Gooogle – OneBox, Many Beats, More Profit

Right.

Reading the Beeb News again (the source of many a good story) and learn that Google is getting into the online music market with the launch of OneBox, an alliance with music sites Lala and MySpace-owned iLike.

When users search using OneBox, a pop-up widget powered by iLike or Lala offers to play the entire song.

Interesting to find that the words “music” and “lyrics” are among the top 10 search terms of all time, according to Google [reported here]. Also interesting is the news that Apple currently have the music industry over a barrel, dominating the online music market with around 70% of worldwide sales.  Thus, they are now presumably the largest music distribution operation in the world.

One of the possible advantages of the service for the beleaguered music industry is seen to be a halting of piracy from torrent sites.  While Apple may not be able to stop iTunes users adding pirated music to their libraries, Google can.  Simply by “adding alongside all of those Torrent results… a heavily integrated Google music offering“ (Mark Mulligan, Analyst @ research firm Forrester).

Yipee. So now we can expect adsense on Music searches.  Bound to get you what you’re looking for in no time, as any Google search generally will [SIC- sore point, some blogging on this here before].

Coinciding with proposed charges on YouTube piffle (sorry, content) Google seem to really be getting into the Christmas spirit…

Lifting liberally from the BBC press release here, please note that:

“…At Google, we see millions of music-related queries every day,” said the company’s vice president of search Marissa Mayer at the launch in Los Angeles.

“It is clear to us that for our users music holds a very special and particular place…” (Source BBC)

It is clear that Google is in the best market research position in the world.  Let’s face it, they know what pretty much the entire online world is searching for, and are in a unique position to anticipate trends, one could suggest in a monopolistic and somewhat insidious manner.  And now they have learned that people like music.  Result.

So then, one would have to wonder, if people like music so much, why did Google not get into this before Apple spotted the niche?  Why would they have wasted so much time and resources giving the world such epic fails as Google Video before buying their way out of the problem with the acquisition of YouTube?  I can guess, can you?

Not all of the feedback about this will be positive, and a casual Twitter search brought this other early opinion:

“…Will Google , which has just wheeled out a new search thingy called Onebox, soon be hit by one or more trademark infringement lawsuits?

A week ago, “Giant online advertising company Google is like a nasty virus,” p2pnet posted. “It’s everywhere and into everything. And now it’s planning on a music ’service’.”

Google is already the world’s largest music indexing site overshadowed, perhaps, by The Pirate Bay. And it’s even Cartel Proof, said p2pnet in July…” (From P2P Net)

Final call on this, if Google end up becoming contenders with this service YOU KNOW it will mean that Madonna, Robbie and Jay Z will have to start and finish all of their future world tours in the Google canteen to a room full of polo-necked nerds.

Can’t stop progress.

New Music I like – October 2009

Computer Camp Love.

Who needs a reason?  Don’t remember this exactly, but somebody obviously does and was very scarred by the experience.

Powers of Ramsey – An insight into the Celebrity Chef on an Atomic Level

“Here’s something silly I made for the bbc comedy website,” beams Mutated Monty.

He’s taken a powerful microscope to examine Gordon Ramsey at every visual level.

Interesting stuff, I’m sure you’ll agree.

On a related note, it was sad to see the passing of Keith Floyd recently, who was the daddy of them all.

Celebrity Chefs lined up to gush warm tributes his way, but Keith was not exactly reciprocating:

SOUND DESIGN LECTURE

These are the notes on a lecture we gave on sound design, pitched at animation students.

HISTORY OF SOUND DESIGN:

In motion picture production, a Sound Designer is a member of a film crew responsible for some original aspect of the film’s audio track.

The terms “Sound Design” and “Sound Designer” were already in use in theatre and were introduced to the film world when Francis Ford Coppola directed a live production of Noel Coward’s Private Lives at the American Conservatory Theatre (ACT) in San Francisco where sound designer Charlie Richmond was resident, while the final cut of the The Godfather was being edited in 1972.

