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Listen to Six Cover Songs Played on the Google Moog | MTV Hive » Music Technology

Google gave us a new toy today via Google Doodle –- a virtual Moog synthesizer, which lets anyone celebrate the 78^th birthday of Moog inventor Robert Moog by crafting Moog-y renditions of the popular hits of today and yesterday and uploading the video of them to YouTube. Here’s six of the better ways people have spent their day crafting Moog-y covers.

1. Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance”

A little goes a long way when covering a pop hit on a browser-based Moog, and this rendition of “Bad Romance” wisely keeps things to a mere thirty seconds. Even better, it just does the famous parts, so you can cut right to the chase when forcing your friends/roommates/family members to play “Name That Tune” with you.

2. Van Halen’s “Jump”

Singer/songwriter Aaron Isles apparently, took the existence of the Google Doodle Moog as something of a challenge, recording a half-dozen covers (or snippets of covers) since its unveiling. Rather than just plunking on keys, Isles’ renditions have rich textures that make the 0:25 seconds you spend listening to the intro to “Jump” feel like a genuinely musical moment.

3. Deep Purple’s “Smoke On The Water”

The execution on this cover of “Smoke On The Water,” most likely performed by some old dude who spent his college years trying to pick up girls by playing the song’s signature riff, is a bit belabored – we watch as he crafts individual pieces of the song and works them into the full thing, which takes nearly four minutes. Still, at the end, you get not only a Moog-ified version of “Smoke on the Water,” but a weird, abstract documentary about the making of the song.

4. Daft Punk’s “Aerodynamic”

Mildly Internet-famous YouTube musician Brett Domino offers a positively jaunty version of Daft Punk’s “Aerodynamic” for your listening pleasure.

5. The Cure’s “In Between Days”

Aaron Isles is back at work here, delivering a maddeningly short tease of the intro to “In Between Days” that clocks in at a mere 23 seconds. What happened to you yesterday, Aaron Isles? Did you get so old you felt like you might die? We’ll never know until you record the full song.

6. The Beatles’ “Hey Jude”

This version of “Hey Jude” is dark and hard-edged, with an eerie, moody feeling to it that belies the sweetness of Paul McCartney’s reassuring ode to the fact that John Lennon treated his son Julian kinda badly. It also long, without the atmospherics or artistry present in the work of an Aaron Isles or a Brett Domino. Still, if you ever wondered what “Hey Jude” would sound like in a darker key and played on a virtual Moog by someone controlling the keys with his mouse, well, now you know.

Five Rap Songs That Shout-Out Facebook | MTV Hive » Music Technology

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, rapper Snoop Dogg, and entrepreneur Sean Parker pose backstage at Sean Parker’s Celebration of Music on September 22, 2011 in San Francisco, California. Photo: Kevin Mazur/WireImage

Hive Five: Our daily listicle of musical musings

Facebook has floated on the New York stock exchange! If you’re a business tech nerd, this is probably awesomely interesting news. For the rest of us though, here’s something far more entertaining — five examples of rappers using and abusing the social network in song shoutouts, plus a gratuitous picture of Snoop Dogg with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Soundtrack your social-network IPO party with this playlist.

1. Paul Wall, “Internet Goin’ Nutz”

Long before 50 Cent was cyber flirting with chicks on Twitter, Houston rapper Paul Wall was bragging about staying home and attempting to hook up with girls over the Internet. “So I log on to the Facebook/ I’m trying to find me a good look,” he raps, before going on to detail that he’s “Looking for a lil’ one night love/ I throw the bait and they bite the hook.”

2. The Streets, “OMG”

In which lovable lad Mike Skinner gets all distraught after he peeps the Facebook screen of someone he has his eye on and realizes that her status is “in a relationship.” Also included: the most emotive ever use of the phrase “plain Helvetica.”

3. J. Cole, “College Boy”

Fittingly for a social network conceived while its creators were in college, J. Cole’s ode to campus life includes a reference to Facebook. Using the site to pick up chicks, Cole explains, “You mad ’cause your girl on Facebook poking me/ So, uh, you know the G/ I hit her up like, “Hello Elle, I see you looking right the other day, LOL.””

4. Gummy Soul, “I Can’t Get Off the Facebook”

Just today, Hive favorites Gummy Soul dropped an R&B and hip-hop fused ode to Master Zuckerberg’s addictive platform with this joyous tune, “I Can’t Get Off the Facebook.” It’s funny, ’cause it’s true.

5. Asher Roth feat. Ludacris, “I Love College (Remix)”

Offering up a reminder about the potential perils of the social network scene, Ludacris brags about posting up footage of drunk girls on YouTube before adding, “I took some naked pictures of they ass and ’bout to post ‘em on Facebook.” Disappointingly, Luda’s actual Facebook page is devoid of any Instagrammed pics of girls’ behinds.

