This week in our series of interviews of AudioJungle authors, we meet…
We’re actually two people, Chris Martyn from Leeds in Northern England and me, Geoff Harvey (right in picture), from South Manchester. I’m involved in other media-related businesses and Chris works for the British National Library.
Social media has totally changed the music industry. Where it used to be virtually impossible to get someone to listen to your music, including prospective record companies, it’s now incredibly easy to use the Internet as a vehicle for self promotion and publicity. Now, instead of waiting for a rare opportunity to perform to just a handful of people, it’s now possible to share your music overnight to potentially millions of people from all corners of the world.
Sites such as YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and Last.FM are just a few of the more famous and popular Web sites that musicians, singers and bands are all using to get their music out there into the homes of potential fans, customers and record labels. Publishing and marketing on social media Web sites is an incredibly fast and inexpensive way to promote your music. If you want to be successful, you’ve got to get your self noticed and you’ve got to get your music heard.
In the first of a brand new series, we’re going to showcase and applaud talented and unique musicians and artists who have used the Internet to promote their incredible music. You may have heard about these artists before or you may not. Either way, we want to celebrate how the Internet has afforded us the opportunity of discovering new talent and and new music.
Author: Fkmedia
Track Name: Funky Bassline + Digital Synth Beat
Duration: 1:33
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This hiphop track has an amazing synth lead with interesting filter effects. “Not really Lounge although not strictly Hiphop.”
Last week I spoke about how popular the iPod has become—and has been for many years. “iPod” now seems to be the generic name for MP3 players and portable media devices in general. Apple have done very well.
Not content to stay on the sidelines, Microsoft joined the competition a few years ago with their Zune range of portable media players. They haven’t gained much ground, but are trying to compete with the iPod by improving their hardware, and using a music subscription model instead of just selling songs. Unfortunately they have also made it difficult or impossible to acquire a Zune outside of the United States.
They have just released the new Zune HD. Is it good enough to make you switch?
iPhones and iPod touches have raised the bar for what is expected in a portable media player, and Microsoft are following suit. Here are some of the specs for the Zune HD:
They look gorgeous (at least in the photos), and comments around the forums have been overwhelmingly positive. Here’s a sample:
Sometimes I feel like you guys have a team spying on me, because once again you guys totally incorporated my secret desires for improvement. 4.0 is awesome. I know you’re especially proud of the smart DJ, but my favorite feature has to be the miniplayer/Zune Toolbar. Oh man, how I’ve longed for these. Keep up the awesome work, and tell your team of spies ‘thanks’ for listening. (TheDanRazzaia)
Though you can buy music and movies at the Zune Marketplace, the thing that really sets the Zune apart from the iPhone is their subscription model: the Zune Pass.
A Zune Pass costs less than $15 a month, and gives you literally unlimited access to all of the music available for the Zune (currently around five million songs). You are able to download or stream the songs to your Zune device, or stream them from a web browser on your computer.
If you listen to a wide variety of songs and artists, or love discovering new music, Zune’s subscription model could work out significantly cheaper than having to purchase all the songs to listen to on your iPod. If you discover a song you enjoy, with one press of a button the Zune will wirelessly download more songs by that artist. This subscription model really lends itself to affordably exploring new music.
If you’re not sure whether this subscription model suits you, Microsoft offer a 14-day free trial of the service. That should be enough time to see how the service can change your listening habits. Besides the subscription, Zune Pass also gives you ten song credits each month – that’s ten songs that you actually “own” rather than rent.
Do you have any thoughts about the new Zune? Do you own one, or would you consider switching? What do you think of the Zune’s music subscription model? Would it suit you better than purchasing songs? Let us know in the comments.
This week’s salute goes to AudioJungle author Slats, who made 28 sales in September.
Slats has been an AudioJungle author since April 2007, and has uploaded 55 items, made 396 sales, and achieved a rating of 
.
Slats’ profile contains a large number of instrumental tracks in various genres. He’s a talented musician with years of experience under his belt.
