Why? Well it just feels good to be able to open up Spotify and listen to your own music. This is stuff we’ve made almost 20 years ago (!) but it still feels kinda relevant. Fresh. Well.. you know what I mean.

I used Distrokid to handle the distribution to all major services. It’s a bit fiddly to work with and the overall UX is rather barebones, but it does what is supposed to for a pretty damn honest price!

When I ran into the excellent Spotipy library (a small yet nifty Python client for the Spotify Web API) I couldn’t wait to try it out with some fun project.

So that’s how the SpotiSci experiment came about; essentially a search tool that allows to query Nature.com‘s one million articles archives while at the same time browsing the vast selection of music available on Spotify.

Have a good listen. You may find the right soundtrack for your science.

Biophilia for iPad will include around 10 separate apps, all housed within one “mother” app. Each of the smaller apps will relate to a different track from the album, allowing people to explore and interact with the song’s themes or even make a completely new version. It will also be an evolving entity that will grow as and when the album’s release schedule dictates, with new elements added. Scott Snibbe, an interactive artist who was commissioned by Björk last summer to produce the app, as well as the images for the live shows (which will combine his visuals with National Geographic imagery, mixed live from iPads on the stage), describes how Björk saw the possibilities of using apps, not as separate to the music, but as a vital component of the whole project. “Björk’s put herself way at the forefront here by saying, ‘We’ll release this album and these apps at the same time and they’re all part of the same story.’ The app is an expression of the music, the story and the idea.”

The review above is taken from an article on posterous.com. How will the music/apps look like? Here’s an example:

For one song, Virus, the app will feature a close-up study of cells being attacked by a virus to represent what Snibbe calls: “A kind of a love story between a virus and a cell. And of course the virus loves the cell so much that it destroys it.” The interactive game challenges the user to halt the attack of the virus, although the result is that the song will stop if you succeed. In order to hear the rest of the song, you have to let the virus take its course. Using some artistic license, the cells will also mouth along to the chorus. It’s this determination to fuse different elements together – be it juxtaposing a female choir from Greenland with the bleeps and glitches of electronic music pioneers Matmos during the Vespertine tour, or meshing soaring strings and jagged beats on the Homogenic album – that helps explain the power and success of Björk’s collaborations…..

Biophilia is the result of a collaboration with Scott Sona Snibble, a digital artist active in the app-world with products such as ‘OscilloScoop’:

More press coverage on Pitchfork and the Guardian.

The summary says:

Sound Reasoning” is a web-based, introductory music appreciation course. It offers a new approach to music appreciation for adults, focusing on style-independent concepts. While the course concentrates primarily on Western classical and modern music, the concepts that are introduced apply to music of any style or era. The goal of “Sound Reasoning” is to equip you with questions that you may ask of any piece of music, thereby creating a richer and more comprehensive understanding of music both familiar and unfamiliar. Here are some additional features of the course. 1) ”Sound Reasoning” is completely listening based. No ability to read music is required. 2) The course assumes little or no musical background. A minimum of terminology is invoked. 3) Musical examples are interpolated directly into the text. 4) The course is interactive. A “listening gallery” with exercises follows each module, so that you may practice and refine your listening skills. 5) The modules may be studied in sequence or individually. 6)You may easily print a .pdf of any module.. “Sound Reasoning” is designed as both a stand-alone, self-paced course as well as a supplement to existing university classes. Thanks to Connexions, “Sound Reasoning” is available free of charge twenty-four hours a day in a cross-platform format. […] You must have the latest version of Macromedia’s free Flash plugin to play the musical examples. The course works best using Internet Explorer 6 on Microsoft Windows, or Mozilla on any platform.

.. can it be because the Kryos Project are already in it?

On jamendo, the artists distribute their music under Creative Commons licenses. In a nutshell, they allow you to download, remix and share their music freely. It’s a “Some rights reserved” agreement, perfectly suited for the new century.

These new rules allow jamendo to use the powerful new means of digital distribution like Peer-to-Peer networks such as BitTorrent or eMule to legally distribute albums at near-zero cost.

jamendo users can discover and share albums, but also review them or start a discussion on the forums. Albums are democratically rated based on the visitors†reviews. If they fancy an artist they can support him by making a donation.
jamendo is the only platform that joins together :
A legal framework protecting the artists (thanks to the Creative Commons licenses).
Free, simple and quick access to the music, for everyone.
The use of the lastest Peer-to-Peer technologies
The possibility of making direct donations to the artists.
An adaptive music recommendation system based on iRATE to help listeners discover new artists based on their tastes and on other criterias such as their location.

The Hot Handâ„¢ system is a patent pending technology that uses micro-machined motion sensors to translate movement and position into control signals for use in guitar effects. The system provides an unprecedented level of control and expressiveness and offers the artist a new way of manipulating effects.