What’s Next for Soundcloud? The Next Soundcloud | MTV Hive » Music Technology

Image courtesy of Soundcloud

Soundcloud, the popular music streaming site that lets you comment on the exact second you love or hate each song, has unleashed what they’re dubbing “The Next Soundcloud.” It promises to have more social features, Facebook-esque profiles, a more attractive looking “wave” and much more. For a detailed analysis, check out Hive contributor Brenna Ehrlich‘s thoughts via the OMA Blog.

Could Indie Bands Learn How To Tour From Umphrey’s McGee? | MTV Hive » Music Technology

Umphrey’s McGee play while fans’ voting results pour in. Photo: Tammy Wetzel

Looking down at his feet halfway through the night’s third set, Umphrey’s McGee guitarist and vocalist Brendan Bayliss didn’t know what to play next. But this indecision in the middle of the band’s marathon five-hour UMBowl event at the end of April wasn’t an awkward brain cramp, and the downward glance wasn’t a nervous tic. Instead, Bayliss was peeking at a video monitor updating the results of a “Choose Your Own Adventure” experiment, a live vote by the 800 fans packed into Chicago’s Park West on what the band should play next. As the percentage choosing a song called “August” inched its way past the two other options on the screen, Bayliss cued the rest of the band with a hand signal and launched into the crowd’s choice.

Traditionally, the best way to request a song at a concert was to demonstrate your skills with posterboard, Sharpies, and glitter, or to at least have a really loud voice. But as the music industry pendulum swings from album sales to tour revenues, more artists are exploring novel ways to get fans in seats. Joining the trend of performing classic albums in their entirety are interactive gimmicks that turn over control of the setlist – or even more– to ticketholders.

At the 2009 Pitchfork Music Festival, Yo La Tengo, the Jesus Lizard, Flaming Lips, Tortoise, and Built to Spill participated in a “Write the Night: Set Lists by Request” concept, where ticketholders voted online for the songs they wanted to hear. Since then, bands as far-flung as Sugarland, Mötley Crüe, Steely Dan, the Backstreet Boys and Muse have recently conducted vote-the-setlist experiments, while Yo La Tengo left their opening set up to a special wheel spun by a fan to select from options such as “S Songs,” the band’s Condo Fucks side project, the dreaded “Sitcom Theatre,” or, of course, spinner’s choice.

But compared to the UMBowl, other bands’ games are Duck, Duck, Goose. The Chicago band’s hometown marathon was divided into four “quarters,” each a roughly hour-long experiment dictated by a different fan-driven concept. The first and fourth quarters could be considered as advanced versions of the usual fan-voted requests format, with the added difficulty level of working from ballots made up of rarities, unusual band member combinations, song debuts, and reprises of favorite improvisational moments from the band’s career. But the second and third quarters were the real high-wire act, giving the hardcore fans that paid $100 a ticket the chance to conduct the band in real time.

Stacking the request deck with unusual rarities and creative gimmicks helped Umphrey’s McGee avoid the pitfall of most fan-chosen setlists: Most fans just want to hear the hits. For the Flaming Lips’ Pitchfork Music Festival set in 2009, the top fan choice wasn’t to dust off “Talkin’ ‘Bout the Smiling Deathporn Immortality Blues,” but to play “Do You Realize?,” a song the Lips have likely played at every live appearance since 2002. Number two was “She Don’t Use Jelly.”

Photo: Tammy Wetzel

Friday night, the most predictable part of the UMBowl all-request quarter was that the fans gave the most votes to the Grateful Dead cover on the pre-show ballot, the serpentine pairing of “Help on the Way > Slipknot!”. But any jamband stereotypes were diluted a bit by the “Umphreaks” choosing Daft Punk and Tool covers as well — a reflection of the band being more on the Phish-style prog-nerd branch of the jamband tree than the ‘60s revival clade. Another set asked for text-messaged cues were straightforward genre exercises (“Hip Hop Tribute,” “Middle Eastern Metal,” “Yacht Rock jam”) Umphrey’s sportingly played the chameleon with typical jamband flexibility, particularly on a convincingly brosteppy “Drum ‘n’ Bass,” but each impromptu composition sounded a bit like a commercial jingle version of the chosen genre, or a live karaoke band with no singer.

Better was the third set, the “Choose Your Own Adventure” concept where Umphrey’s gave their fans a legit reason to spend the show staring at their phones. Before the set began, three options from the group’s regular song rotation were projected on the screens, with instructions on how to text-message vote for your choice. Then as the band played through the initial winner, fans were able to choose again for the song they would subsequently segue into, and so on throughout the hour. The live polling forced the band into some more difficult maneuvers in this quarter, such as suturing together the first half of one original to the second half of a completely separate song via a cover of the Talking Heads’ “Making Flippy Floppy” (which beat out Toto’s “Rosanna” and Flock of Seagulls “I Ran” in a landslide).

The night’s final set allowed Umphrey’s to tug back on their puppet strings, as they played a suite recreating some of the favorite improvisational moments of the preceding nine years, as voted on before the show by the band and its fans. With a little more time to prepare the set’s outline, this round avoided the occasional hesitant vamping and brainstorming dead ends that marked earlier sets, producing a more cohesive set of music – though one that only the most rabid superfans could divine the true references from as it happened.

