Music

An Immodest Proposal for the Music Industry

Doc Searls — Thu, 08 Nov 2018 14:52:10 +0000

How music listeners can fill the industry's "value gap".

From the 1940s to the 1960s, countless millions of people would put a dime in a jukebox to have a single piece of music played for them, one time. If they wanted to hear it again, or to play another song, they'd put in another dime.

In today's music business, companies such as Spotify, Apple and Pandora pay fractions of a penny to stream songs to listeners. While this is a big business that continues to become bigger, it fails to cover what the music industry calls a "value gap".

They have an idea for filling that gap. So do I. The difference is that mine can make them more money, with a strong hint from the old jukebox business.

For background, let's start with this graph from the IFPI's Global Music Report 2018:

Figure 1. Global Music Report 2018

You can see why IFPI no longer gives its full name: International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. That phonographic stuff is what they now call "physical". And you see where that's going (or mostly gone). You also can see that what once threatened the industry—"digital"—now accounts for most of its rebound (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Global Recorded Music Revenues by Segment (2016)

The graphic shown in Figure 2 is also a call-out from the first. Beside it is this text: "Before seeing a return to growth in 2015, the global recording industry lost nearly 40% in revenues from 1999 to 2014."

Later, the report says:

However, significant challenges need to be overcome if the industry is going to move to sustainable growth. The whole music sector has united in its effort to fix the fundamental flaw in today's music market, known as the "value gap", where fair revenues are not being returned to those who are creating and investing in music.

They want to solve this by lobbying: "The value gap is now the industry's single highest legislative priority as it seeks to create a level playing field for the digital market and secure the future of the industry." This has worked before. Revenues from streaming and performance rights owe a lot to royalty and copyright rates and regulations guided by the industry. (In the early 2000s, I covered this like a rug in Linux Journal. See here.)

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Linux Gets Loud

Joshua Curry — Wed, 13 Jun 2018 13:08:08 +0000

by Joshua Curry

Exploring the current state of musical Linux with interviews of developers of popular packages.

Linux is ready for prime time when it comes to music production. New offerings from Linux audio developers are pushing creative and technical boundaries. And, with the maturity of the Linux desktop and growth of standards-based hardware setups, making music with Linux has never been easier.

Linux always has had a place for musicians looking for inexpensive rigs to record and create music, but historically, it's been a pain to maintain. Digging through arcane documentation and deciphering man pages is not something that interests many musicians.

Loading up Linux is not as intimidating as it once was, and a helpful community is going strong. Beyond tinkering types looking for cheap beats, users range in experience and skill. Linux is still the underdog when it comes to its reputation for thin creative applications though.

Recently, musically inclined Linux developers have turned out a variety of new and updated software packages for both production and creative uses. From full-fledged DAWs (Digital Audio Workstations), to robust soft-synths and versatile effects platforms, the OSS audio ecosystem is healthy.

A surge in technology-focused academic music programs has brought a fresh crop of software-savvy musicians into the fold. The modular synth movement also has nurtured an interest in how sound is made and encouraged curiosity about the technology behind it.

One of the biggest hurdles in the past was the lack of core drivers for the wide variety of outboard gear used by music producers. With USB 2.0 and improvements in ALSA and JACK, more hardware became available for use. Companies slowly have opened their systems to third-party developers, allowing more low-level drivers to be built.

Hardware

In terms of raw horsepower, the ubiquity of multicore processors and cheap RAM has enabled Linux to take advantage of powerful machines. Specifically, multithreaded software design available to developers in the Linux kernel offer audio packages that offload DSP and UI to various cores. Beyond OS multithreading, music software devs have taken advantage of this in a variety of ways.

A well known API called Jack Audio Connection Kit (JACK) handles multiple inter-application connections as well as audio hardware communication with a multithreaded approach, enabling low latency with both audio DSP and MIDI connections.

Ardour has leveraged multithreaded processing for some time. In early versions, it was used to distribute audio processing and the main interface and OS interaction to separate cores. Now it offers powerful parallel rendering on a multitude of tracks with complex effects.

