8Tracks: Music Curated

8tracks: handcrafted internet radio. Theirapps are pretty cool, too.

I’ve become fascinated with the playlist curation site, 8tracks. It allows users to upload songs from their personal libraries as playlists with tags and cover art, then share, browse and comment on playlists of other members. All for free. Think of it as cloud-based mixtapes with social functionality included (comments, tags, profiles, etc.).

I’d been a casual listener of the site for a while (and similar sites like Pandora and Blip.fm), but only when hosting an ’80s-themed party recently did I fully get into the full 8tracks experience.

The two above were the perfect soundtracks. Turns out there are scores of ’80s playlists already hand-picked and battle-tested by folks who care enough to share them with the world. And now I’m making my own playlists – which embed beautifully here:

My 8tracks playlists: singles, covers, guitars…

It’s been fun for me to see who likes these and then to check out their playlists myself. As a person who enjoys discovering new music perfectly suited to my tastes, this is rather exciting, as I now have several promising playlists to explore. Heck, TIME magazine even named 8tracks the best site of 2011. If you’re into discovering and sharing music, you should definitely give 8tracks a try.

What do you think? Have you ever used 8tracks? Is there a similar music discovery site that you recommend? Let us hear from you in the comments.

Related articles

• Mix Tape (nerdistheword.wordpress.com)
• To Spotify or not to Spotify… pt. 1 (songsoup.wordpress.com)
• 8Tracks Mixtapes (Mono no aware)
• 8tracks: The Moodiest Music Site on the Web (du.uloop.com)
• She Speaks (on): Internet Music Databases, Part Deux(shelistensshereadsshespeaks)
• Streaming Radio Service 8tracks Relaunches On iPhone: App Rebuilt From Ground-Up With New Look, Better Music Discovery (techcrunch.com)
• 8Tracks for iPhone Makes Finding and Streaming New Music and User-Created Mixes Easy and Fun (lifehacker.com)

A New Way For Music: Eno and Soundcloud

I’m a total news junkie. Always reading, listening, scanning; it’s fun for me. And I’m a music geek — that’s practically a religion. So of course I was interested in this story about Brian Enoreported by MarketPlace Tech Report, available via SoundCloud.

Photo: Brian Eno | Edit: rsmithing | Click for original

Eno has just launched a musical app, Scape, that gives listeners a new system for interacting with the sounds. Interestingly, Eno & his team developed the concept for this years before we all had smartphones and tablets. He describes it as:

…the move from one type of composer to another: the “let’s push the boat out together & see where it lands” type.

Scape App

So as listeners, we have the opportunity to be something more, while using an artist’s input to make our own creation. Not unlikeInstagram, or audio mashups like those by John Boswell, aka Melodysheep.

Who is Brian Eno?

I’ve never listened to much Brian Eno music, but I thought I’d give this interview a chance. Wow, am I glad I did. Eno is a deep musical thinker, which makes for a highly interesting listen, especially considering his perspective, having worked on such a breadth of projects. Many of my favorite artists have eitherworked with or referenced him regularly (Depeche Mode, NIN, Devo).

The guy is quite eloquent. Here are some quips from the full interview:

• On his new album: “A closely-guarded secret launched onto an ocean of indifference.”
• On using Scape: “You’re making an ecosystem of sounds. You’ve got quite a few creatures you can put into this little garden here.”
• On curation: “We’re going to have to come up with this type of system to short circuit the vast amount of material that’s out there for us to look at now.”

Putting curation into practice, Eno has a friend whose taste he admires send him a mix CD of new music each month… but doesn’t get the list of artists and songs until one month later, in order to “listen without prejudice,” since as a professional musician, he isn’t necessarily listening to as much music as he might be creating. It’s an interesting concept, especially to hear Eno himself describe it (at about 15:32)…

SoundCloud: I Like It

Besides the content, what really motivated me to blog about this interview was the opportunity to explore SoundCloud at the same time. SoundCloud is a site I’m becoming more pleased with every time I interact with it.

I started listening to the interview on my iPhone through iTunes, having subscribed to the podcast previously. In the brief 4-minute story from the podcast, the host referred listeners to the extended version at the MarketplaceTech.org site. I keyed that in and found a link to the full interview, which played on my phone effortlessly over 3G, streaming through SoundCloud. Having previouslyregistered at the site, I was able to add it to my list of “likes,” and embed a clip here on the blog afterward, since I emailed myself a link and tweeted about it from the site’s mobile page:

Richard Smith@rsmithing

Cool interview: Brian Eno on his new app & album via@MarketplaceTech soundcloud.com/marketplace-ra…

7 Nov 12

• Reply
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It’s great to discover and interact with something new — successfully, enjoyably and consistently like SoundCloud.

