This generation (my generation) has grown up with file sharing and digital downloads. The amount of education required to reverse this progression will happen (if) long after we’re dead. After reading all of the comments here, I don’t know if its the music industry to blame or the people downloading the music to blame. We have to take a long, hard look at the generational gap here to understand the problem. First generation, the advent of recorded music, is used to a booming industry of selling full-length albums and being in control of the type of music released (because hey, it was pretty expensive to record anything back in the day). Now you look at the present, you have the millennial generation with their ever-present ADHD. The internet comes and BOOM…. information overload. You can download any music, video, tv show you want for free…. not too mention pirate recording software that allows any chump with 2 ears and 2 thumbs to record music.

Now here is my question……. what were musicians doing to make money before you could record music? Before there were major labels, was the only way to make music by touring? We have to realize that records have only been around about what….. 100 years? OMG I bet the big opera houses thought it was the end of the world when trains allowed musicians to effectively tour and take business to other states/countries!

I’ve come to the conclusion that while we waste away our lives fighting copyright battles and publishing deals gone awry, the next generation of musicians is learning to adapt. I know many musicians that have done everything independently and never been signed to a record deal that view this social media environment and ability to record on Garageband as the best thing since sliced bread. We have to accept the inevitable…. that Major Labels are going the way of the dino and that the internet is here to stay. While we’re here trying to figure out how to make as much money as we used…. .com start-ups and app developers are steering a new course for the future of music. So do we spend more decades trying to beat them…. or adapt and join them?

Sincerely,

Jacobo

The music industry is abuzz with indie-rock act Arcade Fire’s nomination for the prestigious album of the year at this year’s Feb. 13 Grammy Awards.

“The Suburbs,” full of poignant music ranging from moody ballads to grandiose anthems, was hailed as a masterpiece on several music critics’ top 10 lists for 2010, with fans from Bruce Springsteen to David Bowie to Bono also singing the band’s praises.

The nod is the biggest indication that this could be a landmark year for artists linked to independent labels, with Grammy nominations in more than a dozen categories. And it signals a growing sophistication on the part of such smaller imprints as Glassnote Records, run by big-label alumnus Daniel Glass, in recording high-quality albums.

“That recognition says a lot, that out of all the music out there, they (indie acts) made it to this point,” says Gail Mitchell, a Billboard writer affiliated with the Los Angeles chapter of the Recording Academy, which votes on the Grammys.

“They are breaking down the barriers for other indie acts to move forward. It’s a boon for us (radio) listeners because maybe … it will bust that bar wide open and we’re going to hear a wider expanse of music.”

This year’s nominations also help to validate the academy’s campaign to diversify its membership and welcome acts beyond those backed by the marketing muscle of huge record labels.

“The Recording Academy has been very gracious to us,” says Jim Mahoney, vice president of the American Association of Independent Music. “They have been interested in reaching out to us.”

Steady progress

As big labels have struggled and the Internet has provided new ways for music to reach listeners, the quality and reach of independent acts and labels has achieved Grammy-worthy levels.

‘The indies had a connotation for so many years of putting out subpar music, ‘garage-y’ music — underrecorded, underwritten, underproduced, not mastered properly,” says Glass, who’s based in New York. “And guess what? It didn’t do that well (at the Grammys). The truth is, you have to make exquisite records.”

A year after Glassnote recording artist Phoenix won the Grammy for best alternative album, a category where indie acts can flourish, Glass’ latest project — Britain’s Mumford & Sons — is nominated in more mainstream categories, such as best new artist and best rock song (“Little Lion Man”).

Mumford and Florence & the Machine, a second British act that was virtually unknown in America a year ago, as well as indie jazz singer-bassist Esperanza Spalding, will do battle with teen-pop monster Justin Bieber and rising R&B star Drake for the best new-artist trophy.

Ray LaMontagne, who once lived and wrote music in an isolated Maine cabin, is up for song of the year (“Beg Steal or Borrow”), against powerhouse acts including an Eminem-Rihanna duet, Lady Antebellum and Cee Lo Green.

The contest for best rock performance by a duo or group is brimming with acts with indie roots — the Black Keys, Kings of Leon, Muse and Arcade Fire. The same can be said about the alternative-album category, which features Vampire Weekend, Band of Horses and Broken Bells, as well as Arcade Fire and the Black Keys.