But the night also teetered at times into the hazardous realm of fan fiction, fulfilling wishes for the most obsessive but with a hollow, artificial ring. Reversing the usual power structure of the concert experience takes away some of the performing artist’s most powerful tricks: The shell game of surprise, the teasing tension and release of fan service vs. the band’s own priorities, the ability to make an argument and force a fan to find a thrill in an unexpected place. Sometimes, the band knows best.

Photo: Tammy Wetzel

That said, could any of these concepts fly outside the open-ended rulebook of jamband shows? Certainly, the majority of indie rock acts settling for identical setlists from night to night would benefit from an injection of crowd-sourced randomness, both artistically and financially, as more fans find it worthwhile to follow them to multiple shows hoping to catch their favorite song. But the success of letting the audience conduct the band is likely proportional to the intensity of an artist’s fanbase.

Casual fans will opt for the hits, which explains why vote-the-setlist experiments haven’t worked as well in festival environments. But polling the diehards can bring out the richness of a deep catalog while reassuring the band that they don’t have to play to the median audience member. Nobody would ask Radiohead to improvise a reggae number, but an adoring, obsessive crowd might push them to slot b-side rarities like the recently-excavated “The Amazing Sounds of Orgy” while retiring some of the staler numbers they might feel obligated to play. But who are we kidding: Most fans would ask for “Creep” anyway.

Thanks to Scott Bernstein at Hidden Track for the UMBowl setlist and other Umphrey’s McGee assistance.

Amanda Palmer is the Queen of Kickstarter | MTV Hive » Music Technology

Photo courtesy of Girlie Action

While Kickstarter has certainly sparked a new revolution of DIY funding for creative whims, musician Amanda Palmer showed this week that a robust, rabid fanbase and a massive amount of artistic offerings under just one album can raise some serious cash. On Monday, she launched her second Kickstarter project, this time to fund her newest solo album — which has already been recorded. Thus far she’s raised close to half a million dollars in just five days. That, folks, is staggering.

For her new set, Palmer assembled a band called “The Grand Theft Orchestra,” and along with an album of all new material, she’s offering an art book that includes original work for more than 30 different artists. She’ll also be touring this year and opening art shows, all possible with her Kickstarter funding. Hive emailed with Palmer yesterday about her Kickstarter success, her new album’s sound and how she’ll crowdsource live musicians for her upcoming tours.

You recorded first, then Kickstarted. What are the advantages of that ? Most folks try to raise the money first, from what I’ve seen.

I actually hadn’t planned it that way. I had originally wanted to launch this Kickstarter in late January, right before hitting the studio. But there was one huge problem: My other Kickstarter was behind schedule. This past fall, Neil Gaiman and I Kickstarted a tour recording to make a live three-CD set of our West Coast tour together (it went really well, we were 666% funded at about $130k). Selecting the tracks and manufacturing that record took way longer than we thought it would, and by January people still hadn’t gotten their stuff. There was no way I was going to go back to the fanbase and ask them to support the next project before they’d gotten the first one in the mail. So I waited.

What’s the new album like?  

The new album is absolutely amazing, and a totally new sound for me. This is a fact I keep reminding myself of — that this project won’t go truly epic until the music comes out and people find out what I created in the studio. This Kickstarter would have gone mental anyway: I’m riding on faith and my reputation right now, I’m very aware of that. But just like the fans have faith in the fact that I couldn’t try to get them to back a sub-par record, I have my own personal faith in these songs that nobody has heard yet. One of the tracks, “The Bed Song,” is hands down the best song I’ve ever written. And enough of my friends have agreed with me that I don’t think I’m deluded. That’s a solo piano tune; most of the record is bombastically arranged and dripping with synth and guitar and loudness. The band I put together, the so-called “Grand Theft Orchestra,” is a core of three people but also alludes to the fact that we’ll be crowdsourcing the horns and strings in every city we tour through, via twitter and blogging. The band is literally everybody. I love that.

The Kickstarter has a vast reward system depending on what people will donate. Serious question: Will you have to hire an Amanda Palmer Staff to help  full fill everything? (And if so, what would their staff uniforms look like?!)

Ha! My management staff at Girlie Action actually fulfilled the Neil & Amanda Kickstarter from their office, but it was only a few thousand packages. And since they were all New Yorkers, I assume they were wearing hip vintage dresses and skinny jeans and stuff. But the scale of the new record is way too huge for them to deal with. We’ll be working with an off-site fulfillment company to do all the mailings. But that’s not new for me … I’ve been working with a merchandiser like that since the dawn of the Dresden Dolls. I don’t miss burning CDs and stuffing padded envelopes in my kitchen. We did it that way for a long time in the early days.

“The band I put together, the so called “Grand Theft Orchestra”, is a core of three people but also alludes to the fact that we’ll be crowdsourcing the horns and strings in every city we tour through, via twitter and blogging. The band is literally everybody. I love that.”

