ARTICLE FROM WIRED.CO.UK
By Duncan Geere |05 February 2010 |Categories: Culture, Technology
The music industry seems to be in trouble. The major labels have been in free-fall for a decade. Consumers are increasingly spending their time and money on videogames. The charts are a never-ending list of X-Factor finalists. Despite a stream of young acts bubbling under the surface, fewer bands seem to be 'making it' than ever.
Many pin the blame on the web -- where a slow start from the industry has put the power into the hands of technology companies and filesharers. But the music industry has begun to fight back. A growing trend is seeing music becoming more interactive, using games, websites and mobile apps to allow people to play with music, rather than just listening to it.
The idea behind all of this interactivity is to increase what marketers call "engagement". With the vast quantities of entertainment content being pushed at people every waking hour of the day, how do you make something stick? By allowing the listener space to explore the music themselves by giving them simple remix tools, or playing a game that interacts with the music.
The positive effect of this approach has already been seen. Aging rock acts have seen an entirely new generation of fans appearing at their concerts and buying their music simply because it's included in games like Rock BandGuitar Hero. The sales of Aerosmith's "Same Old Song and Dance" jumped 500 percent the week after it was released as downloadable content for Guitar Hero. and
Even lesser-known acts can benefit from this effect. Powermetallers Dragonforce also saw sales of their song "Through the Fire and Flames" - thought to be one of the hardest tracks in the game - jump 500 percent after Guitar Hero III's release. At Christmas 2007, when many had just been bought iTunes gift cards and a copy of Guitar Hero, the sales jump reached nearly 2000 percent above pre-release figures.
Another attempt at benefiting from a gaming/music tie-in is being pioneered by a company called Reality Jockey with an iPhone application called RjDj. The app can change and adapt songs based on input from the handset's various sensors - if the phone is moving about a lot, the music could become more intense. If you're walking, the beat can match your pace. It can even take a microphone input to inject ambient noise into the songs.
This means that you never hear the song twice in the same way. Depending on how obvious or subtle the changes are in a particular piece, the song can be relatively unchanged by this external input, or it could be dramatically different. Little Boots has her own RjDj application that offers "secret" sections of her single Remedy if you listen to the track in the right environments. A perfect recipe to get fans to listen incredibly intently to the track.
Another app, Retro racing game Lilt Line, challenges you to avoid walls while tapping the screen of your phone in time with a dubstep beat provided by 16bit. It's an album of sorts -- there are 14 songs in 14 levels -- but unlike a traditional album, you can't listen to the later songs until you've passed the first ones.
But some don't like this technique, seeing it as a marketing gimmick polluting the simple, pure expression of musical talent and emotion. Other companies are trying to tap into this opposing sentiment, delivering stripped down experiences that present just the music and do it with the minimum of fuss.
The most famous of these accolytes of simplicity is Swedish music streaming service Spotify, which puts you mere seconds away from any of the 7 million tracks in its library -- then promptly gets out of the way and just lets you listen to it. You can create playlists, share tracks with friends, and listen on your phone, but the music listening experience always takes centre stage (if you pay not to have ads).
Another service, Soundcloud, offers a very simple way for musicians to share their tracks with both collaborators and the public. Upload a sound file, and you can then embed it onto a blog or website. It is interactive -- it invites listeners to comment on particular moments of the track -- but that interactivity never gets in the way of the act of listening, it merely augments it.
Andy Malt, editor of industry newsletter CMU Daily, told Wired UK: "Most people don't want to have to jump through hoops to listen to music that they've just paid for. I engage with music by listening to it and I don't feel that relationship needs to be "enhanced" in any way."
"However, I can see why putting one of your songs in a game is a smart move, even if you make it downloadable for free. In fact, more so if it's free. You've got a captive audience who might listen to that song over and over again, sometimes in one sitting".
There may be a way of artfully and gracefully making music more interactive. RjDj's experiments with enviromental modification are an interesting start. But we're yet to see a truly great piece of musical art that comes in the form of an iPhone game.
In fact, right now, most of the offerings from the major labels contain constant offers of lyrics, biographies, tour dates and merchandise that barely conceal a frantic, desperate attempt to upsell in any way possible. It degrades the music that it accompanies. It cheapens the experience.
And the other problem is that many of these approaches limit how and when you can listen. You can't transfer any of the music that you've bought in Guitar Hero or Rock Band to your MP3 player. You can't burn the music out of Lilt Line onto a mix CD to play in your car. It's stuck -- which devalues it further.
So while there may be a lot of potential and value in what games, mobile applications and the web can bring to music, let's have a little bit of restraint. Interactivity should augment music, not swamp it in a mess of marketing. Ultimately, the songs should speak for themselves.
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