It’s hard to find someone that doesn’t appreciate The Beatles. Many would argue that they are the greatest band of all time, and though I might put Led Zeppelin right there with them, I’d have to agree. These four guys changed the world of music as we know it, and now they’re finally coming to Rock Band.
I was able to score a little face time with some of the Harmonix crew to get a hands-on look at the latest iteration of Rock Band, which is dedicated to The Beatles. The Harmonix guys played a 3 song set which showed off a couple of the historic venues, as well as one custom venue for Back in the USSR. The graphics for the game look great, with each of the band members looking just as good as you would hope.
We covered Ben Lewry’s LCD guitar back in 2007 when it was a prototype, but here at Maker Faire we got to check out the latest version in person. The “LCDetar” took him 3 months to build at a cost of about $5000; it comes with a Wiimote built into the headstock that communicates with the visualizer built into the body of the guitar so that you can alter the patterns with a thrash or two:
Each guitar is a custom job, but you can contact Ben Lewry at Visionary Instruments for more info.
There’s no denying that iTunes is one of the more popular music players out there. This of course makes things easy for iPhone users such as myself, since there’s no real hassle when importing your tracks. Unfortunately the iPhone is really the only phone that plays nice with Apple’s music player. (Yes, I’m choosing to ignore the very existence of the motoROKR, and for good reason)
Well we know that Palm is trying to edge into some of Apple’s market share with the Pre, and it seems that they’ve found one place to hit them. It seems that the Pre will in fact sync iTunes straight out of the box. For those on the fence, this could be something to push them towards Palm’s flagship phone. The only downside is that you won’t have access to music purchased through the Apple Music that’s still infested with DRM (which shouldn’t be an issue for music purchased now, as it is DRM-free).
I love the power of press. If something gets enough coverage (positive or negative) then something usually comes out of it. Remember that Nine Inch Nails iPhone app that was denied earlier this week by Apple? Well we weren’t the only place to cover the story; in fact, it spread like wildfire throughout the internet. It was a perfect example of everything that’s wrong with the App Store approval process. Well it’s only been a few days, and change has come.
Apparently all of the negative press lead to Apple taking a second look at the app. For whatever reason, this time they decided that everything was peachy and gave it their stamp of approval. It’s just sad that it takes this much bad publicity for Apple to approve an app that had nothing wrong with it in the first place.
If you live in a small apartment or even a dorm, you know just how valuable every square inch of space can be. If you’re also a musician, you might have a hard time finding room for all of your equipment. Well here is a simple device that will give you somewhere to keep your guitar that’s out of the way.
Guitars can be a bit awkward to store since they are bulky, and even in a case they make it hard to store other items around them. Well if you’ve got a little space free on your coat rack, then you might check out this Guitar Hanger. Now your guitar takes up little more room than a winter coat. Of course you’ll need to make sure that the bar is sturdy before you go dropping a Les Paul or two on there. Try as I might, I couldn’t find a price for one of these. Surely we’re not talking more than $20 or so.
Not long ago I warned you that Apple might finally be caving in to the record labels by hiking the prices of some of their new tunes. Unfortunately it appears that I was correct, if you hit up some new tracks in iTunes, you’ll find the new $1.29 price tag staring back at you. But it isn’t actually all bad news.
Before the changes, there were two types of music available. You had your regular stuff, and iTunes Plus. The ‘Plus’ tracks used 256 kbps AAC encoding and were DRM-free. You paid an extra thirty cents for these bonus features, which added up to $1.29. Now all of your music, even the $0.99 stuff, is higher-quality and DRM-free. As for your old tunes that you previously purchased, you can go ahead and convert those to the better versions for free.
As we stated before, the price of your track is determined by how popular it is. There are three tiers; $0.69, $0.99 and $1.29. The more popular the track, the higher price bracket. To be honest, I’m really a lot less upset about this change than I thought I would be. People have been turning to Amazon because they offer 256 kbps DRM-free tracks at $0.99, but now Apple has leveled the playing field. And for those wondering, Apple isn’t the only one raising prices on new tracks. A quick look around the Amazon site showed some new tracks with a $1.29 price as well.
Update: Looks like you’re still going to have to pay that $0.30 charge to upgrade your old music to iTunes Plus.
It’s hard to disagree with anyone that says iTunes forever changed the way we buy music. Their simple $.99 per song pricing made it cheaper than ever to buy just the songs you like. It didn’t matter if the song was brand new or three decades old, $.99 was the price. Unfortunately starting next month that will no longer be the case. If you’re looking for a current chart-topper, expect to pay a premium.
According to sources, Apple has begun telling record labels that on April 7 they will introduce the new $1.29 premium price for popular tracks. This has been discussed off and on for some time, but this is the first we’ve heard of a date for the new pricing.
I won’t pretend to know all of the inner-workings of the record industry, but I’m pretty sure their business model is to bend potential customers over a table and attempt to extract cash rectally. I mean, it’s not like we’re going through a recession or anything. Oh well, looks like we’re just going to have to listen to music the old-fashioned way. Speaking of which, I believe we can look forward to a ruling on the big RIAA vs ThePirateBay case just 10 days after this new pricing scheme goes public.
I’m spending today at the ETech Emerging Technology Conference, and I just got back from a talk by Aaron Koblin. You might remember Aaron from his Sheep Market project, where 10,000 people were paid two cents each to draw “a sheep facing to the left” via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, a service (that you can participate in!) that lets humans perform crowd computing in exchange for money. If you haven’t seen this project, it’s awesome, especially if you like sheep.
In his talk today, Aaron showed two other crowd sourced projects… One was an image of a hundred dollar bill composed of 10,000 individually drawn pieces. The other, in the video above, was a rendition of Daisy Bell, the first song ever sung by a computer and made famous in 2001 (the movie, so in 1968). Aaron’s version of Daisy Bell was sung (and accompanied) by a mix of 2,088 people singing one syllable each, when they had no idea what they were contributing toward, just that they would get paid six cents. It’s pretty remarkable.
Last year Harmonix announced that they had acquired the rights to create a game based around The Beatles. Naturally this caused quite a commotion, as they are one of the most sought-after bands for rhythm games such as Rock Band and Guitar Hero. Unfortunately details were scarce, and we’ve been forced to wait for another major announcement regarding the title. Thankfully the wait for more info is over, as Harmonix has not only released specifics on the game, but a launch date and pricing as well.
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