Critics frequently attach the phrase “lock-in” to Apple’s iTunes Store – iTunes – iPod/iPhone combination. But, in the post-DRM age, what does that mean, exactly?

First, you have to recall that while for many of us the manual drag-and-drop music management is appealing, it isn’t so for many average consumers. They want sync. That means that music will be stored in iTunes and synced to Apple devices and nothing else. Apple is serious about locking you to their store and their devices, enough so that they frequently update their software with special keys that prevent the use of devices. iTunes is “free,” but Apple determines which mobile devices you can use and which you can’t. And Apple has gone after anyone who dares give you the ability to use your own music software or own devices, including efforts (ironically) to make their iPhone and iPod work with Linux and open source players.

These efforts don’t protect the music or prevent privacy – they protect users of Apple’s software and mobile devices from using anything but Apple’s tools. Yet Apple has used the Digital Millenium Copyright Act to take legal action over anyone who dares to even talk about how to use legally-purchased music and hardware:

OdioWorks v Apple

Perhaps suspecting their case was too thin to defend, Apple eventually backed off that particular claim — after, says the Electronic Frontier Foundation, “7 months of censorship and a lawsuit.”

Apple Withdraws Threats Against Wiki Site

But the software and hardware locks are unchanged. And Apple has won, in my view, an even more important battle: they have a monopoly over mindshare.

Here’s an example from a recent review by Gizmodo of the Android 2.0 mobile operating system from Google, as implemented on the Verizon-distributed Motorola Droid. They have some fair points about Android’s maturity and strong and weak points. But note what they say about music sync:

The only way to get your music and videos on the phone is to manually drag and drop the files. There is no syncing, no easy way to get your music library onto your phone. How are normal people supposed to figure this out? Verizon reps actually joked about how putting music on the Droid is sure to make for a lovely Saturday afternoon. What. The. Shit.

In fact, this is technically accurate, to my knowledge, only if you’re using iTunes. That incompatibility is engineered specifically by Apple. It’s a “feature”: other vendors could make other devices sync with iTunes, but Apple engineers regular updates to prevent them from doing so. In fact, while Apple was conceding defeat in its efforts to censor the Web over its iTunes lock, it was simultaneously busy blocking the Palm Pre from working with iTunes. This should be especially sad to long-time Mac watchers, who saw a Mac community railing against Microsoft’s effective office software and operating system monopolies in the 90s. Those Mac historians should also recall the early development of iTunes and shareware predecessor SoundJam, both of which worked with a variety of hardware. Now, some members of the same Mac community cheer market share numbers and anti-competitive practices by Apple.

But, engineering aside, it’s really the mindshare battle that’s most impressive. Gizmodo, in saying the Android “doesn’t sync,” really means that it “doesn’t sync with iTunes.” And given iTunes’ massive market share, Gizmodo is not alone – I’ve seen similar complaints from other press outlets and, anecdotally, many, many users.

In fact, Android sync is supported by a variety of applications. In my tests, it works with the open-source players Songbird (Mac, Windows, Linux), Banshee (Mac, Linux), Rhythmbox (Linux), Winamp (Windows), Media Monkey (Windows), and yes, even Microsoft’s own Windows Media Player. Microsoft may restrict the use of its Zune media player, but ironically its music playback software is far more open than Apple’s.

By “sync,” incidentally, I mean automatically – it’s no harder to use these applications with Google Android than Apple’s iTunes and iPhone/iPod. I personally find most of them more flexible and intuitive than iTunes. And I can show someone in a couple of minutes how to manage their device via the file system, too – even “normal people.” (I definitely don’t count as “normal,” so no argument there. But presumably “normal people” can learn to use the Mac Finder, right? Apple certainly argues they can – then locks users out of that tool when they connect an Apple mobile player.)

This is not a pro-Android argument, despite the screenshot. Any music player or phone that supports normal disk mounting will work the same way.

Why should all of this matter to musicians? The reasons monopolies are a concern in the first place has to do with pricing, and media monopolies add to that control of culture and speech. Even if your music isn’t distributed through iTunes, pricing and consumption patterns, and even the kinds of music people listen to and where they discover it are now being deeply impacted by Apple. Apple, in turn, by convincing users that there are no other options and engineering interoperability out of their products protect that control, just as digital music is growing by leaps and bounds. (For statistical evidence of the resulting trends, see today’s other story, linked below.)

I spoke to the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Senior Staff Attorney Fred von Lohmann in April about the paper-thin (literally) arguments from Apple, when Apple was trying to prevent websites from talking about the database lock between iTunes and mobile devices:

All Apple has told us about this is in the letter they sent to us in December, as posted on the website as an exhibit to our complaint. Apple simply cites the fact that the iTunesDB page authors said that the obfuscation mechanisms used to create the iTunesDB has “may reside” in the FairPlay DRM code.

…The important thing here is that the iTunesDB pages were simply discussions about what might need to be done to reverse engineer the iTunesDB hashing. There was nothing to indicate that the efforts had succeeded. So even if understanding the iTunesDB hashing mechanism somehow magically unlocked all of FairPlay (which would seem to be far fetched), nothing on the pages suggests that the authors were anywhere near that goal.

Note that at the time, the EFF did not claim Apple lacked the right to make these kind of locks. The EFF told CDM at the time, “They have every right to do – to try to block it. Apple can certainly try to block it. What they can’t do is use inapplicable federal law to use legal threats to get them to stop.” And Apple backed off those claims.

The issue is whether you should invest in a product that limits your freedoms to use it. And the issue for musicians is whether this kind of a behavior from a company with an effective monopoly is limiting the potential power of digital music listeners in the future.

