Img courtesy of ~necrolz

This I think is a given at this point, but anyway. I wanted to write this post to put down some ideas I have had recently after I started using a few new music services. So this really is just an idea dump more than anything (if you haven’t a lot of time just JUMP TO THE IDEAS and perhaps you can tell me what you think in a comment!) If I had intentions to move into music software perhaps I would write something along these lines, but to be honest I would prefer if Spotify or similar invested some of their first few years profits and did it :p

So the best thing about switching the model up on music? Well it does make piracy less of an issue by charging a fairer rate (e.g. Spotify is £10 a month here) for a better service – it doesn’t eliminate it but it makes a step towards a feeder/reciever relationship which takes back control slightly. But really as long as the music is good the listeners don’t care about that money/buying/business part of the affair, all they (or rather we) want is to have access to listen to the music we want, when we want it, where we want it so we can enjoy it without concern of the business, this is why subscription is the right way if you ask me – although I wouldn’t be surprised if other dynamic/hybrid models pop up.

What else is good? Well it takes the files off of your computer, which on the front of it seems like an instant win because you save some space and don’t have to worry about hardware failure, but really its a lot better than that. It separates that management process from the whole business of collecting music, you can effectively manage and listen too a music collection from your home, phone, work, friends house, web cafe, wherever you can get access.

All this is great and currently available in Spotify, but ultimately the best thing about this new model we are adopting is the data, and that it is all in the cloud. It’s this data that could take the experience of music to a whole new level. CD’s, Tapes and other redundant media allowed for a start at this – Top of the Pops for example provided a weekly countdown of the most sold song’s – but with the music service coming direct from the cloud there is nothing stopping you moving this too a whole new level.

• Top of the NOW
• Top of the Minute, Hour, Day, Week
• Top of the Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays
• Top of the Month, Quarter, Year, Decade, Century

This allows people to listen to music in a whole new way. Spotify and some websites do process this data and this kind of breakdown is pretty much all available now.  Breaking down this data can also globally create billions of niche statistics. From Top Rock Track of 27th of February 2010 to Most overall listened too blue grass album this week. Now this is no small amount of data and visually defining a GUI or a system to easily transverse the breadth of options without drowning the user would be a challenge. One I think that can be pieced together using the combination of search technology, social media and a little bit of flair.

Why not have a “stream” automatically created based on something like this – simple selectors that will tailor to you
(background image courtesy of jelski)

My idea’s for a new way to listen to music? Granted a few of the below ideas are amalgamations of current systems but nethertheless they would still improve my experience as a music consumer. (Broken up in no particular order just to make them more readable!!!)

• Simpler listening – playlists are good, as is the capacity to play a specific song, but 75% of the time you just want a mood of music (see below)
• Switch playlists with streams – playlists serve a purpose but we are now superceding limits, jumping boundaries – we should be listening to streams of songs not finite lists
• With all that data music providers should be doing more – Top of the NOW for example
• A more linked architecture – Elements such as bands, band members, albums, tracks, tempos, instruments, dates, geo-location data could all be better linked and presented
• With a better architecture you could have things such as “Awards” for “Best indy band of the week” etc. awarded to each band

• Music will progress socially – and this should be addressed by the software we use to listen to it, not “facebook” for music fyi
• Social listening – capacity for relational data, friendship links, follows/subscriptions, groups and fans
• Friend stream following – listen in realtime to the same stream of music
• Global digital DJ’ing – allow for digital concerts and DJ sets, democratisation of music selection presentation
• Shared streams – communities could vote on songs to create streams of genre or other element specific music
• Rivers via Stream merging – 10 friends could merge their party streams to create a river of music, perfect for a house party and not complicated or time consuming

• Song UX – band, artist management – A better system to allow artists/bands/label’s to manage the user experience of a listener when they are listening to their track
• WikiMusic – band/artist tributes, photo’s, fan art, tributes etc. could be cooperatively uploaded by the supporting community
• VOIP karaoke – integration of audio back up the stream could produce some interesting options such as remote karaoke sessions
• New and Hot – catch up service – see whats hot with your friends that you have never listened to before
• MixTapes – A classic gift perhaps for the lazy or late thinker, either way the idea could be sound – create a time specific stream of music and save it forever/share/send it
• Streamchat – while listening to certain artists, songs, streams, rivers a chat room could enhance the experience

• Intermission management – I saw this as an idea for a software on dragons den years ago – I still cant believe no music player can mix between songs automatically and well

The post Some idea’s for Listening to music first appeared on Woody Hayday | Blog.

