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08 Jul 2013

«Instead of music we'll be selling special features»

A year ago Hollander Bas Grasmayer had traveled to Moscow to lead the Strategy Department of Dream Industries, and namely the Zvooq project, which offers users a new way of engaging the music. At the end of last May Bas had met with the students of «Music Business and Entertainment Industry Management» RMA program, and talked extensively about the digital future of music, modern trends, and the context of their formation.

All the changes that occurred in music during the 20th century, were closely tied to consumerism, mass media and recording technology. Today the music industry is steadily drifting from mass culture to the so called i-media, and the musical prospects are more than ever tied to the rapid growth of the mobile internet technology.

The technological ability for cooperation between the artists and their fans had brought a whole new range of genres, which over time become memes. The meme culture is based on the internet in general, it uses its own visual language, which is, in and of itself, a product of spontaneous public creativity. One of such memes are the mashups - the non-original tracks that are composed out of two or more various original compositions. Controlled by the specialized software, the mashups can be generated in real time during any the live performance. Thanks to mashups, dub step and many other new genres, the clear borders separating these genres got substantially blurred, all while the electronic sound is increasingly becoming more dynamic and "live".

The mobile applications have also created new formats of engaging the sound. The recent album "Don't Be Scared" by DJ Vadim, came out as an iTunes app, which allows users to simultaneously listen, read texts, watch video, and even adjust the sound properties and the arrangement of each individual track, by manipulating the 3-D models on the screen. Therefore, having bought an app, you can now feel yourself as an active participant to the artistic process of creation of a composition. Another great example of the non-static music genre - the endless composition, which also operate through the web and mobile apps. For example, Infinite Gangnam Style endlessly mixes various parts of PSY's hit, until the exhausted listener decides to press the button that reads "Please, stop it". Today we have a generation that can't even imagine their life without internet and touch screens. They live in an active world and demand the interactive ability to engage it. And the more internet technologies permeate their lives, the deeper will be the complexity behind their relationship with music. The music will be able to adopt to our current mood based on our behavior pattern. It will endlessly play while you are in your car and seamlessly end as we reach our final destination. Hence, if the last century's major achievement was in the area of recording technology, the achievement of today is arguably the creation of new instruments, that bring the new dynamism to the sound. The current development trend will make music ever more exclusive, helping the artists make money not by selling the albums, but rather by selling a specialized application with various added features.

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