbaum
disquiet.com
credits
released 22 February 2012
. . .

all sounds were created or captured
by CORY ALLEN + MARCUS FISCHER.
in Austin, TX + Portland, OR.
Winter 2012
Mastered by CORY ALLEN
Photo + Design by MARCUS FISCHER

More:
cory-allen.com
mapmap.ch
disquiet.com

By the way, one of the many things I love about Bandcamp is that it is supported by the superb Chrome extension, ex.fm, which is ideal for listening to streamed music. I tend to like to survey music via ex.fm and purchase and download the stuff I really love. If you want to follow me, my profile is:

http://ex.fm/peterkirn

Get the extension: http://ex.fm/

And I’d love to know what you’re listening is like, if you wish to send playlists. Perhaps we can talk more about that soon. We’ve just enabled the ex.fm plugin here on CDM, so that may make finding music here easier, too.

Writing about the meeting place of technology and music, we cover potential: what’s possible, what might be in the future. So as he launches a new music column, our new contributor Kid Kameleon has coined a cheeky title: “created.” This isn’t just what you could create with digital music, but what has been made, as he discovers and reviews new sounds. And while words like “genre-defying” get overused, producer/DJ/journalist Kid Kameleon – aka Matt Earp – really is on a quest for music that pushes out from the boundaries drawn around it. Over this and future installments, Matt will help widen our own listening to the up-and-coming and unexpected. So let’s get started, by peering through the window of one label and one artist. -PK

TESTTOON & OUBYS

Testtoon and Oubys are separate but symbiotic (for now). Testtoon is a very new label run by Michael Severi from Antwerp, Belgium, in collaboration with his brother Rafael. Michael’s girlfriend Eva D’haenens creates the label’s art and graphics as part of Testbeeld, the label’s visual twin. Testtoon is only two releases into its existence so far, but according to Severi, its agenda is to “promote creative and original electronic music” with vinyl-only releases of ”only local or more unknown producers we like.” Severi’s current aesthetic for his own DJ sets as well as the label is “ambient, field recordings, and experimental,” and Testtoon couldn’t have found a better or more captivating artist for their launch releases than Oubys, from Brussels.

Oubys is the stage name for Wannes Kolf. From his succinct bio: “Kolf’s music is made with live improvisations, electronic treatment and field recordings. Influenced by early legends Faust, Heldon, Can and ambient guru Brian Eno, this music has a nice sense of subterranean depth and a pulsating progression.” Oubys has had two previous releases on the CDr label U-Cover (also out of Belgium), and his music has is perfect blend of textured soundscape, low thrumming bass and steady washes of atmospheric synths that combine in perfect proportion to yield richly immersing musical experiences. This world can be a space where it’s hard to sound original or interesting, but Kolf weaves just enough of a pulsing through many of his creations to give them the skeleton ambient music so often lacks. His first release for Testtoon was Terra Incognita in 2011, which falls somewhere between an EP and an album in length. It’s full of rich complexity reminiscent of Monolake and Chain Reaction, and it ends with the almost epic Blackland 2 (below). But it also takes in more collage-like sounds along the way, in tracks like “Hidden Base” and “Mitlt”.

The label’s second release is the Positronium EP, which heads in a slightly darker direction, more buzzing electricity than soothing sound beds. It contains an early version of the album track Positronium II, a remix by Oubys, and truly special restructuring by Substance of Hardwax, Berlin, a scion of German dub techno reaching back almost 20 years. A tantalizing snippet of it can be heard here:

That EP will be out by the end of February. For now Testtoon is doing the distribution themselves, so it can only be found in vinyl shops in Belgium and by mail order through a couple of internet outlets. But Severi is hoping to secure distribution soon, so untill then keep your ears on both Oubys and Testtoon’s SoundCloud pages for samples of new material. And give them both props for doing such small run and tangible releases in the age of digital music!

