SUFFICIENTLY ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY

Fans who attended Rock Werchter, the Belgian music festival that ended Sunday, were being tracked by Bluetooth scanners as they enjoyed the music of  Coldplay, Nine Inch Nails, Fleet Foxes, Metallica, Oasis and numerous other bands.

Researchers from the University of Ghent set up a network of 36 Bluetooth scanners at the festival site as well as on a few surrounding roads and bus stops that noted each of the 80,000 daily attendees as he or she came within 30 meters (approximately 100 feet).

The resulting data is the first time a large crowd has been tracked in a live situation, according to the researchers. They added that privacy wasn’t a concern since they only tracked MAC addresses (the unique identifier assigned by the manufacturer) and therefore cannot be linked to an individual user.

Some fans who attended the UK’s Download Festival last month encountered a different unexpected Bluetooth application. Local police and the Leicestershire Drug and Alcohol Action Team asked if they wanted to opt in to receive free informational animated messages. Among those that were sent out were friendly advisories on alcohol and drug use.

(Title lyric from the Dead Kennedys.)

Application developers 9astronauts have created Billie Tweets, an art project they refer to as “a Twitter tribute to Michael Jackson.” Basically it plays the incomparable Billie Jean video, featuring Michael Jackson at the height of his powers, accompanied by a waterfall of random tweets that have each word of the lyrics highlighted in order, kinda like Twitter karaoke. The effect is oddly hypnotic.

(Title lyric from Pearl Jam.)

Moby sent an email to Bob Lefsetz regarding his new album Wait for Me [lala link]. In it, the recording artist shared the news that his album would be No. 1 in Europe if it weren’t for Michael Jackson. But then he said it was funny that the best-selling iTunes track is Shot in the Back of the Head.

To quote Moby’s email: “Why is that funny? Because it’s the track we’ve been giving away for free for the last 2 months and that we’re still giving away for free.” (Here, among other places.)

Having an official video by David Lynch certainly helped, but the iTunes sales are an excellent example of the famous bottled water analogy: even when something is available free, people will pay to get it in a manner that suits how they wish to acquire and use it.

(Title lyric by Brown, Henderson and DeSylva via Frank Sinatra.)

The iTunes Festival is underway in the UK, marking the third anniversary of this month-long music event. Among the artists performing throughout July at Camden’s Roundhouse are Oasis, Snow Patrol, Franz Ferdinand, Kasabian, the Saturdays, Flo Rida, Bat For Lashes, Jack Peñate, Paolo Nutini, Noisettes, Peter Bjorn and John, Bloc Party, Simple Minds, Madeleine Peyroux and many more.

And did I mention tickets were free? There are also free weekly downloads: this week it’s Placebo’s For What It’s Worth from here (valid in the UK only).

Each performance will be recorded and available to download on iTunes, so it’s not like Apple will lose money on the project. But that doesn’t devalue the fact that this is a laudable and innovative way to reach music fans.

(Title lyric by David Bowie.)

As the music industry continues to grope its way into the future, Denny’s restaurants have unveiled a marketing campaign that links its 24-hour comfort food to four extremely popular recording artists. Starting June 23, its new Rockstar Menu will offer substantial dishes named after Rascal Flatts, Gym Class Heroes, Sum 41 (pictured) and Good Charlotte.

I suppose the campaign is reminiscent of the Stage Deli naming sandwiches after its better-known customers.  But it still seems unlikely that a fan would ever walk in and see one of these guys eating his eponymous Denny’s meal.

(Title lyric from Katy Perry.)

Sansa’s SlotRadio is one of the few electronic gadgets I haven’t craved on sight. The tiny and well-designed $100 player caught my attention at CES, until I realized it only plays $40 proprietary pre-loaded micro-SD cards and has a (theoretically) non-replaceable battery.

Each of those Billboard magazine-branded cards admittedly has 1,000 high-fidelity songs – that’s just 4 cents each – but they can’t be deleted or moved to another device or anything.