“Several concert sized ukeleles, acoustic bass, tambourine, castanet combined to perform a classic flamenco style, the quirkiness of the sound is fun and lighthearted. The track would be ideal for anything to do with ukeleles, Spain, Portugal, Italy, or even Greece and Mexico, food, fun, humour, spaghetti westerns.”
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“Happy, upbeat French style gypsy jazz. Real acoustic nylon strung guitars, vst drums/percussion, upright bass……..niiiiiiiiice!! This piece has a conveys a passion for life, fun, food, wine, romance!! That’s what I think anyway!”
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Here are two more of Slats’ tracks that I enjoyed:
Ambient Website Background Sound Pack
“A full length ambient website background track, which is also broken down into it’s sub parts, 10 variations to allow the user to re-arrange into a custom built track or use the individual parts on different parts of a website/movie. The variations are subtle, so there is a nice flow between each part, but there is enough change in feel to create a nice feeling of build, from the sparse delay driven acoustic guitar and percussion intro to the full pad swells and electronic drums. Ambient, easy listening, subtle, minimalist, beautiful, calm, serene, peaceful, corporate, business, acoustic, strings, heavenly, thoughtful, contemplative.”
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“Simple detuned acoustic guitar loop with live bongos and a touch of reverb,has a folky bluesy feel in the style of Led Zep-unplugged.”
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Congratulations, Slats. Keep playing and keep sharing!
Seems like a long time ago now, but in late August, we announced our $1,000 Logos & Idents Competition. We asked authors to submit audio logos into our brand new Logos & Idents category, which hosts all the audio you could ever need for podcast intros, radio and TV stingers, film intros and much, much more!
Thank you to everyone who produced and submitted their audio logos to the new category, we had an amazing response! Not only is the Logos & Idents category now thriving with over 500 items, but the quality of the submissions were outstanding. This category has very quickly become a goldmine for film makers, podcasters, game developers and multimedia developers who need stingers, audio logos and idents for their projects.
So let’s get down the the competition results! As per the instructions outlined in the competition announcement, we drew three random winners from the 358 entries we received, and here are the results!
1st Prize Winner: Stringgod
Stringgod wins an M-Audio Axiom 49 Pro Advanced USB MIDI Controller ($600 via PayPal)2nd Prize Winner: Pressplay
Pressplay wins an Akai XR20 Drum Machine ($300 via PayPal)3rd Prize Winner: Slavador
Slavador wins a Samson C03U Multi-pattern Condenser Mic ($100 via PayPal)
Congratulations to all our winners! We will be contacting the winners this week to arrange prize payment transfer. As Stringgod was the grand prize winner, he will also be receiving a “Won a Competition” badge to proudly display throughout the envato network forevermore! Well done again to our winners and everyone who participated in the competition. 
A sign of a talented musician and producer is often a diverse audio portfolio. This is certainly true for Ionics, whose portfolio consists of a wide-range of music that includes jazz, hip-hop, classical, and corporate motivational tracks. There is also an array of wonderful cinematic soundscapes in Ionics’ portfolio ranging from suspenseful science fiction numbers to gentle laments of sorrow.
Here are some highlights from Ionics’ portfolio:
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SONAR is a Windows-only MIDI sequencer and digital audio workstation developed by Cakewalk. Roland acquired a majority share in the company in 2008, and their logo was changed to “Cakewalk by Roland”. The program runs on Windows Vista (including 64-bit), and version 8.5 is the first DAW for Windows 7. It is also the only major DAW to have a scripting language. (more…)
Audiotuts+ is our sister site, and part of Envato’s Tuts+ family designed to power up your skill set. It is a blog for musicians, producers and audio junkies.
The site is interesting and informative, and always worth a visit.
Want more? Join the Plus program where you can access source files and bonus tutorials.
Here is a roundup of this week’s tutorials and articles.
(more…)
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Deep in the Jungle is the community blog of AudioJungle, an Envato marketplace. At AudioJungle you can buy or sell royalty free stock music loops, sound effects, music packs, logos, stingers and idents and even complete source files. Items are created and sold by a huge community of authors from all over the world!
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