Deadmau5 Sobre A Realidade Virtual De Jogos E Música: Estes Mundos Vão Colidir

Deadmau5 Dishes On Virtual Reality Game & Music: 'These Worlds Are Gonna Collide'

Earlier this week, deadmau5 launched a virtual reality game in conjunction with Absolut Labs. Users get a taste of a day in the life of the producer, interacting with his cars, his cat, and his crowds; deadmau5 also debuted a new track, "Saved," inside the game.

Billboard caught up with the producer on Thursday to discuss the inspiration behind "Absolut deadmau5," the importance of getting the virtual reality experience right, and the bright future for virtual reality in music.

How did the idea for a VR game come about?

To do VR, you have to do it well. If you do it poorly, it's just a bad representation of VR, and you're also delivering a shit project, and you're just wasting a whole bunch of time -- including your own. I decided let's give this a shot, let's talk to some developers and get some ideas together and see what kind of thing we can do to max out quality and produce something that's good for you guys. Once we started prototyping and working with the studio that was involved, I was super happy with the result -- they took the time to do it right.

Usually companies, when they approach other people to do VR, they're like "we're gonna offer a virtual reality experience" -- to me that usually means they're gonna put a bunch of 360° cameras in a room, film something, and wrap the video in a sphere so you can head-track and look around. To me, that's not virtual reality. That's 360° video. So that's what initially scared me off.

Once we started going into technical details -- like we would be building a game engine for this -- I was like, "this is great." Our interests are aligned. This is a world I'm starting to immerse myself in, and these guys want to be immersed too. This a great entry level project in VR to get my feet wet.

Explore deadmau5's Studio in Video Walkthrough & Razer Music Production Tutorial

You were closely involved in the process?

As much as I could be. I had to do other things -- I've got three or four projects at any given moment. I do this sort of thing where even for my own shows, I like to supply my own fingerprint of creativity. Not just ideas, technical things: offering model data, creating visuals for my stage show myself, babysitting renders, learning that technology as I go. That's what makes me feel like an artist. I'm doing this thing in all these departments to create and release and have that as part of the final product, as opposed to being a guy who only does one thing and then has all these companies and teams that create the rest of it.

Is it difficult to balance all those projects simultaneously?

It keeps me busy; it keeps me satisfied and challenged. I know very well that I can release a song or two and then spend weeks and weeks hanging out by the lake or sitting on my porch. That puts me in a state -- if I'm caught idling, I get really fucked up and miserable. The feeling of being unproductive to me does not go over well.

Do you think a project like yours will help to build demand for VR?

That's the point of this. It's technologically as fucking insane as it could be, it's there, it's working, you can get it in anyone's hands right now. To build something that can work on that platform is a fucking great way to entice people into VR development. We really stressed quality in terms of performance. It's a small proof of concept, a demo, an experience that lasts five to ten minutes, you can go check it out and have it work well and then take it off and go, "wow, that was neat." And then hand it to your buddy.

Virtual reality to me seems to have a number of different tiers. Entry level tier VR is this experience: on a phone, some simple head-tracking, and some quick and dirty, game-engine-quality stuff. The price point is minimal getting in. Up at the top end, you're looking at $600 to $800 for a headset, and then $1000 for a video card. It gets up there. That's why there are no true VR games right now. All the major game companies -- they put in $200, $300, $400 million to produce a game over a period of four or five years, and then they sell the shit out of it and make all their money back. These games are on platforms that everybody can enjoy: some mid to high end PC specs with a 2D game. That sells; they get their money back. With VR, because the tech is so limited right now, no one has really been focusing on that sort of thing.

Deadmau5 Launches Virtual Reality Game

Is this the first song debut via a VR experience?

I think so. I whipped that track up out of the vault and said let's try it out. It's a risk, but I think the end product, having seen it and babysat it from start to end, is a beautifully well-executed thing for what it is.

Do you have ideas for where you want to go with VR in the future?

I've been working with a lot of pretty big companies in VR right now. I'm exploring this world of game development and GPU and getting involved in any capacity that I can to meet talented artists and programmers and developers. That's what you're gonna need to get a high-end experience done.

All this technology and this delivery method relies on game engines. Anything short of that isn't virtual reality -- it's you standing in a room looking around from a fixed point perspective with no interactivity. To be as fully an immersive experience as it can be, it has to be built in a game engine, meaning every component has to be rendered out in real time in three dimensional space.

