MUSIC|MEDIA|DESIGN

Here we go: check this piece from Create Digital Music » The Generative iPhone-iPod Touch.  Finally, it seems things are shaking off the dust of 20th Century music – rediscovering that music can be more than a spectator sport, the piece links to some cool interactive music, but also the tools you need to make it. Now we’re cookin’ with gas…

So a guy named Steve Lambert has given me SelfControl. A cool little app that blocks access to incoming/outgoing social and networked media tools!  You select the biggest distractions, define the amount of access to grant yourself, and bob’s yer’ uncle!

…is that they require both literacy and time to consume. While email and the web certainly enhance basic literacy, they actively consume free time. Ruthlessly Darwinian decisions are constantly made about what to read, view and consider. In many (most?) cases the rawest sensationalism will beat depth or accuracy. Of course this view comes off as sour grapes in the context of dataesthetic.org, where we spew ideas to no one. But it’s equally true for The Daily Kos and the New York Times. For many reasons, raw meat trumps meatloaf on the web. So what’s a blogger to do?! Short of “sexing up” one’s posts with inflammatory or sensational headers and content, the answer may involve expanding the concept of literacy to other media, including video and audio, so ideas may be consumed at other venues and times. Podcasting, in all it’s forms, is one such solution.

Of course simply reading this post into a microphone will not make it more interesting or compelling. Likewise, while “powerpoint” style visuals and text can improve retention and comprehension, they do nothing to attract and hold interest. In today’s media market, high production values matter more. You Tube user-generated content seems to contradict this notion, but consider the nature of viral videos: they tend to be short, and derive or assume legitimacy through low production values that suggest a “regular person” and not a professional created and delivered the package. The ideas of the author are enhanced by the individual’s autonomy from a corporation, indicated by the home-made look and sound of the work. This is just one contemporary tactic though. At the other end of the spectrum are professionally produced pre-packaged news stories, distributed on DVD, tape or via the net, and delivered by local news personalities as “original” reportage, and corporate media. This content also enhances messages in the public eye, by disconnecting the audio and video elements of the program, and augmenting the “canned” images and sounds with fresh narrative. Somewhere in between lies traditional documentary and journalistic forms. One powerful solution to our “blog problem” lies close to those classic formats.

Talk radio, all-news and sports radio formats, as well as NPR programming, attract big, loyal audiences. Part of this is content driven: Sports and news junkies will always find a fix. But just as important, time and venue (car, bus, office) encourage rich audio-centric formats. Interestingly, monologues are rarely valued. While bloviators like Rush Limbaugh fill the majority of their time with their own wind, they rely in equal measure on listeners, to provide appropriate echos of their themes, or targets for their venom and reaction. When you remove the callers, talk formats only succeed through guests. Good guests draw, no guests or outside sounds drive listeners away. Really!

By contrast, even the most popular blogs have a tiny fraction of the audience of most major metropolitan radio stations. We may frequent dozens of blogs, but visit none as frequently as we hear radio, or watch my favorite network TV series’. Podcasts fare a little better since they’re “pushed” via subscription to iPods and PC music libraries, but even there time is a critical variable. Some shows are “stale” or superceded by a new episode before we ever hear them. Still, it’s the user who decides when to delete, or listen.

While I’m not suggesting blogging is dead or obsolete (quite the opposite, we’re at the front of this curve), I am saying it may not be the most effective tool to communicate with broad audiences. The intimacy and closeness of blogging can be attractive but the fact is many people already have plenty to read in their lives. Time is a real barrier. Formats that can be delivered and consumed with less active attention from the user can overcome that barrier. Podcasts can be delivered to passive users via subscription. Many people can’t read on cars, busses or trains without getting sick, but these same folks have no problem listening to music or audio programs while riding or even driving. Podcasts don’t lash the listener to a fixed seat, nor does their quality degrade over time and distance like broadcast. Programs can be shaped and sized based on the needs of the message, or the listener, or both, instead of being clocked to wastefully fill pre-determined “time slots” and program grids. Audiences for podcasts, like blogs, are self-selecting and potentially self-qualifying, but for all the reasons mentioned, capable of attracting much wider audiences in the manner of broadcast. But unlike broadcasts, the cost/eyeball is knowable, controllable and scalable.

As potential podcasters recognize these benefits, production values will certainly increase. Competition in the iTunes Music Store between free podcasts and paid video content is heating up, and more companies are tasking capable in-house production teams or freelancers with producing content. We see this already when established podcasts are “adopted” or “sponsored” by corporations. Typically the look and sound improves dramatically as a condition of sponsorship! This is good news for creatives, and savvy companies and individuals. Podcasting remains a natural meritocracy, where quality and content trump pervasive placement.

Podcasting combines the benefits of broadcasting and blogging, but it’s solutions to the biggest problems of those media is more significant than the similarities. Podcasting has evolved to encompass everything from entertainment to corporate communications, incorporating still imagery, web-links, and more recently, full-motion video. This richness expands the market for podcasts of all kinds, as do advancements in player technologies. Even many cell phones can deliver content these days. Podcasting and podcast players, along with digital video recorders (DVRs) like TiVo, shuffle the deck. While blogging remains a good way to communicate with the most engaged users and clients, podcasts hold greater potential to reach the masses. We can apply this potential to meeting their many and varied niche needs.

Dave Davis
Media Designer • Sound Images

NOTE: This post was cross-posted to dataesthetic.org by the author

What a way to start a blog, eh? Our concern here is looking forward however, and here in 2007, the blog is more about today than tomorrow. Since the turn of the 21st Century, the text journal, or blog, has been a popular format for discussion and even dissemination of news! Aside from the novelty and joy of knowing 40 other people recognize your handle, the phenomenon differs little in substance from the long-established vanity press. It’s difference in tone, a degree of significance impossible for a self-published author, is found in it’s availability: Successful googling is a measure of value.

Over the short term it’s given rise to a new genre of celebrity, actively defining their own fifteen minutes of fame. Longer term, as google is filled with hundreds, then thousands, then millions of other bloggers and their commentators, this effect will weaken. A different kind of hook is needed to remain relevant to Minute 16 and beyond. In an information economy, any sort of notoriety has value, so this is no small thing.

Study the differences between the best blogs and the best webzines. Plastic and Salon speak to similar audiences with a strong voice. How are they similar? How do they differ? The critical distinction between blogs and webzines is that blogs are a medium of the moment. Action/reaction. Any periodical is reflective to the extent of the deadline. A daily deadline, with no boss or editorial control certainly generates content, but quality suffers for all but the most talented writers. Practice tends not to make perfect, but lazy. Blogs can evolve by becoming less time and popularity driven, and more info-driven with a tight focus on user interest.

It must be understood that users can contribute in many ways, including by lurking in intelligent web spaces. Artists, writers and creators must devise frameworks that encourage all kinds of participation, including subversively responding to attackers (snoopers, trolls, people with too much time). Dataesthetically powerful design seeks and acquires information about fans and attackers alike, and uses it openly to discourage attacks, and better expose the information driving the site. The information itself is the product, and all response is crucial to shaping it.

That’s what we’re doing here. We’re redefining the blog a bit, making each post closer to an article (researched and considered) when it begins it’s life, that evolves, wiki-like, in response to comments and refinements in thought. Until it self-composts into irrelevance. Welcome to music•media•design blog. Or whatever it is we are.