Elsewhere, such left-of-center acts as Carolyn Malachi (urban/alternative), Dweezil Zappa (rock instrumental), the Steeldrivers and Dailey & Vincent (both for country performance by a duo or group) are competing with such heavy hitters as Lady Gaga, Dave Matthews, the Zac Brown Band and Green.

Every nomination for an act with independent ties is a victory, given that the major labels grab 85 percent of the sales revenue despite releasing only 10 percent of the 100,000 albums marketed annually in America, according to Terry Tompkins, who teaches music courses and supervises the student-run record label at Drexel University in Philadelphia.

“I was surprised when I looked at best new artist and saw Mumford & Sons and Florence & the Machine in there,” Tompkins says. “That’s tremendous.”

A growing reach

The community of acts with independent links has become broader as indie labels form distribution and marketing alliances with the majors and some acts accept deals with bigger labels.

Arcade Fire, nominated for three Grammys this year, is a prime example: Spawned in Canada as a songwriting partnership between Win Butler and Regine Chassagne, the group’s eclectic mix of pop, classical, punk and French sounds brought widespread acclaim on 2004’s “Funeral” CD.

Although Arcade Fire since has shared the stage with U2, played such huge festivals as Coachella and Lollapalooza, topped the Billboard 200 chart with 2010’s “The Suburbs” and seen its songs used in movies, the group has stayed with the indie Merge label.

LaMontagne, in contrast, initially signed with independent publishing house Chrysalis Music, but his four albums have been released by major-label RCA.

And although LaMontagne has enjoyed high-profile exposure on TV’s “Saturday Night Live,” “Rescue Me” and “Bones” and in the movie “27 Dresses,” his earthy take on modern folk music has been embraced by indie listeners.

Drexel’s Tompkins says that despite the blurring of the indie/mainstream divide, it’s not hard to identify the latest crop of Grammy independents. “The music is outside of the mainstream,” he says.

Florence & the Machine, for example, creates a hard-to-label brand of pop. The Black Keys put a primal-yet-modern stamp on the blues. Spalding’s latest album, “Chamber Music Society,” dips into everything from jazz to tango to pop. And the Kings of Leon have maintained their indie cred as their music has evolved from rough-around-the-edges Southern rock to more bombastic, arena-ready material.

The final tally

So, with the growing number of accolades heaped upon their music, do the indie acts actually have a chance of winning?

Mark Harmon, president of Beggars Group USA, which overseas four independent labels, thinks the fact that Vampire Weekend’s “Contra” album on the XL Recordings imprint debuted at No. 1 gives the band a chance.

“The nomination is great,” he says. “The competition in the (alternative album) category is tough. We are hopeful we have a good shot at winning. I don’t know that we are banking on it.”

Tompkins sees a bigger challenge: “For album of the year, Arcade Fire is up against Lady Gaga, Katy Perry and Eminem. There is little chance (Arcade Fire) is going to win.

“Ray LaMontagne is up against Eminem and Lady Antebellum. Mumford & Sons, and Florence & the Machine are up against Justin Bieber and Drake. So the likelihood that they are going to win … is not there.”

Grammy chapter member Mitchell says mainstream votes in best new artist could be split between Bieber and Drake, giving one of the indie artists a chance to slip in.

For his part, Mahoney, of the independent-music group, is satisfied with this year’s crop of nominations.

“There’s such a sense of partnership or an ownership stake from almost any staff member … at an independent label on each artist’s project,” he says.

“So to get a nomination, to be recognized by people from the Recording Academy who you could see as your peers is tremendously rewarding.”

Nearly a quarter of global Internet traffic consists of people downloading pirated content, with about half of that traffic derived from peer-to-peer file-sharing technology BitTorrent, according to a report funded by the entertainment industry released Monday.

The report said that 23.8 percent of worldwide Internet traffic involves copyrighted material that is illegally downloaded or uploaded, such as music, movies and TV shows. Half of that illegal content is downloaded on sites using BitTorrent, a free, open-source technology that facilitates trading of large content files, according to the report.

The research was commissioned by NBC Universal, which is now owned by Comcast, the cable giant that provides broadband Internet among other services.

