“Social Media And The Music Industry: The Good, The Bad And The Viral” plus 1 more

Social Media And The Music Industry: The Good, The Bad And The Viral

Posted: 02 Mar 2018 06:23 AM PST

It’s no secret that digitization is proliferating into almost every corner of our lives. We can order our groceries delivered, communicate in an instant with someone halfway around the world, and yes — share a song with our Facebook friends and other social media followers whenever we want, introducing an entire audience to music they might never have experienced.

My brother is notorious for this. He manages the programs committee for our local arts council and as such, is responsible for digging through scores of YouTube artists to find acts that he can book. He’s brought singer/songwriters from Portland, California, Oregon and more to our little hometown of Wallburg, North Carolina. How has he done it? He’s found them online, then sent them a Facebook message to inquire about their tour schedule. This is a tactic he’s employed almost every single time, and to much success.

A proper conversation about social media and the music industry would be tome-length and likely too detailed for a blog post, but I’d like to talk for a second about how these platforms are changing the game — both for the artists themselves and the listeners who find them.

According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), which follows and reports on worldwide trends surrounding the recording industry, streaming revenue jumped 60.4% last year. In the United States alone, it was up 16.5%, an interesting figure considering that physical sales were down 17.1%.

What does this tell us, besides the fact that more people are hopping online to buy their music? It signifies a gradual, though significant shift, in consumer culture. Put simply, people aren’t going to big box stores, flipping through the alphabetical selection, and buying physical CDs with the same fervor they were a decade ago. Of course, this has ironically given rise to the rebirth of vinyl, with everyone from Kacey Musgraves to Fall Out Boy producing their new LPs in the throwback format. It’s now a more than $220 million industry, and doesn’t look to be slowing down any time soon.

But, back to social media. With so many people hopping online to buy albums straight from their favorite artists’ website, through iTunes, or via myriad other digital means, the music is imported directly onto their smart device. That means that gone are the days when you’d have to go to the store and buy a CD, come home, pop that bad boy into your CPU and download it to your hard drive.

The result? We literally carry our music in our pockets now, and that makes it infinitely easier to share it with someone we think would like it. Just last night, I sent Macklemore’s new song “Good Old Days” to my best friend a few cities away who was ha

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Soundwhich, Make Royalty Free Music Like Sandwich

Posted: 27 Feb 2018 03:32 PM PST

Music is math that moves people. That’s the conceit behind Soundwhich, an online platform that allows users to access, combine and share the basic “ingredients” of music to create their own songs, all without preexisting musical knowledge.

“It’s well-known that musicians use widely-accepted formulas to compose the bulk of the music we hear every day,” says Soundwhich tech lead Roger Chen of San Francisco-based Varidada Inc. These formulas specify tempo, chords and song structure. This is the minimum information a musician needs to know to compose an “ingredient” such as a bass line or a vocal harmonic that can be mixed with musical elements by other musicians using the same formula.

Soundwhich’s innovation is to transform these formulas into algorithms called “musical guidelines.” Using these common guidelines, musicians can create “ingredients” (divided into melody, harmony, bass and drums) that can be combined in nearly infinite variations. Soundwhich collaborated with hundreds of vocalists, guitarists, pianists, drummers and electronic producers around the world to source these ingredients.

“When you talk about sampling, whether that’s digging in the crates at the record store or using a program to remix digital files, you’re talking about composition as assemblage,” says Chen. “The existing elements have their own meaning and context, but it’s the distinctive way you put them together that makes the song new. We’re trying to make that process more accessible to those with no previous musical knowledge. With Soundwhich, anyone can combine these ingredients in any way they like to create a fully-realized piece of music, just like using meat, veggies and condiments to make a sandwich.”

Using the platform to create songs is simple and intuitive. Once a user has selected their formula, they can search for ingredients by category and tag, adding and dropping elements from the mix in real time. Stick to ingredients within a single “genre” to snap together a jazzy instrumental, or wander further afield to create a heretofore-unknown fusion of house, latin and metal. Without human intervention, Soundwhich has produced over 150 billion songs by using every possible combination of the samples in its database—but the one thing software can’t yet do is immediately recognize when it’s scored a hit like a human can.

Users are able to purchase their best creations directly from Soundwhich under royalty free music terms. Custom music from Soundwhich can be used to soundtrack films, corporate videos, podcasts, games and advertisements.

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