
Imogen Heap releases single on Ethereum-based Mycelia - pajop
http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/sep/06/imogen-heap-saviour-of-music-industry
======
ethana
Went to alpha.ujomusic.com, greated with:

>The UJO MUSIC Prototype is optimized for Chrome on the Desktop.

People says that Safari is the new IE, but I have come across too many Chrome-
only sites to think otherwise.

~~~
random_passerby
Also note that "is optimized for ~" is now a euphemism for "content is only
available for ~".

I'm not quite sure to like that semantic shift.

~~~
johnchristopher
Well, _in my days_ I read "is optimized for Mozilla 1024x603" as "I am not
savvy enough to make IE align my stuff correctly but I am an armchair open
standard freedom fighter condescending enough to stick my W3C-validate logo in
the face".

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dvh
Singer Imogen Heap releases single on Ethereum (blockchain-based) service
Mycelia

~~~
PhasmaFelis
Thanks for this. It's a continuing problem with HN that submitters assume
everyone knows the same things they do, and leave out vital context.

~~~
arbitrage
It's been a continuing problem with tech sites since the beginning of tech
sites, not just HN.

But yeah, this is really frustrating.

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teekert
What I don't understand is: Is the music in the blockchain? Is the music on
everyone's computer but only accessible for whose with a key? Does this not
make a blockchain too big? Can you have subsets of the blockchain locally?
When you buy this album can you stream from these subsets of blockchains like
with Popcorn time? Its' not really explained in this article...

~~~
knocte
Exactly, good questions, that's what I was wondering as well!

After looking around, I think this is complete bullshit. I mean, it's a normal
website with a normal HTTP download. The only difference is that the payment
method is Ether.

So I think calling this "blockchain-based" is sensationalist.

~~~
cslarson
This definitely _is_ blockchain-based. Specifically, this project is using an
ethereum smart contract to record the release of a piece of creative content
along with a list of contributors to the realisation of that content. These
contributors will be automatically and transparently paid a portion of the
revenue each time someone purchases that content. My understanding is that
currently the content is hosted on amazon s3, but future plans would use
something like ipfs.

Some data on the ethereum contract including stored values and transactions:
[http://frontier.ether.camp/account/c7696b27830dd8aa4823a1cba...](http://frontier.ether.camp/account/c7696b27830dd8aa4823a1cba8440c27c36adec4)

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svarrall
How to actually get the song: [http://blog.ujomusic.com/2015/09/get-
ether/](http://blog.ujomusic.com/2015/09/get-ether/)

~~~
yc1010
I use Bitcoin every day, and these steps will rule out 99.999% of users from
being able to get any etherium (and hence buy this music)

The biggest problem with bitcoin is getting "normal" people to acquire even
small amounts without going thru too many hoops, Coinbase and Circle are doing
a good job there

~~~
warcode
How is coinbase/circle solving the hoops?

The only steps I want to go through are

1) Register an account (email/password)

2) Choose amount of bitcoin and destination

3) Pay

~~~
ISL
Chat with your local legislator. Anti-money-laundering laws exist.

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khawkins
This article really buries the lead.

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triplesec
please do be more specific

~~~
hrnnnnnn
You have to scan through about ten garbage paragraphs describing the current
state of the music industry before it starts talking about the story in the
headline.

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petewailes
Long term fan - if you ever get to see her live, it's well worth going along.
Her gloves are amazing. Allows her to combine something akin to composing
while she's also playing instruments. Fascinating to watch.

~~~
anentropic
musicians do this all the time

~~~
ddingus
She does it well. Just saying ;)

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thedaemon
"Imogen Heap invents _a really complicated way to pay for 1 song._ "

I'll pass.

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koloron
My favorite song by her:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAKh26bfkpw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAKh26bfkpw)

Beautiful usage of a vocoder.

Yes, I know it's OT…

~~~
filoeleven
Since we're already OT, I'll add that she was actually using something more
like a harmonizer than a vocoder[0].

A vocoder takes the formants from a singer/speaker and applies them to a
carrier signal which provides the pitch. So you could for example use a piano
as the carrier signal, resulting in a sound that is still very recognizably
piano-like but "sings" whatever you do, ignoring the pitch of your voice.

A harmonizer is really one or more pitch shifters that take the original
singing and move the pitch up or down a certain number of steps while
retaining (more or less) the timbre or texture of the voice. The altered
pitch(es) can track the original or be fixed to certain notes. The altered
pitches are mixed with the original signal to create harmonies. (AutoTune is
in fact a pitch shifter married to pitch recognition algos that nudge the
pitch back to where it should be.)

Some harmonizers let you use a MIDI keyboard to determine the pitches that
will play. With this kind of setup it's often referred to as a voice synth:
you can play chords on a keyboard that result in copies of your own voice re-
pitched and played back simultaneously. This is basically what she used to
create that song.

None of this (hopefully interesting) aside changes the gist of the original
statement: Hide and Seek is a beautiful song, and Heap's voice is a perfect
match for the instrument because of her range and tonal flexibility.

[0][http://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t=288785](http://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t=288785)
(forum link because the original article 404s)

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aaroninsf
I got all excited that IH had released some music Eduardo Kac style by
encoding it with CRISPR in mycelium or something. From 8-bit to RNA-bit.

Silly me, it's some block-chain thing. Drat.

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Grue3
>When was the last time you bought a CD or a record?

August 2015. Is that a trick question?

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jeremy7600
Doesn't the song being on YouTube defeat the purpose?

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glitcher
This article is begging for a TL;DR summary. 18 paragraphs before they get to
the first mention of Ethereum or blockchain.

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dang
Also
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10335389](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10335389).