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Play for Me, Jarvis

Shawn Powers — Thu, 16 Apr 2015 17:07:51 +0000

by Shawn Powers

Elon Musk is known to be particularly apprehensive about artificial intelligence. Although many of us are both excited and worried about the potential future of AI, most don't need to fear computers taking over in the creative realms of society.

Or do we?

Heading over to https://computoser.com both delights and concerns me. Using nothing more than algorithms and preloaded data, the Web site will generate completely unique and oddly pleasant electronic music. I expected the results to feel bland and single-dimensional, but honestly, some of the songs are incredible and seem to relay emotion that obviously was never there to begin with.

Although it might be the downfall of civilization and might mean the unemployability of creative folks like myself, you can taste the computer's creativity yourself. There's also an app in the Google Play store if you want some Skynet music in your pocket.

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Non-Linux FOSS: Let's Make Music Together

Shawn Powers — Thu, 19 Dec 2013 18:47:40 +0000

by Shawn Powers

Just because you're not on Linux doesn't mean you can't have awesome open-source tools. I was having a conversation with a friend and reader (Don Crowder: @eldergeek) on Twitter the other day about music theory. Yes, I'm not just a computer nerd, but a music/math nerd too. Anyway after our conversation, I started looking for an open-source program for creating sheet music. Not only was I able to find one, but it happens to work for those folks on Windows as well as Linux.

Mind you, I'm a neophyte when it comes to music theory, but thankfully, MuseScore is useful for experts and n00bs alike. Not only can you create sheet music, but you also can download thousands of pieces others have created and shared on the Web site.

If you're a Windows user who wants to dabble in sheet music, but can't afford something like "Finale", MuseScore is right up your alley. If you're a musician who wants to give back, please join the community of users and contribute some of your music. To see how MuseScore is helping blind musicians, check out Katherine Druckman's article.

If you want to download MuseScore for yourself, you can download it from your repositories if you're on Linux, or download the installer from the Web site for Windows or OS X: https://www.musescore.com.

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Music for All with Open Source Software

Katherine Druckman — Tue, 15 Oct 2013 21:42:43 +0000

by Katherine Druckman

I am embarrassed to admit that I have never in my life considered the struggle of blind musicians to find Braille music scores. I did not realize until last week that only about 1% of sheet music is available in an accessible format, but my friend Robert Douglass is hoping to change that with his Open Well-Tempered Clavier - Ba©h to Bach project on Kickstarter.com.

To get a better idea of what the lack of Braille music scores means to an actual musician, see Eunah Choi's video below.

The Open Well-Tempered Clavier Kickstarter project began with the goal of creating a public domain score and recording of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, with the intention of making Bach's work, a cultural treasure, accessible to all without the burden of copyright. Along the way, Robert and the others behind this project discovered that full accessibility is a much greater challenge. While a public domain score and recording tears down a few walls, other walls remain for those can't see the score. To that end, the project's goal has now been extended to include a Braille version of the Bach score, and with enough funding, a means to convert tens of thousands of scores into Braille thanks to open source software.

The underlying issue is about creating a process whereby existing open source music tools can be made to work together properly, and then be used to generate Braille scores, as no open source tools yet exist for creating Braille music. The specific technical challenge will be to complete work on an open source Braille converter for the MusicXML format, which would then allow the 50,000 scores on MuseScore.com, and any future additions, to be downloaded as a Braille file that is then readable with a Braille terminal. MuseScore.com is a web service that facilitates creating, sharing, and storing sheet music using MuseScore's open source music notation software. As an interesting sidenote, MuseScore's popularity is on the rise compared to its proprietary equivalents (see the illustration of Google trends below), so score another point for team open source and for music educators as well.

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Rock Out with Your Console Out

Rebecca Chapnik — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 17:39:00 +0000

by Rebecca Chapnik

Playing and managing your music in text mode.