This is not to say that there aren’t reasons to choose to use an Apple device or its iTunes software. As reader “low resolution sunset” says in comments on the previous story:

This is pure conjecture: but I tend to think that slick interface design, trust, and loyalty for the Apple brand identity is what’s winning them the dominant market share of downloads.

Indeed. So, why not rely on that design, trust, and natural loyalty? Why force loyalty through engineering? And even given these qualities, isn’t there a danger when one company becomes so dominant that people don’t so much as consider alternatives? What’s to keep Apple competitive on good design if they have no competitors?

I certainly can’t answer those questions. And in the meantime, I’m looking to other alternatives, alternatives that have made me quite happy.

More on what this can actually mean:

Digital Sales Up, But is Apple Monopoly the Price? NPD, Mint Data, Editorial Analysis

Mint.com, the online financial management tool, has put its numbers together with market researchers NPD Group to analyze music spending. The results: when it comes to consuming recorded music, digital music continues to rise. At the same time, so does Apple’s grip on the music consumption market, a combination that includes proprietary control of a music store, a music player, and the leading mobile device.

The NPD data should look familiar. Digital music is growing, and clearly it’s at the root of the record industry’s loss of revenue as consumers shift from physical to digital media. Also, Apple’s iTunes remains the lion’s share of the market – enough so that they effectively control distribution, pricing, and consumption patterns, the very definition of monopoly by most measures. (That’s even before you get to Apple’s effective monopoly over the computer player and mobile device, though my suspicion is that an all-out attack on the portable device could start to chisel away at all three.)

Even in the NPD data, though, there’s an interesting indicator: note that the “Other” category is roughly the same size as Apple’s main competitors. That suggests that there’s a plurality minority. And oddly enough, it’s right in the middle of this mysterious “Other” category that a lot of unknown music artists make their dollars, selling direct to listeners or going through niche sites. Artists I’ve talked to in the electronic genre have almost universally said they make nothing on Apple, while they do very well on a site like electronic-specific Beatport. And unlike physical media, it’s not a big deal for someone who loves electronic music to drop their favorite tunes manually from the Beatport store into iTunes and an iPhone.

Dig into the Mint.com numbers, and you see just how different stores can be. Per-transaction spending differs by an enormous margin. Brick-and-mortar retailers sell a lot more per transaction. True, this could include accessories like headphones at stores like Sam Goody, but it’s also interesting to note the gap between stores like eMusic, Rhapsody, and CD Baby, and the smaller per-transaction buy at iTunes.

While Apple buyers aren’t spending as much per visit, they’re visiting more often, and Apple’s move to variable has made a big difference. Buyers have gone from purchasing an average of 2-2.5 transactions to well over 3, coinciding with the introduction of variable pricing.

If you’re not a fan of monopolies, there’s just not much to be done to spin this data. As digital consumption has grown by an order of magnitude, nothing has happened – thus far – to change Apple’s dominant share of the market. And as you can see in pricing statistics, within the Apple ecosystem, Apple has been enormously effective in controlling the pricing of the product and spending habits of the consumers.

On the other hand, looking at the inverse situation, a lot of the most interesting activity is happening outside either the former brick-and-mortar or new digital iTunes economies. We don’t have data on a lot of these niche stores (Dancetracks, Beatport, Bleep, and so on), which grow in number and variety. We don’t have data on direct-to-consumer sales by artists. And we don’t have much data on legal free music consumption, music released as Creative Commons or pay-what-you-will. Just criticizing Apple for their popularity could miss out on what’s happening in these alternative channels.

Many of these channels have no obligation to share their statistics, but to any who are interested, I’d love to talk to you. (And I think CD Baby winds up being the most interesting stat here.)

This is also an excellent illustration of what online analytics can do with financial data. It certainly won’t ease anyone who prefers that this data remain private, but fans of analytics might also see potential for collective learning experiences from shared data. Data like this had long been privileged only to banks and credit cards; a service like Mint allows users to share such data with one another.

So, how are you spending on music?

And would you find it useful – or disturbing – to have that kind of data shared anonymously with other consumers?

Given a choice between boring and crazy, I always choose crazy. After all, craziness is part of the artistic persona. So bring it on.

It’s been a while since we had a celebrity saying things that didn’t really make sense. It’d be unfair to ask Ricardo Villalobos live up to some of the titans – Bob Dylan saying CDs have “no stature” and “have sound all over them,” and Elton’ John’s classic call to “tear down the Internet.” (Not to mention, in the end I think we wound up agreeing with them and turned Elton’s quote into a brand-new verb.) As with Elton John and Bob Dylan, I love and respect Villalobos’ work, no less so as he says things with which I disagree. But Ricardo Villalobos does get special credit for claiming in a recent Resident Advisor interview, among other things, that what has really hurt sound quality today is the lack of cheap drum machines from the 80s, because they were analog. Or they weren’t, but it was as if they were. Or something. (If you think this might earn some ire from Ableton loyalists, you’re right.)

No. I think the development is going in the opposite direction because everyone is making tracks in programs like Ableton, which has an OK sound engine. When I started making music 20 years ago, you had to at least buy a mixer, then some synthesizers, a drum machine—which is the best quality possible of a sampled drum. There was a pureness of the source of the music. It was analog, direct.

Ah, yes, the good old days. Back in the day, digital samples of acoustic instruments played through digital-to-analog-converters were real digital samples of acoustic instruments played through digital -to-analog-converters. It was analog, direct – well, aside from the fact that it was digital and not direct, but it was real … um … analog … digital. Pulse code modulation was real, pure pulse code modulation, not like the pulse code modulation you kids have today. Not like now, when people don’t … own… mixers. It’s not like you kids today, you people who use Ableton, people like… Ricardo Villalobos. (Villalobos is, in fact, a notable Live user.)

