Digital Noise: Music and Tech

Most musicians want to concentrate on writing, performing, and recording. The first two are like breathing and eating, and the third has become much easier in the last decade thanks to the ongoing revolution in digital technology--you can set up a decent computer-based recording studio for a few thousand bucks. But once you're done recording, then what? For artists without a record label, promotion and distribution are two of the thorniest tasks--they take a lot of time, and you learn a lot of lessons (and meet a lot of rip-off artists) in the process.

Launched today, HyperDIY attempts to provide an all-in-one resource to help independent bands accomplish many of the nuts-and-bolts tasks that must accompany a new release. For $579, they'll take up to 12 of your finished mixes and master them (which means balancing the equalization and levels so they sound more like a professional radio-ready recording), press your music onto CD-Rs that (they claim) look and sound indistinguishable from traditional audio CDs (which cost a lot more to manufacture at low volumes), create MP3s, distribute the CDs through CDBaby's one-stop distribution network (which includes placement in both retail and online stores), distribute the MP3s to iTunes and all the other big online services, and create and distribute an electronic press kit to their opt-in network of contacts in the music industry. Other packages involve greater degrees of promotion, such as contacts with radio stations and a professional photo shoot, and there's a one-track "appetizer" for $195 that lets you try the service before committing to releasing a full album with them. They'll even handle mixing for you as long as the basic tracks are in good shape.

As a musician, I'm always hesitant to pay money up front for intangibles such as promotion, but HyperDIY avoids promises of rock stardom--they'll get your material out there, but if it's no good, there's no "suck button" they can turn off. The prices seem in line with what you'd pay to do such things on your own, especially if you budget your time in. Unlike a label, once you've paid the up-front fee, they won't take a cut of your sales revenue (although they might take out some administrative expenses, such as 10% from Amazon.com sales, or CD manufacturing if your disc takes off). Of course, their first sales will involve a lot of trust on the part of artists--as a new company, they don't have any track record yet.

What don't they handle? Booking. Getting gigs and arranging tours is probably the hardest and most thankless task faced by any beginning band, and one of the great benefits of working with a label--they usually can hook you up with a booking agent who can accomplish these tasks much more quickly and effectively than musicians can themselves.

I'm a Replacements fan. Paul Westerberg's new album, 49:00, sounded intriguing. Like Radiohead and Trent Reznor and others, he's released it as a download first. Unlike these previous experiments, 49:00 is sold as a single album-length track. And while he's not technically giving it away, it costs only $0.49--a bit more than one cent per minute. (Paradoxically, the album is not 49 minutes long, but 43:55. The number refers to his 49th birthday, which occurs on the last day of 2008.)

So I headed over to Amazon.com's MP3 store. The front page has 49:00 as a highlighted selection. But the album download page says this song is available as a "full album only."And you can't download it by clicking on the title. Helpful. After stumbling around a between title pages, I finally figured out the only way to download the album is to click on the button on the upper right that says "Buy MP3 Album with 1-Click." Fine.

Next, Amazon told me I had to download the Amazon MP3 Downloader, a piece of software that automatically adds Amazon downloads to iTunes or the Windows Media Player. So I completed the download, but as part of the installation process, it automatically opened Internet Explorer and sent me through a trial run to download a free Apples in Stereo song--apparently that's how it initializes the first time. Weird: Firefox is my default browser and I downloaded the Downloader in Firefox--but OK, I'm committed.

(Aside: I'm listening to the record now and the song just came up that starts "Everyone's stupid, everyone's stupid....")

So the free song download started in IE. It asked me where I wanted to save the .amz file. I created a new folder called Apples in Stereo within My Music, then opened the .amz file. Finally iTunes launched, and at long last the Apples in Stereo song was added to my library. Although darned if I could find the MP3 in the folder I created, and the .amz file was gone.

Five minutes down, and still no Paul Westerberg album! (What's that about one-click?) So, back to Firefox...only for some reason it says I have to download the Downloader again. I guess it's a cookie thing--the cookie was stored in IE so when I went through Firefox to download the record, Amazon couldn't read the cookie to know I'd already downloaded the Downloader. Whatever. I relaunched IE, found the page for 49:00 again, began the download, saved to a folder, opened the .amz file, and finally--at long last--the song was added to iTunes.

Who at Amazon thought this was a smooth process?

It was totally worth it, by the way. It sounds like the Replacements thrown into a blender and mixed up like a Guided by Voices record.

It's sometimes lost in all the flavor-of-the-week mix-remix-download-social networking sites, but eMusic has been selling DRM-free MP3s--meaning they can be played on the iPod or any other player--from independent labels and artists for a decade now, and has a reasonable claim to be the No. 2 music store behind iTunes.

A planned redesign is meant to help eMusic retain this position. According to reports in Fortune and Digital Music News, the site's slated for an overhaul beginning next week. Artist pages will be updated with Wikipedia biographies, original editorial content, and embedded YouTube videos. In a nod to Web 2.0, fans will be able to embed portions of these artist profiles, including streaming song samples, in their Facebook pages, as well as on other social-recommendation sites such as Digg. A navigational update is also in the works--for such a well-established site, eMusic is kind of hard to get around.

