Music Industry Bows To Point-And-Shoot Cameras

This photo of U2 lead singer Bono, shot during U2's Rose Bowl show on October 25, by amateur photographer Bruce Heavin, was taken with a Canon PowerShot G11, and is representative of the high-quality pictures that ticket-holders can easily take these days at concerts and other events with point-and-shoot cameras. Note the people in the picture snapping their own images of Bono. (Credit: Flickr user Bruce Heavin)

From CNET:

At last month's huge U2 show at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif., how could you tell the difference between the professional photographers and your average amateurs?

Answer: the professionals were the ones whisked away after Bono and friends finished their third song, and the amateurs were still there, happily shooting to their heart's content.

Nearly every person at any show these days is going to have some form of camera with them, be it a point-and-shoot, an iPhone or some other camera phone, and it seems that there is almost no way to imagine keeping all those devices out.

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Music Improves Brain Function

From Live Science:

WASHINGTON (ISNS) -- For most people music is an enjoyable, although momentary, form of entertainment. But for those who seriously practiced a musical instrument when they were young, perhaps when they played in a school orchestra or even a rock band, the musical experience can be something more. Recent research shows that a strong correlation exists between musical training for children and certain other mental abilities.

The research was discussed at a session at a recent gathering of acoustics experts in Austin, Texas.


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Innovation: Ultimate Jukebox Is Next Step In Net Music

Find what you want and listen to it (Image: Gary Burchell/Getty)

From New Scientist:

Something exciting has just happened to online music, and it has nothing to do with Google's new music service garnering all the headlines.

If you Google search for music related terms, like an artist's name, some results now come with links to audio previews for relevant tracks. It is easy to use, but the service taps into just a few of the online music streaming sites. Lala and iLike are included but others with large libraries like Spotify and Last.fm are ignored. It also only works in the US. But more importantly, Google's service only helps people find music, and what they really want is to listen to it.

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Ten Years After Napster, Music Industry Still Faces the (Free) Music

From Epicenter:

A full decade after Napster taught the world to share, the music industry’s resistance to new business models continues to obstruct some of the very services that could preserve it, albeit in a smaller, more efficient form.

The future of music over the next ten years depends on finding the right mix between “free” and “paid,” luring fans away from file sharing networks by offering them services that are faster, easier, and more convenient without asking them to subsidize the industry’s return to CD era profits.

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Music Benefits Exercise, Studies Show

From Live Science:

With the Fall marathon season in full swing, thousands of runners are gearing up for the big day. Just as important as their broken-in shoes and heart rate monitor is their source of motivation, inspiration and distraction: their tunes.

Running with music has become so common that the two biggest names in both industries, Nike and Apple, have been joined at the hip with the Nike + iPod combination. So, what is it about music and running, or any exercise, that feels so right?

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Epicenter The Business of Tech Google Preparing Music Search Service

From Epicenter/Wired:

Google plans to launch a music service, Wired.com has confirmed with sources familiar with the situation. Next to nothing is known about the service at this point, rumored to be called “Google Music,” “Google Audio,” or “OneBox,” although from what we hear it’s launching sometime next week.

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Monkey Drumming Suggests The Origin Of Music

An illustration of a rhesus macaque drumming with cage doors.
Credit: K. Lamberty, PNAS.

From Live Science:

When monkeys drum, they activate brain networks linked with communication, new findings that suggest a common origin of primate vocal and nonvocal communication systems and shed light on the origins of language and music.

In the wild, monkeys known as macaques drum by shaking branches or thumping on dead logs. Similar behavior has been seen in non-human primates — for instance, gorillas beat their chests and clap their hands, while chimpanzees drum on tree buttresses.

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Sky Guns For iTunes Market With New Music Download Service

Sky to compete with Apple's iTunes with 'Sky Songs' downloading service

From The Guardian:

Sky is to join the digital music marketplace when it launches a subscription download service that it hopes will persuade millions more consumers to switch to buying albums digitally and threaten the dominance of Apple's iTunes.

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Will Computer Programs Replace Mozart?

From Discover Magazine:

Meet Emily Howell. She’s a composer who is about to have a CD released of sonatas she composed. So what makes her unique? She’s also a computer program.

Emily was created by University of California-Santa Cruz professor David Cope, who claims to be more of a music teacher than a computer scientist (he’s both). Cope has been working on combining artificial intelligence with music for 30 years—thereby challenging the idea that creating music should be limited to the human mind.

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Fungus-Infected Violin Beats Stradivarius in Listening Test

Biotech-Enhanced Violins via Science Daily

From Popular Science:

Violins made by the Italian master craftsman Antonio Stradivarius are worth millions of dollars for their unparalleled sound. And that's great, for the handful of musicians who can afford these centuries-old instruments. This month, a new violin made from wood treated with a fungus actually trumped a Stradivarius in a blind listening test, offering hope for violinists who want high tonal quality at an affordable price.

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Scary Music Is Scarier With Your Eyes Shut

The power of the imagination is well-known: it's no surprise that scary music is scarier with your eyes closed. (Credit: iStockphoto/Mirko Pernjakovic)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 16, 2009) — The power of the imagination is well-known: it's no surprise that scary music is scarier with your eyes closed. But now neuroscientist and psychiatrist Prof. Talma Hendler of Tel Aviv University's Functional Brain Center says that this phenomenon may open the door to a new way of treating people with Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and other neurological diseases.

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Why Does Music Make Us Feel?