We're gonna start to see a merge happen in the industry, where production companies will be talking to game studios. These two worlds are gonna collide, and when they do -- they're already starting to now -- it's gonna be a really big thing you're gonna really regret not getting into now at this time, not in the future. That's the next big thing that's gonna happen to the music business I think. Not in the sense of co-branding, where Aerosmith comes out with a first-person shooter, cool as that would be. The technologies are going to collide: musicians are going to be working with game companies instead of some twat director with a 35 mm shooting a music video.

Sony Pode Oficialmente Comprar 2 Milhões De Músicas Que Pertecem a Michael Jackson

Sony Can Officially Buy 2 Million Songs That Belonged to Michael Jackson

Including a trove of 250 Beatles songs. 

A ruling by the European Commission on Tuesday gave Sony access to works by Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, and a much-coveted trove of 250 Beatles songs that were previously owned by Michael Jackson.

The commission’s decision gives the music company the green light to buy 2 million songs from Jackson’s estate for $750 million and dismisses opposition by Warner Music and independent music trade group Impala, which argued that the purchase would give Sony too much influence in the industry.

The deal will give Sony full control of Sony/ATV, a music publishing company created 21 years ago through a joint venture that split ownership of the firm 50-50 between Sony and the pop superstar, who died in 2009.

Warner and Impala had opposed the purchase, arguing that it would give Sony—already the largest music publisher—outsize leverage in negotiating licensing deals with music and video streaming services like Spotify and YouTube. Publishing rights are more important than they used to be given the explosion in digital streaming services that give consumers access to millions of tunes through a few taps of their smartphones. Songwriters and rights holders are paid publishing royalties when songs are played through these platforms.

The commission said Tuesday that the transaction will have “no negative impact on competition in any of the markets for recorded music and music publishing in the European Economic Area.” In particular, it said, the deal will “not materially increase Sony’s market power vis-à-vis digital music providers compared to the situation prior to the merger.”

Helen Smith, executive chair of Impala, said in a statement Tuesday that the decision is “clearly wrong.”

“It goes against the EU’s previous analysis of concentration in music, as well as the concerns raised during this market investigation. We will need to read the decision in full when published to understand properly why the Commission has allowed this transaction to go ahead—there is a fundamental flaw somewhere.”

Como Mello Music Group Tornou-se O Maior Sucesso Como Gravadora De "Indie Rap" Da Década

How Mello Music Group Became The Most Successful New Indie Rap Label Of This Decade

When Mello Music Group founder Michael Tolle entered the music biz in 2007, he was bombarded by proclamations of the industry’s imminent demise. A digital revolution had decimated the market for physical sales, and conglomerate-backed major labels were slow and indecisive in adapting to the new landscape. If once-loyal consumers were listening to music on their phones and laptops, skeptics fearfully asked, how were artists, much less labels, going to make money?

Tolle saw the challenge as an opportunity. Born from a series of compilations and self-funded collaborations, his Arizona-based upstart embraced the Wild West of digital downloads and streaming as means of organic publicity. But in other senses, Mello Music was a throwback, pressing releases to CD, vinyl, and cassette for a devoted audience. The album art recalled the great jazz and funk imprints of the twentieth century, and collaboration among Mello’s wide-ranging hip hop roster soon spawned full-length joint efforts from artists of varying stripes.

Rejecting the excesses which helped sink major labels in the new millennium (the built-in overhead of pricey A&Rs, extravagant video productions, superfluous equipment and studio engagements), Tolle let the evolving market dictate the means of his output, reasoning that demand would always exist for considered, musical hip hop. Where other labels clung to outdated mediums and rollout schedules, Mello emphasized the album structure in packaging its stable of idiosyncratic rappers and producers.

Many of Mello’s artists–quirky, progressive narrators with old school sensibilities–are ideally suited for the indie setting. Successful projects have included outings by Stik Figa, a scene-painting lyricist from Topeka; the abstract-leaning discographies of Dudley “Declaime” Perkins and his wife, the neo-soul singer Georgia Anne Muldrow; Open Mike Eagle, who terms his free-associative style “art rap”; and a stable of acts helmed by Detroit producer Apollo Brown, whose neo-noir compositions comprise a brutalist take on his city’s musical tradition.

We caught up with Tolle to discuss the demands endemic to the modern independent label, keeping up with advancing technology, and cultivating an audience.

A lot of Mello Music’s artists hail from distinctly middle American cities. How important was it to seek acts beyond the established hip hop epicenters of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Atlanta?

