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Content Tagged with Online + music
WiiWare Finally Gets Some Rhythm!
It’s about time. Last Spring, Nintendo launched WiiWare, a downloadable game service on the Wii, but I haven’t been all that impressed by the scant titles they’ve made available since then. This week’s offering is different: Helix, from indie developer Ghostfire Games. In my view it’s the first WiiWare title to truly capitalize on the game console’s unique functionality and diverse audience. More crucial, it’s WiiWare’s first music/rhythm game, an entry in the seemingly unstoppable genre which accounts for 32 percent of the industry’s growth so far this year.
Plus, it’s pretty freaking fun.
Think Dance Dance Revolution, but for the upper body. Holding two Wii remotes in either hand, you imitate an on-screen robot in a fast routine of arm swinging, swaying, and waving your hands in the air like you just don’t care. As with DDR and all the many games it’s spawned, you need to time your movements to synch up with the glowing symbols that fly across the screen.
All this is accompanied by fairly decent electronica dance music, though Helix is too frenetic and choppy to feel like dancing. Still, it’s a good workout. For the Wii’s future outlook, that’s another important plus — it’ll easily appeal to the 6 million+ who bought WiiFit, and prime them to look for more downloadable content on WiiWare.
Image credit: www.ghostfiregames.com
Missing Muxtape? Try 8Tracks. It’s Better
Muxtape, a startup that quickly became a favorite of the Tumblr-set, has taken a nose dive, thanks to the machinations at RIAA. There are lot of folks bemoaning the loss of the service. To them, I have one word: 8Tracks.
I talked to the New York-based startup’s founder, David Porter, formerly of Live365, a few weeks ago and he walked me through the service. I have been using it sporadically and, well, it works better than Muxtape. (Thrillist thinks so, too — take their word over a Web geezer like us.) Essentially, 8tracks allows you to upload your own tracks and create a mix. Of course, you can create mixes from a library of tracks uploaded by others. Drag, drop, play!
How long before RIAA calls on these guys? They have applied for a small webcaster license, but that won’t be enough if the company gets popular. Peter Kafka says they they will “end up having to pay the same rates as the big guys, which basically translates to about 2 cents per listener, per hour this year, and will jump to 3 cents next year.” Porter remains undeterred!
M.O.M (My Online Music) - Web Based Music Library
Online-Radios
Audacity: Free Audio Editor and Recorder
Долина гейзеров
[from wnpxrz] ☮ Music: a Mathematical Offering ☮
Are non band playing Hip Hop acts not getting attention online?
I just recently joined a great site for discovering new music and it becomes fun when you really enjoy new music and not what just you hear on the radio or commercials. Thesixtyone.com gives you a music discovering experience like no other site, well except for digg.
See the way the site works is very simple, you upload your music and for an hour your music is on the front page of your genre in the browse menu of the site. I would love to tell you my secrets to gaining points fast but i just wanted to make a point about internet music and how it is making it hard for a Unsigned hip hop artist with no band to really make some noise online.
For Instance Soulja Boy Tellem blew up on the internet by making up some dance step the some white folks can dance to and bam you have another “hey macarena” on your hands. This is not the way hip hop wants to be presented online. Now i like the selection of hip hop on the sixty one but unless you doing what this kid can do you don’t get the amazing amount of bump ups in just a short range of time.
Im feeling like this because here is another band but this time its just two mcs on the mic spitting some real shit not just that bling and dancing shit but like old school nas.
Update: i decided to just put it on my page and see if i can get any new subscribers to give me some bumps..
No TagsRadiohead Has Its Cake and Eats It Too... Maybe
In October, Radiohead released their new album, In Rainbows, as an online download with a name-your-own pricing scheme -- you only paid if you wanted to, and only as much as you thought the album was worth. Our unscientific poll showed that a majority of ReadWriteWeb readers thought that downloadable albums were worth between $5-14 -- though we framed the question such that we can't make any determinations about how many people would actually be willing to pay that much.
And we really don't know how many people purchased In Rainbows online. comScore said just 38% of downloaders paid for the CD, most below $4, while Radiohead disputes those numbers -- but won't release any of their own. Writing in October, Richard MacManus predicted that it would be the physical CD that would be the true money maker for the band. It looks like he was right.
"According to our poll US$5-9 is the most popular price range that people are willing to pay for the digital download version. That pricing will be virtually all profit to Radiohead, so the download version will make some money for the band," he wrote. "However the eventual single CD release will reach a much wider audience, so the physical CD will end up being the pot of gold at the end of In Rainbows."
The latest UK album charts have In Rainbows sitting pretty at #1. Because the Internet download version is no longer available, it is clear that Radiohead's main goal for the gimmick was to promote the planned CD release of their album. It would appear they were successful in that regard, but appearances can be deceiving. To be fair, it is way too early to tell what effect the In Rainbows online promotion had on the band's CD sales, so what follows is purely hypothetical.
It was certainly not hard for Richard to predict that a CD release for Radiohead would be a "pot of gold." The band's last 4 albums have reached #1 in the UK, and none of the bands albums have thus far failed to go platinum there. Even in the US, where the band's popularity has cooled since the late 90s, a gold record is nearly guaranteed for Radiohead. So Internet promotion or no, a hot selling CD was in the cards for Thom Yorke and company.
What we don't know yet, is how In Rainbows CD sales will compare with the band's past albums. Could it be that by offering essentially a prerelease of the album online, the band cannibalized future CD sales? Did the eventual cancellation of the download promotion and release of a traditional CD alienate early-adopters and cause them not to want to buy the album? Or did instead the Internet release merely attract casual fans who would not likely have purchase the CD anyway? These are all interesting questions, but it is still to early to form any definitive conclusions from Radiohead's experiment.