Podcast: Episode 1

Introduction

Hey there light audio recording fans, I hope you’re doing well today. It’s September twenty seventh, twenty eighteen, and this is Ronan Fitzgerald from light audio recording dot com, with episode 1 of the light audio recording podcast, bringing you a five-minute round-up of news from the past month of stuff that’s relevant to light audio recording.

In this podcast, we look at artists directly uploading their music to Spotify rather than going through an aggregator; as well as other gear and tech-related news

Item one

The big news for everybody interested in the music industry and technology right now, is of course Spotify. They’re beta testing a function allowing people to directly upload music to the platform.

Up until now, the only way for an independent or unsigned artist to get their music on Spotify is to go through an aggregator such as Tunecore, who of course want payment for their service.

According to Spotify’s blog from September twentieth, the feature is being tested with a few hundred independent artists, in the US only. Spotify told The Verge that they’ll offer artists fifty per cent of Spotify’s net revenue, and one hundred per cent of royalties for the songs they upload.

So yay for the music artists! We’ll be able to put our light audio recorded tracks on the world’s most popular music platform as and when we feel like it, no matter how awful it might be!

Item two

On September fifteenth, BandLab, a key company in light audio recording, excitedly announced some new updates.

The updates do seem geared towards the mobile iteration, so, let’s see what’s up

First up, over on their recommended playlists, they’ve added the ability to seek within a track, meaning you can dip in and out of a track to see if you want to get involved with it. That’s a mobile-only feature.

Next, if you’ve been working on a track and want to share it with individuals rather than the whole world, you can now share your revisions privately.

The feature they seem most excited about is text posts. Apparently this has been highly requested, and means you can share things outside of BandLab creations you publish. To me that seems a lot like a Facebook post or a tweet.

And finally, they’ve optimized their iPad version, and improved the instruments library on mobile.

Item three

One of the core aspects of light audio recording is of course Google’s Chromebook. In a little under two weeks, on October ninth, Google has a major event, where they’re expected to announce some new products. Among those expectations, there’s a Chromebook or two.

Kevin Tofel, from the website, AboutChrombooks, suspects the unveiling of two new Chrombooks, using the Pixelbook name. The Pixelbook is of course the Chromebook that Google designed and manufactured themselves, rather than letting Samsung or HP stick the Chrome OS in their models.

The major design change, is that it’s going to really be a tablet, but with an attachable detachable keyboard.

In terms of light audio recording, the first generation of Pixelbooks retailed at just under one thousand dollars, so isn’t really in line with affordable aspect of the endeavor.

And honestly, I don’t have enough of a following for anybody to lend me something that expensive to review.

Item four

And our final item today is some news from SE Electronics. On the light audio recording blog, their twenty two hundred a, a large diaphragm condenser microphone, is to date, the go-to microphone of choice. In fact, it’s recording this very podcast.

On September twenty fourth, news came through of a shiny new version of the mic, named… wait for it… the twenty three hundred.

The twenty three hundred seems to essentially be the twenty two hundred. But now with even more stuff. The main new stuff is the option of a figure-eight polar pattern in addition to cardioid and omni-directional choices.

According to the Gear News website, it also claims a shorter signal path, and new pad and filter options.

More stuff does mean more money, and the twenty three hundred retail at three hundred and ninety nine US dollars.

Soooo… maybe be patient for six months, and then get a mint used one from Reverb.

Wrap up

And that’s all I’ve got for you right now. I’ll be back with another podcast next month with a round up of the latest news for light audio recordists. I hope you have a great weekend, and that you have some fun recording your music.

If you haven’t already, subscribe to the light audio recording blog at light audio recording dot com, where you can follow my exploration of recording music in a cheap, compact way.

I’m Ronan Fitzgerald, that’s it for episode 1, and I’ll catch you next time.