Só Fazer "Turnê" Não Salvará os Músicos na Era do Spotify

Touring Can’t Save Musicians in the Age of Spotify

First of all thanks to MIKE ERRICO for this article.

Dave Growl of the band Foo Fighters performing in Ansan, South Korea, in July after breaking his leg.

Every couple of months, I see another post in my Facebook feed about a band that was cut off by an 18-wheeler or skidded on a patch of black ice and rolled their van into a ditch. Some members are injured, and they’re launching a Kickstarter campaign to pay for medical bills and to get back on their feet.

My heart (and often, money) goes out to them. But if you need to crowdfund your hospital costs, you were never on your feet to begin with. After many years as a touring artist myself, I’m honestly surprised that the person in that ditch has never been me.

Touring is, of course, the most ancient business model available to artists — and in many ways, it remains a vital part of their livelihood, even while the surrounding industry undergoes major upheaval to accommodate the new paradigm of streaming music. In response to the shift in revenue sources, standard recording contracts now intrude into the numerous nonrecording aspects of an artist’s career. But the advice given to the creative generators of this multibillion dollar industry is still one that would be recognizable to a medieval troubadour: Go on tour.

And yet from a business standpoint, it’s hard to find a model more unsustainable than one that relies on a single human body. This is why we have vice presidents, relief pitchers and sixth men. When applied to music’s seemingly limitless streaming future, the only scarce resource left is the artists themselves. You would think the industry would protect such an important piece of its business model, but in fact, the opposite is true.

The contribution of live touring to the music industry’s bottom line is enormous, and the number is only growing. Consider Taylor Swift: According to Billboard, her live show grossed $30 million in 2013, with another $10 million in merchandise sold. And depending on whom you believe, she made anywhere from $500,000 to $6 million from her catalog on Spotify that year. While she is certainly making money in retail sales and digital downloads, both of those metrics are spiraling downward as people migrate away from the concept of owning music at all. Nielsen recently released numbers indicating substantial drops in both CD and digital-track sales, which are down almost $100 million year over year from 2014; streaming music continues to grow, but the revenue it generates isn’t close to making up the difference, yet.

This means that the bulk of Swift’s income rides on her ability to get to venues safely and perform. It also makes her much-examined decision to pull her 2014 release “1989” from Spotify the financial equivalent of her taking a few months off. Regardless how you look at it, the health of her singing voice is far and away the single most important aspect of her business.

Record labels have followed the money and addressed these changes in the contracts they offer to recording artists. In the predigital era, labels profited only from the physical recordings they funded, but as that income began dwindling, a new logic was applied to the artist-label relationship. Labels argued that by promoting the recordings they owned, they were also promoting the artist’s career as a whole, and were entitled to profit from the full spectrum of artist’s revenue streams — the “360 deal,” named for the totality of its coverage.

But labels do not take on the additional risks associated with their additional profits. Instead of protecting the health of their revenue-generating engine, they simply point to an artist’s independent-contractor status, which releases them from any liability they would be on the hook for if artists were labeled employees. Rather than sparking a labor dispute, these 360 deals quickly became the new normal. As a result, administrators, support staff and office spaces are insured against the risks of doing business, while the company’s income generators — the creators of their master recordings — are on their own.

Artists today are not only touring more to make up for their own lost recording-sales revenue; they’re also being compelled to by the labels that also stand to profit. This makes it a great time to be a fan of live music: From the rise of electronic dance music to the regular resurrections of the Grateful Dead, a major musical event is never far away. But the physical price that artists pay for this easy access is steep. Last summer, Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl was forced to cancel shows when he fell from a stage in Sweden and broke his leg. Other artists with 2015 tour-date cancellations on account of injuries, surgeries and other health issues included Sam Smith, Miranda Lambert, Steve Aoki, Little Big Town, Meghan Trainor, Nickelback, the Black Keys and Kelly Clarkson.

That’s a lot of injuries — and millions of dollars lost. The European shows canceled by Foo Fighters alone, including a headlining slot at the Glastonbury Music Festival, cost the band nearly $10 million in fees and travel expenses.) And of all the instruments on a given tour, the vocal cords are the most vulnerable to the harsh environment the road virtually guarantees; basically anything that inconveniences the ordinary traveler becomes a business risk for the singer. Regardless of the circumstances, the singer has to call on this small, unprotected instrument to deliver on a daily itinerary that can extend from a morning drive-time radio show to the meet-and-greet after the performance.

