Bob and the Monster and a Nice Use of QR Code

Bob and the MonsterBob Forrest may be better known as the outspoken group counselor on VH1’s Celebrity Rehab, but for music fans he’s the legendary lead singer of LA band Thelonious Monster, who released several critically-acclaimed albums in the 80s and The Bicycle Thief in the late 1990s.

Bob and the Monster, a documentary by by Shaker Films, chronicles the musicians rise to fame with Thelonious Monster, his fall into addiction, recovery and his transformation into a controversial yet influential drug counselor. The film premiered back in February 2011 at SXSW and has been making the film festival rounds, including earning a Special Mention at Toronto’s Hot Docs.

For its one-night showing in Los Angeles they’ve created a poster with a stylized QR code that links to a mobile site to learn about the film, watch the trailer, purchase tickets and link to the Twitter and Facebook profiles.

The poster makes good use of QR Codes following several best practices. The large stylized glyph created by Warbasse Design dominating the poster. The poster features clear instructions and description of what the user should expect on the mobile-friendly destination site. The poster also clearly displays the site URL and provides a short code for users to download a QR code reader. Good job all around.

I believe that in the near-future QR Codes are likely to cast-aside as technologies such as image recognition become more prominent. I believe the technologies (QR, Geofencing, Image Recognition or even NFC) themselves are less an issue than advertisers following best practices and providing value to their audiences. These connective technologies are here, use them with care folks.

Artists Re-Interpret Nick Cave’s Ship Song for Sydney Opera House Tribute

Sydney Opera House - The Ship SongLet me first say that any project involving Nick Cave gets my attention, so when I saw that the Sydney Opera House had released a version of The Ship Song I was all over it. The song provides the natural soundtrack for the visuals of the stunning sail-inspired architecture.

As the song transitions from scene-to-scene you’d never guess that it was actually recorded and shot over a period of 10 months before their respective performances at the Opera House. It’s an inspiring piece of work that sent shivers up my spine and raised goosebumps on my arm as the song’s intensity builds to a climax. One of several highlights is the performance by Melbourne’s Temper Trap.

Among the other performers on The Ship Song project are Neil Finn (of Crowded House fame), Martha Wainwright, Kev Carmody and Paul Kelly. Several of the Sydney Opera House’s resident companies are featured in the project including the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, the Australian Ballet and Opera Australia.

The Ship Song project was created by Sydney-based creative agency Three Drunk Monkeys and directed by award-winning music video director Paul Goldman.

The Ship Song can be purchased on iTunes.

Exploring the Cosmos With Bjork’s Biophilia App

Bjork - BiophiliaWhether you enjoy Bjork’s music or not, you do have to appreciate her creative ambitions and refusal to follow the tried and true. And please shut the hell up about the swan dress, that was nearly 10 years ago. Musically though, I’m still partial to Bjork’s earlier solo albums like Post and Homogenic and Vespertine, but her more recent experimental projects like Medúlla and Volta still hold a spot in my music library.

Back in June I posted that Bjork was set to release her new project, album, collection (what the heck do you call these things anyway?) Biophilia as 10 iPad apps within a mother app.

On June 19, the Biophilia mother app was released in the App Store. The opening interface works as a 3-dimensional view of the a Bjork cosmos. Each of the 10 tracks appears within that cosmos and can be found by swiping and rotating the 3D constellations.

The Biophilia app can be downloaded for free and comes with the ‘Cosmogong’ installed. The app features an animated introduction to the concept of Biophilia featuring the voice of David Attenborough. This track explores creation myths and explains that the big bang theory may be this civilization’s creation story. This might be more fun if you could dance to it.

Previews of the track Crystalline have been played on the web for a few weeks now, and now it appears here as the first app/track for in-app purchase. Crystalline can be played as a scrolling interactive stream or as a game, collecting crystals as the user navigates through 3D tunnels by tilting the iPad.

It should be interesting to see the creativity that Bjork and her creative team explore in the other 8 apps. If you’re a Bjork fan without an iPad, don’t fret. The songs will be released as a traditional digital and physical album on September 27th.

The Biophilia app can be downloaded for free from the Apple App store, each of the tracks, or individual apps can be downloaded for $1.99 as they become available.

Biophilia was designed by MSM (Paris) and produced and engineered by Scott Snibbe Studio.