TEAL & BEASTIE RESPOND

Not terribly far from Testtoon’s sample-based ambience, a similar label/producer symbiotic relationship is going on, but for a different genre of music. The label is Teal Recordings, run by Simon Olsson, and the producer is Beastie Respond aka Tobias Pedersen. Both of them are in Copenhagen, Denmark, and both have associations with the Dunkle Bar there.

Teal is 4 releases deep so far, available both as 12″ records as well as digital, and much of its sound has been focus on that particular hybrid of house, dubstep, UK Funky and techno that doesn’t have a name yet but is currently saturating lots of clubs in London and beyond. Producers like Blawan, West Norwood Cassette Library, Hypno, and Kowton have all given some of their finest productions or remixes to the label – a favorite in this vein is the smokey jazz-club sampling shuffle-skip of Hypno’s Koko, a true gem.

But the label’s breakout sound has surely been the beguiling Syncope by Beastie Respond. A beautiful piece of uncanny music that draws equally from Drum and Bass, Dub, Dancehall and Chilled Out Hip-Hop, it’s one of the best examples of the current trend of DnB producers using increasingly tricky rhythms to give the illusion of both 85 bpm hip-hop (or in this case, with a 4×4 beat, almost slow disco) and the frenetic poly rhythms of Jungle. It is a sound that’s most closely associated with the producer dBridge, his label Exit Recordings, and what’s been termed the “Autonomic sound” of this particular strain of modern Drum and Bass – a sound hugely influenced by the “is it head nod or dance music?” slippery-ness that is Dubstep’s most impressive achievement to date. And frankly it’s an amazing breath of fresh air to the genre of Drum and Bass, reviving many veteran’s interest in a sound that’s accesible enough for a new generation of listeners who till now only knew DnB as classic ragga, harsh tear outs, or cheesy over-the-top atmospherics.

Now, not to pigeonhole Pedersen into only this one sound – he’s got musical skills that stand out on some darker and more straight-ahead productions, as well, geared to a more traditional DnB audience. But his syncopations are at their most impressive in this rhythmic netherland, so it’s not surprising that Teal is releasing a second single from him in March. This one, the label’s 5th, is 2 tracks, “Be Quiet” and “No More”, and once again, “No More” is just killer, full of crisp clean sounds that tumble over each other, constantly pinging back and forth between a head nod and a skank.

Beastie Respond says he has some other tracks and remixes coming soon. If both record labels and producers the world over can embrace this sort of tricky, intelligent music that works both on the dancefloor and in headphones, then the future of electronic dance music is bright indeed.

Kid Kameleon is a San Francisco-based DJ, promoter, writer, blogger, historian, archivist, and fan of electronic music.
http://kidkameleon.com

Don’t miss Matt’s write-up of selections from 2011′s musical landscape – complete with a couple of recent choices from his more than 100 mixes:
The Music of 2011: Kid Kameleon Picks, Om Unit Mix, Techno Mix

Remember when electronic sound gear hid in hulking, rack-sized cases? Korg’s Kaossilator series had already begun shrinking the desktop KAOSS Pad gear, but even the first-generation Kaossilator wouldn’t fit in your pocket, given its square shape and corners. (Well, unless you were wearing overalls.) The Kaossilator 2 and Mini Kaoss Pad 2, on the other hand, are scaled perfectly to your hand and would tuck neatly into a pocket in your pants or bag. And while I know some readers were hoping for a new Pro addition to the KAOSS line, these little bundles of joy have added some functionality that could make them musically useful. Being dedicated hardware, they also won’t suffer from a battery sapped by phone calls or the interruption of a Facebook message – and that input jack is built in.

We saw the new models at the NAMM show this month. The highlights:

The Kaossilator 2 is a PCM-based phrase synth, inspired by the original Kaosillator, for improvising melodic lines. What’s new is some handy recording functionality:

• Scale Key and Note Range so every note is “right,” effectively, as on the original
• Drum sounds
• Gate Arpeggiator with adjustable gate time and swing settings
• Loop recording to layer phrases and add as many overdubs as you like
• “Dual Loop Recording banks allow DJ-Style mutes and cross-fades”
• Record using the built-in mic; or use the mic input for recording of external input
• microSD/SDHC, so you can cheaply add up to 32G of removable storage

That crossfader, of course, is entirely new, and Korg does mention “dance music” in the sounds and focus. It’s easy, then, to imagine this as a pocket-able instrument for jamming or something you’d use to make musical ideas on the go, and it does look like a lot of fun.