From royalty rates to basic safeguards against the standard hazards of doing business, recording artists begin the negotiating process with a deck that is stacked against them. This lopsided balance of power allows labels to treat all artists as replaceable until proven otherwise, and both sides know that there is always a long line of hopefuls outside auditions for “The Voice” or “America’s Got Talent” to undercut a young artist’s bargaining power.

The question of why recording artists have been unable to organize and collectively bargain the way other artists have — actors and screenwriters, for example — is one that has dogged them since the dawn of the record deal. Musicians do have a union, the American Federation of Musicians, but it’s not a particularly strong one; it primarily represents members of symphonies, and it hasn’t been on a national strike in 70 years. Recording artists are not really considered core members, because their tenures within the union tend to be shorter than those of lifelong pit musicians and orchestra members. Music is also a traditionally decentralized, live art form with an ingrained renegade spirit. Hollywood, by contrast, has a single dominant hub.

Perhaps musicians’ renegade spirit is what ultimately will save the next generation of recording artists, who are increasingly forgoing record deals altogether and going it alone. As true independents, they work the margin between the technology that makes recordings cheaper to create and a public that is steadily buying fewer of them. Without a label taking a bite out of multiple revenue sources, the numbers can actually work. Others are coming together in groups centered on advocacy and pressing for changes to the laws that dictate royalty payments in the new streaming economy — something that could mean all the difference when injury, accident or age brings a touring musician’s career to a halt. But in the meantime, the vans and buses roll on.

As Melhores Músicas Através de Vídeo Games

I DISCOVER ALL THE BEST MUSIC IN MY LIFE THROUGH VIDEO GAMES, AND I’M NOT ALONE

First of all thanks to Mat Ombler for this article.

I’m pacing across a road that’s been coloured with a century’s worth of dust, waiting for a lone car to pass by. When one starts to crawl from the horizon, I place myself directly in its path. Like clockwork, the car - in this case, a beaten down pick-up truck - comes to a stop. I move around to the driver’s side, point my weapon, throw the vehicle’s occupants out and jam my foot on the gas. As I speed into the sun that’s starting to set over Blaine County, Radio X plays out at full volume over the truck’s stereo. 

This isn’t real life; I’m not a carjacker. I’m sat in my pants eating Doritos and playing Grand Theft Auto. Yet the songs on the game’s soundtrack - which range from All Saints and Jai Paul to Suicidal Tendencies and Bob Seger - bring my moments of virtual criminal life closer to reality. Later, I’ll outrun the entire Los Santos police force while Lady Gaga’s “Applause” blares in the background. As my virtual crime spree comes to an end, I decide to ditch the truck and jump in a taxi for a tactical cig break. I hear “El Sonidito” by Hechizeros Band for the first time, and I fall in love with its little beeps.

The scenarios I’ve attached to these songs have brought them into my day-to-day life. As a result, new artists and groups – those who wouldn’t have been on my radar had they not been on the game’s soundtrack – are now on my daily playlist. In fact, there is no relationship quite like the one I have with video games and music. 

On the surface, video gamers like me are being introduced to new music. That’s a good thing, because there’s nothing like falling in love with a brand new song from an unexpected source. But underneath it all, there’s a bubbling undercurrent that plays a role in helping to establish the careers of artists and composers alike, bringing them far greater revenue and exposure than ever before. Just think about the gluttony of past and present artists that’ve been discovered through Grand Theft Auto’s radio stations.  

So where did it all start? Big name franchises like Grand Theft Auto, FIFA, and NBA are well known for their soundtracks, but the inclusion of popular songs in video games predates their next-gen existence by almost a decade. Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker – which incorporated synthesized versions of the musician's hits, such as “Beat It” and “Smooth Criminal” – is arguably the first video game to include pop music on its soundtrack, arriving in 8-bit glory on the Sega Genesis in 1989. Games like Wipeout 2097 (which included Chemical Brothers and The Progidy on its soundtrack) and Quake (which was scored by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails) arrived shortly after, cementing the idea that including popular music on a game was more than a fad. For me, though, the pinnacle of video game music didn’t come until 1999, with the release of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. It’s that game that opened my ears to a whole new world.