The entertainment industry has called on lawmakers in Washington to get tougher on punishing those who infringe on copyrights. NBC Universal general counsel Rick Cotton has made several trips to Capitol Hill to express his concerns about the growing problem of online piracy.

The report was authored by David Price, head of piracy intelligence at Envisional, an Internet consulting firm in the United Kingdom that tracks online piracy and other fraud. At an event hosted by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, Price will release the results of the report examining how much bandwidth is used by illegal downloads.

The research showed that content downloaded illegally from sites utilizing BitTorrent technology makes up over 11 percent of global Internet traffic. Cyberlockers and video-streaming sites are responsible for around 5 percent and 1.4 percent of that traffic, respectively.

In the U.S., more than 17 percent of Web traffic consists of infringed content and roughly half of that traffic is attributable to sites using BitTorrent, the report found. Meanwhile, pirated works in cyberlockers — such as RapidShare and Megaupload — and video streaming sites make up around two percent and 1.5 percent of all Internet traffic in the U.S., respectively.

“There’s a lot of demand out there for free, pirated content,” Price said regarding the results of the report. “On the positive side, it tells you there’s an enormous demand for content on the Internet. There’s enormous opportunity for the legitimate means of content and it should go hand in hand [with the demand for content] to reduce illegitimate file-sharing.”

This isn’t the first time BitTorrent has been pegged as a generator of illegally copied music, movies and TV content that people can access and trade for free. Just last week, Google started blocking “torrent” from appearing in its search box’s autcomplete feature. It’s one of the search company’s new copyright policies that aims to prevent piracy-related terms from popping up in autocomplete so people have a harder time finding pirated content. San Francisco-based BitTorrent, which develops file-sharing tools and other technologies, said Google went too far and encouraged the search company “to reevaluate this decision expeditiously.”

Washington has also taken steps to crack down on copyright infringement. A joint campaign last fall by the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security shut down the Web addresses of 82 sites that were said to offer counterfeit goods and pirated music and movie content. Near the end of the last Congress, the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously passed a controversial bill that targets rogue websites.

The report said it excluded pornographic content, which typically comprises a large percentage of pirated works on the Internet, because it can be “difficult to discern” whether its copyright has been violated. However, Price noted that the percentage of global and U.S. Internet traffic that contains infringed content would be a lot higher if pornography was included.

NBC Universal said it asked Envisional to conduct the report so it could determine how big of a problem copyright infringement is and how much bandwidth pirated works soak up on the Internet. For the entertainment industry, today’s Envisional report provides more proof that online copyright infringement is a significant problem. In addition, it bolsters concerns of broadband providers about the misuse of Internet services to perpetrate illegal activity.

But similar research reports about online piracy have been deemed inaccurate and allegedly exaggerate the scope of the problem. A report released by online protection firm MarkMonitor in January found that Megavideo, Megaupload and RapidShare collectively received more than 21 billion visits annually. RapidShare immediately fired back against the report, picking at its methodology and arguing that it ignored the fact that “millions of customers use the service for perfectly legitimate purposes.”

To find the percentage of Internet traffic that consists of infringed works using BitTorrent, Price tracked the top 10,000 swarms — or groups of people downloading the same piece of content — individually via PublicBitTorrent, which acts as a traffic cop that pairs a user with someone who has the particular file they want to download. Of all the material in the top 10,000 swarms, Envisional found that around 99.2 percent infringed upon copyright laws.

Price is confident in the report’s methodology and is ready to defend it, if necessary.

“We’re looking forward to debating the methodology. There are some people within the anti-piracy world [who] are not going to take issue with it, but they’re going to want to understand the methodology very carefully,” said Price, adding that “ticking apart reports is one of my great pleasures.”

By Jennifer Martinez

(Source: hamptonroads.com)

In our digital times, art and artists are now easily available to nearly every person in all corners of the globe. A sense of taste and style that was once reserved to a metropolitan few before mass communication can be accessed by any ordinary person with an internet connection. The only downside to all of this is local art and culture can sometime suffer.

Independently-produced music, for example, is prolific and never so easily gleaned by a listener. It is possible to tune into the newest bands on the biggest music scenes across the country. Surfing the Internet looking for new tastes in music is not bad, but listeners should turn their ears to the local scene every now and again to see what’s going on. Supporting local art and music ensures that the pulse of a vibrant community beats strong.