The Mini Kaoss Pad 2 is an effects box to the Kaossilator 2′s synth – and it even has a built-in MP3 player, so you can load up sounds and tracks ahead of time:

• MP3 player with microSD card slot for data storage/exchange – or record performances and mixes
• 100 effect programs, with 3 favorite slots
• Looper, Vinyl Break, and Ducking Comp from the Kaoss Pad Quad (actually, need to find out if all the slicer effects from the Quad are there)
• Internal mic plus external audio inputs
• I’ll quote them directly on this: “Support for pitch change and cue point settings allows serious DJ play.”

Now, it’s a little hard to imagine DJing on something the size of a deck of cards, but, of course, I hope somewhere out there tries. I like the idea of putting your tracks on there and improvising a little mix, especially with the ability to record. Again, you could use it as a little sketchpad.

I got some hands-on time on the first morning of the show, and they’re a blast to play with, certainly. See the official Korg videos.

The other advantage of dedicated hardware here is, again, having a dedicated resistive touch interface. On a phone, the highly-sensitive capacitive interface can lead to missed triggers, and you have to fiddle around with menus and the like. There is something to be said for this dedicated gadget, at least for some. And it seems worth comparing, since many of you have a smartphone. What do you think – are you intrigued at all by these latest Korg gadgets?

With a US$160 street, if you are, they may be hard to resist. We’ll watch for when these start shipping.

http://www.korg.com/kaossilator2

http://www.korg.com/minikaosspad2

Previews of each, then the two together:

You can expect to see ongoing appearances by Ghostly International, the 12-year-old label with roots in Detroit that has since established firm outposts in California and New York, in these pages. (Pixels?) The reason is simple: Ghostly is a grand experiment in how to retain relevance as a label in the second decade of the 21st Century. But like any label, the proof in that exercise lies firmly in the sonic output, so while I’ll ramble a bit here, the best thing to do is to simply point to a lot of things to pipe into your headphones – particularly as Ghostly has been on a bit of a tear in the opening weeks of fall with plenty of free downloads and mixes to give you a free sample. (The first taste is free, natch.)

Ghostly is perhaps best known, traditionally, for its ties to Detroit and artist Matthew Dear (aka Audion), but contrary to proper belief, the founding role – and ongoing helmsmanship – belongs to Samuel Valenti IV. The label’s presence is now international, founded on slickly-produced tracks that seem to embody a certain zeitgeist. The recent release by mainstay Tycho is coated with a sonic equivalent of the golden patina that seems to resonate from the artist’s tinted photos and designs, emanating a warm, partially-nostalgic glow that nonetheless remains firmly digital and future-minded. Ditto Com Truise, whose modern-retro sound is now crossing Europe, or the previously-covered samplist Gold Panda.

It’s notable that Ghostly’s evolution now has been from narrowly-focused label – often experimental, as with its IDM-ish Spectral Sounds imprint, or techno-focused – to design and taste hub. Ghostly’s model for how to address the exploding access to global stuff now on the Web appears to be to cast itself as a curator, assembling stunning output by designers and design-geek goodies, and ensuring its content flows at a steady but comfortable rate through blogs, Facebook pages, and free online radio pages. While all metrics suggest that all-you-can-eat streaming services are devouring actual sales, Ghostly’s strategy could prove a bellwether: they plaster the free mix services and such, but also are developing a loyal following that consumes everything from vinyl to , all as they cultivate a subscription service that focuses on access to just their releases. (See Drip.fm, formerly the Ghostly Music Service, which in turn has a landing page that hints they may extend the same model to other labels.) Whereas just throwing your music to the winds of the cut-rate services threatens to destroy just the kind of boutique music Ghostly represents, the label suggests that careful curation could rise, not fall, in value in the wake of the cheap fire hose of sounds now available to consumers.