Some of you probably have played audio files from the terminal with one-line commands, such as play, or even used the command line to open a playlist in a graphical music player. Command-line integration is one of the many advantages of using Linux software. This is an introduction for those who want the complete listening experience—browsing, managing and playing music—without leaving the text console.

Thanks to the Ncurses (New Curses) widget library, developers can design text user interfaces (TUIs) to run in any terminal emulator. An Ncurses application interface is interactive and, depending on the application, can capture events from keystrokes as well as mouse movements and clicks. It looks and works much like a graphical user interface, except it's all ASCII—or perhaps ANSI, depending on your terminal. If you've used GNU Midnight Commander, Lynx or Mutt, you're already familiar with the splendors of Ncurses.

An intuitive interface, whether textual or graphical, is especially important in a media player. No one wants to sift through a long man page or resort to Ctrl-c just to stop an annoying song from playing on repeat, and most users (I'm sure some exceptions exist among Linux Journal readers) don't want to type out a series of commands just to ls the songs in an album's directory, decide which one you want to hear and play it, and then play a song in a different directory. If you've ever played music with a purely command-line application, such as SoX, you know what I'm talking about. Sure, a single command that plays a file is quite handy; this article, however, focuses on TUI rather than CLI applications. For many text-mode programs, Ncurses is the window (no pun intended) to usability.

Note to developers: if you want to write a console music player, take advantage of the Curses Development Kit (CDK), which includes several ready-made widgets, such as scrolling marquees and built-in file browsing.

Now, on to the music players!

Mp3blaster

Mp3blaster was the first console music player I ever used. That was in 2007, by which time it already was a mature and full-featured application. Its history actually dates back to 1997, before the mainstream really had embraced the MP3 format, let alone the idea of an attractive interface for controlling command-line music playback. Back then, it was humbly known as "Mp3player".

Despite the name, Mp3blaster supports several formats besides MP3s. Currently, these include OGG, WAV and SID. Keep an eye out for FLAC support in the future, as it is on the to-do list in the latest source tarball.

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Roaming Media

Michael Nugent — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 18:36:18 +0000

by Michael Nugent

Portable music doesn't need to be restricted to headphones. Here's a step-by-step how-to on setting up a music system that follows you around the house like a puppy.

Like many of you, I store all my music digitally on a central server in my home. The problem is when I walk from room to room, my music doesn't come with me. I could carry around an iThingy or put it on my phone, but I'd rather not have to wear headphones, and no matter how awesome they are in their class, tiny phone speakers still are tiny phone speakers. Fortunately, I have a lot of computer hardware lying around from past upgrades, so it was fairly easy for me to come up with some small, older systems for each area of my house. Now, instead of listening to music on a little device, I use a device to tag my location and have the music follow me wherever I go.

The system is easy to build and uses mostly off-the-shelf open-source programs. In addition to the player and control system, you need a way of tagging your location in the house. I use the Bluetooth radio on my phone, but you also could use RFID tags, Webcams with motion detection or facial recognition, or pretty much anything else that will let the system know where you are. For this setup though, I'm assuming you're using a Bluetooth device.

The central piece to this project is a server-based music player. I am using the Music Player Dæmon (MPD), a wonderful server-based system released under the GNU General Public License and available from the repositories of most Linux distributions. Install the software with your favorite package management system. In addition to this player, you need to set up a streaming system. Icecast fulfills this requirement and also is widely available. Install it as well.

Configuring MPD is fairly straightforward. The default file for your distribution is probably very similar to the example below, but you may need to change a few things. The music_directory entry should point to the directory that contains the music files and one bind_to_address should contain the non-loopback name or address of the server. If it binds only to 127.0.0.1, outside boxes may have trouble connecting to it.

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gStrings in Your Pocket

Shawn Powers — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 16:45:25 +0000

by Shawn Powers

What may sound like a perverse concept is actually one of the many ways smartphones can change your life. If you play a musical instrument but don't happen to have perfect pitch (most of us, sadly), you can buy a tuner, pitch pipe, tuning fork or any number of other aids to keep yourself in tune. If you have a smartphone in your pocket, however, you also can simply download gStrings. Available in the Android Marketplace in either a free ad-supported version or an inexpensive ad-free version, gStrings will help you tune any number of instruments accurately.

