Worldclass Shopping

The v-band.de Shop opened. You now have the possibility to buy merchandising, advertisement and sponsorship for musicians directly on v-band.de.

In addition it's possible for members to sell their songs or artwork - and customers could directly download them!

Enjoy the new openness and have fun!

New Version of Magix Samplitude

Most musicians recording their instrument or voice using a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation). The market is really big and every manufacturer presenting their product as the best.

Now Magix has the turn. They're presenting their new "Samplitude" in version number 10. Samplitude has everything what a musician require and presents a solid, easy to use, digital audio workstation (DAW).

The key feature of SAM-10 is called "Hybrid Audio Engine" and is described as followed: "The Hybrid Audio Engine in Samplitude includes a combination of a low latency and the classical Samplitude playback engine with higher latency where a clearly defined signal flow between the two exists."

On the first view it sounds like a real revolution. Everyone enjoys a low latency with music production. But is that really "core feature" of SAM-10?

Reading this again and again I'm thinking about how music producers and home recording musicians where able to life the past five years. Is it no standard to record with a low latency in an affortable environment?

Lets have a look into an audio studio. The first I see is a digital mixer, a lot of cables, a microphone, some amps, a guitar and... a Mac with a pritty great wide screen. What software is running on this workstation? Logic! Do they have significant latencies? No.

So why should an "Hybrid Audio Engine" become a revolution? Did they overslept the past?

Online Music Review by Pro's

Is your tune ready for the mass-market? The Global Media Development Group, Los Angeles, launched the new website DemoCheck.com which allows songwriters, musicians and composers to send their songs online to professional industry reviewers.

“In the music industry, one of the most important things a musician can have is perspective from a seasoned professional about how that musician’s writing or playing is progressing,” said DemoCheck.com founder Mark Northam. “Now songwriters, composers, musicians and vocalists from across the world can get a valuable perspective and critique on their music directly from industry professionals.”

The new service welcomes industry educators, performers, and other professionals to join the service as new reviewers in addition to the initial group of reviewers. New reviewers provide references which are used to establish the reviewer's credentials in the music industry, and each reviewer sets their own review fee and turnaround time for text or audio reviews which are delivered by email.

See www.democheck.com for more info

The Rocktober Podcast Radio show is online now!

Check out the radio overview and listen to the show with your MP3 player, via iTunes or any other device which supports the MP3 file format.

The show includes all rockin' and disorted tracks since v-band.de is existing - in complete over 2hours moderated music!

Enjoy now.

New Food for Podcaster and Radio Stations

The social network for online music collaboration, v-band.de, puts together what musicians, podcasts and radio stations require.

On v-band.de musicians all around the world create songs together. The songs get presented on many distribution channels all around World Wide Web. As most musicians needs to keep their rights to the songs, most collaborations are based on legal copyright - what makes it difficult for podcaster and radio stations to play these songs.

Also an alternate license environment, such as creative commons don't help to solve this problem because of their basic license conditions (e.g. naming all artists and naming the license) which are mostly not dealable for airplay.

Using the new section "On Air" at v-band.de allows members to link to their songs for airplay - free of any further restrictions - and allows registered podcaster and radio stations to use the songs in their shows.

In addition, radio stations have the chance to promote their shows to get more listeners.

More Information:

For Musicians:
www.v-band.de

For Podcaster and Radio Stations:
stations.v-band.de

About v-band.de

v-band.de is a social network website for musicians to create songs with artists worldwide. Using an open structure allows any style of music, any kind of copyright (e.g. Creative Commons or Legal Copyright) and easy ways of communication.

The use of v-band.de is free of costs.

Podcasters, Radio Stations and Webradio awake!

You're producing a podcast? You own a Radio Station or Webradio?

Great! Have a look at v-band.de "On Air" and play great songs out of our community for free.

Information's for Radio Stations

MeeMix | Beta - Internet Radio

The new internet community "MeeMix", allows members to create and listen to personalized radio stations that predict their taste in music based on a musical taste. Members can also connect to the diverse community and meet music lovers, based on their common taste, from across the globe.