I mean, at least it’s a novel argument. Usually, you get the “mixing in the box is bad” and “computers aren’t real” argument from crusty audio engineers with massive outboard analog mixing boards, not electronic musicians. Recently, many experienced engineers I’ve talked to have come to the side of accepting that “in-the-box” recordings in software can be just as good as their analog counterparts. So, we may have reached a real landmark, a world in which electronic musicians claim digital’s no good and turntables are the only way to listen, while engineers experienced with analog claim just the opposite.

Let’s go back in time. For the record, twenty years ago by my calculations would be 1989.

The drum machine you might have bought then could be the Alesis HR-16, or perhaps a Roland TR-707. They’re fantastic, unique-sounding instruments. But “the best quality possible” is not generally a phrase associated with instruments of this era. We love them because they aren’t 192kHz, 64-bit multisamples recorded from 30 microphones and shipped on a 100 GB hard drive, because “quality” isn’t actually everything. And if you bought a new mixer in 1989, I assume you picked up something like Mackie’s just-released LM-1602, rather than an SSL. Of course, you really could go do that now. In fact, Ableton Live recently added 64-bit processing in the signal chain; the software that does more aliasing to account for lower bitrates is actually Pro Tools.

He goes on:

The thing is, you have the limitation of the program, the limitation of the digital mixing which is happening inside the computer, you have the limitation of the sound sources of the synthesizers—the virtual synthesizers. Even the sound engine is playing a very big role in the whole sound of the product. If you have a good turntable and good speakers, you can hear it is made in Ableton. Logic, for example, is very neutral in sound but Ableton…you can hear it in two seconds.

It’s hard to know where to begin. Live does have an overused sound – but that comes from people using effects presets as-is, people not knowing how to mix, people time stretching and warping without adjusting settings or taking care to think about the impact on its sound.

The idea that you have to use a turntable to hear these things, or generally to hear quality issues in a track produced entirely digitally is… well, an interesting theory. (It’d be like testing the fidelity of your inkjet printer by first taking a Polaroid of the output.)

They have all of these virtual instruments that are calculated by a computer, and you have a certain space where you have to put everything. And when you want to leave this space, you have to live with compromises, the compromises of digital mixes and recordings.

Now, perhaps I’m wrong, but I thought that if for some reason you thought you needed to mix on an analog board and record to, say, analog reel-to-reel, you were no less able to do that with the analog outs of your MacBook Pro than with your 606.

And what exactly was in those vintage drum machines, if not a computer making  calculations? Eleven secret herbs and spices? Elves with slide rules?

But this is the beauty of interviews – you can say whatever you want. And it definitely beats boring.

There is also one statement with which I wholeheartedly agree:

People are finding it easy to publish something without any controls. And this is the problem with the internet in general. There is so much information, and no one knows if it’s true or not. It’s just there. It’s an information monster.

It’s almost as though the Internet is a place in which people can make any wild claim they wish, without anyone questioning its basis in reality or fact.

http://www.residentadvisor.net/feature.aspx?1128

Imagine a nightmarish, dark-world, alternative-reality version of Wii Music, one that sends Miyomato-san screaming. That’s what you get from tokoloten, in a very un-Nintendo noise performance, as found on comments. The Wii is just one of his tools:

tokoloten uses a variety of objects such as magnet motors, infrared devices, game controllers… in order to hide his lack of conventional technic. Depending on the venue, the show might be ambient-like, experimental or electronica with weird cinematographic references. But it most often combines all of this.
tokoloten is based in Lausanne, Switzerland.

It’s proof that the controller – any controller – is in the hands of the creator, and what it sounds like is entirely undetermined.

Mapping a hardware input to a sound means making an abstract connection between one physical action and another sonic reaction. What that relationship is is entirely up to you. I was honestly a bit surprised by some of the impassioned critical reactions to yesterday’s brief mention of the use of the Wiimote as a studio recording. Of course, that proves the creed of the blogger – post first, ask questions later, and when in doubt, just post. Amidst some of the frustration, there are some good discussions, though I do dream of an Internet on which we criticize content without name-calling.

But the reality remains: controllers are always abstracted from the sound, by definition, and whether they’re satisfying to you depends on how you’ve mapped them. I don’t know what qualifies as innovative, but then, there have been times when I’ve very much enjoyed turning a knob, so “innovation” isn’t always what matters to me. I tend to fall back on Duke Ellington – “if it sounds good, it is good.” For controllers, that means “if it feels good, it is good.” You’re the one with the controller in your hands.

For an alternative example, musician/artist Kassen has an excellent session on improvising with custom software and game controllers. Below, you can catch some of his talk from Amsterdam’s famed STEIM research center, which has a long history of researching the controller-music connection. After all these years asking that question, what we have is …more questions. But that’s a beautiful thing.

Kassen (DJ, performer, ChucK programmer) from STEIM Amsterdam on Vimeo.

Part of the reason I’ve never liked “controllerism” as a term – sorry, Moldover – is that there is no clear technique, no clear sound, no particular discipline. That is, I understand the case for the term and I’m glad there’s a discussion. But it seems to me that part of why controllerism is interesting is that there is no such thing as controllerism. The beauty of digital music is that you do have wide-open, blank-page possibilities. You can create your own system. It is abstract, simulation, ungrounded in physical reality. But while that is at odds with millenia of acoustic instrument-making, it’s also in tune with centuries of compositional and notational tradition, which are abstract. For the first time, the systems of how we conceive music can themselves become physical.

