While radio is a subject on this blog, here’s Gerd Leonhard’s take on the “Next Radio“. On-demand Streaming of Music on Social Networks and Blogs: this is the Next Radio!

Partly because of my general work as a Futurist, and partly because of my role as Co-Founder and CEO of Music API provider Sonific I have been very busy analyzing social networks, blogs, and other self-publishing platforms, and their importance to the music (and media) business. I will be publishing the results as part of my new book (The End of Control), soon, but my summarized conclusion is that this is the birth of the next Iteration of Radio that we are witnessing here. If you recall, Radio was first based on ‘pirated’ un-licensed content, too, unwanted and hated by the record labels and music publishers, since they considered it to replacing solid revenue streams (performances and sheet music, mostly) that they were counting on and did not want threatened (much like CD and download sales, today!).
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MUSICS, CITIES, NETWORKS: MUSICAL CREATION AND SOCIAL INTERACTION :: 10TH Conference of the SIBE-Ethnomusicology Society :: 5th Conference IASPM-Spain :: 2nd Conference of Popular Musics in the Hispanic and Lusophone Worlds Salamanca :: (Spain) 6-9 March 2008.

One of the social phenomena most characteristic of the last decades is mobility. Cities across the globe continue to be inhabited by immigrants from all over the world. This invites reflection on the place of music in these migratory processes. In what ways does music, both in its sonic form and as a cultural practice, contribute to social and cultural integration or segregation? How might music intervene in the experiences and perceptions of displaced or virtual communities? How do musics change, mix up, fight for the survival of, or influence, new cultural formations, and how do they make space for new sounds, new practices or new sites for cultural production? Continue reading

“The Last Tag Show, a live “net performance,” took place on Last.FM on April 14, 2007. Last.FM is a social networking site centered around tracking its users’ music listening habits and creating a profile based on that data. As a user listens to music, the track title and artist name are sent to his/her profile and listed publicly, allowing the service to create connections between users and the musicians they listen to. Another notable aspect of the service is its reliance on user participation, through wikis, in the creation of artist profiles. Continue reading

Networks, Mobility, Interventions

The projects in Glowlab 09 examine urban architecture by investigating the social spaces enabled by public networks, mobile communication devices and direct intervention. In viewing the work, one might re-imagine the city as space which is defined through the nature of the interactions that take place within it.

Public Broadcast Cart by Ricardo Miranda Zu�iga: Transforms a shopping cart into a mobile radio station, transmitting via miniFM and the Internet. The Public Broadcast Cart is designed to enable any pedestrian to become an active producer of a radio broadcast by reversing the usual role of the public from audience to producer.

Hundekopf by Brian House and Sue Huang (Knifeandfork): A location-based narrative project utilizing SMS text-messaging to explore the experience of riding the Berlin Ringbahn.
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Talent-Spotting in Virtual Worlds

“…At Radio 1 we want to bring a new level of social interaction to our virtual broadcasts. We are hoping that the bands featured on-air will have their own custom-built avatars, playing in the virtual world. So if we have the Red Hot Chilli Peppers playing a gig, visitors to a Radio 1 virtual space will see avatars of Anthony Kiedis and Flea, mimicking the action in the real world.

We also believe it is crucial that the virtual audience can interact with the event. It is about replicating the “liveness” of an event, not just broadcasting it. Additionally, Radio 1 wants to find ways of allowing the audience in these worlds to actually affect the real event. I see no reason why they cannot be asking their musical heroes questions, alongside virtual Radio 1 DJs, either via Instant Messenger or VoIP. This deeper social interaction, that mirrors real world events, would do much to enhance the ripples that resonate around digital communities.” From Talent-spotting in virtual worlds by Daniel Heaf, BBC.com.

The Myth of Bolshevik

Network activists and friends of the medien.KUNSTLABOR want to travel by boat from Amsterdam to the Black Sea. Final destination of the journey is the island St. Anastasia, formerly known as Bolshevik (1945 – 1990). The boat is named after Franz Feigl, an Austrian artist and network activist who lived in Amsterdam and died in 2001 at a young age.

The boat will record on its journey all open wireless lan access points. This activity, if conducted by car, is called war-driving. The peaceful goals of the Motorship Franz Feigl aim at highlighting the possibility of opening up networks and creating a free infrastructure (see Funkfeuer, Freifunk,
Consume).
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