"This is a huge and exciting step for us and for our loyal members," said Gilad Shlang, CEO of MeeMix. "Coming out of the closed Beta is a milestone. From now on, the power of expanding the MeeMix community is in the hands of our members."



"MeeMix is centered on taking the work out of entertainment. It's all about you and your tastes," he added. "No more searching, downloading, sorting and missing out. MeeMix is a place where you can sit back and enjoy your music while sharing your own private stations and experience with friends and like-minded people."

Visit MeeMix Beta

Creativity

With the time, the community gets bigger. And the creativity of our musicians didn't stop. In that case - to get a better overview to all of the finished songs at v-band.de - it was required to show the featured songs on more than just one page.

Everything is ready now for more creativity - so keep rockin!

More fun

From the 8th October 2007 new projects would get placed to our new collaboration rules.

The next step for openess is ready to use - without loosing the control of a project.

Any musician has every possiblity available. If you don't like the collaboration rules, simply add your general agreement and disallow anything you want or setup some rules which fits to your thoughts.

If you need assistance with this - feel free to get in contact anytime!

Radiohead?

The news went around the world. Radiohead is distributing their new album over their website - and the customer could choose how much to pay for a song.

As well as this is a big step against the music industry - looking behind the scene will show that they missed the target.

At first, Radiohead is now performing what indie artists and bands doing already long time before. One example is Alun Parry a songwriter from Liverpool and front man for The Alun Parry Band. They launched the idea on his website several months ago.



The second part Radiohead missed, why they do not use more distribution channels such as online music stores in addition? With simply selling their songs through the website they'll never reach enough people to impress the music industry. So seems this action is just a favour to themself.

Sorry for that words, but currently it seems that this is not seriousness. They missed their homework.

New food for loudness

Just reported about the project against the loudness war, I have to read following:

Image Line Software, the development department of FL Studio, released a new audio tool called "Multiband Maximizer Maximus".

Chief Architect and developer Didier Dambrin explained: "Used sparingly, Maximus raises the volume of the track without introducing unwanted distortion and ensures that the quieter parts, often lost in the mix, are more easily heard".

But looking more detailed into the tool, all key features also allows producers and musicians to use the tool against loudness and for dynamics, as they are:

• 3 independent user-definable High Mid Low (HML) frequency bands


• Custom look-ahead for the HML bands and Master compression envelopes


• 4 limiter/compressors: One per HML band plus a Master wide band limiter/compressor


• Each compressor has a multipoint compression curve. Create any shaped knee or special effects (limiting, compression, gating or expansion)


• Fully configurable. Any of the HML or Master compressors can be bypassed to configure Maximus to suit any limiting, compression or maximization task


• Two saturation types per HML & Master bands, with independent gain


• Phase-free mixing between the frequency dependent compressors and the master, perfect for parallel & NY-style compression


• 4 Independent stereo separation controls, one per band, for independent bass through to high-end separation shaping

This tool is available from end of October for a price $119 ($189 retail). To test a free demo of the tool check out
http://www.image-line.com/documents/maximus.html.

The war of loudness

It's a never ending discussion in subject of mastering. Most engineers needs to catch the time and master a song on "industrial standard". In the past this standard moved forward from dynamic to loudness.

What ever that means - for the customer and listener of music one knob switched converse.

In the 90s the volume knob of the home HiFi system mostly knows the direction up. With current records, the knob has to get moved down.

But why? Current productions are mastered to get out the most loudness with loosing dynamics - why ever - and catch a new customer experience. In fact, most engineers had to mess with this loudness war and produce the same way.

Turn Me Up - A project against the loudness war.

Hard to reach but welcome - this project want to get back the dynamics of a song with a compromise between dynamics and loudness.

Every musician and engineer should have a look at the project site and think about alternatives to the current situation.

http://www.turnmeup.org