That to me is an exciting thing.

So, here’s a question — let’s take the example of sensors that handle orientation. How would you want to deal with them in music software, if they could be standardized, if any accelerometer or tilt sensor could announce its orientation? How do you decide which is the x, y, and z axis, for instance? How would you want the data normalized?

I have a problem. Let me explain.

Au Revoir Simone’s “Shadows” presented by David Lynch Foundation Television

Au Revoir Simone have released the debut music video, “Shadows,” from their forthcoming album, “Still Night, Still Light.” Yet again, the music is warm and wonderful, with clever, deceptively-simple ostinatos and earnest melodies delivered in wispy vocals. But the release also suggests the new album is going to be more of what we got in the last albums – pleasant and dreamy, but absent, ironically, any hint of “shadows.” The music video comes again from Vikram Gandhi and Brendan Colthurst of Disposable, a firm with expertise in indie-tilted but finely-crafted and always-safe music videos. Their previous outing on “Sad Song”, featuring un-ironic, sweet footage of the trio baking cookies, seemed to capture the blissfully good intentions of the talented Brooklyn outfit. Here, though, the video seems to fixate on its crushes, alternately on the ladies, their vintage synths (just one more effects shot over the top of the JUNO-60), or both. It’s product placement for hardware that isn’t made any more.

I begin to wonder if all of this is moving us, the music fans and critics, into dangerous territory, tangled in indie cred and inescapable nostalgia. I expect some of you wonder why, years into an avalanche of releases with whisper-thin vocals of [boy/girl] atop vintage [square wave synth] and [lo-fi beat box] it would take me until now to come to this conclusion. I love Ms. John Soda and Lali Puna and the many other bands whose stripped-down style is close to Au Revoir Simone’s, but it seems by definition the sort of music that doesn’t need description or explanation or analysis. Yet, oddly, we have even more publicity for a band that seems not to need it.

After all, for a Brooklyn band that makes lovely, earnest tunes, do you really need to know that it has an endorsement from David Lynch? Lynch is a talented visionary, but does that mean you need his musical advice – and isn’t there a danger that it’s not longing for his insight but yet more 80s nostalgia, for headier times with landmark art, here for Elephant Man (1980) and Blue Velvet (1986) in place of a Roland JUNO-60 (1982).

This is not a critique of Au Revoir Simone, or their lovely music. It’s meant as a critique of us, in 2009 – of me. I expect this trio has found their identity and musical voice honestly. It seems not to be changing – that’s fine; change for change’s sake is never an appropriate answer for an artist. But their output it just one place on the musical spectrum, and it’s a place with which I fear the rest of us have become overly fixated.

It’s possible to become crippled by nostalgia and romanticized ideas of what constitutes authenticity. There are times for synth-art-folk. But there are times when we need to find music that’s dangerous, uncomfortable, radical, and not in any way like a batch of warm cookies, to find men and women who are recluse and don’t have any endorsement from anyone.

Therein lies my problem. I know that this is in part the responsibility of those of us in the press. As writers about technology music – in that order – part of what we can do is to highlight things that are genuinely new. New technology does not necessarily mean new music, but the presence of radical tools can be connected to radical artists. I think we risk becoming, instead, caught up in gear lust, in artist lust, and hero worship.

To everything, indeed, there is a season. So I put it to you that it’s perfectly appropriate to admire the new work from Au Revoir Simone – but also that we need to talk about the opposite end of the spectrum. And as I always do, I ask you for your help: who should we cover? What artists would merit the time of outlets covering technology and new music, so that we talk not only about the lovely gadgets and lovely tunes?

My problem is, I often don’t have the perspective to track the output of music in the age of global abundance, while also troubleshooting driver issues, programming, and making my own humble attempt to be an artist myself. I can never be a perfect critic, because of the dangers inherent in being artist and critic simultaneously. But I am nonetheless a lover of danger and the new. I hope that our abundant, globally-connected community can find a way to tell the story of that music. I expect a lot of it is outside of Brooklyn – love that borough as I do. I hope we can find more work there, the stuff that truly lives in the shadows.

Side note, in the interests of explanation: Aaron asks in comments, isn’t it unfair to single out a band? Indeed, yes – it is profoundly unfair to single out this band, as Au Revoir Simone is neither the cause nor symptom of anything. But a blog is, by definition, a medium in which you try to find deeper meaning in the day-to-day news item. It’s trying to make cosmological sense of your inbox. The problem I have here is that posting Au Revoir Simone’s new video is entirely appropriate. But their promotion is, at the moment, focused on David Lynch’s endorsement, and the video on their instruments. So the dilemma is, I either post such things without question, or I ask a larger question we should be asking of everything – that I’m obligated to ask myself regarding my own artistic output (a test I myself will often fail, by my own standards).

And I say this is a “problem” not specifically because of one band, but for every band that we’re not covering. Is that all there is? If my inbox isn’t making much sense (and, perhaps yours), how can we get something different in there?

In pointing out Behringer’s clone of Apple’s homepage, I may have left some things unclear. I was honestly surprised to find a number of people rushing to Behringer’s defense. I wasn’t trying to score cheap and easy points against the brand, but while venting frustration, I may have underestimated the response of people who own Behringer gear. If you do, and it’s working for you, as always – that’s a good thing.

The conversation got me excited, and I stepped into the comment fray. I shouldn’t have in this case, and unless asked to, I’ll stay out of this conversation. I enjoy being involved in those threads, but there are times when I should keep my writing to this space and let you have at it in the space below – the one labeled “comments.”