What do you think? Are you a fan of Brian Eno’s music? What other collaborative art examples does this bring to your mind? Do you have any experience with SoundCloud or similar sites? Let us hear from you in the comments.

Related articles

• Brian Eno and His New App (superradnow)
• Scape: the Brian Eno album that you create (telegraph.co.uk)
• Brian Eno Back to Ambient Roots, in iPad App with Peter Chilvers, Upcoming Album (createdigitalmusic.com)
• Brian Eno’s New App Redefines The Concept Of An Album (businessinsider.com)
• Feed Your Ears // Lukid, Stott & Eno (beatsandbobs.com)

iPhoneArt.com - the Next Level of Mobile Photo Sharing

As a fan and avid user of several photo sharing websites for years, I’ve been around the block when it comes to quality of work, features, and ease of use of these online communities, especially as of late with my interest in the area of mobile photography growing into a full-blown obsession (in a good way). Sites and apps I’m most familiar with are Instagram, Statigr.am, Flickr, DeviantArt,Fotki, and now I’m happy to add to that list with iPhoneArt.com.

I'm a Featured Artist of The Day at iPhoneArt.com - A great site, and not just because they feature moi.

Full Disclosure: They Have Excellent Taste

It so happens that I have been a featured iPhoneArtist of the day on the site which is a total honor for me, considering the quality and vastness of most iPA featured artists. I do this for my own enjoyment and expression, so that someone of some authority sees fit to recognize it as exemplary or interesting to others — well, that’s a huge compliment I’m very grateful for.
That said, I was a fan of the site well before being featured. The site recently released a companion app for the iPhone, which I find more enjoyable the more I use it. Here’s what I wrote to that effect in my second-ever app review:

Makes Instagram look like MySpace
Don’t get me wrong; I absolutely love IG (and loved MySpace back in the day), but I’m digging iPhoneArt as an alternative experience. There are no filters, so it’s up to you to create something artistic either with a solid photo or though editing via other apps. The “popular” page content here is considerably more art-based. And the interface is bare-bones, elegant, just enough. There’s also a fully functional website interface with organization through sets and such. Altogether, I see IPA as a relevant, enjoyable evolution in the mobile art sharing experience.

Is the app perfect? No. Is the site as feature-rich as it possibly could be? Of course not. But that’s to be expected with any new platform. The features and enhancements will come. But what about the art? Well, now… this is where iPhoneArt.com really shines. It lives up to the name wonderfully.
For one thing, it was designed by artists for artists, so there’s an inherent elegance to the interface, both on the site and the app. Also, you can only upload five photos per day. So they’d better be good. You won’t find the deluge of mediocre snapshots all over the place and highlighted for their popularity the way you might on, say, other sites. And the whole community there is indeed very creative. Just browse the site and you’ll see.
Seriously, don’t just take my word for it. Have a look at these screenshots from the app and then go download it and visit the site for yourself.

Galleries, faves, & searches — oh, my! Search in iTunes for "ipa: the mobile art network" to download for iPhone.
Again, I’ll state: I still love Instagram. I’ll still use and endorse it for general sharing and discovery. And I’ll still use Flickr for mass-scale storage and organization of the bulk of my images. And along with those sites, I now I have a home for the arty shots I’m most happy with, and a growing community of like-minded folk to discover and share with.

My sincerest thanks to the folks at iPhoneArt.com for featuring me, and for developing such an enjoyable site and app. I am truly honored.

What do you think? Do you have a preferred photo sharing platform? Do you use different photo sharing sites differently? Is this just a fad, or is this truly opening up a creative world to more people with the rise of smart phones and apps? Let us hear from you in the comments!

Related articles

• The History Of Photo Sharing (gabrielcatalano.com)
• How to Become Popular on Instagram: 10 Tips (rsmithing.com)
• We’re On Pintrest (great explanation of social media platforms) (fashionfoodfeminism.com)
• iPhoneography: Is It Here to Stay? (CasaForns Blog)
• Featured Artist on iPhoneArt.com (Creative iPhoneography)