Popular Science Soundtrack Thingie
So I’ve spent the last couple of weeks working on a rather interesting project. As you may or may not know, I am listed on the masthead of Popular Science magazine as “Contributing Troubadour.” This is of course a highly coveted position at any magazine, but one of special importance at a joint like PopSci, where they take their geek music straight up without chasers of any kind. They have asked me to write a five-song soundtrack to complement their September issue on The Future of the Body. This is an unusual request, since magazines are not traditionally something that you LISTEN TO so much as READ QUIETLY TO YOURSELF.
I don’t want to spoil too much of the surprise, but I will say that the songs are about: a muscle-bound robot butler, DNA, mind-enhancing drugs, body augmentation and of course, artificial wombs. Each one is meant to correspond to an article in the mag and while there will not be an actual CD (this time anyway), the songs will be available for free download from their website. That DNA one is going to be a real toe tapper, I can tell.
It’s an aggressive schedule, basically five songs in as many weeks, so this is really an experiment in high-speed (for me at least) songwriting. But so far it’s been really fun, and I’m pretty happy with what I’ve written. I spent all day yesterday finishing up songs two and three, and now I am forced to turn my attention to songs four and five, which are still just rough ideas floating around in my brain and thus my least favorite. I am in constant fear of that awful moment of complete creative blockage.
So watch for the issue – I’ll post progress reports here if I ever make any more progress ever again.
More Radio, Ikea Podcast
As mentioned in my last post, Ikea will be the Net Unknown song on this week’s Net Music Countdown show, which as near as I can figure airs tonight sometime on some radio stations. I can’t for the life of me figure out where or when, so I don’t even know what the point of this post is. The only people who will be able to listen are the people who know when and where to tune in because they already listen anyway. I do know that it’s somewhere on both Sirius and XM. If anyone finds it, let me know.
In podcasting news, John of the Ongline Podcast recently contacted me asking for permission to use the Ikea song in a soundseeing podcast of a visit to an actual Ikea store. The audio sounds great. I honestly found it a little stressful to listen to – I think it was the general shopping noise, plus that I’m-having-fun-but-just-barely-holding-it-together conversational tone you only get when people are picking out furniture together. Or maybe I’m projecting. Anyway, it’s a good example of this new Enhanced Podcast that you can do with an AAC file and iTunes 4.9 – you can create bookmarks and embed images and links along with the audio, which is pretty interesting. It must be nice to have your own proprietary format.
Coulton on Radio, World Ends in Fiery Apocalypse
On Friday afternoon as I was leaving for the train station (headed down to DC to visit with some old a cappella singing friends, ahem, more on that later), I got a call from a guy named David Lawrence. He does a syndicated radio show called the Net Music Countdown, which is a countdown show based on charts of online airplay and downloads. David’s chosen Ikea as the Net Unknown track for the next show, which is very exciting – no idea what stations you can get it on, but there is a podcast, so check it out. He also asked me to join him for some interview time on The David Lawrence Show last Friday night (7/1). We chatted about many things and he was kind enough to play a couple of my songs. He also did a lovely dramatic reading of the Ikea lyrics. I didn’t get a chance to post about it ahead of time, but you can listen to the mp3 online. Thanks David!
iTunes schmiTunes
Apparently the iTunes podcasting support is neither “all that” nor “a bag of chips.” For starters, so many new people found and downloaded the Little Gray Books podcast that our web host shut us down for the day. I know! And the same thing seems to have happened to a few other podcasts too. It’s a shame that the iTunes store doesn’t include support for Bit Torrent – of course it may never, because you-know-which organization (initials are RIAA) is a hulking, stinky, litigious monster, and even though Bit Torrent isn’t illegal as a technology, it sure does “induce” people to infringe on copyright. Meesa people gonna get sued.
And not everybody’s jazzed about the functionality or the mainstreamification of podcasting that ITMS brings. The Wizards of Technology had an interesting discussion about it with the makers of iPodderX in their most recent podcast. Seems that some rss details aren’t getting picked up right. And it also seems that the top 100 podcasts list on ITMS includes a lot of corporate stuff (some kind of deal with Disney) and not so much the indie-type shows. Is this the beginning of the end of free, amateur-produced podcasts?
All in all, I still think this is good for podcasting, even for us indies. It’s fun doing it for free, but you can’t really make a living that way. Just like blogging, podcasting is going to become one of the many ways we all get information and entertainment – just another medium. And some of it may cost money, and some of it will be done by companies instead of individuals, and that’s just the way it is. You’ll still be able to listen to what you want ,when you want, where you want (er, at least until they add DRM to everything).
Just, please lord, make sure Adam Curry’s OK.
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