But that’s Ghostly. Let’s listen to some music. It’s especially worth mentioning here in the “hump day” of an autumn work week, as many turn to some of these Ghostly tracks, like the free Music for Ideas compilation, to gain inspiration for getting work done and things made. In particular, Lifehacker spotlighted Tycho in a recent feature. (See their Work Sounds series, and thoughts on whether music really can make you more productive, though I don’t wish to be glib about that on an actual music site.)

Here’s some material to watch and listen, to use as a backdrop to work or dance, or to simply let yourself drift away…

For starters, there’s the 8tracks compilation Ghostly made for itself earlier this month. With cover art by Ghostly design regular Michael Cina, it covers the gamut of recent releases, with appearances by Shigeto, Tycho, Matthew Dear, Com Truise, Jacaszek, Mux Mool, Gold Panda HTRK, plus remixes by Nicolas Jaar, Star Slinger, Teen Daze and King Midas Sound. (I can’t say enough good things about Nicolas Jaar; I’m still working on nailing down an interview. And kudos to 8tracks for being a service with a nicely-designed, clean interface that lends itself well to this sort of track compilation.)

As seen on drownedinsound.com, a good place to discover this sort of thing.

My favorite moment: the chilling, gorgeous Jacaszek track “Elegia,” which apart from its scintillating string and vocal timbres and pads, has a heart-tuggingly melancholy pulsing ostinato that moves the thing forward, before a surprising and satisfying twist in direction at the end. You’ll want to file it away for an icy day. Jacaszek is well worth listening to, generally, with richly-cinematic, Classically-inspired, electro-acoustically-skilled, moving music out of Poland. He’s newly-signed to Ghostly – check out his performance from Poland’s own, legendary Unsound Festival, in the video below:

For that aforementioned mix to boost your productivity, look to Ghostly’s “Music for Ideas” compilation, a free set of downloads celebrating the label’s appearance at a TEDx installment in hometown Detroit. It’s accompanied by an especially-gorgeous, organic Michael Cina explosion of ink and color, seen here. You get more Shigeto, Lusine, Tycho, Mux Mool, Dabrye, and company, but also the likes of Ben Benjamin, Osborne, Solvent:

Ghostly Essentials: Music for Ideas

As they describe it:

A 10 song experience of Ghostly’s artists, each with a unique mood. The Music for Ideas compilation is a joint effort between Ann Arbor-founded Ghostly International and TEDxUofM; it’s release coincides with TEDxUofM 2011: Encouraging Crazy Ideas, the second annual self-organized TED summit at the University of Michigan.

Music for Ideas is meant to awaken the creative flow, the tenet on which TEDxUofM 2011 is based.

If you like that free download, fill up your music collection at this page:
http://www.theghostlystore.com/collections/music-free

MP3.com – yes, there’s still an MP3.com – has a good snapshot of what Ghostly’s about, accompanied by three free downloads. (Ah, free downloads from MP3.com – wow, that takes me back.) Notable: art rock duo out of Melbourne HTRK is one of the downloads, and MP3.com wisely points to the electro-acoustic bent of many Ghostly releases, something often missing from more restrictive electronic labels.

Label of the Week: Ghostly International [MP3.com]

And more HTRK listening: (“Hate Rock,” not to be confused with “Hate Beak,” the heavy metal parrot I have failed to mention for far too long)
http://mp3.com/artist/HTRK

Shigeto has his own mix, as spotted on XLR8R.com, neatly timed to coincide with a tour of Russia and China. (I know we’ve got some Russian and Chinese readers, so do go say hi, and if one of you is handy with a camera, perhaps we can get you a press pass.)