Lukasz Laska

From Scientific American:

A new study demonstrates the power of music to alter our emotional perceptions of other people.

As a young man I enjoyed listening to a particular series of French instructional programs. I didn’t understand a word, but was nevertheless enthralled. Was it because the sounds of human speech are thrilling? Not really. Speech sounds alone, stripped of their meaning, don’t inspire. We don’t wake up to alarm clocks blaring German speech. We don’t drive to work listening to native spoken Eskimo, and then switch it to the Bushmen Click station during the commercials. Speech sounds don’t give us the chills, and they don’t make us cry – not even French.

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You Are What You Listen To, Says New Study Of Music Lovers

Playlists can give an insight into your personality Photo: GETTY IMAGES

From The Telegraph:

Think twice before proudly showing off your iPod playlist. Your choice of music may mark you out as boring, dim and unattractive, according to new research from the University of Cambridge.

The study found that we make assumptions about someone’s personality, values, social class and ethnicity based on their musical preferences.

Classical buffs are seen as ugly and boring, while rock lovers are regarded as emotionally unstable and pop fans are considered to be rather dim.

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Yahoo Wins Appeal Of Music-Streaming Case

From CNET:

A three-judge panel ruled Friday that Yahoo will not have to pay up every time it plays a song on its Internet radio service, affirming an earlier verdict.

In what is being seen as a defeat for the music industry, Yahoo Music was not deemed "interactive" enough to require the company to negotiate with record companies for the rights to play songs over the Internet. Instead, according to Reuters, it merely has to pay licensing fees to digital music rights organization SoundExchange.

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Strep Throat May Have Killed Mozart

FILE - This is an undated portrait of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. What killed Mozart so suddenly in 1791? A report in Tuesday's Annals of Internal Medicine, a medical journal published in Philadelphia, suggests it might have been something far more common: a strep infection. (AP Photo)

From Yahoo News/Reuters:

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The death of composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart at the age of 35 may have been caused by complications stemming from strep throat, according to a Dutch study published on Monday. Since the composer's death in 1791, there have been various theories about the cause of his untimely end, from intentional poisoning, to rheumatic fever, to trichinosis, a parasitic disease caused by eating raw or undercooked pork.

On his death certificate it was officially recorded that the cause of death was hitziges Frieselfieber, or "heated miliary fever," referring to a rash that looks like millet seeds.

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Why Music Moves Us

From Scientific American:

New research explains music's power over human emotions and its benefits to our mental and physical well-being.

As a recreational vocalist, I have spent some of the most moving moments of my life engaged in song. As a college student, my eyes would often well up with tears during my twice-a-week choir rehearsals. I would feel relaxed and at peace yet excited and joyful, and I occasionally experienced a thrill so powerful that it sent shivers down my spine. I also felt connected with fellow musicians in a way I did not with friends who did not sing with me.

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Oldest Musical Instrument Found

Flute: The earliest modern humans in Europe carved this 8.5-inch flute from a vulture bone more than 35,000 years ago.

From Popsci.com:

Bird-bone flute hints that Paleolithic humans banded together to the demise of Neanderthals

How’s this for classic rock? German scientists have unearthed the oldest-known musical instrument fashioned by human hands. It’s a delicate flute made from the wing bone of a vulture that dates to at least 35,000 years old—just after the first modern humans entered Europe. The team discovered the flute littered among a trove of early-human loot at a mountain cave in southwest Germany. It included a few other flute fragments and a female figurine carved from the ivory tusks of a mammoth with body proportions that are beyond Rubenesque.

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The Sound Of Passion

From Scientific American:

Imagine a quiet night like any other. Suddenly, your infant’s cries break the silence. Fully loaded with emotion, the sound triggers an urge to stand up and run to your infant’s room. But, considering that your spouse is a musician and you are not, who will be the first to reach the crib?

According to Dana L. Strait and a team of researchers at the University of Northwestern in Chicago, the musician should win the race. Their latest study showed that years of musical training leave the brains of musicians better attuned to the emotional content, like anger, of vocal sounds. Ten years of cello, say, can make a person more emotionally intelligent, in some sense. So the alarm carried in a baby’s cry make a deeper impression; your spouse wins the race.

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Language Of Music Really Is Universal, Study Finds

A saxophonist. Native African people who have never even listened to the radio before can nonetheless pick up on happy, sad, and fearful emotions in Western music. (Credit: iStockphoto/Richard Clarke)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Mar. 20, 2009) — Native African people who have never even listened to the radio before can nonetheless pick up on happy, sad, and fearful emotions in Western music, according to a new report published online on March 19th in Current Biology. The result shows that the expression of those three basic emotions in music can be universally recognized, the researchers said.

"These findings could explain why Western music has been so successful in global music distribution, even in music cultures that do not as strongly emphasize the role of emotional expression in their music," said Thomas Fritz of the Max-Planck-Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences.

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Want To Rewire Your Brain? Study Music

Studying music can change the way a brain is wired, new research finds.
(ABC News Photo Illustration)

From ABC News:

All Those Hours at the Piano Paid Off: A Musician's Brain Recognizes Sound That Carries Emotion.

All those hours practicing the piano pay off big time by biologically enhancing a person's ability to quickly recognize and mentally process sounds that carry emotion, according to a new study.

The study, from Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., offers a new line of evidence that the brain we end up with is not necessarily the same brain we started out with.

"We are measuring what the nervous system has become, based on an individual's experience with sound," Nina Kraus, director of the university's groundbreaking Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory, said in a telephone interview.

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