Each afternoon I would rush home from school, throw my bag on the floor, and gallop over to the Playstation to tear up the School level on the game. Now, don’t get me wrong: I loved kickflipping down stairs from the confined safety of my settee. But, as a kid living in a world without high-speed internet, the most interesting thing about the game was its soundtrack. Because from Goldfinger to The Vandals, it introduced me to a punk scene I hadn’t heard about before. 

As the franchise continued, moving from the Playstation and on to the Playstation 2, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater had a strong influence on my music taste. In some ways, it was like a big brother. Alongside the likes of the Bouncing Souls and Less Than Jake, later editions included Frank Sinatra, Gang Starr, and Public Enemy, opening my ears to new music years before the Swedes dreamt up Spotify. I know I’m not alone in my love for the THPS soundtracks either; they’ve become a sort of cultural reference, entering the nostalgia canon for my generation, with playlists littering YouTube decades after the games were released. And it’s these generation-defining soundtracks that have helped the bands involved sell a lot of records. 

Tim Riley - former Activison employee and the man responsible for most of the music within the Tony Hawk series - says Fall Out Boy shifted 70,000 copies of their album in one week after their music was featured in 2005’s Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland. Goldfinger’s “Superman” is now their most popular song, and is seen by many as the title track to the series. Through its soundtrack, the game became synonymous with a millennial love for punk music, and it’s arguable a load of musicians wouldn’t have as established and decorated careers without it.

Since the release of the Tony Hawk franchise, video game soundtracks have exploded. These days, you’re just as likely to see Lorde on the soundtrack to Assassin’s Creed (where she featured on the game’s trailer) as you are on the radio. And who can forget The Sims 3, which commissioned artists as diverse as Damian Marley, the Flaming Lips, and Katy Perry to re-record their songs in Simlish. But these big name titles aren’t the only ones bringing music to the attention of a gaming audience. Take the game Life Is Strange: a third-person adventure title that was released in 2015. It covers some intense subjects, from drug-dealing to abuse, yet what’s special is how the developers of Life Is Strange have carefully licensed music to use as part of the soundtrack, helping to amplify the raw emotion embedded in the gameplay. 

[SPOILER ALERT] As the game’s fourth episode wraps up, players are presented with a decision. They can choose to euthanise one of the main protagonists, putting them out of their misery, or they can move forward. Given that the scene is virtual, it sounds trivial, but it’s the inclusion of the Message To Bears track “Mountains” that helps to bring the scene’s raw emotion to life. In fact, it’s so emotional that some fans have cried while playing through the scene. Others have reached out to Message To Bears to say how the song has affected them. Message To Bears tells me he’s “found new listeners” through the game and the track in question now has nearly a million YouTube plays.

Whether it’s driving down the Los Santos freeway or anxiously deliberating over whether to inject a virtual protagonist with morphine, it’s that emotional connection between music and specific scenes in a game that helps to drive music sales. Dan Croll is an electronic artist who has featured in both FIFA 14 and GTA V. One of his tracks featured in a Justin Bieber playlist, but it was his inclusion in the Grand Theft Auto franchise that led to a phenomenal increase in fans, and far outnumbered the traffic from Bieber’s hat tip. “Once GTA V brought me here, I was blown out of the water”, he says. “Games enthusiasts from all around the world were contacting me to say how much the track had connected with them”. 

It’s no surprise that video games are now being seen as a profitable method of music distribution. Former CEO of Universal Music, Zach Horowitz, once cited that inclusion in the Guitar Hero series boosts real world sales of an average of 200-300%. Activision chief Bobby Cotick remarked that Aerosmith earned more from Guitar Hero than they ever did from an album. It’s like the vinyl reissue of the video game world. In November, digital sales for Inon Zur’s theme song for Fallout 4 surpassed 17,000. That figure may seem paltry in comparison to major artists, but it’s a high number when you take into account that people have been that into the game they’ve gone out of their way to purchase the title music that plays on repeat.

So given that these bigger, more popular titles have the potential to drive revenue streams further than a Justin Bieber playlist can, it’s perhaps easy to see why Universal Music Group made an investment in Swedish mobile games developer, Nuday Games, last October. The studio’s first release is a trivia-based mobile game called Rock Science: The Rock Game of the Century. Essentially, it’s a pop quiz. Or rather, a rock quiz, as players are quizzed on their knowledge of bands, ranging from Motorhead to Korn. 