SOB.021 Shigeto by streetsofbeige

Listen to Shigeto’s Mix for Streets of Beige [XLR8R.com, with RU and CN tour dates]

Tycho is on tour now through North America, alongside Swedish rock band Little Dragon, and delivers this tasty remix of that outfit (not to be confused with the experimental outfit Little Dragons, plural):

Little Dragon – Little Man (Tycho Remix) by Tycho

If somehow you’ve missed it, you can follow the exploits of Tycho – including his aesthetic-candy tastes in design and visuals – alongside contributors like Ghostly’s and Moodgadget’s Jakub Alexander, a good place to find goodies for your eyes and ears and play “where is Tycho now”:

http://blog.iso50.com/

And you can see inside Tycho’s studio in some gear pr0n on Wired:
Tycho Shows Off Old-School Synths Used to Craft Dive’s Ethereal Sounds [Wired]
…though, of course, you read CDM, so as the saying goes, there’s nothing there you haven’t seen before.

Gold Panda is featured in a beautifully-produced film of his live performance at a sold-out show at London’s Koko. We previously followed Gold Panda in 2010 – I might add, before this record really blew up – in an in-depth behind-the scenes feature here on CDM:

Gold Panda Interview: Inspiration from Samples, Loved Ones, and Distracting Dogs

See also, from earlier this year:
Gold Panda on Sampling; Moby on Drum Machines

And if all this leaves you wanting to shake your butt around to Matthew Dear – I know there are times when that’s all I want to do – there’s a fantastic, house and techno mix from the label legend in Miami. The next time Berlin gets hit with a frozen ice fog that blots out the few hours of daylight, this is very much getting switched on, at least if I’m not in the mood for staying in messing about with long reverb tails and endless drones.

Matthew Dear DJ Set @ SAFE – Electric Pickle, Miami – 10.22.2011 by Matthew Dear

Ghostly also has a nice approach to YouTube, one worth emulating: in addition to the requisite music videos (I do want my music television), they use the service to tout upcoming releases.

http://www.youtube.com/user/ghostlyintl

If there’s a downside in any of this, it’s that Ghostly is so firmly established as curator and brand that it seems to me it falls on other venues for the kind of experimentation that might lead to future sounds, experimentation that may need to draw outside the lines of what makes Ghostly’s notion of taste so clear. And of course, I’d like to see a release that to me throws caution to the wind, even from Ghostly. At the same time, Ghostly can supply a model for upstart labels that have such aspirations, in the ways in which it crosses media and engages Web networks: there’s a roadmap here for how to thrive, let alone survive, that is not exclusively the domain of a name this well known. Look, learn, and steal.

If you have a label you’d like to see spotlighted, do get in touch. Big and small, you know they’re welcome here. (I have a few things to dig out of my inbox that look tantalizing and go in very different directions, so stay tuned.)

Previously:
Hot for Heat: Warm Up Your Weekend with a Mix from Ghostly’s Moderna (Missy Livington)

After 100 Records, A Bento Box, July Events Full of Ghostly International

Dispatches: Interviewing Lusine on Detroit’s People Mover

And, naturally, for more:
http://ghostly.com/

The tenth anniversary of the iPod debut means you’ll find plenty of commentaries on Apple’s iPod and how it has changed music. It’s an issue that’s been talked to death enough, continuously, in the past ten years that I’m literally uncertain there’s more I can say about it. Here’s one good, compact commentary from Daring Fireball, inspired by Macworld’s sharp review from the 2001 debut of the hardware.

Instead, let’s consider what hasn’t happened: Apple hasn’t discontinued the standalone iPod, as distinct from the iPad and iPhone and other general devices. For music lovers, that’s a big deal. The sad news is, the category itself has all but entirely imploded.

The last ten years has been in almost every category a kind of battle between dedicated devices and convergence devices. Anecdotally and statistically, you’ve seen people abandon dedicated video cameras, still cameras, audio recording gadgets, and audio players for something like their iPhone. Little wonder: unless you have enormous pockets, if the integrated device does the job – and its battery doesn’t give out – it means something that’s always at the ready.