I think the reason Behringer inflames some people boils down to two things. Those people may have been burned by gear that proved not to be a bargain, or offended by a history of gear designs copied from recognizable models, or both. The former, of course, can happen with any vendor, but it does illustrate that saving money doesn’t always save time or money. Caveat Emptor is therefore true with any vendor. The latter is really the sticking point. Here’s a loose timeline of the cases in question:

Behringer and Mackie: In 1997, Mackie sued not only Behringer but distributor Samson and retailer Sam Ash. Mackie claimed that Behringer mixers were intended as exact copies of Mackie mixers – not only of external look and feel, but circuit design and individual components. In 1999, Behringer and Samson claimed a decision by the US Copyright Office “vindicated” the company. That supposed vindication is fairly empty, however. The US Copyright Office didn’t say that Behringer’s circuit designs were original. Instead, they said that the circuit board designs weren’t covered by the US Copyright Office. That has more to do with peculiarities of US intellectual property law than it does a vindication of Behringer.

Behringer and Roland/BOSS: In 2005, Roland sued Behringer for duplicating the look and feel of its guitar pedals. The blog Music Thing had a nice visual of just what this looked like. In this case, there was no claim about underlying circuit design, but the look and feel or “trade dress” is covered legally. Again, Behringer was not exactly vindicated. The two companies reached a settlement. The terms remained confidential, but Behringer did modify the look of its pedals.

Behringer and Line 6: What’s more disturbing to me is that, after reaching a legal settlement with Roland, Behringer simply moved on to a different vendor. In 2007, Behringer introduced a new line of pedals copying Line 6 instead of BOSS. Again, Music Thing’s Tom Whitwell did a visual comparison. Less extreme, but demonstrating Behringer continues to try to steal Line 6 market share by looking like Line 6, even the prize for the web design competition (the V-AMP) is intended to clone Line 6’s POD.

These are not the only cases of Behringer products that are designed to look like someone else’s products. As noted in comments, even the screenshot of the Behringer website is of monitors intended to look like those from KRK. Part of why I’m taking up the Behringer stories is that Music Thing isn’t around to do it any more, but here are some of Tom’s best hits:

In 2006, Behringer again copied Mackie, answering Mackie’s ONYX with mixers-plus-digital-I/O called the XENYX. (They copied the look and feel of older Mackie mixers rather than newer ones, but this was also clearly intended to look like Mackie’s product.)

Some amount of cloning, of course, should be forgiven – it’s expected practice for software emulations to mimic the look and feel of classic analog gear, so I can’t really fault Behringer for that. (That said, of course, I still think there’s far too much of that, and far too little original thinking about how to lay out controls and design interfaces.) The difference between cloning a classic product and a currently-shipping product is that making something look like something else that you can buy new suggests you want to create confusion. There are laws around that – “trade dress” – but more importantly to me is the question of whether it’s ethical.

Please, if, in comments, you want to fill out this timeline or offer more details of each case, on either side, I’m happy to hear it.

Apple and Behringer: In the case of the Apple site, while I wish websites in general would stop cloning Apple’s design – good as it may be – Behringer crossed a line by copying product pages, the color weight, gradient values, pixel weights, and radius of the Apple site. My small images in the story didn’t do that justice. This is not about the “cult of Apple.” Let me make myself plain: please, stop making sites look like the Apple site. Behringer’s case I think was worse than most, but I’d be happy if other sites flirted less with some of the particulars of Apple’s designs. Apple’s solution is not always the “best” design solution. There are others.

(Side note: the basics of Apple’s current website design really have been tremendously influential – so much so that it’s easy to overlook how much of this is derived from Apple. The earliest version of the current look dates from around 1997. But you can be influenced by a design and make it your own, rather than copying every detail or copying every detail poorly. To pretend otherwise would be to say design doesn’t matter, and I can’t do that.)

Let’s consider the larger issues:

Cheap can be great. One thing I won’t do is discriminate against musicians because what they’re using is cheap. “Ghetto fabulous” I believe is the proper term. Far from that, I hope on CDM we can find every opportunity to champion finding ways of doing cool stuff with cheap things. However…

Cheaper doesn’t always save you money. Because value is important, because you’re on a budget, you don’t want to throw your money away. Assume for a moment the allegations that Behringer cloned Mackie’s mixers down to individual circuits and components were true. That still doesn’t cover issues like manufacturing quality assurance or support. Larger than any one vendor – Behringer or otherwise – we urgently need to consider value. We can’t afford disposable gear. Our musical electronics are made out of toxic materials, and they impact the environment as they’re made, shipped, and disposed. And we need them to last for our music, too. I’m certainly guilty of having made this mistake, but it’s something that – as a community – we can all do better. Again, perhaps you have a good relationship with Behringer gear, which is great.

Copying is good; plagiarism, not so much. There’s a huge benefit to making copies and improving on them. A certain amount of copying is part of design. There is a difference, however, if the copy is intended to create confusion, to substitute for something else dishonestly. It’s the difference between Kia competing with the Honda Accord, as mentioned in comments, and someone making a car that looks exactly like an Accord called the Monda Schmaccord, and steals the design of its drivetrain. Likewise, in music, sampling can be a beautiful thing. Taking someone else’s work and trying to pass it off as your own is something different.

I believe it’s essential to draw these lines. It’s only going to get tougher from here. If you think these isolated Behringer cases were bad, brace yourselves: an army of music technology cloning companies is waiting in the wings.

My plea to Behringer: kick your copying habit, if you can. I could forgive you if you didn’t keep doing it over and over again. That suggests to me, and many others, that it’s malicious, that you hope consumers won’t notice and will buy your cheaper version because, cosmetically, it looks the same as something else. If it really is different, and if it really is better, then that only makes this more of a tragedy.