I bring it up now because recently I’m encountering Father’s Day marketing efforts focused on grass-roots techniques like Twitter-based competitions and blog seeding.

What’s interesting is the pickup on SlotRadio’s messaging: “It’s great music, made effortless.”

The product clearly isn’t meant for someone like me, who loves both music and gadgets. So, do many people find it that onerous to use digital media players? And if they do, wouldn’t something like a Rhapsody subscription ($13 a month) and compatible player (starting at $25 or so) be more appealing than its market share would indicate?

(Title lyric from Public Enemy.)

Bad Science’s Ben Goldacre has taken on pirate downloading statistics in, “Home taping didn’t kill music.”

He reads through newspaper stories on a report by the government’s Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property (SABIP) and notes that the estimated amount of illegal downloads music in his native United Kingdom is 4.73 billion items a year worth about £120 billion. Goldacre does the math and notes that equals about a tenth of the country’s GDP and means each illegal download is worth about £25.

Goldacre further calculates that these numbers work out to £175 a week per person. Since this is about a third of the average UK wage, he wonders: “Is this really lost revenue for the economy, as reported in the press?”

Adding to his skeptism, Goldacre researches the original documents and learns that the original executive summary and press release were incorrect by an entire decimal point. His subsequent conversation with SABIP makes for entertaining reading.

(Title lyric by Mike Skinner, The Streets.)

Songkick launched as a social network-enhanced site to buy concert tickets. Since then, however, it has been adding a lovingly compiled and growing database of all things related to live music. Wired calls it a crowdsourced concert scrapbook, which is a pretty good description.

Users can add entire concerts in addition to fleshing out their online collection of shows by uploading  photos, videos, scans of setlists, ticket stubs and flyers, their own original reviews, links to professional reviews and other elements.

It requires a download and – in these early days – the UK is disproportionally represented. But it’s already fun to browse around, and users already are jockeying for bragging rights based on quantity and exclusivity.

The oldest concert entry I could find was 12 July 1962, the Rolling Stones at the Marquee Club in London. Then I did what everyone else will do and tried to stump it by searching for obscure bands and venues. That’s kinda easy to do – especially because people enter their own metadata, so places turn up with multiple name variants – but that will change as users fill in the gaps.

Information about upcoming concerts is gathered from 29 ticketing agencies, so it has a strategy for completeness going forward. You can also have it scan the music on your computer so it can track those artists for you, in addition to tracking whichever other criteria you indicate. Then Songkick will send you alerts and updates as you specify, along with networking all this data among your Songkick friends. Integration with Facebook and MySpace is in the works.

(Title lyric by John Miles.)

The weather looks characteristically rainy for this weekend’s Download Festival at Donington Park in England. But this year I’ll be watching on the free 24-hour live video stream – it’s back, having not been offered last year. Live Nation says all of the main stage acts have signed the requisite clearances, and Kerrang will be chiming in with interviews and other bits. There’s also blogging, Twitter feeds and additional digital stuff, both for those in slogging through the mud and those enjoying it from the comfort of their home.

The lineup includes Marilyn Manson, Faith No More, Def Leppard, Slipknot, Chris Cornell ,Limp Bizkit, ZZ Top, and many, many others.
(Title lyric from Oasis.)

Sony Music Entertainment joined Universal Music as a content provider and equity stakeholder for Vevo, the music video destination site also part-owned by Google’s YouTube. The labels also promise additional exclusive content like interviews and profiles.

Indie label consortium A2IM signed up as well, and both Warner Music Group Corp. and EMI Group are in talks to do the same.

It’s hard to imagine a reason anyone with the rights to music videos wouldn’t license them to these guys, since they’ll get a share of ad revenue from Vevo and its related YouTube channel without any risk. As for Vevo itself, the business model calls for selling downloads, tickets and merchandise in addition to ads.

(Title lyric from Cheap Trick.)