Here in Starkville, more than a casual glance is required to find some great local music, but when sought is easily discovered. Also, asking about live bands at establishments and supporting a local band when it plays helps ensure a local scene thrives.

Cover bands are not what make for a diverse music and art scene. Bands must play covers to satisfy crowds at times, but there are places where a band playing sets of cover songs is obscene. Some bands starting out at the local watering hole are not yet experienced, and playing covers helps them find a crowd, so it’s understandable. However, most musicians do produce their own work and if they can feel comfortable enough to share their creations in public, listeners should care enough to give them a listen. Originality inspires more than mimicry and provides the impetus for art to exist. Even the biggest cover band owns its existence to paying tribute to an artist and his originality. Why can we not celebrate originality in our own backyard as well?

Our country grows ever more homogenous. You can buy the same things in nearly any town; we all watch the same television programs and listen to the same music.

We should cling to that which is novel and produced in our locale. Not only will we benefit, but preserving aspects of local culture ensures future generations get a sense of who they are.

There are aspects of our local culture that many buy into, like tailgating. An SEC tailgate is like none other, but as much energy is devoted to such events on a mass scale, a single farmer producing locally grown produce expends just as much effort single-handedly. Artistry is where you find it, but in recognizing inherent artistry the walls of division in society begin to crumble.

Published by:  The Reflector, Student Newspaper for Mississippi State University

(Source: reflector-online.com)

Have you bought a video game recently? Have you ever made an in-game purchase? Do you consider pre-roll, banner or in-game advertising acceptable? Do you think buying video games online or on a mobile device is normal? Has the video game industry turned social networking into a revenue generator through multiplayer gaming?
Every day, I’m meeting people who could answer “yes” to all these questions - which raised a very important question in my own mind: if we replace the word “game” with “music,” why aren’t these answers still “yes?”

The music industry has a lot to learn from the video game industry. We’ve finally gotten past the “save the CD” era, but the music industry is still lagging when it comes to proactively developing new business models. Just as the video game industry has continually adapted and reinvented itself in the last few decades – arcades to consoles to mobile to online to apps to ad-supported and so on – the music industry must learn to quickly spot new consumer trends and behaviors, and then adapt the technology and business models to turn those trends into new revenue streams.
When discussing business models today, there are several critical consumer trends that should not be overlooked by the music industry:

• Consumers like to be social while they are entertained. This was always true to a degree, but now even the solo-music device (the portable player) has been flipped to become the most social device (thank you, iPhone apps).
• Consumers expect to personalize everything. We always saw it in mix tapes and remixes, but that was the domain of hardcore music lovers. Now, personalization is just an expected standard feature.
• Consumers don’t simply want to socialize, they want to compete. Socializing isn’t simply about talking to each other and sharing, it’s about showing who is king of the hill.

Our challenge as an industry to turn these trends into revenue streams, not by simply marketing music downloads but by creating new categories of products that fit how people listen, use, create, socialize, share and, yes, listen to music.

(Source: blog.mxp4.com)

Article by Sarah Hadland

If you look at the internet you might well think that it is a rights-free zone where intellectual property law does not apply. The truth of the matter is that rights owners and the courts are struggling to keep up with the pace of technology says Sarah Hadland, Intellectual Property partner at Boyes Turner.

On-line auction sites in particular are full of counterfeit branded goods that are peddled as authentic to unsuspecting buyers, and a bargain to others. Social media and file sharing has had a similar effect on the music and publishing industries and as a result rights holders continue to find themselves losing out on millions of pounds of revenue.

Over the last few years, rights holders have tried to tame the internet and enforce their rights. The most high profile cases have been those where individuals, including children, have been pursued by record companies for copyright infringement for downloading songs without permission. Only recently, a group called Operation Payback which believes that ideas, and the music and literature which results from them, should be freely available, hacked the website of ACS:Law (which handles a high volume of piracy cases), leaking the personal data of thousands of ISP customers.

Other high-profile, although less controversial, actions by brand owners have involved eBay and Google, in particular Google AdWords.

eBay – a vehicle for selling fake goods?