Although it's certainly no replacement for perfect pitch, having a tuner in your pocket is very convenient if you're a musician. Quite a few tuning apps are available for Android, but I've used gStrings personally, and it works great: https://market.android.com/details?id=org.cohortor.gstrings.

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Short Notices: News In Linux Audio

Dave Phillips — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 16:24:05 +0000

by Dave Phillips

I hope all my readers enjoyed the best of the holiday season. I've been busy with the predictable confusions and minor crises that attend this time of year, but I managed to find time to jot down some recommendations for my readers. Go on, you've been good, give yourself a few extra belated gifts and don't worry if your budget's busted - it's all free software, you can't beat these deals.

harmonySEQ

"live loop-based MIDI software sequencer intended to aid music composers and performers"

Figure 1. harmonySEQ (Full size)

I built and installed the latest development version 0.16 of harmonySEQ (Figure 1) on a 64-bit Arch system. This "little" sequencer is a straightforward MIDI loop composition environment with some unique features, e.g. a Control Sequence editor for writing MIDI Controller curves and OSC support for remote transport control. HarmonySEQ has also borrowed a page from Dr. Emile Tobenfeld's great Keyboard Controlled Sequencer, i.e. the user can assign sequences to keypresses, a very flexible method for patching together fixed-form compositions or for formal improvisation in realtime performance. However you choose to use it, harmonySEQ is likely to find a permanent place in your Linux MIDI system. For more information see the harmonySEQ home and Louigi Verona's article on his use of harmonySEQ. While you're out there, you should also check out his music improvised with harmonySEQ, it's an impressive display of the program's potential (and the composer's talent).

SunVox
"modular synthesizer with pattern based sequencer (tracker)"

Developer Alex Zolotov calls his SunVox (Figure 2) a "modular music creation studio". It's a light-weight but complete music composition environment that includes a handy set of built-in synthesizers and effects processors. The "modular" in Alex's description refers to the program's module tracker, a music sequencing interface designed originally for music composition programs in the late 1980s. The tracker UI is easy to use and lends itself to complex pattern-based composition, but I should emphasize that any kind of music can be composed with a tracker.

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At Home With AV Linux

Dave Phillips — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 15:26:58 +0000

by Dave Phillips

My studio computer collection includes two custom-built desktop machines and a Hewlett-Packard G60 laptop. As described in my previous article, the primary desktop box has been running an old but rock-steady 64 Studio 2.1 that has recently been replaced by a shiny new 64-bit Arch system. The secondary desktop machine and the laptop are both running the 32-bit version of Ubuntu 10.04. However, while I like and enjoy using Ubuntu I hardly require two identical installations of the same Linux distribution, so I decided to replace one of them with AV Linux.

What It Is

AV Linux is a complete Debian-based Linux distribution that includes optimized audio and video subsystems along with the expected wealth of system utilities and productivity software. A live version can be tested and used without disturbing your installed system, and an installer is provided if/when you decide to permanently add AV Linux to your boot menu.

Figure 1. AV Linux 5.0.1, at your service. (Full-size)

The AV Linux Web site tells us that the system is based on the stable "Squeeze" release from Debian Linux, the LXDE desktop and Openbox window manager, and the Remastersys utility. That last item is of particular interest - Remastersys can make a distributable copy of a personalized Debian or Ubuntu system, which is how AV Linux came into existence. At some point in 2007 Glen Macarthur recognized that his custom Debian-based audio/video production system could be useful to more users, so he spruced it up with some neat extras, pulled it all together with Remastersys, and voila, he created a new Debian-based media-optimized Linux distribution.

You can read the full story of the growth of AV Linux in its excellent manual. It's enough here to note that AV Linux has become a popular and recommended audio-centric Linux distribution. For good reasons, too, as we shall see.

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