You’ve got nearly $500k raised. That has to be more than what you originally estimated you needed. What other opportunities could this afford? Could you in theory, record four more records with this?

Not at all. I don’t think most people understand that $500k is a very fictional number. Every time somebody spends $125 on an art book and vinyl set, it costs about half of that to manufacture all the stuff they’re ordering plus pay the shipping to where they live (and they might live in Siberia). And whatever’s leftover is going straight back into promoting the actual record when it comes out to the public. Now that I have no label, every single marketing cost comes out of my pocket. Making videos. Hiring publicists. Paying the band. Getting everybody around. Shipping the art to the galleries as we tour. All that costs a shit-ton, and this is where the dough is coming from.

Could you talk about what DJ Spooky, Kristin Hersh, Robyn Hitchcock and Shepher Fairly contributed on the album?

Yes! All of them created visual art that’s going to be going to be hung of the walls of our special gallery tour (we picked six cities) and will also be reproduced in the art book that’s part of the Kickstarter packages. I’m so thrilled they all came on board — and there’s 30 other artists besides them. That was another one of my start-up expenses: paying all of these artists.

Any new ukuleles? Any new instruments on this album that you’ve never had before?

I put down the ukulele for this record, and picked up a Moog. There’s a ton of instruments that won’t sound very familiar — full horn sections, full string sections, lots and lots of synth and a real shocker for Amanda Palmer fans: SLIDE GUITAR. Trust me, it sounds incredible.

In a perfect world, when would this record come out? Do you have a time table for release?

We’re aiming for early September. I can’t fucking wait.

Don’t Call My iPod Classic “Classic” | MTV Hive » Music Technology

An iPod “Classic” seen here with a classic scroll wheel and non-touch screen functionality. Photo: Getty Images

Music is ubiquitous and confusing. Twice a month, Eric Spitznagel stares into the bottomless chasm of new (and old) songs, albums and musicians that permeate our lives, and tries to pretend he has any idea what it all means.

“What you have here,” Karl the Apple store employee tells me, “is an iPod classic.”

I cringe a little, because the word “classic” always makes me cringe. Unless you’re talking about soda, “classic” hardly ever means “better.” It’s usually a polite way of saying “old.” I’ve reached an age when most of the things I love are becoming “classic” at an alarming rate. This is especially true when it comes to music. A good 85% of my music collection has or is on the verge of crossing over into classic rock territory. I’ve only recently (and still begrudgingly) accepted that U2‘s Joshua Tree is considered classic rock now. And despite having heard it categorized as “classic” repeatedly, I refuse to admit that Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea shares any DNA with music created by old hippies with comb-overs and grandchildren. But okay, fine, I’m a realist. I know that time marches on, and when 15 or more years have passed, it’s unrealistic to think that the things that seemed so fresh and current yesterday aren’t showing a little rust today.

But not in this case. Not with a music-playing device that I bought shortly after a black man was elected U.S. president. Just by the numbers, that’s not nearly enough time to give anything nostalgic street cred. “Oh remember when Mad Men was kinda new and we were fighting two wars in the Middle East and Katy Perry was still married to Russell Brand and my iPod wasn’t considered embarrassingly old?”

I never would’ve known that my iPod was a “classic” if I hadn’t brought it into the Apple store because of a cracked LCD screen. And I probably wouldn’t have thought twice about my iPod’s less-than-perfect LCD screen if it wasn’t for those goddamn kids and their judgmental sneers.

If I’m listening to, say, the new Sleigh Bells album, and mid-”Comeback Kid” I’m incapable of making a stop-motion animation video based on my complex emotions inspired by the song, I’m pretty sure I’ll be okay.

I’d be the first to admit that my iPod isn’t the prettiest girl at the prom. It’s been dropped and scratched and kicked and abused in a myriad of ways. But it’s also been loved, and loved hard. Which is why it hurts when people in their 20s stare at it like it’s a pug in an E-collar.

“Good god,” the checkout girl at the grocery store says when she catches a glimpse of my iPod. “How old is that thing?”

I’ve been walking around with portable music devices for roughly the last 30 years of my life, and only recently have I heard this question. I have no clue how to respond. Is it a rhetorical question, or are they earnestly curious about my warranty?

“It looks like Gordon Gekko’s cellphone in Wall Street,” the barista at the coffee shop down the street from my apartment remarks, covering her mouth to muffle her laughter.

“You think so?” I’ll ask, holding up my iPod so she can take a better look, as if her observation is somehow meant as a compliment.

“It’s so big,” the receptionist at the doctor’s office says.

“If you think my iPod’s big, you should see my prostate,” I’ve retorted. But not out loud. In my head. Long after the moment has passed, and I’m miles away, rocking out to my “Bitchin’ 90s Alt-Rock” playlist.

Sorry. “Bitchin’ 90s Classic Rock.”