In May 2009, litigation between eBay and L’Oreal concerning the sale of fake L’Oreal perfumes on eBay resulted in a ruling that eBay is simply the host of the site and not liable for any infringing goods sold on it. Further, the Court held that eBay already takes adequate steps to help prevent the sale of infringing or counterfeit goods. For example, brand owners can sign up to its VeRo programme which helps those wishing to prevent the advertisement on eBay of goods which infringe their rights, and track down those responsible. Having lost a similar case in France against LVMH, this ruling was important for eBay.

‘key words’ and ‘adwords’ – a growing problem for brand owners

The other issue which was dealt with in the L’Oreal case was the use of keywords by eBay. EBay purchases keywords consisting of various trade marks on search engines such as Google and Yahoo. It selects the keywords on the basis of the activity on its site and their purpose is to cause a sponsored link to eBay to be displayed when a user types in the keyword. One of the keywords referred to in the case, for example, was “Shu Uemura”. L’Oreal claimed that eBay’s use of its trade marks as keywords infringed those trade marks.

The UK Court considered that a Europe-wide approach should be taken to the use of keywords and therefore referred the matter to the European Court of Justice (now the Court of Justice of the European Union - CJEU). The ECJ has not yet made a ruling but in light of recent rulings, it is likely that the court will conclude that the mere use of trade marks as keywords does not infringe.

Google AdWords is Google’s main income generator. Google “sells” keywords to companies so that when a user types those words into the search engine, the company’s advert is listed as a sponsored link to the right of the search results page. Advertisers often use the brand names of their better known competitors in their keywords. This enables their website advertisement to appear in the list of sponsored links, preferably at the top of the list. The brand owner’s website may appear lower down the list or only in the general search results.

So, what does constitute an infringement?

Trade mark proprietors complain that such use of their trade marks constitutes infringement. This was claimed by Louis Vuitton in the case it brought against Google for allowing advertisers to purchase LV’s trade marks, such as Dior, for use as adwords. The litigation resulted in a referral to the ECJ which made a ruling earlier this year. The court ruled that by merely allowing advertisers to purchase key-words corresponding to a third party’s registered trade marks, Google was not infringing those trade marks. However, infringement may occur where the consumer is unable to distinguish the advertiser’s goods from those of the brand owner.

A similar claim was brought against an advertiser by Porta Kabin Ltd. It complained that a company called Prima Kabin BV was using the trade mark PORTAKABIN and various mis-spellings of it, as key words, and that this infringed its trade mark rights. Again, the matter was referred to the ECJ which handed down its ruling in July of this year, upholding the Louis Vuitton v Google ruling.

What does this mean for brand owners?

As a result of the ECJ’s decision in the Louis Vuitton case, Google has changed its policy. Originally, when the search engine received a complaint from a brand owner that its trade mark was being used as an ad word, it would stop the use by the third party. Now, it essentially ignores complaints about the purchase by third parties, in Europe, of trade marks as ad words unless it is alleged that that the sponsored link which appears as a result of the use of the trade mark as a key-word makes it difficult for the internet user to easily distinguish the advertiser’s services or goods from those of the trade mark proprietor. In these cases Google will investigate the complaint and if upheld, will remove the advert.

With the recent cases against eBay and Google, the way in which intellectual property law applies to the internet is becoming clearer. In some areas, such as the use of adwords, the ECJ rulings favour the internet host rather than the brand owner. In others, such as the illegal downloading of music, the application of the law favours the rights owner. The difficulty here is in tracking the illegal users. No doubt there will be an increasing amount of litigation as the internet, which is already an important platform for trade, continues to develop.

(Source: mondaq.com)

By Alex Pham

Los Angeles Times

The music industry may be bellyaching about how tough times are as revenue continues to sink like a rock for traditional music companies, but don’t tell that to Jeff Price, CEO of TuneCore.

“Unit sales are up, not down,” Price said. “That means people are buying more music, not less.”

That’s sweet music for TuneCore, which makes money by charging fees to distribute music to online merchants such as Apple’s iTunes, Amazon.com’s MP3 store and Microsoft’s Zune.

Less than five years after Price launched it, TuneCore has become the world’s largest distributor of music, as measured by volume of releases. The New York company pumps out 15,000 to 30,000 new songs each week, more than most major record labels do in a year.

