Shazam to Give TV Networks a Helping Hand in Digital Sales

The Guardian writes that as Shazam hits 250 million mobile app users, it’s expanding US-based social features. All shows can now be tagged, versus just networks or producers that have a marketing deal with it. Soon, Shazam also plans to link its app to Facebook, permitting people to publish tags to their newsfeeds.

“With more than a quarter of a billion people who have used Shazam worldwide, no other app has our scale when it comes to offering the opportunity to engage with the media that interests them the most, whether it’s music or television,” stated chief executive Andrew Fisher.

Some background: people typically use Shazam to identify — and therefore tag — any music track in its database. Now you can do the same thing with ads of partner brands and American TV shows. According to Shazam, over 160 channels have been covered for the latter.

When you tag a show, you’ll receive cast info, soundtrack details, trivia and news, as well as Twitter updates and data from IMDB and Wikipedia. 

“With our expansion into television, we’ve seen a surge of activity due to recent Shazam-enabled events such as the NBC Olympic broadcast, where more than one million people tagged the closing ceremony,as well as the US Open tennis grand slam event on CBS earlier this month,” said Fisher.

“We think that broadening our television service and offering more comprehensive social features will continue to drive activity and engagement.”

Expanded features are expected to launch in the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain “in the coming months”. Until then, those countries can tag ads from partner brands, including Renault, Reebok, Unilever, Pepsi and Microsoft.

Shazam reports that users produce about 10 million tags daily. It claims to have generated about $300 million in sales of digital goods for the music industry alone (as it enables users to purchase songs they like from iTunes). It hopes to do the same for producers and broadcasters in the TV industry.

Green Day are the first big band to work with Angry Birds maker Rovio on in-game promotion. They’re going to get their own 10-level episode in the Angry Birds Friends game, complete with exclusive music for fans to unlock by playing it.

DJ Shadow getting paid for BitTorrent bundle downloads

DJ Shadow is a pioneer of instrumental hip-hop, but now he’s breaking new ground in digital music business models too. He’s working with BitTorrent to distribute a new ‘bundle’ of music and content based on his new album, and he’ll be getting paid for some of the downloads.

Shadow is the first artist to try a new BitTorrent initiative. Anyone downloading his bundle will be presented with an offer to also download a piece of software – a media player in most of the world, although it will vary by territory. The software publisher will pay BitTorrent for every download, with Shadow taking a cut of those revenues.

“This is the first time in history that anybody’s tried to monetise the BitTorrent ecosystem in a way that naturally plays into its value,” BitTorrent’s Matt Mason tells Music Ally.

“The biggest problem with this technology has been that it lets people share things indefinitely at a cost of zero. That’s actually a real opportunity for the content industries if we can build business models on top of it.”

BitTorrent is looking to try this with other creatives too: filmmakers, TV producers, game developers and authors in the coming months.

Sonic app Smudge. gets installed in Ibiza

You can’t even stroll into an Ibiza megaclub for a night of stonking electronica without encountering an app-powered sound installation nowadays.

At least, that’s what you’ll find if you visit Space Ibiza between 5 July and 20 September this summer. Techno legend Richie Hawtin is holding a solo residency there, complete with an installation called ENTER.Interakt.

Smudge. is its app, complete with the full-stop at the end, developed by longtime Hawtin collaborators Liine.

It lets visitors “twist, pull and warp Smudge to shape a step in the sequence of audio/visual events in the room”. But it also works elsewhere: “Create your own sequences, or connect with others near you automatically.”

It sounds good fun, although we’re guessing there’s no feature to request that Hawtin spin Jive Bunny on his wheels of steel. Perhaps someone could hack it…

Guitar Pee-ro, anyone?

Sorry to lower the tone again, but this is better, possibly, than Sega’s videogame urinal we got so excited about not long ago. Some jokers in Brazil have come up with a rather nifty way of grinding the axe whilst you point Percy at the porcelain. In-urinal pressure pads are pushed by your wee, generating pre-loaded classic RAWK riffs as you eliminate your pint. And as if the surprised looks of the drunk blokes in the above video aren’t priceless enough, “Guitar Pee” has another trick up its sleeve: it records your ‘interpretation’ via an iPhone app, so you can share it with your no-doubt-very-impressed mates.

The name of these tunes’ format? Wait for it… MPee3s! Utter genius :)

Alas, as our friends at evolver.fm point out, Guitar Pee exists only for men right now, and only in Brazil. Fingers crossed!

