I created this screencast using Camtasia - a pretty great piece of software. This is my second attempt at doing this - the first one I built with Captivate which is cool but doesn’t let you export to anything but SWF… - so I would’ve needed to screencast my screencast if I wanted to keep using Captivate! I must say that creating these videos and not having them totally suck is actually pretty difficult…

Popularity: 42% [?]

This is the new Music Blogs application for Facebook. It’s a great way to discover new music.

When you first load the app, it randomly chooses one of the most popular music blogs on the web and starts playing back the music. Behind the scenes, the application is crawling that blog, grabbing all the music links and then putting them into this cool new player that we’ve built. If you like what you’re hearing, you can even grab embed codes from Y! Menu in the player and throw it up on your myspace or favourite social network site…

You can skip through the tracks in the player and it will seamlessly transition the music, crossfading the audio from one track to the next. If you like the blog you’re listening to, hit the Add Favorite tab. This will save the blog to your favorites so you can recall it again in the future. It also creates a music blog player on your Facebook profile which will play back the music from the blog you just saved.

There are thousands of great music blogs on the web – and this app provides a really easy way to discover them. Hit the Popular tab and you’ll see a bunch of different blogs to choose from. Click on any of them to start them playing back in the player. If you know a specific blog you’re looking for – use the Look Up feature. Simply enter the first letter of the Blog and then select it from the list. Or you can just choose a page number from the drop down list and try a blog you’ve never heard before.

Click on the Recently Viewed tab and you’ll see all the blogs you’ve listened to recently, so you can refer back to it share your favourites with your friends.

Discovering new music can be pretty addictive. Once you’ve found a set of blogs that you like – Publish them to your profile. You can drag and drop to rearrange them from the “My Favorites” tab. Hit Publish to My Profile and your own personal music blog roll gets pushed to your profile.

So there it is… a fun and easy way to discover new music. I like to think of music blogs like digital mixtapes. The mixtapes aren’t really what’s important – it’s the authors that count. Find a group of music blogs that you like and they’ll keep turning you on to cool, interesting, new music for a long time to come. This is the future of music and it’s here right now. Check it out!

http://apps.facebook.com/musicblogs

Popularity: 42% [?]

The defacto musicblog aggregrator the Hype Machine has updated their site with a new look and feel, including personalized user accounts which let users “love” their favourite tracks and share them with others.

It’s been interesting to watch the progression of the site over the last couple weeks since they released the update. The initial version scrapped their Flash popup player and judging by the feedback, people were not too pleased. They’ve subsequently updated the site to include a popup player which plays all the music links on a given page.

There seems to be a dichotomy in the music blog space. The tradition - as espoused by the Hype Machine is to provide context with the music. The music is an equal to the blog commentary and the two should be packaged together regardless of how or where the actual consumption ends up taking place.

Then there is an entirely different group of people who are really just in it for the music - they can’t be bothered to read or find stuff themselves. They like music blogs for the euphoria of hearing new music and prefer to just listen via the popup player.

The Flash music player we’ve been developing at Yahoo! should appeal to the latter group. You can point it at any webpage, RSS or ATOM feed, or a playlist format like ASX, M3U, PLS or XSPF.

<embed src=”http://webjay.org/flash/xspf_player” width=”100%” height=”220″ wmode=”transparent” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” pluginspage=”http://www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer” flashvars=”playlist_url=http://www.stereogum.com/&rounded_corner=1″ />

Popularity: 40% [?]

Downtown Chicago was abuzz last week as tech savvy developers with shiny heads and expanding waistlines took over several of the cities finest hotels for the three day Adobefest that was MAX 2007.

The newly completed McCormick Place West was the locus of activity and Adobe put on a pretty good show. It all started with the keynote which featured 3 massive video screens, a rock and roll soundtrack and Flash graphics which roared across the screen. The keynote opened with a sequence of “real developers” from the San Francisco Bay area (who had actually freely given their time in the weeks prior to be a part of this “MAX moment”) waxing philosophical over their love for code, problem solving and of course all things Adobe. It was all somewhat reticent of a nerdier version of something that Apple might put on.