Apple Store employees like this enjoy mocking Eric Spitznagel about his outdated hardware. Photo: Paolo Bruno/Getty Images

“You should think about getting an iPod Touch,” Karl the Apple Store employee tells me. “It’s got a lot more to offer.”

“Like what?” I ask. Which is all the excuse he needs to talk to me for the next 20 minutes about nothing I care about or understand.

I won’t bore you with the details. Because I can’t think of a way to recount the details without sounding like a very old man with his pants pulled up to his nipples. Let me just say this; I own several hip-hop albums (I call it “hip-hop,” I want it noted for the record, not “rap”), and I have not once in my adult life complained about how modern music is too loud or confusing or stupid. But that said, I don’t think any music-playing device, no matter how advanced, needs to be capable of recording video in high definition. I really don’t. I’ll go out on a limb here and say that any definition of video on a music-playing device is unnecessary. High definition, low definition, blurry definition. I’m fine with just the music. Really. If I’m listening to, say, the new Sleigh Bells album, and mid-”Comeback Kid” I’m incapable of making a stop-motion animation video based on my complex emotions inspired by the song, I’m pretty sure I’ll be okay.

Karl the Apple store employee is kind enough to tell me about the 200 or so new software features available on the iPod touch, among them something called a “shake shuffle,” resplendent album art, and apps up the wazoo. I don’t know why I need any of this, as I was already pretty satisfied with my original iPod, despite being a “fifth generation,” which I guess I should be embarrassed about. Karl says “fifth generation” in a hushed tone, like it’s something I wouldn’t want my parents finding out, the equivalent of telling them that I live in a garden apartment with three other guys and I spend my days masturbating to magazine porn purchased at a nearby gas station. (Because nothing shames a parent like knowing their son masturbates like a lonely guy from two decades ago, i.e. “classic” masturbation.)

“How many songs can this thing hold?” I ask. Because in the 21st century, it’s the only reasonable question to ask about an MP3 player. It’s like getting a ticket on a moon shuttle and asking anything other than “Does this thing have enough oxygen to keep me alive?” All the rest of it, all the technical mumbo-jumbo, I’m going to assume the shuttle people know what they’re doing and I’m getting the best that science has to offer. Just tell me I’m not going to die.

But here’s the really strange part. Those smirky kids, the ones with the birth certificates from the ’90s who were so perplexed and bemused by my iPod “classic,” are downright mesmerized by my Walkman. I’m no longer the old dinosaur who can’t keep up with the changing times. I’m the crazy old dude carrying around an RCA gramophone with the big cone speaker, humming along to his favorite Jelly Roll Morton records.

“Well, the 64 gigabyte iPod Touch can hold around 14,000 songs,” Karl tells me.

This does not sound like a lot. And because the iPod Touch costs $400, it also sounds like a fucking rip off. I paid that much in 2008 for a “classic,” and that little bastard could squeeze 40,000 songs into its (apparently morbidly obese by 2012 standards) frame. Now granted, I’ve only filled it with (at press time) 7891 songs, and that’s including all the shit I don’t even listen to, which means I have a 32,109 song leeway. In clothing terms, I’m a toddler in size 44 pants. I will never be able to eat enough burritos to fit into my iPod pants. But I like knowing it’s there. The extra bagginess gives me peace of mind.

Karl takes me through the store, introducing me to a dizzying array of Touches, Nanos, Minis and Shuffles. An Apple store is like a Taco Bell; everything looks different, but it’s all just slight variations on cheese and white flour. Apple has apparently spent the last five years trying to fix what isn’t broken. The moment they created a hand-held instrument capable of playing EVERY SONG YOU COULD EVER WANT OR NEED TO HEAR FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE, they were essentially done. Anything more than that is just greedy, and it misses the point. It’s like saying, “Hey, I discovered a cure for cancer! Also, it can take some really amazing family photos and the Internet connectivity is stellar.” You don’t say? Well that’s great, but you kind of had us at the “cancer cure” part.

Karl tries to sell me on an 8 gigabyte iPod Touch. It holds a mere 2000 songs — a laughably small number — and it’s just a fourth generation, which may become obsolete, Karl tells me off the record, when they release the fifth generation sometime this year. But it comes in white, which has only been available since October! Can you imagine such a thing? White iPods!

“So what you’re telling me,” I ask, “is that for the same price I paid for a Sony Walkman back in 1980, which lasted for thirty years and could play a limitless amount of music, I can have a white MP3 player capable of holding Bob Dylan’s discography, which I’ll probably have to replace in a few months?”

Karl smiles. You can see it in his eyes, he can’t wait to talk about me to the other blueshirt nerds back in the break-room. “I think you’ll find that the sound quality on an iPod Touch is a little superior to a Walkman,” he says.

Challenge accepted.