The Vaccines Crowdsource New Video From Fans’ Instagram Pics

The VaccinesWay back in 1988 Bon Jovi literally crowdsourced clips for their Bad Medicine video in a very ‘old school’ way. They distributed video and film cameras to 250 fans and told them to shoot whatever they want. 23 years later. Imagine how easy it would be to create a video like this in 2011 when it seems like everyone has a camera pointed at the stage.

One of the hottest new bands out of the UK in 2011 is the Vaccines. Their debut album, What Did You Expect from the Vaccines? went to #4 in the UK charts. They’re due here in Toronto for a sold out show on September 27th at The Phoenix.

The band is looking to create a new video for the track ‘Wetsuit’ using images that their fans have captured using the iPhone app Instagram. Fans are asked to upload their best images from summer festivals with the hashtag #VACCINESVIDEO. Fans without iPhones can email their pictures to Pics@vaccinesvideo.com. So far over 650 videos have been pulled into a gallery from Instagram.

This is not the first time that Instragram has been used by music artists this summer. Previously I posted about The Deftones and Moby using the app.

Projects like this are great examples of the bonds that can be created between performers and their audience through crowdsourcing content through social media platforms. In the past a project like this would have taken several months to pull together, if it could have been done at all.

Band-Aid’s ‘Hurt to Happy Project’ Helps Fund Childhood Music Education

Band-Aid - The Hurt to Happy Project“I am stuck on Band-Aids brand, ’cause Band-Aid’s stuck on me”.

Who could forget that famous jingle first made famous in the 1970s? Here’s some trivia, this was one of the jingles written by Barry Manilow for McDonald’s, State Farm and many others.

Band-Aid Canada has launched a campaign on their Facebook page celebrating that famous jingle. Each day that you visit The Hurt to Happy Project and successfully play the “Stuck on Me” jingle, Band-Aid Canada will donate $1 to The Royal Conservatory Early Childhood Education program to help kids in need get the music education they deserve.

At this moment there are 3 different instruments to play; guitar (shown at left), accordion and kazoo. Notes move across the screen and the user must press various keys on their keyboard to play them. If successful, the user earns a badge that they can share to their Facebook profile.

What I love about this campaign is; it’s fun, it’s easy to participate, it’s for a great cause and I get to show off my bad-ass kazoo skills. Just check out the badge on my Facebook profile if you don’t believe me.

Visit Band-Aid Canada’s Facebook page and help out today.

What’s Spinning Over at Turntable.fm

turntable.fmTurntable.fm is definitely one of the hottest and most discussed startups around right now, but can it survive it’s own popularity. The co-founders behind Turntable.fm, Billy Chasen and Seth Golstein were previously focused StickyBits, a service that allowed users to create barcodes that when scanned would link to a user’s stories or contact information.

So, what is Turntable.fm?

Turntable.fm has only been open to the public since May and had amassed 140,000 users in it’s first month and it’s been reported that there are 300,000+ users now. It’s basically a browser-based chatroom featuring up to 5 DJs that rotate their music choices for the audience of avatars. The audience votes whether the DJ’s music choice is ‘Lame’ or ‘Awesome’ and points are awarded. Listeners can choose to follow a DJ and add the current song to their DJ queue. All listeners can be DJs, they can be invited by the moderator of a room or they create a room on their own and invite their friends.

The first time I saw Turntable.fm, I was immediately reminded of the dance parties in SecondLife. The region’s owner would stream music from their desktop as dozens of SecondLife avatars grooved and chatted publicly and privately alongwith the tunes.

Over the past few weeks Turntable.fm has seen artists like Talib Kweli and Diplo drop by to DJ and show off new tracks. Ra Ra Riot leadman Matthew Santos recently premiered his new solo album ‘Massachusetts 2010 to a room of listeners.

The site features MediaNet’s library of more than 11 million tracks, and anything that is missing can be uploaded by a user and added to their DJ queue. User’s can purchase tracks by clicking through to iTunes.

Unfortunately access to Turntable.fm was shut off in late June for users outside of the U.S. due to music licensing issues. Whether this is resolved quickly, no one knows and it’s probably not even a priority for the company at this time. Afterall Pandora has been blocked since 2007.

If you do get a chance to use the site, Chicago blogger Daniel Honigman has put together a helpful list of Turntable.fm etiquette.