There’s some skepticism about major labels getting involved at the root core of the industry. Where some developers put music in their game because it increases the artistic quality of the product, others simply use it to promote their title, which is why Jason Derulo was dismally employed to introduce Just Dance 3 to consumers at last year’s international gaming conference, E3. But when it’s done right, these games help sketch out the music taste of gamers - which is especially helpful for the hardcore elite who refuse to leave their console each time there’s an opportunity to gain double XP when playing online.

I discovered some of my favourite bands through games like Tony Hawk’s, Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX and GTA. Listening to AFI’s All Hallows EP takes me back to playing Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3, completing the Foundry level on 100% for the first time. Most recently, the tragic passing of Dave Mirra saw me taking to YouTube playlists as I repeatedly played “What I Got” by Sublime. When I heard the news, it felt like a huge blow had been dealt to my childhood. I spent a portion of my life playing Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX, and owe my discovery of bands such as Pennywise, Sublime and Deftones to the game, as well as countless others.

The influence of these soundtracks hasn’t just affected gamers, either. In a way, these games have the power to shape the music tastes of a generation, and birth entirely new sounds through their influence. From grime to hip-hop, you can’t count the number of musicians who cite Playstation’s Music 2000 as their gateway into production. Bands such as The Reign of Kindo and BadBadNotGood are covering their favourite video game tracks, too. And increasingly, there are tours celebrating the music of video games like Pokemon, where full orchestras play the tracks out live.

Basically, the future relationship for video games and music is so bright it makes me feel kinda nauseous. Games bring music into our life; with them, my music library would probably be a near empty vessel, containing the one David Bryne song that came packaged with my copy of Windows 98. And as all PC gamers know, that would be a terrible place to be. 

Follow Mat on Twitter.

Dicas Para Músicos: Evite Que Esses Erros Comuns Aconteçam

Tips For Gigging Musicians: Avoid Making These Common Mistakes

 First of all thanks to DiyMusicBiz.com  for this article 

Whether you’re new to playing live or you’re a gig veteran, you’re not immune to some of the common pitfalls of playing live. In this post I’ll describe how to avoid some of the downsides of live engagements.

I have assembled groups and booked gigs, but I have primarily played keyboards as a sideman in the 25 or so bands I’ve been a member of since 1994. I have played regularly in Indianapolis, Nashville, Chicago and Madison WI, and I currently play regularly with 2 jazz groups in the Madison area.

In part one of my two part post, I’ll explore several topics and will share my experience with leading a band, booking shows, promoting, working with live sound engineers, getting paid and writing contracts.

In part two, we’ll look more closely at money (again), co-writing, guest players, substitute players and travel/accommodations.

With that, here are some key concepts followed by some comments based on my experience:

Don’t Get Short Changed

When I toured professionally in Nashville, I was a member of the American Federation of Musicians. For each of our live TV show performances, we named a different band member as band leader. This was so that person could collect a larger paycheck through the union as leader. I think this is a good idea, but you don’t want to rely on it and you should beware of the possibility of getting shorted.

For example, say there are 5 members in your band and you end up doing 4 TV dates in the calendar year. Simple math – one person isn’t going to get leader pay. The intentions were good but one band member never saw the payday that the other band members saw. That sets up the potential for resentmentwithin the band which can be toxic.

If you’re touring as a sideman for a major label artist, consider setting a goal for yourself to eventually become bandleader of that or another band. This helps to develop your leadership skills and will open the doors to a multitude of opportunities. Touring with major label artists allows you to play with some of the best musicians in the world.

Relax, You Did Everything You Could Do

If you’re the band leader and you book a show, on the day of the gig make sure you designate some time before the downbeat to get yourself into a music frame of mind. I have found myself struggling through the first couple of songs because I was still thinking about how I’d find the agent after the gig to give her back the parking passes, how I’d forgotten to get enough cash to pay the sub after the show, that I didn’t have time to eat dinner before the show and I wondered if I’d be able to eat before 10pm, etc.

These are not the kinds of thoughts you want running through your mind as you play your first solo. For me, all it takes is 10 minutes of silence and privacy to get into the musical frame of mind. At crowded venues this is hard to do – sometimes a bathroom stall is the most privacy you’ll get – but it works.

Promote, but Don’t Spam Your Fans

Take the time to promote your gig on Facebook and Twitter, but don’t spam your followers. Be sure to tag the venue and/or the booking agent in your post so that they’re aware you’re promoting too. It’s also a good idea to list the gig in the entertainment section in the online edition of your local newspaper and/or TV station websites. The listings are almost always free.