Adobe Max 2007 Highlights

Adobe announces many “new” products including:

• Flex 3 Beta 2
• Air Beta 2
• Adobe Developer Connection (including new social network for developers)
• Adobe Experience Design Site
• Share
• Buzzword (new acquisition)

Lots of excitement around Flex, AIR and AS3!!!

• Apps are converging around Flex/mxml as a common “language” for interop across Adobe product line.
• Designer focused apps such as Dreamweaver and Fireworks are being updated to export/import mxml
• New apps are being developed (like Thermo) to convert Photoshop or Illustrator files to mxml

Pursuing a new “service based” approach on many fronts

• Adobe rolling out series of different hosted services with complete developer APIs
• Pacifica is a service (now in private beta) that will allow developers to integrate voice, messaging and user presence information into applications built using Adobe Flex, Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) or Flash technologies.
• CoCoMo is a new Flex implementation of the Adobe Connect front end. Soon to be released as reusable components that you can roll into your own app. As Kevin Lynch puts it, “CoCoMo will be the next-generation framework for the Adobe Connect Web conferencing service, which will enable developers to take certain parts of Connect’s functionality and integrate them into other applications.”
• Share is a new service which allows users to share files with other users. Users can take files from the desktop or existing library from the SHARE application and specify who the file will be shared with, or whether the file will require users to log in. The files get uploaded, virus scanned, and emails are sent to the people you shared the document with. The app also creates a thumbnail of the document and tells you who you shared it with. There is also a REST API to upload/share/manage content and a ActionScript^? 3.0 library you can use to leverage Share in your apps.
• Scene7 (acquired by Adobe in May 2007) provides “on demand rich media publishing media services”. Its bread and butter appears to be a set of high quality dynamic image generation tools that you can leverage via service calls.

Reflections on the growing maturity of Adobe enterprise technologies.

• Flex enables seamless integration to provide richer UI experience on top of existing enterprise software applications - SAP, proprietary J2EE^? apps, etc
• Interesting usage of Adobe Consulting clients to inform future development of Flex component modules - Adobe clients are literally paying Adobe to figure out what needs to be added to Flex next.
• Many interesting discussions on the utility of higher level frameworks for rolling out large scale Flex applications. Surprising amount of honesty with an open discussion of some competing ideologies:
• http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Cairngorm
• http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/blueprint.html

New Products

Flexbuilder 3 Beta 2

• Flex Profiler - new profiler tool in Flex allows you to track the memory management in realtime and see how long its taking for various parts of your code to execute. This feature is great.
• Adanced Data Visualization Comps - Some new charting features, such as dragging to select series in charts and the new “Advanced DataGrid^?” which does multi-column sorting.
• Flex Framework Caching - Apps created using Flex 3 now include signed Adobe components, including the entire Flex framework. This means that users who are using the latest version of Flash Player 9 (Moviestar aka 9.0.60) will only need to download Flex from your domain once. All subsequent downloads will ignore the Flex part of your app (~200K) and simply download the app itself.

Adobe also announced the Flex SDK would soon be open sourced.

Flash Player 10

The next version of Flash Player was presented with three main features:

• Advanced Text Layout (including using multiple columns in a single text field and providing support for a myriad of different International languages)
• 3D Effects
• Custom Filters, Blend Modes and Effects built using Hydra (allows you to write your own photoshop style effects)

Adobe did not provide a release date.

