Blast got the word on Grammy award winning artist Ziggy Marley’s latest collaboration: an iPhone application that lets fans and music lovers alike a chance to observe the music from the production side of things. Providing tools to mix tracks, beats, dub sounds, interchangeable parts for drums, melody, bass, and vocals, the iPhone application is bridging the gap between the music industry and its audience.
We chatted with Chevon Hicks, CEO of Heavenspot, the independent digital creative agency that worked along with its sister company AppWagon, to create the application and bring a unique experience for users.
BLAST: How has this evolved? Bands have offered fans the opportunity to remix their work before (for contests and such) and with technology now being available in our homes (Garage Band, even ProTools and home studios) people who would never have thought of mixing or arranging before are now diving in.
CHEVON HICKS: We wanted to create a remix application that was easy enough for novices, but had enough features to keep aficionados entertained. We wanted to work with an artist who was first and foremost “cool”, especially since we knew it would be a long process. We needed someone with international name recognition with a broad appeal across multiple genres. Ziggy Marley was the perfect fit. We are also big fans of exclusive content, we knew right away that we wanted to create music specifically for the iPhone app – not just old singles. It took quite a bit of R&D to figure out how to get 50 different song parts to work together musically, as well as getting everything to playback in perfect sync on the iPhone’s processor. Six months, thousands of dollars, and three developers later we had a fully functioning proof of concept.
Since nearly everyone at Heavenspot is a musician of some kind, it was important to us to put our artistic stamp on the music. These Ziggy Marley tracks don’t sound like the Ziggy you’re used to. We figured it would be even more interesting to take him in a different direction, so we went old school. We were inspired by movies like Rockers, and Harder They Come. Really good rootsy 70’s reggae. I instructed our composer to listen to Rocksteady artists from the 50’s and 60’s like Alton Ellis, U-Roy, Freddie MacGregor, Dennis Brown, and of course Bob Marley and The Wailers. We’ve had people walk into our conference room while we’re demoing the app and ask where we got these new Bob Marley tracks – it sounds that good. That is one thing we will insist on as a company – we make the tracks. There is also a practical reason for this, as the technology dictates that the music is constructed in a very specific manner. It is possible to retro-engineer existing songs, but we will need to control the remix process.
BLAST: Is this positive for the recording industry? Are we surrendering our power, or offering insight to fans?
CH: Agencies, Record Companies, and Brands are all a little afraid of crowd sourcing – that is giving creative control to your audience. We believe user generated content is the wave of the future. Instead of marketers putting all of their eggs in the basket of one big idea, all we need to do is to give users to the tools to create what they want. This serves two purposes – 1. it decreases the risk associated with putting a bunch of money behind an unproven idea, and 2. it serves as a research platform as the metrics (that is the tracking of what users create) will tell us volumes about what they like, what they don’t, and how to best communicate with them.
I think it’s a positive thing for the recording industry, and our app specifically represents the future of customization. Imagine being able to remix any song with any artist? Or being able to remix and create duets between your favorite crooners? Or simply extending the bridge in that Steely Dan song you love? Or just getting something completely new with a flick of the wrist? We realize that humans aren’t always in the mood to interact. Sometimes you just want to sit back and be passively entertained. Well, we’ve accounted for that too, with our “DJ For Me” mode, which uses proprietary AI to randomly remix any of the songs included on the app. This also offers a unique experience as the remix of any song will be different each time “DJ For Me” is engaged. In the end, this will sell more product, and the recording industry should be excited by that.
BLAST: Also, this is seen as a personal gesture from an artist to fans. How do you think more artists will get involved in this way?
CH: We are hoping to reskin this app with everything from country to classical music. We would love to create some old school Patsy Cline music for an artist like Tim McGraw, then have someone like Maxwell come in to provide the hook. We’d love to create a classical version where you remix Mozart’s Piano Conciertos. Our process requires very little commitment from the artist – Ziggy came in a freestyled everything in less than two hours. He heard the tracks, made some quick suggestions, and went to town. At one point, I was in the vocal booth with him capturing video. When I closed my eyes it was like being the room with Bob Marley – that same voice burns through in our application.
BLAST: How does Heavenspot view the future of music technology and the recording industry?
CH: We can see that music technology is all about simplifying the experience for the artist. What used to take tons of equipment and space can now be done on a laptop, without a noticeable degradation of quality. In the end, it’s all about ideas and no amount of technology will ever— wait, I shouldn’t speak too soon – have you heard of Ray Kurzweil’s Poetry Writing Software? Apparently even creativity can be deduced in 1s and 0s!
The recording industry needs to focus on two things, IP and Digital Distribution. They fought it for too long which hurt them gravely, but I think the right people are steering the ship these days. Finally, and Apple is testament to this, the future is in micro-transactions. Nobody thinks twice about spending 1 dollar ten times a day, but spending 10 dollars at once is scary. Our application attempts to equalize the divide with it’s low price point of .99¢, which is not an accurate reflection of it’s value. That’s exactly what we want – high value for low cost, and to get it into as many hands as possible. The more people that have it, the larger the community grows.
Bob Marley would be proud. I just grabbed this, Chorus, Appolicious and FastMall which rocks.