Spotify Finally Set to Launch in the US (but not Canada)

Spotify in the USUS music fans are finally set to get their crack at using Spotify tomorrow. The launch has been rumoured as far back as two years ago when I was first granted a handful of press invites for myself and my music fan friends. Over that time we’ve run the desktop version through its paces, accessing the expansive library, creating shared playlists and providing the block rockin’ beats for two raucous Delvinia holiday parties.

According to an article published todays on GigaOm, Spotify will be offered in the U.S. in three subscription models: A free ad-supported service, a basic $5 per month subscription, and a premium subscription service for $10 a month which allows access via a mobile app, higher audio quality and access to exclusive content. You can head over to the landing page now and signup for an invite for Spotify as soon as it becomes available.

In the two and a half years since Spotify first launched in October 2008, several other competitors have emerged in the US such as Rdio and MOG, and services such as Last.fm, Grooveshark and Pandora have established themselves. Is there room left for another music service amongst music fans, or is Spotify simply a tech curiousity?

Below are a few screenshots of the Spotify application.

What’s New: this is the home screen showing which new albums or tracks have been recently added to the service, as well as a feed of news. This view also hosts popular playlists and a Feed of music that has been played by a user’s friends recently.

Radio View: Similar to Pandora, the radio functions allow a user to create a stream based on genres and decades.

Album View / Playlist View: Shuffle and repeat are available at the bottom of the screen as well as the audio controls. Tracks can be selected for a new playlist or dragged to an existing ones. Right clicking allows a user to grab the HTTP link, Spotify URI or simply share the track with another Spotify user.

Local Files: A user can mix and match your own locally stored music files with tracks from Spotify to create playlists.

Spotify Screenshots

Now, what’s this thing about not coming to Canada?

Pringles Crunch Band Wants You to Rock Your Smartphone


Pringles Crunch Band

This summer Pringles Sweden have unleashed Crunch Band, a fun new app for chip munchin’ music fans. Created by the creative folks at CP+B Europe, the app wants to turn everyone into a budding rock star just by shaking and swiping their Android or iPhone mobile smartphone.

The app uses the phone’s accelerometer to create the sounds of an electric guitar, bass and drums. More instruments can be unlocked by scanning the UPC code on the side of other Pringles cans. As the instruments are unlocked special badges are shared to a user’s Faceboook profile, and if your smartphone speakers aren’t loud enough you can order a special speaker attachment (in exchange for 3 product seals) that can turn your empty Pringles can into an rockin’ amp.

If you need help Pringles have provided a Rocktorial direct from Tomas the rest of the hard rocking development team. 🙂

Rob Zombie Directs ‘Clothes Torturer’ Woolite Commercial


Don’t run off and check your calendar after watching this commercial for Woolite, it’s not quite Halloween yet.
Rob Zombie directs Woolite Commercial

The Woolite commercial above was directed by Rob Zombie. (insert dramatic pause followed by blood curdling scream here) Yes ‘that’ Rob Zombie, Dragula driver, rock musician and director of movies like House of a Thousand Corpses, The Devil’s Rejects and the remake of Halloween. Zombie brings his dark, twisted vision to the laundry detergent brand courtesy of the New York office of Euro RSCG Worldwide.

In a recent NY Times article, Jiri Kulik, of Reckitt Benckiser said,

After “some of the consumers in our focus groups described what their clothes go through with laundry detergent like a ‘torture,’ we got this crazy idea of the washing machine like a torture chamber for your clothes, and then we describe Woolite as the savior.”

No mention in the ad of how well Woolite gets bloodstains out of your delicate laundry items, so make sure you check your labels.

Is Google’s Les Paul Doodle the Best Ever?

Google Doodle - Les PaulThe Google logo doodles have come a long way since the first one appeared August, 1998 as a tribute to the Burning Man Festival.

While most Google doodles are simply static images, others like the Martha Graham birthday animation and the playable Pac-man game take the art to a higher level.

The Google doodle posted June 9 was tribute to the Les Paul, the American guitar pioneer who would have been 96 on that day. The logo was a playable guitar that visitors could strum and even record. The guitar logo proved to be so popular that Google kept it on the American home page for an extra day before moving it to a permanent home.

What’s your favorite Google doodle? You can view them all here.