A new toolkit was also released which allows you to start writing Hydra code right now:

http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/AIF_Toolkit

Example Hydra code:

kernel NewFilter
<   nameSpace : "your namespace";
    vendor : "your vendor";
    version : 1;
    description : "your description";
>
{
    parameter int width
    <
        defaultValue:   200;
        minValue:       1;
        maxValue:       400;
        description:    "height of the generated plasma";
    >;

    parameter int height
    <
        defaultValue:   200;
        minValue:       1;
        maxValue:       400;
        description:    "width of the generated plasma";
    >;

    void
    evaluatePixel(out pixel4 result)
    {
        float2 coord = outCoord();
        float a =   0.5 + 0.5 * sin(   coord.x             / 16.0 ) +
                    0.5 + 0.5 * sin(   coord.y             /  8.0 ) +
                    0.5 + 0.5 * sin( ( coord.x + coord.y ) / 16.0 ) +
                    0.5 + 0.5 * sin( length( coord )       /  8.0 );
        a /= 4.0;

        result = pixel4(a,a,a,a);
    }

    region generated()
    {
        return region(float4(0,0,width,height));
    }
}

Thermo

Thermo is a very cool new tool that’s still very early but got many developers out of their seats cheering. A demo was shown of how to import a PSD doc using Thermo and very quickly convert it into a highly customized, almost completely functional Flex app. Thermo also exports and imports mxml which means it can be used by designers in coordination with developers so each can update the same codebase.

http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Thermo

Featured Flex Apps

If you haven’t seen them, check out these Flex apps:

Scrapblog http://scrapblog.com

Buzzword http://preview.getbuzzword.com/?s=true

MTV Air Challenge

MTV has launched an AIR challenge for users to create AIR apps using MTV assets.

http://adobe.mtv.com

They’ve provided quite a lot of cool MTV assets and content feeds for users to incorporate into their app. Developers are going to now mash it up and make cool stuff for them for free…

http://www.mtv.com/partners/adobe/mtv_air_challenge/assets.jhtml

More information

There’s been some excellent blogging about MAX:

Flex Components Tutorial - http://www.velloff.com/?p=39

Videos of Sneak Peeks -  http://www.peterelst.com/blog/2007/10/03/adobe-max-chicago-sneak-peeks/

General Overview -  http://blogs.adobe.com/pdehaan/2007/10/rough_notes_from_the_adobe_max.html

Popularity: 24% [?]

The MIR propellerheads of the world are gearing up for ISMIR 2007 later this week, the uber conference for music similarity geeks.  Seeing as the timing is right, I thought I would present an example of why this research can be difficult.  I’m interested in hearing any thoughts on the example - the good, the bad and the ugly, and if you have a better one.

The purpose of a great deal of similarity work is to generate music recommendations.  This only complicates the matter further as similarity starts to mean “what people will like”.  Even if we ignore this precarious assumption and its untold consequences, there are still many different reasons why people may believe that music is similar.  This makes it very difficult to measure the effectiveness of any similarity algorithm.  For example, check out this playlist:

http://new.music.yahoo.com/playlist/1CEC1111-F9D6-409D-BCB6-53558D25506C

It contains three different versions of the song All Along the Watchtower - one by Bob Dylan, the other by Jimi Hendrix and finally a more recent cover by U2.  Which two are more similar?

U2’s version is essentially an update of the Jimi Hendrix rendition and features very similar instrumentation.  The original Dylan tune is stripped down and folky.  It sounds different from either the Hendrix remake or the U2 cover.  Yet Dylan and Jimi recorded their tunes 20 years before U2 and the two (Hendrix and Dylan) will be forever linked together as icons of classic rock and the 60s.

I think it’s a nice example because it shows the difference in people’s perception of what similarity can mean from one context to the next.  Is it that they sound alike?  Is it that you think of them as a belonging to a common group?  Is it that they are using similar chords or instrumentation?  Or is it that you fondly remember listening to them together when you were 16?

In the end, music similarity seems to be different things to different people at different times.

Popularity: 15% [?]

Digital music has changed the world.  It has never been easier to feed your music addiction. 

I personally will never understand why people have bought over 3 billion tracks at iTunes when they can get a much better deal using subscription services like Yahoo! Music Unlimited, which cost less per month than the price of a single drink at a club and allow you to download or play on demand over 2 million tunes.  You may occasionally find me at the bar, getting obstreperous about this subject.  I can usually convince two or three people to try it for every one that I actually get into a fight with.  In the end, I think the problem is that most people don’t know that music subscription services exist or how they work.  There’s also the nagging issue that many of these services suffer from some annoying technical glitches, which can often require a bit of work to get around.  This will hopefully go away once all the major labels agree to drop their requirement that subscription services only offer DRM encoded tracks.

