|
Wireless telephone Music in CyberspaceJohn Logie Baird FootballTV / GamesFUTURE SOUNDS Recorded music. David Bowie stole the headlines recently when he announced his new album "earth" would be available for purchase through the Internet a full two weeks before it reached the shops. Bowie is not the first pop star to use the Net. In 1998 Massive Attack launched their third album Mezzanine on the Net three weeks early. The site received over 1.3 million hits and the songs were downloaded 101, 673 times. The album still went into the UK charts at Number One. Radical American rap group Public Enemy, who are in dispute with their terrestrial record company, have used the net to make new songs available to their fans.
The simultaneous emergence of the Internet and digital recording techniques has changed that forever. For musical explorers the net has broken down geographical boundaries. With a couple of clicks of the mouse one can tune in to radio stations playing salsa in Cuba, jazz in New Orleans, rai in Algeria and Hindipop in Bombay. It has also made it possible to record that music with no loss of sound quality. Anyone with a new PC, preferably a Pentium III or an Apple G3 microprocessor, and a half way decent internet connection can download enough music to keep themselves happy for years - provided the music is available in an MP3 file. The stored files - up to 60 minutes of music - can then be transferred into a Rio Diamond MP3 portable player, smaller than a Sony Walkman. As the price of CD burners drops -they are already available for £250 and within a couple of years will be standard on domestic PC packages - listeners will be able to record their own discs with whatever they want. Artists are less concerned than record companies. Net technology makes it easy enough to charge people to download music files - software companies do it all the time. There will always be superstar singers who people will pay a premium to see and hear. Bowie knows that. There are more people out there who have a CD player and not a computer than the other way round. Publicity - or hype - are still essential. Major groups - from the Rolling Stones to the Jesus and Mary Chain give concerts which are simultaneously broadcast on the web. The Stranglers recently gave a lunchtime performance at the Doctor Marten's Shop in Covent Garden which was shown on the shoe company's web site. Paul McCartney received more than 3 million questions in 30 minutes from fans when he went online to promote his Flaming Pie album. His symphonic poem, Standing Stones, was the first classical piece to be debuted live on the Net. The future of recorded music is virtual. Already sites exist where musicians separated by continents can jam with each other online. Angels Online, three singing girls from Essex, caused a flurry of press interest because they were only available on the World Wide Web and their site was getting thousands of hits. Using only the most rudimentary equipment musicians can record their songs, shoot their videos on a digicam and load the whole thing up onto the Net. Direct to the consumer. Former Talking Heads keyboard player Jerry Harrison has created garageband.com. Groups can upload their songs to the site for review by critical net users. Every month, the band that gets the most votes of confidence earns a $250,000 recording contract with garageband.com's own record label. At present the site is US oriented but Britain is the first port of call for expansion next year. Wannabe stars should start saving up for digital recording kit now. The hardest part will be to get anybody to listen to it. But then it has always been that way. Just ask the Beatles , Sinatra and Presley   |