Apple’s legacy in music players is curious: they both defined the category, and wiped out all the competition. And that’s true even before Apple changed the category again with the iPhone. That’s not the normal pattern: typically, in electronics or any other tech, the pioneer defines a space in which other competitors come and play. Not so with the iPod: a combination of shifting consumer trends, the profound success of the iTunes “ecosystem,” and the general ineptness of competitors to make quality, differentiated alternatives has led to the iPod standing more or less alone. The iTunes issue shouldn’t be overlooked: recall that when the iPod launched, record labels were still concerned about copy protection. The result was an iTunes-iPod relationship that ultimately kept consumers from working out the complexities of moving their music library to another, rival player. (The fact that most of the rival players weren’t any good didn’t help, so we can’t ever really know how much of a factor this was.)

Two things have happened this fall. Microsoft did discontinue the Zune, in what seems the final death knell for any major dedicated music player that isn’t made by Apple:
Microsoft confirms Zune HD is dead

But, secondly, even as various analysts predicted Apple would kill the dedicated iPod players or even the iPhone-with-no-phone iPod touch, Apple didn’t discontinue anything.

My favorite player remains Apple’s iPod Classic. It’s beautifully designed, holds an absurd amount of music no phone can match (160 GB), and has a simple, clean interface for getting to your music. It’s sad to me only that it’s the only choice, particularly because the one thing rivals did have going for them was easier, more open sync rather than iTunes-only solutions. In fact, even the original iPod had as a major selling point the ability to work as a dedicated hard drive. As a purchaser of the first iPod, one of my favorite features was the ability to easily tote around a big file or two atop the music library.

Oh, yeah, and it’ll still run when your phone battery is dying, and it costs just US$249 – no phone contract required. Ahem.

http://www.apple.com/ipodclassic/

Phones as playback devices are pretty great. But remember that the original dream of the iPod was something different: it was the ability to put your whole music library on one device and take it anywhere. My main question is how that legacy will pan out. Dedicated music devices give you distraction-free access to nothing but music, and ongoing storage innovations mean that something that’s just a music device may long exceed what the convergence devices can do, surviving for the reason SLR cameras do.

Apple’s iPod series will last so long as people keep buying them; Apple seems in no hurry to walk away from extra revenue. (It’s part of the reason why they’ve got all that cash, folks.) But I wonder in the long term what will happen to the category. To me, the major gaping hole is something a lot of us wanted even when we saw the first iPod: a dedicated, pro-quality music player, a kind of audiophile iPod. It doesn’t need any fancy features or silly gold-plated jacks, just something dedicated to playing music and nothing else. I wonder if we’ll ever see that, or if it’ll be another casualty of the explosion in consumer gadgets. In the meantime, long live the iPod Classic.

And for the record, if you do have an original iPod from ten years ago, you can still make it sing: install Linux and it’ll even run Pd.

Artist Tricil sung the praises of Topspin in April. Since then, I did my own LP release on Bandcamp, about which I hope to share experiences soon.

But how do the two compare? And how might they even be combined? Recording/mastering engineer and artist Jimmy Ether recently posted some thoughts to his Google+ account, shared here by permission:

Topspin vs Bandcamp mixed with other options
I was pretty sold on going with Topspin for the back end store and promo features for the Headphone Treats site I’m rebuilding. Until today. I’ve always been a big Bandcamp supporter, but they were just missing a few features I felt we needed for the more full-scale assault I’m hoping to make:

1) An integrated store across artists – actually, both services sucked at this (until today). It was possible in Topspin, but you had to get hacky with tags to have multiple bands in one account. Which I never really wanted anyway. Now Bandcamp lets you span any artist on their cart system, which is brilliant. Lets the bands manage their stores and I can just tie them into our site. Exactly what I wanted.

