New Release

I've just released a new single under my given name, John Hughley, entitled, "Runaway Love." It's available at iTunes, Rhapsody, Amazon, and Google Play. To hear a full stream, just click the widget below.

A video clip of "Runaway Love," is available at YouTube. Thank you for listening.

Pandora's Box

I like Pandora, the internet radio site. The first time I used it I thought it was awesome. You didn't even have to log on. You just type an artist's name into the search box and the program generates a station using the music of that artist and those that are similar. What better way is there to listen to music then hearing only what you want to hear?

When I read that Pandora wanted artists whose music they used on their site to take a cut in royalty payments I couldn't believe it. The claim was made that the company was successful but not profitable. That the only way Pandora would ever turn a profit is if the company could pay recording artists less.

Pandora even took their plight before congress in the form of the Internet Radio Fairness Act introduced late in 2012. Many major artists and recording companies were immediately move to action against the bill. However, time ran out on the 112th Congress and the bill was not passed. This year the most recent protests against Pandora have been made by the surviving members of Pink Floyd. The members complained that they had only received $16.89 for 1 million plays of the song "Low."

If a major legacy band like Pink Floyd only got $16.89 for a million plays of one song, then lesser known artist with fewer plays most certainly are receiving even less then that. So where is all the ad revenue that Pandora is getting, really going? Why must the artists, who are supplying the content, being asked to take less for the use of their work? Surely, there must be another way for such a successful company to turn a profit.

Enter iTunes Radio. A Wall Street analyst has just compared iTunes Radio to Pandora and has called it a worthy competitor. As a result, Pandora stock dropped by 9%. With that alone, one would think that Pandora would rethink their strategy. The artists were once in their corner. Why continue to alienate them, when it's their music that has made Pandora what it is today.

Pandora's box is indeed open.

It's About The Return Of High Fidelity

On June 20th, Universal Music Group announced the release of it's new high resolution audio disc called High Fidelity Pure Audio at Dolby Head quarters in London. What's interesting about this news is that this is not the first attempt to introduce such a product. About 10 years ago, it was DVD Audio and SACD. And, there's the question of why now, when consumers are beginning to move onto digital downloads and streaming media?

The High Fidelity Pure Audio disc is basically a Blu Ray disc that can be played back on any Blu Ray device or PS3. The bit resolution is 24/96kHz which has become the standard for recording major releases and is much greater than the 16 bit 44.1kHz found on today's CDs. Most high end mp3s may be 256kbps to 320kbps and the file is a lossy file, which means that some audio was removed when the music was encoded.

The mp3 has been a great start for the age of digital distribution, but it only provides a measure of immediacy, The sound quality has always been lacking. The average listener may not be able to discern the difference between an mp3 and a lossless music file such as FLAC, but with digital, the higher the resolution the better the sound.

There are those who think this move by the High Fidelity Pure Audio group or, HFPA will only meet with failure. There is, and this is just my opinion, the possibility that there maybe new audio devices in the works. And, the release of another optical playback media is a good way to not only take advantage of the growth of Blu Ray, but possibly to introduce new hardware. Also, HFPA discs will be sold with the added bonus of downloading your music as a 320kbps mp3 or lossless FLAC.

This might be a good time to bring the FLAC file to the forefront. A FLAC file is like a zip file for music. No information is lost when the file is encoded. The same amount of data that goes into the file is what you get back when it is decoded. Plus, a FLAC file can be played while in it's encoded form and still deliver the same sound as the file it was made from. Making major releases available as FLAC files would give listeners both the immediacy that they've come to enjoy from downloading, with the added bonus of improved sound quality.

I think that it will be interesting to see just what will happen in the months ahead. While it's clear that most music lovers have kind of forgotten about high fidelity in this digital age, there's always the possibility that all that is needed is time and opportunity for music fans to find their way back to true fidelity at last.

Even More... Shameless Self Promotion

I've just released a new Nprogram single entitled "Sunshine," and it's available at iTunes. It's a mid tempo R&B/Pop groove that kind of fits the season. The song is also available at Amazon, Rhapsody and Spotify. You can also hear the song by clicking the the Tunecore Widget to the right or the one below. A thirty sec video clip of  "Sunshine," can bee seen at YouTube.


Also, I now have mobile apps for both Nprogram and John Hughley that are available for free from Reverbnation. Thanks for listening.