With all this music available though, it’s easy to get lost in the music.  You’ll never be able to actually listen to all of those 2 million tunes you have access to.  There simply isn’t enough time in the day.  So how do you choose what to listen to?  Subscription services can typically deliver about 75% of what you already know you like, but I much prefer finding new music I’ve never heard before.  It’s refreshing and makes you feel good, like sipping Erdinger in the sun on Venice Beach or Leffe au Saint-Michel.

So how do you discover new music in a world of too much choice? I used to really like Webjay for this sort of thing, but it’s gone now.  One of the best ways to find that more eclectic 25% is by surfing music blogs.  Sites like Hype Machine or Musiclibre let you explore the mp3 blog world and find new stuff accordingly - they are a great place to start, but there is much opportunity for cool new discovery tools to be built.

To this end, I had the pleasure of working with DSP guru Malcolm Slaney on this problem last year.  We used signal analysis to analyze web media tracks that otherwise had very little metadata information.  Sadly this is the norm for most audio tracks on the web.  When websites like Yahoo! or Google go out and crawl the web looking for audio files, they often return very little relevant info about the content of the audio files themselves.  We analyzed over 25,000 popular mp3 files and found less than 20% had data in their ID3 tags.  To make matters worse, the actual contents of the ID3 tags were often incomplete or incorrect.  This means that searching for web media using traditional metadata techniques, or traditional web search techniques (ie. the status quo) ignores the vast majority of audio files on the web.

We used MARSYAS to help us analyze our corpus and projected the results into a multidimensional audio feature space based upon the acoustic properties of each track.  Our demo page lets you browse this feature space to find music which is acoustically similar.  Using this technique, we can suggest music that would otherwise never be returned from any existing audio search engine - yet sounds similar to music you enjoy and want to listen to.  Use it to select a seed song which you like, and check out the acoustically similar tunes it recommends: 

http://www.musiclibre.org/research/playlist.php

Popularity: 25% [?]

If you’ve ever seen KT Tunstall perform live, you’ve been witness to the amazing electronic (g)eargasm that is her one woman show… courtesy of the excellent repoire she has established with the various Japanese guitar toys she uses to create her music. it’s really quite amazing to see. Kate uses an Akai Headrush pedal to loop layers of herself singing, playing guitar or drumming and builds up tunes right in front of you in real time…

A similar, more recent device which I happen to own is the Digitech Jamman - which is kindof awesome… it lets you loop up to 99 samples onto a CF memory card and dump it all to USB, load it into your favourite audio sequencer and process your samples to your hearts content.

It’s the core of my own setup for live, improvised electronic performance but has always let me down because of the complete lack of MIDI sync or a tempo variable that you can explicitly set. This basically means you really can’t integrate it into your computer setup live… It’s virtually impossible to sync your computer and Jamman by tapping in the tempo on your Jamman. it certainly isn’t anywhere near consistent enough to use in a performance environment where it needs to be absolutely synchronized….

That is, until now…

If you look at the XML file that is generated whenever you save a sample on the Jamman, you’ll see a Tempo parameter:

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”utf-8″ ?>
<JamManLoopSetup>
<LoopMode>Loop</LoopMode>
<Tempo>24055</Tempo>
<TimeSignature>2</TimeSignature>
<RhythmType>1</RhythmType>
<StopMode>Stop</StopMode>
</JamManLoopSetup>

I knew I could get something cool out of this value, but I couldn’t figure out how to do it, until Bill Clayton from Digitech let me in on a little secret. Like the flux capacitor, it’s the key to bringing the planets back into alignment and getting all your gear to work together in time…

BPM = 2646000 / <Tempo> (264600 = Sampling Rate * 60 seconds.. ie. 44100*60)

Therefore in the example above - the loop is saved as 2646000 / 24055 = 110 BPM

When you plug the Jamman in initially, it will default to this base tempo… so you can then load whatever sample you want… look up it’s value in the XML file and then set your computer’s tempo appropriately. Voila - the two systems, your computer and all devices that are synced to it and your Jamman will now completely play in sync… kind of half assed but I’ll take it.  Now I can actually use this thing as a tool for live performance, instead of just playing around by myself…

Popularity: 16% [?]