A portable music device from the past called the Sony Walkman. Photo: SSPL/Getty Images

I still have my Sony WM-DD9. It’s been in my closet since 1998, when I finally gave up cassettes for good. I don’t know why I still have it. My closet is also filled with every computer I’ve ever owned, but that’s because I haven’t figured out how to erase all the porn, and I don’t want the guys at the dump to dig around my hard drive(s) and think, “Holy lord, this guy was into some sick shit.” But my Walkman has no evidence of past musical misdeeds, other than the Counting Crowes cassette that’s still in there. I guess I always knew, somewhere in the back of my mind, that I’d come running back to it again someday.

The sound is shockingly good. Not iPod eighth generation “now available in silver, turquoise blue, or off-applesauce” good, but “I’m going to take a walk and listen to some tunes” good. It’s noticeably heavy, which I like. The iPod Touch weighs four ounces, and the Walkman is a meaty twelve ounces. It’s the difference between carrying around a credit card and a hoagie. The Walkman’s gears make a high-pitched grinding sound, and the whole thing is held together with electrical tape and Soul Coughing stickers, but otherwise it’s in perfect working condition. Are there special features? You’re fucking right there are. You’ve got your volume control and your gold-plated headphone jack and your auto-motherfucking-reverse. That’s right, bitch, I ain’t flipping my tape manually. I let technology do it for me. Oh, are you familiar with something called “Mega Bass?” Flick that shit from “norm” to “max” and get ready to melt your brain.

But here’s the really strange part. Those smirky kids, the ones with the birth certificates from the ’90s who were so perplexed and bemused by my iPod “classic,” are downright mesmerized by my Walkman. I’m no longer the old dinosaur who can’t keep up with the changing times. I’m the crazy old dude carrying around an RCA gramophone with the big cone speaker, humming along to his favorite Jelly Roll Morton records.

“Does it work?” the checkout girl at the grocery store asks, touching my Walkman gingerly like she thinks it might disintegrate.

“It works fine.” I point towards the cracked screen, where the tiny wheels are turning loudly, grumbling in protest. She stares at it, unblinking, like she’s never seen anything so weird and magnificent.

Snoop Through John Peel’s 60,000+ Records Online | MTV Hive » Music Technology

Image courtesy of The Space

The John Peel Archive launched just the other week on The Space, a digital arts service funded by the Arts Council and supported by the BBC. The site will run from May until October 2012, and will digitally house Peel’s massive record collection, in addition to photos, videos and content of all ilks related to the radio personality.

The Space worked with Peel’s family to determine how best to showcase this massive store of content, deciding to roll out 100 albums from each letter of the alphabet each week until October.

It you visit the website today you’ll find an interactive, drag-and-clickable representation of Peel’s studio. Clicking on highlighted items such as photos and radios will unearth corresponding content — snaps of Peel, documentary videos featuring artists related to Peel (a new video will roll out every week), and, finally, Peel’s record collection. Clicking through to that will reveal an interactive wall of records, allowing the user to choose and peruse individual discs, reading info cards composed by Peel and listening to tunes on Spotify and other music services when available.

Although the Archive is certainly a stellar resource for Peel fans and music lovers alike, the experience seems somewhat archaic — like playing with an interactive CD-ROM in the ’90s (the David Bowie Jump one was aces). Such a resource just screams out for an iPad app, much like The Guitar Collection: George Harrison. In addition (small complaint) the site would have been more streamlined if it made use of Spotify’s new Play button feature — as of right now, you have to open the application to listen to tunes outside of the website. The same goes for Soundcloud-hosted songs; you have to open Soundcloud to listen.

Still, according to The Space, this is just the start of the project (funding is still tight), so perhaps apps etc are on the horizon.

Metric Reveals New Single Via Slow Online Burn | MTV Hive » Music Technology

Image courtesy of Metric

If you jam on over to ILoveMetric.com right now, you’ll find a blank piece of notebook paper and instructions telling you to drag bolded lyrics from “Youth Without Youth” into position on that page. When you do so, you’ll get a sneak peek at the making of the song. Sadly, the lyrics are borderline illegible — in the first block of words, there’s something about playing hangman (reflected in the childlike sketch at the bottom of the page) behind a church. Let us know if you can decipher more.

In the coming days and weeks, more lyrics will be revealed as well as more clues about the song, which is off of the band’s fifth full-length studio album, Synthetica (out June 12).

This all might sound like a lot of work when it comes to unveiling a single song, but it will definitely build excitement among diehards and remind forgetful fans of its release. St. Vincent did something very similar with the release of “Surgeon,” asking fans to tweet the album title “Strange Mercy” to unlock the track.

Check out Metric’s first clue below and let us know in the comments: Will you keep up with the slow, slow reveal?

Bob Marley Documentary To Premiere On Facebook | MTV Hive » Music Technology

Image courtesy of Facebook, Bob Marley

Starting at 12:01 a.m. on April 20, Marley will be available for viewing on Bob Marley’s Facebook Page — the same day that the film hits the theaters. It will cost viewers $6.99 (via PayPal or credit card) to take in the flick, a portion of which will be donated to Save the Children.