I’m going to leave the Behringer discussion at this point, having provided some of the historical background. But I certainly won’t let go of these other issues. And the uprising of Behringer support says to me that CDM and I do need to spend more time talking about affordable gear, affordable software, and — not necessarily because it’s “cheap” or “free” — free and open source hardware and software. I welcome your suggestions.

Snow Leopard looks like a promising upgrade for Mac users. Most importantly for music users, 10.6 is the first operating system with what looks like a mature foundation for 64-bit support in the future. Previous versions of the Mac operating system had begun this transition, but Snow Leopard is the first to have a proper 64-bit kernel mode. Also, some Mac developers are likely to be able to take advantage of new multithreading capabilities provided by OS APIs. (Others, particularly those targeting more than one OS, will continue to provide multithreading and multi-core support via their own mechanisms.)

However, there are very few scenarios that are likely to benefit from upgrading today. Nearly all software developers (Propellerhead, Avid, Ableton, Plogue, and Native Instruments) advise waiting as support stabilizes. A number of hardware issues (Digidesign, M-Audio, Tascam, PreSonus) are known to exist, and many more likely simply haven’t responded this week to our call for information. Other hardware and software issues are likely to be uncovered now that the final OS build is available for widespread testing by end users.

Also, while Apple’s own software (Finder, Mail, and other apps) appear to get performance improvements, and startup/shutdown is better, the advantages of new OS services aren’t likely to be realized immediately. In fact, even measuring what the difference will be may take additional time.

Compatibility issues should be resolved fairly quickly – which is even more reason to wait. PACE Anti-Piracy, for instance, works now, as does software and hardware for MOTU. Other updates should be available in a few weeks with enhanced compatibility, making that a better time to upgrade.

If you’re looking to reclaim hard drive space with a smaller OS, I recommend Monolingual. By removing PowerPC-native code from Intel systems that don’t need it (or visa versa), it offers the same significant disk space improvement available in Snow Leopard. (Clarification: It should achieve similar net results, though Snow Leopard nips and tucks in a different way – cutting PowerPC but adding 64-bit, while reducing elsewhere – see David Pogue in The New York Times. But that’s academic – if you need extra gigs, you can get it both ways, and I expect we’ll eventually see Monolingual on Snow Leopard, too.) It also removes extra languages you don’t need to save space – something even Snow Leopard doesn’t do. I was able to nearly halve the size of my OS install using the tool, the same gain claimed by Snow Leopard. And it’s free.

http://monolingual.sourceforge.net/

This advice doesn’t mean that Snow Leopard is a “bad” operating system – just that the OS is currently ahead of the other pieces you need to make it useful for music. Developers are largely talking about new updates in “weeks,” not months.

Another way to look at it: Snow Leopard might run just fine for you today. But it’s almost certain that it will run better – and fully supported – in a few weeks. Stay tuned.

That said, just as 10.6 is coming out, 10.5 is maturing. Ableton notes that the latest version of 10.5 is recommended for maximum graphics performance. Native Instruments now considers 10.5 its officially supported operating system. As you’ll recall, early builds of 10.5 offered a very rough road for audio, as it contained more significant under-the-hood changes than 10.6 does today. Audio and music applications simply acheive their best results on fully-mature operating systems, and they tend to require more extensive testing and tweaks by both the operating system vendor and third parties.

If you do like being on the bleeding edge, more power to you. If you encounter issues, let us know about them, and that may help get them resolved more quickly.

So… relax. And enjoy your weekend.

While you wait for full compatibility, remember you can watch updates at:

http://createdigitalmusic.com/snowleopard

Rounding up my catch-up-on-iPod/iPhone-stories, here’s one from the developer perspective – one that could face music creation developers on the entire platform.

The Apple iTunes App Store now faces the risk of becoming a victim of its own success. Music applications could be a big part of that, without some adjustments on Apple’s part. The problem is this: incoming music “fan” apps could flood out the music production apps that had enriched the mobile software platform since its debut. I think the need could be really urgent. Consider that part of the appeal of Apple’s mobile platform – yes, even in stark contrast to the Google Android on which I’ve been developing myself – is its spectacular real-time audio tools. Combine that with a disproportionately large number of Mac-using musicians, lots of ingenious apps build on Apple’s Core Audio platform, and we’ve seen a mobile platform with an extraordinary number of tools for music creation.

The problem now is that that unique set of powerful apps could get overwhelmed by essentially unrelated “music” apps. A developer who has asked to remain anonymous is already campaigning for a change. He does a good job of explaining the issue, and what might need to happen to fix it. If you’re a developer, you can add your support and feedback to the idea.

Here’s the full explanation:

Hi Peter,
I am writing you with this email I have been sending other developers on the Apple App Store. Although you probably cannot go visit the apple developer connection website because you dont have a membership, I thought you should be informed about the discussion brewing there. Here it is:

Recently the Music section of the App store has gotten very busy with a new type of app, lets call them Artist Apps or Fan Apps. Some of these Apps are great resources for fans and artists reaching out to their fans and potential fans, and some don’t live up to their potential.

However, they are joining a category that previously moved a lot slower, as the apps that had been populating this category were apps with a lot of development put into them and therefore sold at a higher tier usually- but were released at a slower pace. A look at the top 100 paid music apps illustrates this nicely.

Customers perusing the music section to catch that next great sound generating tool (for example), could check in on the new releases section perhaps once a week or even once a month and have the opportunity to check out all the great new apps that had been released, without worrying that one was missed.

Now however, these newer Artist apps have flooded this category, and great apps are getting lost in the shuffle. On one day last week, there were 21 pages of Artist or Fan apps, with a few “other” apps strewn in the mix here and there, very hard to pick out of the jumble.