Michael Tolle: Hugely, because while I love listening to music from New York, L.A., Chicago, all of those places, they’re very urban cultures that have their own energies and their own vibes, and they’re visible even when you go there. But they’re not the vibes and cultures that everyone’s on. I personally don’t spend a lot of time in L.A. or New York, but I’m in Seattle a lot, I’m in Portland a lot, I’m in Hawaii a lot, New Orleans and Detroit. Because I listen to so much music every day, to find that little pocket that’s familiar, but has its own little twist, that resonates.

A big thing that people don’t realize about an independent label is that there are a couple of business factors going on that I don’t think anyone consciously tries to do, but they do weigh on things. You saw the death of the group a decade or two decades ago because it doesn’t make sense to tour 18 guys if you can just bring a guy with a microphone. And now it’s sort of gotten back to where the live band is part of the equation, but it’s still economically tough for labels and artists themselves to tour with a band if they’re not really cemented.

Likewise, there’s so much talent in the world, and when you speak to a New York artist or an L.A. artist, they pay New York or L.A. rent. So I’ve got plenty of experience with amazing New York and L.A. artists who are struggling financially, and when you talk numbers with them, they’re paying more per month to share an apartment than you’re paying to buy a house with a mortgage, land, and school district. Living in New York doesn’t sell records, talent does. So if you can find an artist who is not based in New York or L.A., but has talent, money goes farther. And so I think that that plays a factor with a lot of artists because you can go to places like Seattle, Detroit, and things are more reasonably priced without being outside the sphere of understanding, it’s not like you went to some country town where there’s only one building–the experience is similar.

Due to their styles and hometowns, some of Mello’s artists carry the status of hip hop outsiders. How has this helped carve a niche?

MT: There are people who are privileged, people who are not privileged–you get the whole spectrum–but in general most people in this country are somewhere in the middle, and we try to reflect that with music. So when you have someone like Stik Figa from Topeka, Kansas, or Red Pill from Detroit, you get these very American experiences that are unique to the regions. If they’re being truthful in their music, that resonates with people, and it resonates with me. I’d like to imagine we’re building a narrative or a story through all these different people from these very American places, portraying everyday existences with little distinctions that make their stories speak to people.

One thing I noticed with other people I worked with outside the label is that they have this ritual–it’s very hip hop–it’s, ‘Let’s get this big studio that looks awesome, this giant mixing board that we’re not gonna use. We’re gonna smoke tons of blunts, and we’re gonna write our rhymes in the studio, and somebody’s gonna pay $300 an hour for this, and it’s gonna look cool.’ And our artists don’t really work like that. They’re out writing stuff on the plane, on the bus, while they’re sitting in the town square, while they’re traveling, they’re writing as they go, and they only hit the studio when they need to record.

I think a lot of artists have a great first record, because they bring in their experiences from the world. And if they have success, they then tour, they live in hotels, they live in the studio and talk rap music. And that’s what you get on the next record, and the next record, and the next record, as long as they’re successful. But with us, you look at our artists, you don’t hear about that experience, because that’s not what they’re living. They’re continually out in the world writing about their experiences. They maintain a life rather than an industry existence.

Revenue-wise, what’s the current breakout between the digital and physical markets?

MT: I don’t care what format people listen to music in–it’s the music that matters. To that end, we do everything. I personally think CDs are great, vinyl’s great, we do some cassettes now too. Downloads are awesome, streams are awesome. But I’ve watched it change. We used to be pretty evenly split between physical and digital–it would be about 30% CDs, 20% vinyl. Then Apple eliminated CD drives and automakers eliminated CD players, so in the last year or two CDs’ share has decreased, but they’re still about 20% of the market. Streaming has taken over very quickly in the last 12 months, to where, revenue-wise, it has an equal share. Now it’s a little bit tilted–maybe 60% digital, including streaming and downloads, 40% physical.

Within digital, I’d say the most interesting thing is that it’s now about equal between streaming and downloads, which until recently wasn’t the case. Spotify is fantastic to us. Anybody you hear complaining about it, I don’t think they’ve really looked at the comparative picture. iTunes and Amazon are great to us–they’re about the same in terms of revenue. I think that’s why you saw Apple move to Apple Music, and it’s going to get bigger. Some of the iTunes people will move to Apple Music, but hopefully revenue will be equal there. I still think CDs will make a comeback in like five or ten years, and be the vinyl of that age.

Over the last year or so, I’ve been really surprised to see cassette tapes make a bit of a comeback. What do you attribute that to?

