Gizmodo: songs

Popular Songs Remixed Into Windows Dialog Boxes

John Mahoney — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 11:40:00 EDT

Brilliant.

$1.29 iTunes Songs Mysteriously Get Less Popular

matt buchanan — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 20:00:00 EDT

Billboard's crack scientists conducted a quick study on a mysterious new phenomenon: More expensive $1.29 songs on iTunes are becoming less popular! (Actually, the results will surprise you.)

One day after the price jump, there were 40 $1.29 songs in the Top 100, and 60 at 99 cents. The $1.29 songs fell an average of 5.3 places, while 99 cent songs moved up 2.5 places on average. The total average chart drop of pricier songs since the prices went up is about three places. Which sounds like the masses punishing the greedy labels, but it's not—greed wins:

For a price increase (to $1.29 from $0.99) to result in an equal or greater amount of revenue, unit sales would to drop by no less than 23.3%. On the most recent track download chart, the different between #42 and #45 was only 3.5%. One has to move up to #6 on the chart to get to a difference greater than 23.3%. The difference between the #6 and the #3 chart positions equals a 30% drop in unit sales while the difference between #7 and #4 is a 19% drop in unit sales.

We tried voting with our dollar, and our dollar stabbed us in the back. [Billboard]

'CrackBerry Love' Tribute Ruins Ten Years of BlackBerry in About Four Minutes

John Herrman — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 07:55:56 EST

Gadget-inspired songs are almost always terrible, but this, this is something else. A kind-of-spoof, kind-of-ad performed by legendary nobody Caitlen Moe, "Crackberry Love" is an unmitigated disaster. Things to watch for: a man in a BlackBerry suit, endless T-Mobile shout-outs that the company almost certainly didn't ask for, and the line "my Crack and I, we got a date." Slightly NSFW for language, and because your boss might hate it enough to just fire you out of spite. [CrackBerry]

Microsoft MixView Is Prettier, More Useful Version of iTunes' Genius

Elaine Chow — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 01:21:03 EDT

Not content with deploying their version of Apple's Genius tech support lackeys, Microsoft is now biting on the iTunes Genius song feature as well and the initial previews make it look... really awesome, actually. Wired got a sneak preview of the Zune 3.0 software, to be released on Sept. 16, and found it much more intuitive and encompassing than Apple's recommendation system.

The new feature, called MixView, puts a single album, artist or Zune user at the center of the screen and surrounds it with related items. This allows you to start on an artist and instantly find related bands. Double-clicking to any song plays you a 30-second sample, gives you a chance to buy the track or plays the full track if you're a Zune Pass subscriber.

MixView will be free to everyone, even if you don't own a Zune or subscribe to Zune Pass. Besides pulling reccs from their internet store, it will also apply its music aggregating prowess to your existing MP3 library. It'll be interesting to see how this really stands up to Genius come next week. [Wired]

Microsoft Research's MySong Makes Musical Accompaniment For Your Singing

Jason Chen — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 20:00:13 EDT

Before MySong from Microsoft Research, people without musical talent had to resort to consuming music and not bothering the rest of us with their amateur stylings. No longer. All you have to be able to do is sing a short tune (provided you can sing somewhat on key) and this MySong software will dynamically generate a piano accompaniment just for you.

As you can see in the video, it actually sounds pretty good, and you can adjust the sliders to make the piano part happier, sadder, jazzier, or not quite so jazzy. The bad news is that this is just a Microsoft Research project, not an actual package you can buy. Maybe in a few years? [IStartedSomething via Geekologie via Dvice]

TuneWiki Is the Karaoke-Like Lyrics App Apple Must Include in iPhone

Jesus Diaz — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 19:00:13 EST

Lifehacker's Adam Pash (co-author of the best iPhone book with some dude called "Jason Chen") told me this weekend about TuneWiki, an iPhone application that downloads songs lyrics from the web and shows them synched with the song in real time, karaoke-style. It works great and, being a closet karaoke whore, I admit I'm hooked. Apple must include this app integrated in their next firmware update. Watch the video review and, for an alternative take, you can see Californian high school cheerleader Rosita (yes, she's as sexy as it sounds) telling its virtues after the jump:

Rosita gives good reasons on her own but for me, TuneWiki is just perfect for drunk nights in the bar, when everyone wants to sing for some reason and nobody knows the exact lyrics to a song. Or maybe it's just me. Whatever. In any case, if you enjoy music and singing or reading lyrics as you listen to songs, TuneWiki is a must. [TuneWiki - Video review music by Goldfrapp]

VOCALOID 2: The Japanese Anime Song Generator

Jason Chen — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 15:15:58 EDT

Think Garageband for otakus. This Japanese software suite lets you plug in lyrics and melody and generates an "authentic-sounding" song via its music and vocal synthesizers. As you can see above, the software features a 16-year- old "Virtual Singer," which croons out whatever disgustingly sweet (or just disgusting) lyrics you enter in (Japanese only, we're assuming). It's so popular in Nippon that it's actually the #1 selling software on their Amazon. And for good reason—the songs they generate actually sound like it could have come from a generic teenaged anime. Hit the jump for two videos.

[Gamersweb]