My concept for the next generation of music albums (english)
Hello folks!
Well, now this is my first English post in this blog. It's because I hope I can reach more people this way because I've got a great idea. It's about a possibility to provide music CDs in a new way. I'm talking about a digital form.
I got inspired by a demo video from Elane's new album "Arcane - Music Inspired by the Works of Kai Meyer" I saw yesterday as well as the former web site from "The Birthday Massacre" (nothingandnowhere.com) - that doesn't exist anymore.
You can see the video from Elane here: Elane - Arcane
On the web site from The Birthday Massacre you could see a beautiful scenery at night. Every time you changed the page another scenery appeared: Grass lands, woods... etc. And on every page you were able to hear ambient sounds appropriate to the scenery. (I still remember when my ex-girlfriend and I just opened the page to listen to the sound of a river flowing through a forest and we fell asleep. Very nice!) But what I want to talk about is the lovingly animated scenery. It was like a static picture with some moving elements: Leaves of grass and branches waving in the wind, flying fireflies, Leaves flying through the air, etc.
Why don't you create something visual like this and distribute that together with the album? The example from Elane is a pretty nice one. But you can show the lyrics you currently hear in the song you're listening to and let them scroll over the screen. And in the background you can show static or moving pictures or a movie corresponding to the song. You could tell a story this way or underline the story of the song.
I'm sure you can do a lot more this way. Since it's an idea for downloadable content or maybe also a DVD you can buy in a shop (and NO ordinary music video that's running on TV!) it also can be interactive. Since I see this as an idea for a whole album I think it should be possible to control the playback of the music anyway.
I got this idea this morning and I imagined it would be very nice to get dragged into "another world" by watching something that's connected to the music I hear. On the other hand I'm just unhappy with some things right now:
1. Some music videos just don't express anything anymore. There are video clips where you only can see the band playing the song. After seeing those I just think "Um...... okay. Now I've seen it." and there's nothing that tells me "Watch it again! Go, do it!". I don't get the sense of those clips. Wouldn't it even be the same if they don't exist?
2. I downloaded how many albums from amazon and iTunes so far? I don't know. But I've got 1 (in words: o n e) complete album booklet so far with the download. The rest are just music files and a few videos that are included in the download. I still prefer to download songs because I don't need a jewel case. It's just laying around because I listen to music on my laptop, mp3 player or mobile phone. I don't even own a CD player! But I'm still missing at least the booklet with the nice pictures and the lyrics.
3. I'm also missing some creativity in todays music. When I think about classical music there are compositions that take over one hour. Now the average is about 3 - 4 minutes. I don't like this thought. But this is why I love songs that fade one into the other and have one big story. I'm always happy when I read "Song XY - 13:26" or "Song AB (Part IV)". No question, short songs can be nice, too. And of course, if you got a lot ideas you want to put into songs it gets more difficult to do both many and long songs. (And yes, actually this point doesn't concern the actual problem but I didn't want to miss it.)
I'm not one of those persons who just complain that "everything is so bad". When I think something's not nice the way it is right now then I think how it could be better. Either I write down those ideas or I shut up. That's how I work ;)
Of course I also wonder about what format should be used. Develop this as an ordinary PC software could be a problem because it won't run everywhere (the Windows Linux Mac problem). DVDs run everywhere, even on DVD players. But I fear the creativity will be very limited. And downloading this content will be another problem. Adobe Flash? I don't know if that's a good idea. But the upcoming HTML5 sounds very promising to me. You can download it, you can play it on every computer and even on some TVs now I think. And you can do A LOT with it. (Even I can handle it)
But a very important thing you don't have to forget: Let the customers listen to the music wherever they are! I. e. provide access to the music files, no matter what you put around the music.
Okay, that's it I think. What I expect from writing this? I don't know. Maybe I can move the world a bit if the right people read this. Maybe I can use this idea later for myself or a friend or anything. Just let's see. And wow, this is one - how at our school it would be called - wall of text. ;)
Thanks for reading!
Andy