I understand that this may be happening in other categories for other reasons, but I only concentrate on the Music section since I am a music producer and music App writer.

I propose that we all get together to come up with some suggested sub-category names for the music category. I will start the list off and hopefully some of you will chime in and give suggestions for other categories or add more definition to a sub-category that is alredy here.

Once enough input is received, I will compile it into one bug report for Apple. i will then post the bug# for everyone to include with any correspondance with Apple on this issue.

New sub-categories for the Music section of the App store.

Music Creation:
Synthesizers, drum machines, sound generators, scoring and notation, sequencers, DJ apps, recorders (multi track)

Music Utilities:
Lyrics apps, iPod interfaces, visualizers, iPod controllers, song recognizers, concert finders,

Learning:
Metronomes, guitar and voice tuners, music slow downers, guitar tutors, chord apps,

Artist Apps/Fan Apps:
iLike apps, Deadmou5 app, PVD App, Underworld App, NIN, etc.

Radio Tuners:

AOL Radio, Pandora, Last.fm, individual radio stations

Please visit the Apple iPhone developer forums and voice your opinion/support!

https://devforums.apple.com/message/107989#107989

Definitely voice your thoughts to Apple, but I’d love to hear what you think here on CDM, too (especially since I know some folks at Apple do read this site).

The iPhone has become an almost absurdly-popular platform for music apps this year, even given more capable, more plentiful PCs. But to those who don’t yet “get” the appeal, talk to a mobile music addict: having the ability to be creatively musically in corners of time that would otherwise go unused, like a cramped bus ride, can be a beautiful thing. (Now, you start talking about taking away my PC/Mac experience, and I will start screaming in agony – but that’s a topic for a separate post.) The question is, what form should that app take? Today, I’ve got an iPhone round-up going as I clear out my news inbox, but that thread lies beneath all the stories…

I’m working on putting together a collection of truly productive, non-gimmicky/non-toy music apps now that the platform is maturing. But two apps released this week I think deserve special mention, and mention together – partly because of the different angle they take.

They’re both essentially handheld grooveboxes. They’re both relatively powerful, bringing desktop-style production to the platform. They’re both good options, and at this price, you might go buy both. But as I go off to test these two apps, I’m already struck by the contrast between the two.

One is the kind of app that we’re seeing a whole lot of on the iPhone, just as we once saw it in me-too apps on desktop computers. It assumes that the way to reach more people is to give them a whole bunch of canned loops that already sound like the styles they might want to play, and assume they’ll be pretty limited in their ability to do much with those loops.

The other of the two apps eschews the obligatory audio loops for real synthesis, and strips out the usual “let’s try to look like hardware” interface for something a lot more minimal and (I think) touch device friendly. That’s a design lesson that might well be applied beyond the iPhone, too.

First, consider the looped audio approach.

From IK Multimedia, GrooveMaker is a real-time app for manipulating audio loops. Interestingly, IK brought it over from the Mac/PC software. There are some powerful features, real-time control over audio, WiFi upload to your computer. It’s all well and good, so far.

The problem is that GrooveMaker is yet another app that assumes the only way people can have fun is to start with a bunch of canned loops and genres. GrooveMaker comes with hundreds of loops in house, hip-hop, and club styles. But that’s it – there’s no way to really easily start a track from scratch. (Update: Note that I should say you can at least sequence from scratch, but only with the stock content – which would have made GrooveMaker bigger news on this platform were it not for the release of iDrum and BeatMaker first.)

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not anti-sample. It’s not my own working style because it just doesn’t inspire me, but that’s a personal feeling, and not one I’d impose on anyone else. In fact, some of my best friends (ahem) are capable of doing things with sampled loops that blow my mind. The problem I have is with lowest-common-denominator thinking. In fact, I think synthesized tracks, tracks that give you real control over the sound, are often more fun for beginners.

Take, for instance, Smule. As founder Ge Wang discussed with CDM, their Ocarina and Leaf Trombone app are aimed really at non-musicians. But because these instruments use synthesized sound, people are free to really play with them and make whatever noise with them they like, rather than getting stuck with canned sounds to “remix.”

Now, perhaps a future version of GrooveMaker will make it easier to bring in other audio. Even then, it’ll have a lot of catching up to do with Intua’s far more powerful BeatMaker having been on the market for some time and offering features like integration with noise.io’s soft synth. But let’s talk for a moment about the flexibility of synthesis.

More Funner, with Synths?

bleep!BOX takes a different approach. Now, there have already been some 808 and 909 emulations on the iPhone. But you really have to see this instrument in action. Creator David Wallin has done some interesting work to make lots of sound parameters accessible.

David writes us:

I wanted to drop you a line to let you know that my iPhone groove box app is finally approved and live in the app store. It features 10 drum/synth parts (808 / 909 emulations of snares, hihats, etc and 4x 2-Oscillator analog synth parts). All sounds are generated realtime and are highly tweakable – no samples are used.

Compare the results: with the canned loop, you get something that sounds good right away – though it also sound predictable. It then actually requires a fair amount of effort to make that sound your own, if you succeed at all.

Using synthesized sound, on the other hand, you initially get, well, nothing at all. But you can very quickly get to something you’ve created yourself, even if your skill level isn’t all that high.

That’s an oversimplification, of course, but I think it’s at least born out in the design philosophies here; bleep!BOX allows the user to be more constructive than passive. (Audio manipulation techniques are capable of some tricks all their own – especially when you get into time manipulation and granular resynthesis. But that’s just the means to the end. There’s a difference between synthesizing music and consuming – or even passively remixing – music.)