And it achieves that without scouting and signing artists, operating a recording studio or cranking up a huge marketing machine.

Established musicians such as Jay-Z, Trent Reznor and Aretha Franklin use TuneCore’s services, as do lesser known artists.

The story of how TuneCore became a key part of the digital-music ecosystem parallels the rise of the digital-music business, once the shock of widespread piracy began to wear off and executives began to question every assumption they had about the industry.

For Price, the day of reckoning came in October 2005 when his small New York record label, SpinArt Records, started to go under. In anguish, Price laid off employees and had no money to pay his artists.

A few weeks later, a friend, Gian Caterine, asked Price to help get his songs on iTunes, which does not deal directly with musicians but goes through distributors to get music into its digital store. As the owner of a label, Price was able to post Caterine’s rock album on iTunes.

Price later found out that companies charged artists between 10 and 15 percent of an album’s digital sales for what he did free for a friend. Record labels also digitally distribute their artists’ music, but they, too, charge a percentage of sales rather than a flat fee.

“As a musician, I make and record all the music, drive hundreds of miles to do concerts, eat ramen and sleep on floors. And here these companies were charging up to 15 percent of my sales in perpetuity, just for sending a file from one server to another,” Price said.

“It really upset me that people were getting ripped off like that.”

So he set up a website that charged artists a flat fee to distribute their songs. That meant Jay-Z paid the same amount to post his music on iTunes as someone recording in their suburban garage: $9.99 a song.

When TuneCore launched in January 2006 it disrupted a tradition of taking percentages of sales, which can mean thousands of dollars for a song by a major artist.

“I was kind of stunned it existed,” said Jim Guerinot, who manages Nine Inch Nails, No Doubt, The Offspring and others as owner of Rebel Waltz, a management company in Laguna Beach, Calif. “When I found out about it, I said, ‘Wow. You’ve got to be kidding.’ Jeff completely changed the way you did business.”

Guerinot now uses TuneCore exclusively to distribute his clients’ digital music. He and his clients like that TuneCore doesn’t demand ownership of music rights.

While TuneCore also doesn’t front money or market bands in the way a label would, its service is part of a burgeoning digital toolset that allows artists to be more self-sufficient, bypassing the labels and turning to Topspin, for example, for online marketing and TuneCore for digital distribution. In July, the latest month reported, at least eight of TuneCore’s top 10 artists had no major record label contract.

Last year, TuneCore disbursed $30 million to its artists. This year, Price forecasts that number will be $65 million to $75 million. Many of his highest grossing artists aren’t top 40 bands. They’re do-it-yourself musicians.

As a result, TuneCore has positioned itself directly in the mainstream of one of the music industry’s few growth curves: digital distribution.

The number of album releases more than doubled in the past five years, soaring to 97,800 in 2009, from 44,500 in 2004, according to research group Nielsen SoundScan. A greater portion of the albums are digital-only — 56 percent in 2009 versus just 10 percent in 2004.

And more digital releases mean more money for TuneCore, which generates an estimated $10 million to $20 million a year in revenue.

(Source: seattletimes.nwsource.com)

What I and most of my colleagues tell writers is this…. don’t try too much to type cast… a really good song is one that’s pitchable to a lot of acts.

Authenticity is key; writing your truth or the truth of the character you are writing about, which is most people’s truth as well, makes songs universal…. writers simply put into musical form the thoughts and emotions of the audience. If you have any songwriter genes at all, when you hear a song that really touches you, you say to yourself… “I could have written that”…. because you understand the experience and the emotion of the song because you’ve gone through it…..

The reality is that very few people can write those songs. The simplicity and economy of the lyric and how it falls on the melody seems easy to pull of, yet is difficult to accomplish.

When a songwriter tells me, I can write anything, just give me a target, then I know that this is a writer who’s not writing from the heart, but from the wallet and those writers typically don’t have great songs…. they have okay songs.