Marley’s Facebook Page is a pretty happening spot — it boasts more than 37 million fans and, last year, hosted the premiere of a tribute video created by band and charitable foundation Playing For Change on what would have been the musician’s 66th birthday.

This is hardly the first time Facebook has featured a movie rental; the site has been offering films for around a year now, kicking things off with Batman flick The Dark Knight.

For this premiere — which is apparently the first to run on Facebook and in theaters simultaneously — users will be able to use social entertainment company Milyoni‘s technology to chat with friends while watching, as well as tag and share clips. Milyoni has been used a lot in the past to host concerts and events on the social network, including The Parlotones’ live rock opera Dragonflies & Astronauts as well as scores of films and TV shows.

DISTRO: A Music Subscription Service for the DIY Set | MTV Hive » Music Technology

Image courtesy of DISTRO

A new non-profit music subscription service called DISTRO aims to serve those fans who can’t make it to the show (or who maybe forgot to bring $10 for a CD) by replicating the experience of DYI showgoing online: showcasing awesome bands and letting you pay them directly for their wares.

The service is the brainchild of musician/videographer/lawyer Kyle Marler, who recently launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund the beta version of the offering. As of right now, the alpha is basically a barebones site where users can listen to a few tracks, but the beta would be a fully fledged subscription service and mobile app. Like with Spotify and the rest, users will be able to search for bands and listen to their tunes in a dedicated player/app (or cache for offline listening on other services), with one major difference: there’s no middleman to take a cut of money made. Basically, bands upload their music to the service and set a price to subscribe to their content. Fans can then choose which bands they want to keep up with, subscribing to them like one subscribes to a magazine. Subscription fees will go right to the band.

Marler came up with the idea for DISTRO while living abroad in Vietnam. “I was making music with some amazing musicians from all over the world, and I wanted to share it with my friends back in the States and earn a couple extra đồng,” he says. “It wasn’t until fall of 2010 when I needed an escape from the mind-vice of law school that I acted to execute on the idea.”

While there are currently several music subscriptions on the market — Spotify, Rdio, etc — Marler saw a need for one that was truly non-profit, one that works directly with bands and makes sure they’re paid what they deserve. In order to get their music on most services, bands have to go through a distributer like TuneCore or CD Baby — enrollment in which costs money — and, recently, bands of all levels of fame have been questioning whether or not the payoff is even worth it. That question is still widely up for debate, since adoption of these services is relatively new phenomenon.

To ensure that bands get the most money possible, Marler plans to fund the service through donations and private investments. He will only charge bands if it takes off (in order to keep DISTRO running), and even then, the fee will be small. “This will likely be 3% to 5% and far less than the 30% withheld by Google Music, iTunes, etc,” he says.

In many ways, however, DISTRO is not meant to take off with the mainstream, but to serve a pretty select group of people who constantly crave new music — tastemakers, if you will. The Board of Directors that Marler has enlisted reflects that desire: Todd Patrick, Joe Ahearn and Jordan Michael, who are all extremely active members of the New York all-ages/DIY scene. All three book shows (carefully curated lineups of up-and-coming bands) at unusual, not-quite-legal venues in the city and are on the staff of Showpaper, a free paper that lists gigs of that variety. Marler also works at the publication.

“I would compare the current system of Internet music distribution to a bizarro 1990s if all that existed were Virgin Megastores and Barnes and Nobles, and even though they had great selections and relatively good coverage of underground releases – they were still overpriced and lame,” says Patrick, who offers up show listings via his “Todd P” website and email listserv. “Today’s digital outlets are the same. I’m confident that if the savvy indie ‘DIY’ music fan had a smart, technologically advanced ‘independent record store’ option from which to buy digital download music on the Internet, they would start paying for music and supporting musicians financially in greater numbers than they do today.”

According to Joe Ahearn, there is a real need for that kind of service among the denizens of the indie scene. Although zines, cassettes and other tangible items abound in that realm — Showpaper itself is print-only — the web is very much tied up in the dissemination of music. “Kids might be starting tape labels left and right, but they’re posting each new release on Soundcloud and scanning the covers to their blog at the same time,” he says. A concept like DISTRO would make it easier for interested parties to find and consume that culture, all in one place.

Right now, however, DISTRO is just that — a concept. Marler and Co. still have several thousand dollars to go before funding is complete. If they do hit that goal, however, Marler plans to unveil DISTRO 2.0 on July 4. “We’d love to coincide this launch with special, exclusive music offerings on the platform, with a wide range of participating bands,” he says. Given the folks participating in the project and their connections in the underground music world, that offering promises to be pretty damn intriguing.

YouTube Lets You Watch More Music Videos in 3D | MTV Hive » Music Technology

Image courtesy of Flickr, Matt Neale

In September, YouTube introduced a new feature that allows content creators to convert their 2D videos to 3D with a simple click (YouTube has featured 3D videos for a while, but it was a pretty laborious process to make them). YouTube claims “hundreds of thousands” of vids have gone tri-dimensional since then, and we’ve seen a few musicians taking advantage of this new tool, including Chris Bathgate in the creepy yet lovely video for his equally creepy but lovely song, “Big Ghost.”

