Digital Motion dot net

Change this to independant media creators and it still makes sense in these days when you can do it all yourself if you are willing to do the work.

[via This Week In Media]

Ableton and Cycling 74 are going to be collaborating on new products. This is pretty major. Ableton is well established at creating software that is musical and easy to use. Cycling 74 know how to create really powerful, configurable stuff. Both companies claim that their work together will create new products and that their current product lines will continue. This is very exciting, hopefully, we won’t have to wait too long to find out what they will be producing.

Here is Cycling ’74’s take on the agreement
Here is the release from Ableton

So, Daniel Gross in Slate read the same article that I did in the NYTimes and came away with a very different conclusion.

He thinks that the CD (and the album) are alive and well, it is just the music business model that is bad. He points to several (of my favorite) small chain music stores that cater to more of a musical niche and says that since their business is booming, the CD must be doing just fine.

This argument makes no sense. It is like saying that because dance music companies and some independent record labels still produce and sell vinyl that the record is still alive and well.

The folks that shop at Rasputin’s, Wall of Sound, Other Music, and other are fanatics. How do I know? I’m one of them and I recognize the glint in the eye of my fellow shoppers when they come across that obscure Radboud Mens disc in the rack. We will continue to buy CDs (and vinyl) for a long time to come. Long after the rest of mainstream America has switched to digital downloads completely and the stores that cater to us will continue to thrive.

That said, this ballgame is nearly over. The fat lady has sung. Even the independents are moving to downloads. Shipping shiny discs around the world makes even less sense when you sell fewer of them and are completely dependent on your livelihood on the customer paying the store, the store paying the distributor, and the distributor paying you and then you recouping all the costs of manufacturing those shiny discs.

The business model for downloads is SOOO much more compelling than the business model for selling physical product. The only reason the majors haven’t switched is because they have so much invested in the infrastructure and can’t understand where things are going well enough to get in front of it. (Suing their customers isn’t helping too much either).

Lets bury this thing already, but first, please buy as many Unit Circle CDs as you can. I don’t want to store these things forever…

[my previous article]

SonicBirth

Yesterday, Sonicbirth version 1.2 was released, and it was announced that it is now freeware and open source. SonicBirth is a tool that helps you build your own AU plug-ins reaktor or MAX-stylie.

Create Digital Music » OS X 10.4.9 Breaks Some Audio Unit Plug-ins?

I’ve been hearing a number of reports that the Mac OS X 10.4.9 update causes significant issues with some Audio Unit plug-ins, including those from popular developers Audio Damage and Ohmforce. (See Analog Industries blog for a comment thread and reports on Audio Damage; there’s also discussion on the Core Audio developer list which I hope will yield some revelations. Update: Note that Audio Damage is having only development issues; their plug-ins will work just fine if you’re a user.) This update apparently installs yet another version of the AU validator, which could be one clue. Apple has also made significant changes to QuickTime in recent releases, which can also cause issues with audio software in some cases.

Branding the music artist
The long tail of Music
Music Marketing 2.0
The Future of Music
All of these are related to the article: Way Behind The Music

Ars Technica thinks so, and they think that Apple is going to leverage Leopard and Touch Screen displays to do it. On one hand this makes a sort of sense. They point out that it explains the delay in iLife’07 and Leopard details. Especially given how twitchy they have been about revenue recognition with their brush with the SEC, it actually makes a lot of sense. However, you can never be sure of the real truth with Apple until it is announced by Steve on a stage somewhere. NAB? Maybe, sorta, but it seems like this would warrant a Cupertino venue.

We’ll see.

[via Chris Pirillo’s Picks]

Audio Video Edition: Specially Selected Free and Open Source Software | Audio/Video ngo-in-a-box

Nice collection of links to the best Open Source digital media software for all platforms.

The physical ui (the table) is nice, but isn’t new (MIT has been demoing something like this for many years). However, I really like the UI between the different blocks on the table. It is one of the clearest mechanisms I’ve seen for showing the interactions between oscillators and filters and other such analog-y synthesizer pieces. I’d love to see someone code that up in a flash demo or to see Native Instruments incorporate it into a new view for Reaktor. This would be a great tool for teaching synthesis concepts to students.

I hadn’t seen this one in a while, but discovered it again. It’s got some meat in there about their approaches to music.

Tom Waits - in conversation with Elvis Costello Interview
Option magazine, July/Aug 1989