A couple of years ago, I discovered that the community editor for one of our local newspapers noticed one of my listings and he wrote a short piece about my upcoming show in the events section of the newspaper. It was an unexpected promotional boost ahead of the event and as an added bonus I was able to link back to the article in my social media posts.

Everything Is Negotiable (Remember That)

I’m a firm believer that all bars and restaurants with live music should provide at least some food and/or beverages to all of the musicians. Sadly, in some bars and restaurants, food and drink is the only form of “pay” you’ll receive – no show pay, just a $25 gift certificate and maybe some free tap beer. These venues clearly don’t value your time and services, they just see you as a way to keep warm bodies at the bar for a longer period of time.

Some venues do buyouts (a small amount of cash per band member instead of food/drink) but usually they won’t do this for you unless you ask. It doesn’t hurt to ask – the worst they can say is no? If you don’t get what you wanted in one area, ask for something in another – for example, a small bump in pay for the next gig. Everything is negotiable.

One of the best outcomes of good negotiating is that it shows that you take your profession seriously and that you and your band acts accordingly. Also make sure you understand how and when you’ll be paid. If you are the band leader, keep enough cash on hand to pay your band once the gig ends in case the venue pays you with a check.

I have had to run to the ATM after a gig so that I could pay my band when the venue unexpectedly presented me with a check. I recommend that band leaders sign up for Square since some venues might like to pay via credit card, plus with Square you no longer have to wait and worry about a check clearing.

Money In The Bank

It’s a good idea to ask the venue for a deposit, especially for one-off private events. When signed contracts aren’t present, I look at a deposit as earnest money. It shows the buyer’s good faith in the transaction. I think it also makes it harder for either side to back out of the deal.

Contracts Help Prevent Cancellations

Cancellations are a pain, but they do happen. So far it has probably occurred to me less than 10 times in my career. If you’re the band member, there’s not much you can do to prevent the cancellation nor is there an avenue of recourse if it’s not your fault and you don’t have a contract.

Usually the gig is just rescheduled, but I have seen gigs get cancelled when the venue suddenly decides they’d like to have another band for that particular night. It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen. Stay away from venues like this. If you have a contract, specify a cancellation period with the full final total payable to you in the event of a cancellation.

The Pecking Order

Avoid gigs where the sound engineer is paid first followed by the band. There shouldn’t be a pecking order because it usually means someone is about to get shorted. In addition, the crowd didn’t pack the bar to see the sound guy, they came to see your band. Great live sound engineers are hard to find and are worth their weight in gold, but if you’re stuck doing a gig in a mediocre venue with a mediocre engineer that’s paid before everyone else, make that the last gig you ever do there.

I hope you found this information useful. Stay tuned for part two, and feel free to contact me with questions or comments. Thanks to Greg Savage for posting this and for continuing to provide valuable information for composers seeking commercial placements.



Steve Banik, professionally known as STACKTRACE, is an American hip hop producer and musician from Madison, Wisconsin. He is best known for his keyboard harmonies, atmospheric synths and creative uses of sampling. From 2003 – 2006, Steve was based in Nashville where he was the touring keyboard player for several major label artists. Steve is the founder and owner of Stacktrace Music LLC, a music production, engineering and licensing company.

7 Startups de Música Que Foram Apresentadas no "Canadian Music Week"

Meet The Seven Music Startups That Were Featured At Canadian Music Week

Note tracks CEO Kam Lal, winner of Canadian Music Week’s Startup Launch Pad (image courtesy of Canadian Music Week/Grant Martin).

Mugatunes

Nobody is better known for finding the next big thing in music before the masses than young people, so why not really tap into those tastemakers and see what they can discover? Mugatunes seeks to find those college students that have the best taste and a knack for what’s going to be huge and put them in one place online. It is sort of like an online radio station, but created by over 200 kids all around the world.

Interestingly, Mugatunes doesn’t accept just anybody when it comes to its curators. The company has a fairly well thought-out application process where students need to really explain why they are perfect for this site, and even then they may not get picked. As if they hadn’t already gone through enough applying for things…

Audiokite Research

Music is usually a guessing game, even at its most scientific. Just when a group of producers and songwriters feel like they have it all figured out, one track that was supposed to be huge flops, while another tune that nobody expected to do anything becomes the biggest hit of the year. There is just no telling what the people will love, but that doesn’t mean educated guesses can’t be made or that there’s nothing left to learn.