2) High-Resolution, 24-bit FLAC – Again, Topspin was going to be hacky, but doable. But wait! Bandcamp is now allowing 24bit files up to 192kHz??! How did I miss this? I’ll have to see how the download options work, but this is awesome if all pans out acceptable. With what I’m doing, it’s literally two different masterings per album (fully dynamic 24bit/88.2k… slightly more compressed 16 bit for regular lossless down to MP3), so I need to see how that’s going to work. Hopefully I can select formats to be made available for each album and just offer two versions.

3) Campaigns – this is a pretty cool aspect of Topspin which may or may not have been beneficial. Kinda nice to be able to offer a free download of an album for an email signup or Facebook like. But there are other services I could use for that… or I can just roll my own using Bandcamp download codes. And now we have G+ possibly stealing some thunder from Facebook, so it’s reminding me of all that time I spent on MySpace building followings for all the artists. Yeah, that panned out. Social media is wonderful, but you have to keep things centralized and in your control.

4) Mailing list – ummm… Mailchimp? Emma? I’d much rather integrate either of those into my site than use Topspin’s more limited interface. Mailchimp is especially interesting with their killer API, which I’ve used a little bit. I’m a reseller for Emma, so I can send mail way cheaper through them but their integration is a tad clunky and requires more coding on my end (done it before though). I’ll have to weigh that.

So, that’s my current thinking on all the music tech offerings. Speak up if you think I’m missing something though. Discussion is good. Or if your curious what I’m on about with any of the above. Happy to clarify.

That seems a good conversation starter to me, and a jumping-off point for a more in-depth discussion. The competition is certainly heating up: Bandcamp just unveiled a merchandise store, and Topspin is enhancing their features, as well. (Correction: I originally claimed that email capture at Bandcamp was a recent addition, but a reader points out it was unveiled in 2008. I could say time flies, but I will instead just admit I was mistaken. And in fairness, while competition drives enhancement, arguably user requests are the prime motivator.)

So, other users, we’d love to hear what you think, or if you have other questions about either service we can investigate or direct to the sites themselves.

And while we’re at it, Jimmy’s own site has a growing archive of information, including some recording tips – and, oh yeah, some music to hear:
http://jimmyether.com/about/

To take us into the weekend, here are some favorite online music releases this week to download, stream, and enjoy. Be sure to click over to the site if you’re on RSS for the included players if they’re not appearing.

The big buzz this week was the surprise emergence of Squarepusher on a project with Ed Banger Records – a surprise because Squarepusher has long been synonymous with Warp. I’ll leave the music blogs to concern themselves with the label. (Resident Advisor goes understated, whereas exclaim.ca offers, snarkily, “Either Ed Banger Records has moved on from the French touch explosion of 2007 or IDM legend Squarepusher has dropped the wacky time signatures for some four-on-the-floor filter-house.”)

Mostly, Squarepusher fans have been having a good time with a funky, fun track and remix that’s free on Soundcloud (the one “label” we all find ourselves on these days):
Squarepusher – Cryptic Motion Edits by Hypetrak

In the ambient realm, I’ve been enjoying the music of aptly-named artist Ambienteer, whom we visited in June. There’s a new, pay-what-you-will EP up on Bandcamp if you want more:

Ambienteer: Bright Collection of Strange Victories

Ghostly artist Shigeto has an absolutely gorgeous track out this week, mixing the work of vocalist/harpist Ana Caravelle. It’s unmistakably a Shigeto track, but with lots of, well, vocal and harp-y goodness. (If you missed it last month, be sure to check out Shigeto’s free EP from last month.) XLR8R has a nice write-up of the release.
Ana Caravelle – Blackcanyon ( Shigeto’s as i inhale mix ) by SHIGETO

For something more experimental, Makunouchi Bento’s Swimé is a delightful, fanciful soundscape that rattles its way through musical fragments, noises, and cinematic landscapes, sometimes recalling John Cage (particularly when the piano dances over a repeated, asymmetrical motive of some sort). I very much like that it’s free, not so much as a judgment on the commercial potential of the record (which I’ll admit is relatively limited), but because it allows you to encounter the music freely. Like wandering the free day at the art gallery, it may open you up to experience the work. And it’s worth putting on your best cans and listening to a higher-quality format, to explore this musical imaginarium.

