MALMÖ, SWEDEN – Computers are pretty neat. How else can relatively unmusical people produce music that sounds like it was made by a pro? We recently took a look at MashUp DJ, which lets anyone remix two songs together in three clicks — and now, at Music Hack Day Malmö, we’ve witnessed a step sequencer…
Along with the question of collecting music in 2013, we’ve been a little obsessed with another digital music theme — namely, whether so-called “average” people will ever make their own music, the way they make their own photographs and videos, which are both recent developments, historically speaking. As we put it earlier, making a song…
Music fans, by definition, listen to music. We don’t always listen in the same way. Sometimes, we know just what we want to hear; sometimes we have a vague idea; and other times, we grow sick of what we already know, and maybe even feel a creeping sense of guilt that we’re not reading everything…
Last week, Sean Adams from Drowned in Sound and DiS readers shared with my editor a bunch of methods they use to deal with the problem of digital-age music collection. The list includes some great ideas, but the hunt for the most efficient way to collect music is still on. Later.fm (free; web) stands as a pretty good contender,…
If you were to build an online radio station that could channel characters from Arrested Development, what would you call it? Clearly, “Bluthify.” A free Arrested Development-themed web app, Bluthify.me lets you tune into radio stations “created” by all the main characters on the show. Yes, every single amazing, mind-altering Bluth character is represented in all of…
The top trending music app in Google’s weird Chrome web app store today is ButtonBass DubStep Piano (direct web link). If you ever wondered what Skrillex is doing back there, this will give you an idea; it works in a similar way to the MPCs and other equipment used by pros to trigger samples. This…
You might not have heard of the Belgian band, Amatorski. Neither had we, but The Guardian UK called them “the best Belgian act around,” which counts for something — as does the fact that their music sounds pretty great (even after playing this on repeat). Most of all, we’re impressed by their Deleting Borders project, an interactive HTML5 collaboration…
Back in my day, making mixtapes required patience and creativity. Spending hours recording songs from CDs or tapes onto a blank cassette meant taking time to sequence songs, making sure each song flowed into the next. Then music transformed from atoms into bits, and mixtapes into playlists, which only take seconds or minutes to make,…
Ever since Turntable.fm launched its group listening platform, one of the most popular room themes has been some variant of “music for working.” Depending on your genre(s) of choice, a number of options exist — Indie While You Work and the Coding Soundtrack Lounge in particular — but plenty of other rooms there seem suitable for music…
Paul Lamere, the man who brought us the Infinite Jukebox, Bohemian Rhapsichord, Bangarang Boomerang, and other fun stuff is at it again with Boil the Frog, a free web app that’s a little bit like “six degrees of separation.” Boil the Frog is a curiosity — a conversation piece of sorts, but it’s also a new way…
Have you played the Skrillex videogame yet? Well, it is here, and you can play it using nothing more than your browser, arrow keys, and space bar. Jason Oda, who gained notoriety with the breakout retro-gaming hit emogame in ancient times (2001), built Skrillex Quest (direct link) for the dubstep superstar as a promotional item. He had…
Another week, another thing for collecting music on the internet that people might or might not want to use. The latest: Whyd, a social music service that lets you find music from free music sources across the web and start a collection of songs on your Whyd profile page — kind of like an expanded, not-as-alluring…
We have new and interesting apps to share with you in our latest installment of This Week In Music Apps, including iOS, Android, and web apps, just like we do (or try to do) each and ever week. First, take a peek at our latest app reviews (as opposed to hardware):
When you press play in any music service, you want to hear music right away. Even if the files you’re playing are stored up in the cloud, web and mobile apps must maintain the illusion that the files live on one’s own device. If the lag time is too long, our brains tell us that…
The indie video game Minecraft has gotten popular — like, “oxygen” popular, in some circles, with over seven million copies sold. Now, a similar interface has spread into the realm of HTML5 music apps — in this case, for the Google Chrome web browser. ToneCraft from Dinahmoe, an “integrated music and sound production house,” takes the…