I think a few things happened. Vinyl became so trendy, and about two years ago vinyl buyers started requesting free download codes with their purchases. I think the market went from people buying vinyl because they really listened to it–and there’s still that market, that 50% of real vinyl buyers–but there were also a lot of people buying it because it was cool. I think that created a little bit of a bubble, but I still think the core of the vinyl market is very solid.

So then the prices started to go up, and pressing vinyl is still a long process–we’d have to hand records in four months in advance–I think people wanted more of a lo-fi alternative, and it was tapes. I will say that no one’s pressing thousands of tapes, we’re probably talking hundreds at best, even if it looks like they’re everywhere. It’s pretty niche still.

Do you think Mello’s artwork and special edition releases have helped capitalize on the remaining physical market?

Yeah, for me, it’s like Netflix. I stream lots of stuff, but once in a while Netflix changes the selection, and I can’t watch one of my favorite movies. You want to have a copy they can’t take away from you. I don’t want to subscribe to PhotoShop and have to renew it every month, otherwise I can’t open my files. So while I still want to be a subscriber to those services, I want the option of the hard copy.

If I’m pressing something to vinyl, I want it to be a work of art. I joke, I stream it when it comes out, if I like it enough to listen all the way through I’ll buy the digital download. If I’m still listening to it a week later, I’ll buy the CD or vinyl so I can have a physical copy in the house. I know a lot of people don’t do that, but for me, if I have something on vinyl, that means I’ve been listening to it a while, and I want to make sure it’s there, like a book on a shelf. I read digital books, but I have books I really love in paperback or hardcover on a shelf.

Como As Visualizações Do Youtube São Precificados

How YouTube Views Are Monetised

Many artists and bands think that they’ll automatically make money when their videos are viewed on YouTube, but that’s far from the case. In the last part of my series on streaming royalties and an excerpt from my new Music 4.1 Internet Music Guidebook, you’ll see all of the variables that go into how YouTube views are monetised.

“First of all understand that just because your video is being viewed doesn’t mean that you’re getting paid. Your channel must first be signed up with Google Adsense (who supplies the adverts), then set for monetization, then the monetize option for each video must be selected. It’s only at that point that your videos can begin to be monetized

View Variables

There’s more to it than that though, as with everything involving digital music. The commercial on the pre-roll must be watched all the way through or else it doesn’t count towards monetization. If there’s a banner ad across the bottom of the video, it must be viewed for at least 31 seconds before it counts as a monetised view.

There’s also the fact that YouTube doesn’t sell ads on all of your views. Then some views on mobile devices just don’t register unless the viewer uses an official YouTube app.

Another major factor is the advertiser and the type of ad that’s placed on your video. If your audience happens to like expensive cars, jewellery or clothing, then an advertiser would probably be willing to pay a higher ad rate, which means that each video view would earn more money. 

Yet another variable is the time of year the video is viewed, as many advertisers pay more for the holiday season than in January, for instance.

And then there’s the type of ad that’s used on the video or channel. This can vary from a skippable video ad that runs before your video begins (a “pre-roll”), to a transparent overlay add that takes up the bottom portion of your video, to a display ad featured to the right of your video and more. Each pays at a different rate.

That’s why there’s a wide range of payouts that can go anywhere from around $2.50 to $9.00 per thousand views. That means that a monetized video with 1 million views may generate anywhere from $2,500 to $9,000. YouTube takes a 45% cut however, which then puts the income to the copyright holder to between $1,375 and $4,950.

A generally accepted average of what to expect from a million video views is around $1,750, or $0.00175 per view after the split with YouTube, although its also common to see payouts as low as $0.011, or $1,100 per million views.

Don’t forget that if you’re signed to a record label, that this is what the label takes in, and you’re paid at your label royalty rate (15 to 22% of the net amount) minus any recoupable deductions. No wonder why you’re not seeing any YouTube money.”

You can read more from my Music 4.1 Internet Music Guidebook and my other books 

Vevo E Warner Music Formam Parceria

Vevo, Warner Music Strike 'Milestone' Partnership

Vevo and Warner Music Group have confirmed a long-rumored partnership that will finally see premium video content from the major music company’s artists distributed across Vevo's internal platforms. 