Audiokite wants to figure out the appeal of a song or a video before it goes to market, and the company’s real goal seems to be to help every musician become not only better, but more commercially viable. Artists can upload their songs to the platform and select pre-designed surveys, which everyday music listeners will be paid to respond to. Those potential fans will be honest about what they liked or didn’t like about the track, which the original composer can take to heart and consider before creating another possible hit.

SongCat

This Irish startup aims to make producing high-quality music much more affordable and convenient for musicians at all points in their careers, though the deals likely appeal to those just starting out most of all. Instead of having to know people in an area or traipsing from studio to studio, SongCat has everything the modern musician could need, but it’s all remote. From backup vocalists to session musicians and even all manner of mixing and mastering services, everything necessary to create a finished piece of art is available on the site, and for fairly reasonable prices. The company even offers consultations if somebody doesn’t know what to do next with their work-in-progress.

Mission Control Management

One of the most difficult choices a professional musician needs to make is that of who will manage their careers, and some end up deciding that they will go it on their own and manage their lives and jobs. That’s a risk, but sometimes it can work out for the best. For those who have opted to be in control of themselves, Mission Control Management wants to help. The company is an online consulting and coaching service that aims to help those going down this road to understand what they are truly getting themselves into, and to help them be as successful as possible in doing so.

Notetracks

Being referred to as the “Google Docs for musicians” certainly had my interest peaked from the get-go. Notetracks is one of several new companies in the music startup space that aims to help people collaborate on music no matter where they are based. Music is better when people work together, but until recently, there wasn’t a great way for anybody to collaborate long-distance, which is a great problem to fix. Artists of all types can write and record pieces of music, and then make notes on the recordings so that their partners can see. It sounds fairly simple, but of course the people behind Notetracks created a well-designed product that was worthy of its win.

Aybo

The messaging space has become very exciting in the past few years, and it has also gotten much more musical. There have been plenty of new apps that allow people to insert music into their various forms of messaging, and Aybo is looking to be a standout player in the field. The app is an iOs plugin that lets users send just a snippet of a song or movie quote within their messenger. It’s sort of like a meme or an emoji, but only with audio.

Trebba

Perhaps the vaguest of the bunch, Trebba comes off as a streaming service of sorts, though it is aimed at a specific demographic. Instead of going for mass adoption like Spotify, the company is attempting to appeal to younger generations (tweens and the like), promising them a free music experience that still benefits the artists they already love and the ones they’ll discover on the platform. Marketers can get in on the fun, learning what the kids like and using that data to sell them on things elsewhere, though the company isn’t sharing much more on its site just yet.

Estes Mini-Fones Permitem Ajustar o Som do Mundo ao Seu Redor

Magical Earbuds Let You Tune In and Out of the World Around You

ABOUT FIVE MINUTES after Eden, the 20-year-old Irish phenom you really ought to hear, took the stage at Rickshaw Stop, the sound changed. Profoundly. It was as if I’d pried the stage out of a tight, sweaty club in San Francisco and dropped it into Carnegie Hall. Everything felt enormous, the sound reverberating off cavernous ceilings and expensive upholstery. A moment later, it got quiet. Eerily so. Eden looked the same, still brooding and banging on a synth, but the volume of the room dropped by half.

Then my left earbud fell out and everything went back to normal. Turns out my superhuman ability to control how the world sounds is only as good as the fit of my earbuds and the life of the battery powering them.

Over the last several weeks, I’ve worn Doppler Labs’ Here earbuds all over the place. To concerts, on the train, at home and work, in restaurants, and, once, in a public bathroom. In short, these two round, white buds provide almost total control over how the world sounds. You can amplify certain sounds—human speech, the bass guitar—and attenuate others—the airplane drone, the subway screech. You can shut out the world entirely. Or you can tweak things, like Mickey Mouse conducting an orchestra of the world. Add some reverb to that falling broom, give me just a smidgen of flange, and for Pete’s sake turn down that bus! This is augmented reality, people. It’s not just goofy headsets and crazy flying jellyfish. It’s what you’re hearing.

Here isn’t perfect, and the interface is occasionally clumsy. At $1991, the buds are expensive, given what they do, and given how often you’ll remove them because you’d rather wear actual headphones that let you listen to actual music. (My primary volume control on the world is a pair of crappy headphones and deafening pop music. It works just fine.) But every time I use them, and every time I show them to someone, they’re remarkable. They feel like a magic trick.