WHAT I WANT ~ WHAT THE MARKET CRAVES:
I want songs that reflect the human experience, good, bad, ugly, pretty, romantic, sad, happy, angst-full (is that a word?), lonely, longing, hungry, heavy, light, inspirational, motivational, informational, (I’m starting to get a good rhyme thing here….) I don’t want songs that are NOVELTY or something Brad Paisley or Toby Keith would do in that vein…. they are impossible to get cut, because the artists who sing them also write them for themselves…. no novelty need apply…

I want songs that make the listener pull over to the side of the road to focus completely on the song instead of traffic…. I want songs that make my heart sing and soar, I want songs that make me determined to be a better person, I want songs to make me feel loved, or to make me feel that someone out there knows my pain and I’m not alone with it. I want songs that give me hope for a brighter future, I want songs to make me realize how grateful I am for what I have in my life, I want songs to express the emotions I am unable to express or I am uncomfortable in expressing, I want someone to speak for me….to be my voice.

I can’t say it any better than this…

- Robyn Taylor-Drake

(Source: trioproductions.com)

Good evening Internet — are you ready to rock? The power of our old friend, the World Wide Web, offers you the next best thing to rock glory with a recent spate of innovative interactive music mash-ups that you control, pushing the boundaries of the music video as we know it.

We’ve selected our favourite mash-ups that take you around the world with the Chemical Brothers, invade your childhood memories with Arcade Fire, and build Thom Yorke’s face out of raw data. Crank your speakers all the way up to 11 for five of our favourite high-tech music videos that you control.

Arcade Fire

Foot-stomping troubadours Arcade Fire show off the video skills of HTML5 with the The Wilderness Downtown, directed by Chris Milk. It works best in Google Chrome. Type in the address of the place you grew up, and the stabbing piano of Arcade Fire’s We Used to Wait kicks in. A hooded figure begins to run down the streets you knew so well, taking you almost literally for a trip down memory lane. Sinister birds swoop over the Google Map showing your home, and dive-bomb to the ground in a gobsmacking climax as trees explode from the familiar road.

The Chemical Brothers

Big-beat legends the Chemical Brothers showed some global thinking with the video for their slice of coruscating disco noise — Midnight Madness, the first cut from the recent Brotherhood album. The video zooms around the globe courtesy of Google Earth, flashing on geotagged photos and video clips submitted by Chemical fans.

Editors

Indie goth miserablists Editors also took to the streets to launch their new album In This Light And On This Evening. Explore London from Primrose Hill to Parliament Square on Google Street View to discover photos and songs from the album.

X Japan

Technically, veteran Japanese rocker Yoshiki’s video for hard-rockin’ future single Born To Be Free isn’t actually out yet. But the video for Yoshiki’s band, the hugely popular X Japan, earns a place on the list by dint of sounding like it’s going to be utterly barking. The video was shot in Los Angeles on a prototype Panasonic 3D camcorder — and stars Marvel Comics legend Stan Lee. See? Bonkers.

Lissie

The video for US folk-rocker Lissie’s MOR jangle Cuckoo proves that everywhere you go, you take the weather with you. Click your location on the Google Map on Lissie’s website, and the video unfolds according to the weather where you are. If it’s sunny in your neck of the woods, a barefoot Lissie wears a sundress and shades as sunflowers emerge. If it’s rainy round your way — and let’s face it, if you’re British, it probably is — the band rocks out in wellies and waterproofs.

Radiohead

The beautiful video for Radiohead’s actually quite jaunty House of Cards was made without cameras or lights. Instead, Lidar technology was used to build data maps of Thom Yorke and friends, lasers rotating 360 degrees to capture the scene. Beautiful blues, greens and yellows slip away as lines and pixels sketch waveforms into human shapes.

Here’s how they did it:

If you want to have a crack at making your own visualisation of the song, you can dive into the data yourself. Radiohead are no strangers to innovative thinking: House of Cards originally appeared on the In Rainbows album, sold for as much as you wanted to pay for it.

Bonus track: Hurts

It’s not just videos that are bringing high-tech interactivity to pop music. Sharp-suited British angst-peddlers, Hurts, recently showcased their album Happiness as part of an audio novel on Spotify. In a kind of pop-music Choose Your Own Adventure, snippets of the band’s music accompany chapters of Don’t Let Go, written by Joe Stretch and read by Anna Friel. Each chapter offers you a choice of what to do next, leading you to the next track and the next chapter.

If all this musical musing has got you in the mood for more duets between music and technology, tune up with our history of musical technology firsts.