Xbox SmartGlass: Seamless 2screen TV, gaming & films. FTW!

OK, so the above is a promo rather than a video demo. But it rather snappily sums up why SmartGlass was the second sexiest thing at E3, after Watch Dogs. 

Why? Well, M$oft - clearly more and more inspired as it gets older - has been keeping an eye on 2screen TV. You know, when you have extra content and conversations around a TV show on your smartphone or tablet, whilst watching. So it’s decided to go one step further, with extra, apparently ultra-rich content for your device - Apple and Android included - whilst playing music, games or movies.

With music, it’s a multimedia voice-controlled player (if you have Kinect); with games, a screen to show maps and extra commands (Wii U’s ouchscreen-equipped controller was clearly a major influence too); and with films and TV, your tablet shows biogs & backstories; as well as pausing content on your TV and watching the rest on the go. 

WHICH MEANS YOU CAN WATCH GAME OF THRONES AND SEE THE CHARACTERS MOVING ABOUT ON A MAP OF WESTEROS! AND SEE WHICH ONE HAS A CLAIM TO THE THRONE AND WHY! AND DO YOUR ‘HOMEWORK’ IN THE CAR!

Frankly? We can’t wait…

Forget Hologram-Tupac. Why? Hologram-Elvis is on the way

Tupac Shakur has made a habit of returning from the grave since his death in 1996, although usually those returns have been in the form of countless cash-in compilations and remixed vocal out-takes.

At the Coachella festival earlier this year, though, Shakur made a splash as a hologram* during Dr Dre’s headline set, with a virtual version of the late rapper appearing alongside Snoop Dogg.

The success of that has set minds spinning in the music industry as to which other dead musicians could make similarly-virtual comebacks. Get set for the biggest of all: Elvis Presley. The company behind the HoloTupac – Digital Domain Media Group – has signed a deal to do the same thing for The King.

“His lifelong fans will be thrilled all over again, and new audiences will discover the electric experience of Elvis the performer,” claims Elvis Presley Enterprises boss Jack Soden.

The real question, though, is what era Elvis will be brought back: young snake-hipped Elvis, or fat jumpsuited Elvis? Place your bets now (while eating 17 hamburgers).

*not strictly a hologram, apparently. Although it’s only pedantic killjoys who make that point

Young Empire Makes You — and Your Best Friend — the Star of White Doves

Young Empire incorporates you into the music video for its latest track, “White Doves”, using Facebook Connect. Try it yourself at whitedoves.me.

Graphically it’s impressive and affords you the unique (if unexpected) opportunity to see your own poorly tended headstone, rotting away in a dystopic world where only your scorched Facebook photos remain, raining down on children with mysterious tattoos.

Conceptually though it’s less strong than Arcade Fire’s “The Wilderness Downtown”, which used our childhood suburbs to add depth and melancholy to the music; or even Take This Lollipop, which used personal photos to bring creepiness to a whole new level.

Otherwise, a creative gesture that demonstrates how customisation and “viral” tech are of increasing importance to the business of music. Created by OPC/FamilyStyle director Miles Jay alongside digital design and development agency Jam3 and visual effects studio 567vfx.

SketchSynth: A Beatmaking Wireframer’s Wet Dream!

If only interface design was as simple as sketching a few shapes on paper and watching them come to life. With SketchSynth, you can now do just that to produce your own sound hardware.

Dreamt into beating, humming existence by Carnegie Mellon student Billy Keyes, SketchSynth can animate three basic functions: momentary buttons, toggle switches and sliders. Call them up by drawing a few basic shapes. Organise them as you please, and hey presto! You’ve got a MIDI board on ordinary printer paper.

I’m hard pressed to think of any practical applications for this apart from jam sessions in your bedroom, but it shows how quickly responsive technology is developing to make complex systems design increasingly simple for users to access, manipulate and create with.

The tabletop in the video is also a nice example of augmented spaces: a movement toward “smart” technology that looks like basic furniture but which can actually interface directly with you, your phone or whatever you want. Isn’t this a brave new world?

Morton Subotnick’s Pitch Painter is an iPad app that looks like a colourful music sequencer. Which, essentially, it is, designed for children to paint sounds onto the screen and then play them back.

It’s a sign of a couple of exciting, disruptive trends: powerful music creation technology making its way into apps that cost a couple of dollars or less, and the inventiveness of the current generation of apps for children, which make a lot of traditional classroom learning materials look a bit… dusty.