If it’s a mix you’re looking for, German artist Martin Juhls aka krill.minima (on Kompakt, among many others) has a rich, extended “ambient dub” mix up on Mixcloud this week.

By the way, here’s one tool to add to the music releases. If you’re using Google Chrome or the open source variant Chromium, ExtensionFM is a brilliant extension that automatically pulls streaming and download links from pages you’re surfing, then allows you to navigate them as if they were in your local library. I have to admit, I was fairly resistant to the idea at first – until I actually tried it, that is. ExtensionFM is polished, lightweight, and elegant, and far from distracting from focused music listening, I found that the ability to assemble tracks and play them in a complete session has helped me to listen more closely to tracks available online. Anyone who’s ever fiddled with the ill-fated, chronically-unstable, and now discontinued-for-Linux application Songbird will recognize the concept. ExtensionFM is what Songbird should have been, period.

http://www.extension.fm/

It’s been particularly nice when navigating SoundCloud. My new workflow – assemble the stuff I want to hear, spend extended breaks listening to tracks, as well as “browsing” music as you would on the radio by loading tracks in the background while working in the browser, then go out and buy or download the best stuff to add to my permanent library. (These days, that means Banshee for me.)

I was never this impressed with similar offerings on Firefox, but if you have a favorite tool, let us know.

Also, turns out these guys are here in downtown Manhattan, so, ExtensionFM guys, if you’re reading, say hello.

The Internet is supposedly about quantity over quality – endless releases of every sound a computer can spit out, limitless choice and access, albums as prolific and disposable as Twitter updates. Of course, whether it actually is that or not is, as always, up to the creators.

Netlabel Feedback Loop, based in Lisboa, Portugal, has some self-imposed discipline. They release only three or four editions a year, with tracks carefully curated to represent only the best. The initial EP is free, released in high-definition audio if desired; if successful, a paid full-length is the follow-up.

The latest release is an ideal selection for focusing your thoughts and musical energies on this Monday. “Kuss” is a selection of six exceptional tracks from the Guildford, Surrey (UK)-based artist Ambienteer. (I’ll let you guess his musical genre of choice.) The cuts off the EP are to me a perfect balance of organic and synthetic sound, always imbued with a sense of intention and change; there’s never the static quality ambient releases sometimes have. Gorgeous sound design combine with thoughtful, meditative composition. And that’s all I’ll say about it, because you should really just listen – in 320k MP3, FLAC, and other formats. (Bless you, Bandcamp. We deserve you, after all that suffering with MyS****.)

Download, plus more info from curator Leonardo Rosado:
http://feedbacklooplabel.bandcamp.com/album/kuss

And for other releases from the netlabel:
http://feedbacklooplabel.blogspot.com/

A side note: this comes to us by way of our friends at another exceptionally-fine netlabel, PublicSpacesLab. (Previously on CDM) I’m saddened to learn that the co-founder of that label, Alejandro Mendez, passed away last month. Condolences to his friends, family, and his colleagues at the label.

RIP Alejandro Mendez

Autechre are back, following up a set of live dates and March full length release with yet another full-length on Warp and more dates, this time beginning at the end of August in Perth, Australia and heading off to Slovakia, Poland, Japan, and Greece.

Best to let you hear the new full-length track, available for streaming via SoundCloud. (Not embeddable; only on their site, though note that there’s actually a little SoundCloud security hole when you expose a private link in that way – a topic for another day.)

http://autechre.ws/move-of-ten/

I think I may be more eager to hear this one than the March release. Stay tuned.

Does anyone else notice the graphic similarity between Warp’s cover for “Move of Ten” and Flying Lotus’ Fieldlines? You could almost see the one image fitting inside the other. Indeed, let’s try that:

Mystical secret coded message from the folks at Warp?

For more free music, Bleep.com is starting a SONAR free MP3 promo series.