One thing they're not getting rid of: the subscription-based purchasing model. That's always been a deal-breaker for me, as I simply don't download 30 songs from independent artists and labels per month. Still, if you're a voracious consumer of new music, and prefer legal downloads to file-sharing or buying physical recordings, eMusic remains an excellent choice.

Update: there is a lightweight browser plug-in that lets you play song samples without having to download and install the full Rhapsody client. When I tried the MP3 download service yesterday, I was unable to play the 25 free songs in that browser window--it only let me play 30-second samples. Today, using the same username and password, it started my 25-song count. So my major complaint with the service has been solved. Kudos to Rhapsody.

Amazon was first out of the gate with a comprehensive MP3 download store last September, and they've steadily upgraded the site since then. I'm particularly happy they changed the search interface that mixed in MP3 downloads with physical CDs and other products. Now, when you search for an artist's name on Amazon MP3, the default search setting is for MP3 downloads. As it should be.

Even so, MP3s are just another product to Amazon, which is why I welcome the entry of RealNetworks' Rhapsody into the market. Rhapsody is my favorite of the subscription services I've tried, and I know several big music listeners who are devoted fans. The company understands how to curate and package music.

Rhapsody MP3 launched today, and it's very straightforward: songs cost $0.99, albums $9.99, everything's in DRM-free MP3 format, and you don't need the Rhapsody player or any other specialized software application to buy songs. (Like Amazon, Rhapsody offers the option of downloading a small application that automatically adds songs to iTunes. Unlike Amazon's equivalent, this download manager can also add songs to the Rhapsody Player and the Real Player, which apparently is still used by somebody somewhere. But it doesn't support the Windows Media Player, while Amazon's does.)

Rhapsody's store also has one huge advantage over Amazon's: you can sign up for the free level of the Rhapsody subscription service and stream 25 songs per month in their entirety. No more guessing whether you like a song based on a 30-second sample.

As my fellow CNET Network blogger Rick Broida already noted, if you're one of the first 100,000 to create an account--which means giving them a credit card number--before July 4, you get a free album.

The Filter is an entertainment recommendation service that asks questions about your taste, then tries to refer you to CDs and DVDs you might be interested in buying. (The site will eventually add other forms of entertainment, such as TV shows.) It's been in a closed beta since earlier this year, and has gotten some press thanks to the involvement of art-rocker Peter Gabriel. On Tuesday, it opened to the masses.

The idea's not new--Amazon.com has had a recommendation engine for years, and many online music services like Pandora, iLike, and Jango employ variations on that theme.

I filled out the survey asking what genres of music I like, and was somewhat surprised that it only offered about a dozen genres. After noting that I liked jazz, "rock/pop" (a genre so huge as to be basically useless), and electronic, it kept recommending mainstream modern hip-hop, like 50 Cent and Ludacris. Not my bag, although I do own music by Outkast, plus more obscure artists like Mos Def and DJ Spooky. (How can an algorithm ever reconcile those types of contradictions? I have no idea.)

I cleared that up by going back and giving hip-hop my lowest rating. Then the engine kept throwing up pop-rock acts that I'm already familiar with and know I don't like, such as Good Charlotte and Fall Out Boy. After a few more low ratings, it seems to have realized that I'm in my late 30s, and on the front page it recommended three CDs that I heard about a million times back in the early 90s--Pearl Jam's Ten, the Counting Crows' first record, and "Mother's Milk" by the Chili Peppers. All OK records for their time, but not exactly new discoveries. It also recommended a Bruce Springsteen collection--not his last album, Magic, which is actually his best in years and which I might theoretically not have heard since it got very little radio play.

The recommendations interface could also use some improvement: when I click "Improve My Recommendations" it takes me back to the genres page, which I've already filled out once. It doesn't offer me any artists to rate (like iLike does). There's a slider that lets you tell the engine to make recommendations "more surprising" or "more expected" but it's only available when you click through to an album page, and it didn't seem to make much difference when I moved it all the way to the "surprising" side. (Question: if you want recommendations that are "more expected," why would you need a recommendation engine at all?)

Maybe the interface and recommendation engine will improve over time. But based on my early testing, I'm guessing The Filter's meant for busy Internet users who view "entertainment" as an occasional product to be consumed, but don't know where to start. It doesn't seem to be for music (or movie) geeks or collectors. Fair enough. Just not for me.

Why didn't anybody think of this before? Grand Theft Auto franchise developer Rockstar Games has teamed up with Amazon.com in an interesting joint promotion.

When GTA IV comes out on April 29 and you are cruising around inside doing whatever evil deeds come to mind, you might like a particular song playing on one of the radio stations in the game. Well, you will be able dial a number on your in-game virtual cellphone and receive a text message with artist and title information. And if you've signed up to be part of Rockstar's upcoming social network, you'll get a real-world e-mail with a link to buy the song on Amazon.com. All songs are DRM-free MP3s, so you can play them on any device, including your Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3--outside the confines of the game.

Rockstar is curating the 150-plus songs bundled with the game, which will include oddities and a few exclusives, including one number from hip-hop artist Nas. Now imagine if Rockstar used the online capabilities of the game consoles to update the in-game radio playlists silently. That's a new form of music distribution that might actually reach younger listeners.