In the original film world meaning of the title, as established in the 1970s by Coppola and Walter Murch, a sound designer is an individual ultimately responsible for all aspects of a film’s audio track, from the dialogue and sound effects recording to the re-recording of the final track. The title was first granted by Coppola to Murch for his work on the film Apocalypse Now, in recognition for his extraordinary contribution to that film; in this way the position emerged in the same manner the title of production designer came in to being in the 1930s, when William Cameron Menzies made revolutionary contributions to the craft of art direction in the making of Gone with the Wind.

FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO DEVELOPMENT OF SOUND DESIGN

* Cinema sound systems became capable of high-fidelity reproduction, and particularly after the adoption of Dolby Stereo. These systems were originally devised as gimmicks to increase theater attendance, but their widespread implementation created a content vacuum that had to be filled by a competent professional. Before stereo soundtracks, film sound was of such low fidelity that only the dialogue and occasional sound effects were practical. The greater dynamic range of the new systems, coupled with the ability to place sounds to the sides of the audience or behind them, required more creative decisions to be made.

* Directors wanted to realize the new potentials of the medium. A new generation of filmmakers, the so-called “Easy Riders and Raging Bulls”—Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and others—were aware of the creative potential of sound and wanted to use it.

* The new filmmakers were inspired in no small part by the popular music of the era. Concept albums of groups such as Pink Floyd and The Beatles suggested new modes of storytelling and creative techniques that could be adapted to motion pictures.

* The new filmmakers made their early films outside the Hollywood establishment, away from the influence of film labor unions and the then rapidly-dissipating studio system.

As many of these new filmmakers worked in the San Francisco Bay Area, the strong meaning of film sound designer has become associated with films made there, and the production companies situated there, such as American Zoetrope, Lucasfilm Limited (and its subsidiary Skywalker Sound), and The Saul Zaentz Film Center.

WHAT IS SOUND DESIGN & WHERE DOES A SOUND DESIGNER FIT IN?

Sound design is a conceptually creative/technical field. It covers all non-compositional elements of a film, a play, a music performance or recording, computer game software or any other multimedia project. A person who practices the art of sound design is known as a Sound Designer.

ELEMENTS THAT MAKE UP FINAL FILM:

VISUAL LAYER –                    FINISHED PICTURE

AUDIO LAYER –                   DIALOGUE / VOICE OVER

FOLEY / SFX (Deepens Immersive Experience)

MUSIC BED (Sets Emotional Tone)

MASTERING (Compression, Surround etc)

WHY IS SOUND DESIGN IMPORTANT FOR ANIMATION?

Sound design is extremely important for animation.  If it is working well, nobody will notice.  If it is going badly wrong, it will detract from the animation, no matter how good it is.

Much animation deals with creating imagined universes.  A dense and well thought out sound design and music bed can lend these environments credibility.

Animation Production Roles:

http://www.willamette.edu/~gorr/classes/GeneralGraphics/Production/

http://www.wideopenspace.co.uk/animation-tutorial/s4-production-roles.html

HISTORY OF SOUND DESIGN:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_design

WHAT DOES DIFFERENT MUSIC DO? – SETS EMOTIONAL TONE.

EXAMPLE OF DIFFERENT SOUNDTRACKS TUTORIAL:

http://www.wideopenspace.co.uk/animation-tutorial/s5-sound-and-music-score.html

DIFFERENT STROKES:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkqKjgzLbOk&feature=related

DISTURBING STROKES:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kr-e3qGQ884&feature=fvw

EXAMPLES OF EXCELLENT SOUNDTRACK / SOUND DESIGN WORK:

http://www.motion504.com/AICP_show/

http://www.echolab.tv

http://www.tokyoplastic.com/

LINKS AND RESOURCES:

http://motionographer.com/

http://www.creativeireland.com

http://www.gotoandlearn.com/

FREE SAMPLE RESOURCES:

http://www.freesound.org/index.php

http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/55-great-websites-to-download-free-sound-effects/