New music technology for would-be DJs

admin — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 18:35:52 +0000

The story of Last.fm seems like every start-up’s fairy-tale dream: a bunch of music fans start up a personalized radio and social media network in a small East London office. It catches on worldwide. Then, the site is bought out by CBS. When Last.fm dropped its coveted on-demand music streaming service in April 2010, though, spectators worried that CBS was running the service into the ground. Now, a new partnership with music technology developer MXP4 has them back in the newsand could be changing the way the online radio industry works.MXP4 produces audio-mixing software which lets people manipulate their favorite songs by adding instruments, stripping away backing music, or blending songs together. The technology is now available on the websites of licensed artists and on MXP4′s website. Record execs believe this could be the key to reintroducing or repackaging artists’ back catalogues. Last.fm also believes the technology will have a positive financial effect. They hope that the brands which promote on the site will use the technology in their ads. This will let users mix any music used in the promotions.The partnership with Last.fm may be more exciting for MXP4 than for Last.fm, as it’s the first time MXP4 has licensed its technology for commercial use. Previously, a free MXP4 app was released for K’naan’s “Wavin’ Flag,” the World Cup theme song. The developers are hoping to attract more record labels to their product, and are also in talks with Spotify and other online music distribution outlets. As the face of the music industry changes, it will be interesting to see how users react to increased interactivity. Perhaps it will inspire a new generation of music mash-up artists, but will it allow record labels to compete with the alternative (and sometimes illegal) modes of music sharing? Only time will tell.

Veteran broadcaster Tom Leykis launches new online initiative

admin — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 15:28:26 +0000

For radio music fans who feel the waters have grown stale in recent years, there is now light on the horizon. You won’t hear it on the FM dial, though: “New Normal Music” is currently an online-only initiative, though it was started by radio veteran Tom Leykis. Leykis promises to bring a wealth of experience to the venture, and says the show will highlight artists not normally played on Modern Rock stations, starting with a continuous stream of 50,000 songs less than a year old.Leykis has been involved with radio since he was 14 years old, when he served as a fill-in host for Long Island station WBAB. He contributed to talk radio shows in the late 1970s and became the host of the long-running and often controversial talk show The Tom Leykis Show in 1994. The show ended in 2009, and Leykis began a weekly program called The Tasting Room focusing on the high-class lifestyle.The manifesto currently up on the website reveals Leykis’s signature style, lambasting the ages of many popular artists like Rivers Cuomo of Weezer (40), Tom Delonge of Blink-182 (34), and Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers (47). While acknowledging the contributions of these artists, Leykis insists that radio stations cannot truly take a chance on exciting new artists, and is dedicated to changing that via the web.”New Normal Music” will be available on all major devices, including the iPad, iPhone and Droid as well as home computers. The site will also take requests and offers audio quality which Leykis claims is higher than any radio station. It will be interesting to see if and how radio stations take Leykis up on his implicit challenge, but if you’re interested, make sure to tune to “New Normal Music” when it launches July 1.

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New music technology for would-be DJs

Veteran broadcaster Tom Leykis launches new online initiative