by Christopher Sutton on May 6, 2012
Just a short post to celebrate the notion of USB Stick Discographies.
We live in an always-online world where increasingly we prefer downloadables and streaming media over physical products. And that’s certainly the case in the world of music (…with the possible exception of vinyl junkies).
One special case for me is the trend of artists releasing most or all of their back catalogue on a USB stick. Rather than leave fans to trawl around gathering the various tracks and releases and special editions and so on, some artists make an all-in-one bundle that saves you the hassle and bandwidth.
Here are three I’ve bought:
(Jonathan Coulton + Creative Commons) <3 USB Sticks
Who: Jonathan Coulton
What: A 1GB green USB stick containing the JoCo Looks Back album and all the source tracks for it.
Awesome because: A fund-raising release for Creative Commons to celebrate the release of the ‘best of’ album “JoCo Looks Back”, this stick highlighted the power of the CC licenses to encourage remixes and derivatives.
What else: I already owned all this music, but getting at the multi-track source material was was a great bonus. I’m not into remixing, myself, but in my last job having high quality multi-track data proved very useful for building fun in-house tech demos.
Wheatus’ Brendan is a USB Stick
Who: Wheatus
What: [click to continue…]
Tagged as:
Creative Commons,
digital music,
fun,
future of music,
Jonathan Coulton,
music distribution,
Steve Lawson,
USB discographies,
USB Sticks,
Wheatus
by Christopher Sutton on May 4, 2012
A few days ago I attended a fantastic discussion panel session at The Hub, Westminster, entitled “The Future of Musicianship”. It was the first event put on by the newly-launched “Loving and Living Music” project, brainchild of Ben Hillyard and Heli Rajasalo.
The goal of the initiative is outlined in detail here but to give you an idea:
What we are looking for in the Loving & Living Music project is a definition or a description of musicianship that includes all aspects of musicianship across all genres and instruments. Having this definition will enable discussion of musicianship to take place on a wider scale than is possible today.
We see a gap in the way that music in commonly taught. With the Loving & Living Music project we are looking to provoke awareness and discussion among the music education sector about how Musicianship is and could be taught.
The future of musicianship is a subject close to my heart due to my work with Easy Ear Training, where we try to use modern technology to make learning music more fun, easy and effective.
The event was fascinating, and the discussion broad and interesting. I won’t try to recount the discussion (not least because the entire panel session is now available online) but the event was eye-opening for me in a number of ways.
Musicianship is not what I thought.
In my work at Easy Ear Training I live immersed in a world of aural skills and over time [click to continue…]
Tagged as:
aural skills,
discussion,
future of musicianship,
London,
Loving and Living Music,
music education,
music industry,
musicianship,
opinion,
panel,
technology
