Art Gillespie

I’m checking out Bandcamp and I like it a lot.

Check out the embedded player. You can choose several different sizes and different visualizations:

In general, the whole vibe I get off these guys is that they worship at the altar of insane attention to detail. As an example, you upload a single uncompressed aif, some cover art, and boom, they take care of the rest, making it optionally available in every reasonable ‘internet-ready’ format. But when they do this, they also take care to embed metadata in all the files they create. Artist, title, album, sequence information, even the cover art entries are all set up correctly. I’m a huge believer in embedding as much information in mp3 files as possible, and every other site I’ve checked out actually strips this information out.

Another nice detail: Bandcamp automagically generates a favicon from your cover art so that when fans bookmark your Bandcamp site, they have a nice artist-specific icon next to the bookmark.

There’s a nice piece at the New York Times’ web site on Peter Neubäcker, Celemony and Direct Note Access. I had dinner with Peter and his wife a couple of NAMM’s ago. Awesome guy, and easily the smartest person I’ve ever met.

This whole Direct Note Access breakthrough reminds of me of a bit of advice I got once (and have shamefully never followed): Ask yourself, “What’s the hardest problem in my field?” Then ask yourself, “Why am I not working on it?”

Over at CDM, Peter has really stirred up a hornet’s nest with the normally docile keytar crowd: Flame-Throwing Keytar; Players, Not Instruments, Are Cool:

Here’s the best part:

1. Keytar aficionados don’t like the term ‘keytar,’ preferring the more-dignified term ‘strap-on.’

UPDATE:

Found browsing the ‘keytar’ tag on Flickr. Coolest ’strap-on’ ever?