Inner Ears

Before we get to any of the technology, let’s talk about the buds. If they don’t look cool and they don’t feel good, the technology isn’t worth a damn (the Glasshole Maxim.) Here buds are neither beautiful nor inconspicuous, but they’re tolerable: wearing them looks and feels like having quarters sticking out of your ears. Not quite Her-style seamlessness, but you’re not The Great Gazoo, either, with giant antennae for ears.

The designers made Here comfortable enough to wear for a few hours at a time, which is the life of the battery and the longest you’d want to wear them anyway. These aren’t for all-day use. They’re for the concert, for takeoff, for nap time. Then you take them out and do other stuff after sticking them in a charging case about the size of a big pack of gum. It charges and protects the buds. Once you’ve paired them—an amazingly simply process that takes about 10 seconds—the buds turn on the moment you pop them out of their charging pods.

Devices like the Bragi Dash put most of the UI on the buds so you can control everything with taps and swipes. Here features an app where you play with the equalizer, choose various effects, and reset everything once you’ve gone totally off the rails and made the world completely unintelligible. Controlling it all through an app is far easier than learning a new gesture language. The downside is you’re that guy, constantly pulling out your phone and loading a blindingly white app to fiddle with frequencies. Here makes the best case yet for an Apple Watch; being able to quickly tap filters on and off from my left wrist is infinitely better.

Here relies upon a complicated mix of signal processing, frequency filtering, and software algorithms, but Doppler tries to blur all of that in favor of simple commands. I want the bus to be quiet. I want the Rickshaw Stop to sound like Carnegie Hall. I want to hear this concert the way Tiesto might have mixed it, which is always “like this, only with 10 times more party.” And can do all of that and more. But such tricks are merely an add-on to Here’s music features. Doppler did a big partnership with Coachella this year, and it’s working with SoulCycle so you can tune the music to be a little less SoulCrushing. This is very much a live music product. You put them in, tune them, and forget they’re there.

When you’re wearing the earbuds, even with no filters on, you’re not hearing the real world. You’re hearing Doppler’s processed version of it. It occasionally felt like I had water in my ears. Given all the tech involved, and the processing it does, you never get perfect sound fidelity with Here, and your ears will hear the difference with careful listening. Moshing at the Warped Tour? Not an issue. Standing in line at Starbucks, fine-tuning the sweet guitar strains of whoever replaced Norah Jones on the playlist? You’ll notice.

By far the strangest thing about wearing Here was growing acutely, Spidey-sense aware of how everything sounds. I don’t know yet if this is a good thing, or if it will drive me insane. So many drivers blare their horns outside my office, joining the cacophony of screeching tires and rumbling trucks that fills every city. Construction just started on the building next to my apartment, and I hear every shovel, every hammer, every angry guy yelling from the deep hole where the foundation will go. I swear I can hear everyone on earth chewing. I could keep going. (Have you ever noticed the air conditioning on the subway? It’s so loud!) Once I started paying attention to how loud the world is and enjoying the ability to tune it out, it became increasingly obvious that this infernal racket is a real problem we must solve.

I found Here most useful at work. I can tune out catchy songs at coffee shops, or turn down all the chatter that I normally can’t help but totally eavesdrop on. Filters like “Bus” and “Car” and “Subway” are self-explanatory, but my favorite is “Office (Loud).” Turn it on and the world vanishes. It’s like watching a silent film of the world. To be fair, though, this also describes earplugs. Doppler makes those, too, and they’re much cheaper than Here.

As someone who doesn’t go to five concerts a week and, let’s be honest, will probably go deaf anyway thanks to loud music and a general disregard for my eardrums, I’m probably not going to buy Here. But I think a lot of musicians might—Doppler’s certainly done a good job of signing up name-brand artists and composers. And they’re right to be excited. If you want what this product offers—a mixing board for the real world—you should buy it. It delivers. Personally, I’m looking forward to the long-term vision, to the real-time translation stuff and the music stuff and the voice-interface stuff. Doppler’s ten-year plan is really exciting. And maybe by then I’ll be a little less self-conscious about these discs in my ears.

1 UPDATE: An earlier version of this piece misstated the price of the Here earbuds. They’re actually $199. Hurray!