Audiam

I distribute my music through Tunecore, the online digital distribution company that was founded by Jeff Price and Peter Wells. Last year Price and Wells were relived of their duties and summarily dismissed. I was surprised to hear about this move. I know that conflicts can happen with a publicly held company that might find the company's founder/s looking for work, but these guys seemed to have set a new standard for independent music services. Unfortunately, after all this time, the reason for their dismissal remains a mystery.

On June 12th 2013 , Jeff Price and Peter Wells announced their return to the web with an all new company called Audiam. The goal of Audiam is to give independent artists the means to collect money from having their videos played on YouTube. Price and Wells estimate that half of the 25 billion videos posted to YouTube are bringing in about 1.3 billion in advertising dollars a year. Audiam will provide a system to get ad dollars for the other 12.5 billion videos.

The service is currently in beta and is only providing access to those living outside of the US, but Price and Wells expect it to go live sometime early this summer. There's no up front cost to use Audiam, just a flat 25% administration fee. Artists can upload as many songs as they want. Audiam will find videos that use those artists songs and authorize YouTube to place ads on them, and then administer the artists' share.

Audiam will also supply information to YouTube that will allow them to auto - generate buy links to iTunes, Amazon, and Google Play, for placement underneath each video.

Sounds to me as if Price and Wells may be on to something. Up until now most independent artists have not had access to money from views of their videos on YouTube. Clearly, the amount of money that will reach most users of Audiam will probably not be quite as much as major label artists, but at least it will be money that these artist deserve but weren't able to get. I think, and this is just my opinion, that this is definitely something worth looking into.

Let's Do It Again

If you been accessing Classic MySpace,then you've no don't noticed that it doesn't exist anymore. Yep, everything from the old MySpace is gone. As of Wednesday, the New Myspace is the only Myspace you can access. But, I don't have a problem with that.

In fact, while the New Myspace was in beta, I got a chance to add or convert just about anything from the old Myspace that I might have wanted. In reality and in all fairness, that was actually zilch. I liked the look and feel of the New Myspace so much that I looked at it as a whole new website.

The launch of the New Myspace brings along with it a new app for iPhone users, adding the mobile experience that some felt had been missing. The app is free and includes an ad supported radio feature called, My Radio, that builds a station based on user input. Each user has his/her own station which that can programmed with the music that they like or feel that their friends or fans might like. And the app also includes a GIf creator.

The focus of the New Myspace is music and the people who love it. When you log on, the first thing that you notice is that those pesky ad filled pages have been replaced by large thumbnails of your friends/ fans and what they have chosen to share. That, I think, is enough in itself to get get new users into what the site has to offer.

The New Myspace is the website that everyone has talked about for a very long time. The only question is, is whether those of us hungry for the unification of music and social networking will not only go and see what is going on there, but go there ready and willing to participate in the experience that they've all been waiting for.

The Big Squeeze

Like most of us, when I listen to recorded music I usually don't give a thought to why the music I hear, sounds so good.

When you go to a concert or live performance, you usually come away thinking that the show had a great sound or a bad sound based on whether or not the band's FOH (front of house) used compression and EQ. The best live sound is most likely derived from using as little signal processing as possible. The engineer or FOH may deem it necessary to recreate a certain sound or effect from a recorded single or album. The compression and EQ,used during a live show will be mostly on vocals. But, a recorded track is another story all together.

Often, there's so much going on, on a recorded track you have to use compression in order to get a cohesive sound. Compressing a sound alters it's dynamic range. It can make a loud sound softer or a soft sound louder. When it's used in audio recording, compression can even the volume level of each sound, allowing them all to fit together into a mix.

Some compressors have a certain unique quality that can add a coloration to your sound that's actually desirable and many that are used in today's recordings are chosen specifically for that reason. However, when compression is over used, the result can be such a loss of signal dynamics that EQ, or equalization must then be used to bring back what has been squeezed out.

Equalization provides the ability to restore a sound's natural quality by the raising or lowering of specific frequencies. It's like turning up the volume without using gain or attenuation. This works especially well during mastering. When it's clear that a track has been compressed and limited heavily, EQ is used in order to raise the over all volume. This is when boosting or cutting certain frequencies can bring back a sense of the songs character.

Compression and equalization brought together in just the right amounts or used judiciously will not only make a track sound vibrant and fresh, but if they are done so, you will never even know they've been used.