Initially I would break down the challenge into two components. Technically getting the video from DV tapes and DVD’s onto home computer screens, iPhones, iPods, projection screens or whichever selected medium would be one. The second would be the contextual additional options. The scope for digital interpretation, communication, connections and display are countless.

The technicality of presenting video online is now an established practice. Example websites need not be named, for their popularity is well known, however despite the huge number of video’s present on these websites, quality is not a depth assured, this has allowed website’s such as TED to secure a wonderful foothold for providing higher quality (depth of thought not number of pixels) video. While TED is worth noting in this case (the people behind TED would perhaps be an excellent collaborative option) it is also important that it be distinguished from the possibility of this archive, of which there is no other comparative example on-line.

Not to dwell on the finite steps within the technological process I would concentrate this example into a summarised plan of 3 steps. 1. Digitalise all video in as high a resolution/audio quality as is feasible, taking care to maintain a proper method of file storage. 2. Process video – depending on the theory of display this could entail community based transcribing and translation, face tracking, tone mapping, automated or again community sourced segmentation or several other processes. 3. Encode all video for its intended output, depending on the intention this could be 1080p full hd video’s for download/streaming/youtube, higher resolution video for elsewhere or mp3’s for audio versions.

I think it would be important in this instance to not get caught up in the technological solution before deciding on the second component, the theory behind this archives display. Hans Ulrich Obrist has probably already considered many options, within the article it states a “system of tags” and a wonderful phrase “The archive is a polyphonic novel of more than 1,000 protagonists”. Tagging could work quite well but the question of who and how remains. These could be generated from the transcription of all the videos, something that could be tasked to a community to do digitally or by Hans himself or a third party such as end user’s viewing the video interviews. I think tagging broadly speaking will be a necessity in this project, however with such a unique collection I believe there are a variety of options to differentiate the final outcome of the archive online.

Whichever other process’s were performed on the video archive to provide a link or communication between interviews later on I would without a doubt get the video’s transcribed. This would add a depth to the archive enhancing features such as searching as well as providing opportunity for interlinking, communication and a larger array of display choices (the archive could then effectively be available on e-book reader’s, phone’s, subtitles for the deaf etc.) As aforementioned I would propose that this be done via crowd sourcing. Providing the video’s openly on-line and early-on in the project while asking viewers to transcribe what is said within the video they are watching (or even a small clip to maintain a higher attention span and therefore overall accuracy) could allow for a financial saving in transcribing coupled with a positive discussion about the proposed on-line archive by the contributors. This has been proven to work in a number of different scenario’s online and based on the depth of quality of the interview videos there would be more than sufficient interest to power this intention, in fact it may even provide a path to a much quicker transcribing (if a large enough community is built around the task) of the archive as a whole, especially into a number of languages.

From transcribed data a whole host of options are available, providing “similar interviews”, creating discussion groups from interviews, tagging and combining video’s. The transcribed archives could be coupled with other processed data such as face tracking. The interviews could be processed to record the facial expressions of the interviewee’s as they address different topics, acting as an “Expression tag” you could then similarly create different connections, suggestions and comparison’s using these. A web of similarities and dissimilarities could form an interesting navigation and experiment into the archive.

Similarly the video audio could be utilised to the benefit of the project, mapping sound-bites to text or even facial expressions. Perhaps visualised in-line with the video or just tone mapped to provide similar talks or a more interactive navigation. The interviews could also be available as mp3′ files for download or online listening, for the enjoyment of the blind or for people to listen too on their mp3 player’s or mobile phones.

Another possible pursuit would be to break the video’s down, segmenting the archives into smaller chunks might provide more options for viewing the material, communication between interviews and more. This again could be done through crowd sourcing of the task or by using audio mapping to distinguish breaks. This would completely depend on the length of the interview video.

There are, of course, numerous considerations and possibilities for a project like this, providing a way for users to access the archive that is both relative to the archive itself and conceptionally creative would be a great, fulfilling challenge. In just thinking about the idea for around an hour I have come up with a lot more ideas than I can fit in here, how about a new type of “rating” system that identifies the least viewed interviews and shows them on top of the page, therefore creating a cycling effect ensuring that the viewers on the whole as a crowd see the huge variety present? perhaps a single page with several segment’s of different interviews all pertaining to one topic all displayed and ready to click, draggable video frames that immerse the viewer in the interview? I would love to work on such a project.

The post Art Interview Archive’s – Idea’s for Hans Ulrich Obrist first appeared on Woody Hayday | Blog.