Do you host mp3 files on your music blog? If so - please add a /crossdomain.xml file to your webserver root - ala http://musiclibre.org/crossdomain.xml

The crossdomain file grants permission for Adobe Flash applications to read files from your server, and more specifically - to be able to read ID3 tags located in the mp3 files you host. This is kindof awesome, cause it means Flash music players will work better when rendering your music blog. Check out our player, currently kicking out tunes from http://ccmixter.org/. The ccMixter site has a crossdomain.xml file which means that once the tunes have loaded, you’ll see the Flash player that’s playing them gets updated with the metadata info contained in the ID3 tags. It also grants the Flash player access to the audio stream, so developers can build cool visualizations like what you see playing back right now. Click on the area of the player where the waveform is displayed to toggle the different options. This will only work if playing back mp3s served off a site with a crossdomain.

Long story short - if you run a music blog, or even if you’re just posting mp3s of your own music online… please create decent ID3 tags when you encode your mp3s, and add a crossdomain.xml to your webroot (usually a folder called /public_html)… Your music will be easier to share and play back better across all the Flash music players on the net.

http://www.crossdomainxml.org/

Popularity: 43% [?]

Joe pointed this Wired article on starting an mp3 blog out to me today:

Starting a music blog is a mere matter of finding a host for your tracks and posting away. Just one catch: You’ll probably end up breaking the law. Try as you may, you won’t be able to secure permission for every song you want to post. Sean Michaels (creator of Said the Gramophone, one of the first MP3 blogs) knows how to get around this problem. To start with, he says, keep your hosting provider in the dark. Most have a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy regarding MP3s. Also, stay away from prereleased or high-profile tracks. MP3 blogs are often tolerated by music labels, Michaels points out, for their promotional value — but only if the studios don’t end up feeling burned. Finally, post your email address along with a statement saying you’ll respond to takedown requests. Then do so, quickly, should you get a complaint. But don’t get too hung up on bureaucracy: The most important thing is to write about your passions in a way that feels honest. Or, as Michaels says, “Be your own beast.”

On this subject of “Just one catch: You’ll probably end up breaking the law…”, I beg to differ. I’m not interested in listening to music blogs of mainstream “illegal music”. The best music blogs are promoting independent music, often released under a Creative Commons license. Music blogs are about finding new music that you’ve never heard before… all this awesome stuff that people are putting together in their basement, garage or local studio - thanks to the wonders of digital technology. Today’s artists don’t need a major label to be successful anymore, just a little Internet savvy. They can do it all by themselves and music blogs and social networks are how they get the word out. It shouldn’t be dodgy, nor require you to keep “your hosting provider in the dark”. Just don’t post links to illegal music.

Popularity: 20% [?]

I put together a music blogs browser which lets you listen to music from some of the most popular mp3 blog sites on the net in a single click. I’m actually really enjoying using it as a way to get turned on to new music.

One of my personal favourites is Scissorkick, which I was turned on to thanks to its inclusion in Songbird. Scissorkick has been our defacto playlist while developing music apps in the lab yet every time I think I’ve gotten completely sick of it, they add a new track which puts yet another smile on my face.

http://www.musiclibre.org/play?url=http://www.scissorkick.com

Another blog that I really like, given my penchant for somewhat melodic, jazz funk inspired electronica is Aurgasm. This one gets updated more regularly and consistently provides interesting tunes.

http://www.musiclibre.org/play?url=http://aurgasm.us

Popularity: 15% [?]