The licensing deal, negotiated off and on for more than a year, has been declared a “milestone” which concludes Warner's long holdout against the video platform, owned by Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Abu Dhabi Media and Google. Warner Music was the last major label operating outside of Vevo. The agreement excludes YouTube, on which Vevo maintains accounts for artists signed to UMG and Sony, with Warner artists retaining their own YT channels. It also is not an equity deal, as Universal's and Sony's are, giving WMG flexibility in terms of releases.

Warner Music Group Nearing Deal With Vevo

“Today marks an important milestone for Vevo as we forge a new relationship with Warner Music Group based on a shared vision of putting artists first and creating a platform that does justice to the music,” comments Vevo CEO Erik Huggers in a statement announcing the deal. “We’re excited to partner with Warner Music and bring their artists’ content to life through our new mobile and web experiences and across a range of our programming.” 

According to both parties, “select” WMG videos will begin to appear “imminently” across Vevo owned and controlled properties, including Vevo.com and its mobile app.
 
The news of negotiations between Vevo and Warner first emerged last August, and come after a year of redesigns and changes at the video service propelled by Huggers, who took over for Rio Caraeff -- the company's top exec since its December 2009 launch -- in April 2015. 

Divided into three distinct categories, Vevo last month announced a "reboot" that will impact three distinct areas: brand; creative content and programming; and product. The new features will include a redesigned Vevo logo and interfaces, new user profiles with social components and a personalized video player offering recommendation. Its ambitions weren't lost on Warner Music. 

Vevo Unveils Major Redesign, Content Strategy; Taps Drewski, Lizzy Plapinger, YesJulz as Hosts

“Erik and his team continue to evolve their service and bring to life a new vision for Vevo,” comments Steve Cooper, CEO, Warner Music Group. “We're pleased to have built a flexible and mutually beneficial relationship that will bring additional creative and commercial possibilities to our artists and songwriters.” The partnership, he adds, “is the latest in a recent series of deals that are helping us explore ways to unlock the true value of music videos in attracting and engaging vast audiences."

In July 2016, Vevo claimed 18 billion monthly views, a number which should spike with the inclusion of Warner's video content. As previously reported, the new arrangement is not understood to involve equity (as Universal's and Sony Music’s are), which gives WMG some flexibility in terms of releases.

Somente 1% Dos Canais Do Youtube Tem 93% Das Visualizações

1 Percent Of YouTube Channels Get 93 Percent Of The Views

First of all thanks to my friend BOBBY OWSINSKI  for this article.

The numbers in total are staggering. To date, there are roughly 2 billion total videos on YouTube that have been watched a total of 39 trillion times, totaling 196 trillion minutes (or 400 million years) of time spent, according to Bernstein Research. What might be most interesting is that out of billions of videos, viewership tends to be intensely concentrated on the top 1% of YouTube channels, and they’ve accounted for 93% of all the platform’s views since its inception.

That means that nearly 3 trillion views went to everyone else, and that’s still a huge number, just in case you’re worrying about getting run over by top creators. Remember that a trillion is 1,000 billion, and a billion is 1,000 millions, which puts that figure a little more into perspective. In other words, there are still plenty of views to go around when it comes to artists and bands.

While Facebook looks like it’s threatening YouTube for the video crown, most analysts are still betting on the later to come out on top. The reason? It’s all about the advertising, and YouTube is far superior in how it handles the pre-roll ads, giving advertisers more bang for their buck, especially when it comes to the top 1% creators.

And don’t forget, although it may be small, YouTube does pay at least a small royalty, and since the company is under fire from a variety of music-related associations and labels, it’s more than likely that revenue is going to rise in the future.

That said, you probably won’t ever get rich on YouTube alone unless you manage to crack that top 1%, but if you keep the purpose of being on the platform in perspective (it’s all about distribution and exposure of your music and your brand), then the money becomes a secondary issue. While you can’t take your eyes off the money and expect to stay in business, the music, and the passion for it, always comes first.

Bobby McFerrin - Demonstra o Poder Da Escala Pentatônico - Assista ao Vídeo

Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale

What Bobby McFerrin does is not an act; it’s spontaneous invention. He peers over the edge of the cliff, acknowledges the void below, and dives head first, buoyed by the element of surprise. Bobby uses dense rhythms, extraordinary scales, and complicated intervals that accomplished musicians and educators have studied and dissected.

Is our response to music hard-wired or culturally determined? Is the reaction to rhythm and melody universal or influenced by environment? Join host John Schaefer, scientist Daniel Levitin and musical artist Bobby McFerrin for live performances and cross cultural demonstrations to illustrate music’s note-worthy interaction with the brain and our emotions.