Now, viewers can watch videos in 3D whether the artist has clicked the 3D option or not. (You’ll need 3D glasses, though, so perhaps hit up a showing of Titanic and “forget” to return the specs when you leave.) Simply click on the gear icon under the video to surface the 3D option and prepare to be (kind of) blown away.

Before you go gamboling off to YouTube, super stoked to experience all of your favorite vids in futuristic 3D, there’s a catch: The user has to have uploaded their video in 1080p (a.k.a. high definition) in order for you to render their work even more trippy. A quick cruise through some vids quickly reveals that not that many videos are uploaded in that format (it takes a really long time), so it seems content creators still have some agency after all.

Big Freedia Working on a ‘Booty Battle’ Game For PS3 or Wii | MTV Hive » Music Technology

Image courtesy of The Big Freedia Booty Battle

“I’m always playing a game. My boyfriend, he loves the PlayStation — I have to literally fight him to get on that,” Freedia says, explaining why she created a game in the first place. She’s a huge fan of fighting games like Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter as well as games featuring super heroes and villains (not so much the sports games).

The initial iteration of Booty Battle seems mostly a promotional tool: players are challenged to use the arrow keys to control the ass-undulating speed of their chosen avatars whilst a Big Freedia jam plays. If they beat the other dancer, they will receive a download of a Freedia song. High scores can also be shared via social media.

According to Freedia, she had a pretty big hand in directing the creation of the game — right down to the size of the avatar’s asses. As for winning, she really only has one piece of advice: “Just work those fingers even harder like you need to work your butt and that score will go up even higher.”

Freedia also frequently hosts live-action booty battles on tour (the next of which kicks off today), and hopes to incorporate the game into the live show from now on — projecting it behind the stage during battles. “It’s going to be even more interesting now that we have the song that goes with the game when we do it live in concert,” she says.

No word yet on when we can expect Booty Battle on our gaming devices, but here’s hoping that the next version will incorporate Freedia’s much-loved super heroes. When asked what her ideal super hero would be, she responds, “It would probably be a super hero that used their ass for power. That would be my super hero — just a big old butt.”

PlayGrit Merges Fingerpainting With Playlisting | MTV Hive » Music Technology

Image courtesy of PlayGrit

Rather aptly, Evolver.fm compares the $2 iOS app to wildly popular game Draw Something — in that after firing up the app, you’re encouraged to do just that. Sort your music collection by either genre, artist, album, play count, etc and you’ll be presented with a grid of colors connoting those elements. You can then drag your finger through the field of colored dots (each representing a song), drawing anything your heart desires, and the app will create a playlist from what you draw.

I was able to pull together some pretty rad playlists with my inspired drawings — although they were often very heavy on Jay Reatard’s Teenage Hate and sported some song repetitions. The biggest oversight, however, is that you are not able to save your playlist creations for later listening — a bummer, especially since the app is more expensive than the average offering. Still, PlayGrit really makes it easy to weed out the stray Christmas music, which is a blessing to my summer-sound-craving ears.

Spotify Turns Facebook Timeline Into Musical History Lesson | MTV Hive » Music Technology

Image courtesy of Flickr, Steve A Johnson

Facebook introduced us to its new Timeline profile/Page format back in September, simultaneously announcing an expanded integration with apps like Spotify that allows users to check out what music friends are listening to. Timeline, if you haven’t yet seen it, renders your Facebook profile or Page as a kind of scrapbook, organizing life events and content by year.

Spotify, it seems, has taken full advantage of the Timeline format, which allows you to enter in major life events in the past, with its new “A History of Music” layout. With events dating back to 1001 AD (the birth of Organum, apparently) the Facebook Page now acts as a kind of history lesson, including links to Spotify playlists where applicable. Spotify will be adding more events to the Timeline as the weeks go by.

Annoying layout issues aside, ideas like these — ones that take advantage of the change rather than bristle against it — signal that companies and individuals can increasingly find creative ways to express themselves within Facebook’s constantly shifting framework.

Soundfluence is Like Klout For Bands | MTV Hive » Music Technology

Image courtesy of Soundfluence

Soundfluence is a hack straight out of Music Hack Day Amsterdam that plugs into your Soundcloud account and — Klout-style — measures your influence on the music-sharing platform depending on a variety of factors (followers, influence of followers, playbacks, comments, downloads, favorites, etc).

I tested it out with my own meager account and received a designation of “Beginner”: “Someone gave you a present of some recording software. But somewhere along the way you missed the point that you need both good music and a promotional edge in order to succeed. We suggest you record something great, then message your favourite artists to check it out.” Big-name accounts, like Sigur Rós for example, are deemed “Genius,” while up-and-coming acts are dubbed “Journeyman” (you’re on your way!).

Make sure to block out a good portion of your afternoon for all the desperate and obsessive comparing-yourself-to-other-people that this hack provokes.