I’m looking forward to spending some time with bleep!BOX as a sketchpad for beats. I’ll be interested to see how it might evolve to allow easier integration with desktop music workflows.

But notice what you can do with synthesized sounds – you can actually play. I think this is part of what made the Korg DS-10 such a smash hit on the Nintendo DS, even given the DS’ extremely constrained audio fidelity. (The iPhone – and, incidentally, Sony’s PSP – fare much better.)

Whether you’re a beginner or advanced user, “play” and expression are really what it’s about. A kazoo, for instance, doesn’t have canned sounds. It doesn’t come with presets. It can, frankly, embarrass you. But it’s fun to play, because you can feel a certain amount of freedom with it.

Ironically, I think it actually requires a fairly advanced user to have that kind of freedom with pre-canned loops. Aiming at a “lowest common denominator” is too often disparaged, when it can really mean aiming at a large public.

But maybe the reason “lowest common denominator” gets a bad name is that more advanced tools are often more fun. I’d love to see more work done on synthesized sound that’s really fun to play with.

The choice is yours, naturally. The two instruments:

http://www.groovemaker.com/
http://www.bleepboxapp.com/

So, iPhone/iPod touch users – now that the novelty has worn off, have you found apps you continue to use over time?

And, since you do come to CDM for opinions, anyone care to disagree with my take (or nod approvingly)?

Remix contests are all the rage lately, but quality is another thing altogether. I’m happy CDM is involved in a new contest with Dancetracks, however, because the ingredients of a contest that’s worth your time all all there.

First off, Seattle-based [Dave] Pezzner on freefrange is an artist worth noting. He’s a talented producer, has a great sense of sound, as has moved from commercial and television sound and music into being a breakout dance artist – something to which many CDM readers may aspire. He’s assembled just the kind of smart track we like:

Valldemossa was inspired initially by a tape recording I found of a boys choir recorded circa 1982, which was piped through an analog tape delay. The ending result of this tape recording was outstanding and left me with a gold mine of sounds to pick from. I built this song using a handful of my favorite tools, FL Studio, Ableton Live, Native Instruments Battery, Reaktor, D16 Phocyon, some sounds from the Mellotron M400 tape banks, Klanglabs Stompbud collection and Mixed in Key (as well as some keen direction from master and chief, Jimpster). Feel free to let loose and let your inner artist speak loudly. We’re excited to hear what you do!

Pezzner

Valldemossa

Freerange Records

Download M3U »

Dancetracks Pezzner Valldemossa Remix Contest

Many contests claim they get you exposure, of course; it’s another thing to deliver. The winner of the Dirtybird Records Dancetracks contest last year, as covered on CDM, managed to net a deal for an EP with that Claude VonStroke-run label.

Of course, dangling promises of exposure and record deals is one thing – let’s talk loot. In this contest, the winning release (ultimately determined by the label) is a sure thing, along with other goodies:

Winning remix released digitally on Freerange, featured on Dancetracks
Dubspot NYC Professional Mixing & Mastering session ($1095) with private mixdown session*
Ableton Live 8
M-Audio CX5 Studiophile monitors
M-Audio Pro Tools M-Powerd 8
M-Audio Torque Conectiv
Glyph Technologies PortaGig 800 professional harddrive
Cluster Sound 20 Gigabytes of sounds
MONO Producer bag
$100 download credit on Dancetracks
Freerange t-shirt
Dancetracks t-shirt

Nor is Dancetracks just using this as an easy way to cash in — pre-warped stems for Ableton Live (or plain audio for everything else) are a free download.

The contest ends August 31.

Pezzner Valldemossa Remix

Help Us Choose CDM’s Pick

If you do happen to enter, let us know here on CDM, as I’ll also offer a CDM Editor’s Choice Award to my favorite track. I know this musical genre is not everyone’s cup of tea, so I’ll be listening for something really unique and further out, and will make sure your work gets properly exposed. I sadly can’t offer lavish prizes, but I will have a dancetracks shirt and $50 certificate for you – plus coverage we like to think is priceless.

If you’ve entered something already, just send us a link. If not, let us know when you have.

When Remix Contests Go Bad

So, I’m just here pimping dancetracks, right? No, I went through those points carefully only to emphasize that most remix contests get this formula horribly, horribly wrong. And that’s a shame – this shouldn’t be rocket science. Cool track and artist + free download of stems + rich prize package + actual exposure = working remix contest. This should be a doable thing.

So, how is it that the formula often becomes variations of random track you want to shill + paid stem download as a quick cash earner + cheap prizes + exposure that’s anyone’s guess? As our friend Dave Dri – himself both a successful recorded (and performing) artist and musical journalist — puts it:

What is disappointing is the increasing frequency of major labels and their “independent” imprints in creating prize-less or obscene remix competitions, under the premise of “helping up-and-comers”. The fact is that a remixer can simply message or email another producer or label and offer their services with a great deal of success.

So where is the appeal of remix competitions that offer little in the way of an actual prize? Or having to purchase the remix parts from Beatport? Just where does “up-and-coming” translate to “exploitable”?

Check out the whole article for a no-BS take on remixing in general – remixing as business, and not just supposed remix culture.

Life at The Terminal with Dave Dri [Time Off, Australia]

I’m sure some will disagree with his take, so feel free to debate the merits of the argument in comments. But it is worth asking – maybe even about dancetracks’ contest, too; I’m happy to hear constructive criticism.

A thing for the sake of the thing tends to be useless. Remix contests can be a total waste of time – or they can be a powerful tool. But then, you can’t blame labels alone. It’s up to artists, too, to make the right call.