Dave Haynes

Recently I blogged about an exciting new music iPhone app called Lilt Line. I thought it would be interesting to catch up with it’s creator Gordon Midwood for a quick chat to find out a bit more about it.

Previous interviews I’ve done for full articles I’ve written have all been done over the phone, but I thought it might be fun to doing something over Twitter this time round. I’ve seen a few so called ‘Twinterviews’ recently and it’s an interesting concept. I like the idea that the interview takes places in public. It encourages people to follow both participants in the ‘twinterview’ and by using #hashtags the whole thing can be searched and read in its entirety. We used the hashtag #bytsz1 and I’m thinking of maybe extending it into a series.

There were definitely some downsides however. I initially thought that doing the interview over Twitter would make it short, quick and snappy. I couldn’t have been more wrong. It actually took over an hour! For some reason I thought that Twitter was realtime but it took anywhere from 5-10 minutes for a reply to show up. One improvement could be to actually do the interview over the natural course of a day. Your thoughts and feedback would be more than welcome.

Anyhow, here’s how the interview ran. Or you can see it on directly on twitter here: http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23bytsz1

haynes_dave: So describe Lilt Line to me in 140 characters

differentcloth: lilt line is a massively single player rhythm racing tactical beat ‘em up hack’n’slash dubstep space flight simulation

haynes_dave: That’s different! When and how did you first come up with the idea?

differentcloth: i love rhythm games and always wanted to make one - i also love original games - & i dont like guitar hero!

haynes_dave: it seems deceptively simply. How long did it take to put together?

differentcloth: um, deceptively long, about 4 months!

haynes_dave: and do you develop games full time or are you one of the new breed of bedroom app creators?
differentcloth: i have a full time job, it’s very much a hobby, so i am one of the new breed…
differentcloth: so i made lilt line mainly between the hours of 12-4 in the morning which is probably why it turned out so dark

haynes_dave: this is probably the first ever game to purely feature dubstep. Are u a big fan or did it just suit the game’s vibe?

differentcloth: i love all kinds of discordant music, but actually a friend put me on to 16bit and they just fit perfectly, so good…
differentcloth: & i’m really happy that it’s the first dubstep music game too!

haynes_dave: so which came first, the music or the game?

differentcloth: the game, 16bit came on board later, but their music influenced the style massively and determined the level design too

haynes_dave: so do you see new levels, with new artists and new genres? Or will you move onto new projects entirely after this?
differentcloth: well i’d like to do an update for the app with a few new levels and possibly a new game mode when i get some time
differentcloth: if lilt line turns out to be a commercial success then i’d love to do a tapulous with it if that’s what you mean

haynes_dave: and what’s the reaction been like to the music? Do you think the game is helping drive sales or attention to 16bit?
differentcloth: and then i have loads of experimental game ideas i want to try out too - but whether or not i do it on the iphone…
differentcloth: ppl generally love the music - there are a few that hate it too - but when u do something different that’s how it goes
differentcloth: and i hope it does drive attention & sales to 16bit because they are brilliant

haynes_dave: you mention commercial success so I gotta ask. What’s more lucrative? Releasing a music-app or album on iTunes?
differentcloth: haha interesting question that i guess many music execs are asking themselves right now
differentcloth: however so far i have yet to recoup my costs from sales of the game - but its a hobby not a commercial venture

haynes_dave: and do you think labels and artists should be releasing music as iPhone apps? If so, in what sort of form?
differentcloth: if it was a commercial venture i probably would have had to make it a lot more mundane
differentcloth: as i see it, the music industry is scrambling to try and find revenue anywhere, so they’d be stupid not to try
differentcloth: there are so many forms music apps could take, i hope that some cool original games come out of it

haynes_dave: and so how do independent artists connect with independent game developers such as yourself? By chance?

differentcloth: not sure how to answer that in general, if anyone’s interested just drop me a message though!

haynes_dave: Finally, any fave apps you think are really creative or innovative? Either game or music. Personally I love Eliss

differentcloth: yep i’m with you there, Eliss and Edge are my favourite apps - thx for the interview!

haynes_dave: cool, thanks for the chat! Everyone following should check out Lilt Line on iTunes at http://bit.ly/liltline

Posted via web from davehaynes’s posterous

For the last week or so I’ve been reviewing many of the applications that we’ve received for interns (and other positions) at SoundCloud. It got me thinking about the changing ways in which jobs should be applied for nowadays and how important your online personal brand is, even when starting out in your career. I think this is particularly true if you’re hunting for an opening in the music or web industry. So I’ve jotted down my thoughts briefly in a guest post over at New Music Strategies, a blog that you should definitely be reading every week if you’re looking to start out in today’s music business.

Read full post over at New Music Strategies

Posted via web from davehaynes’s posterous

There’s times when I think there are too many ‘music industry’ events and conferences etc. And times when I think there are too few. But I think conclusion has to be that there are just too many doing exactly the same thing and not enough differentiation. It’s not enough anymore to simply bring the same people together to listen to the same panels and discuss the same old topics.

It seems to me that the formula for a good event is changing and one fresh take seems to be Un-convention. I haven’t been before but I’ve heard good things about it and there’s a strong emphasis on making the programme as interesting, inclusive and interactive as possible. Hopefully it will deliver. Take a look at the main Un-convention site to read more. And here’s a little video I found from last year’s event.

Other Un-conventions have been taking place across the UK. I was invited to speak at the Belfast event earlier this year but got snowed in at Luton Airport and didn’t make it :(. So I’m really looking forward to making the trip up to Manchester next month for Un-convention.

Tickets are very inexpensive and the company should be good, so make sure you put your name down and start planning your trip. If anyone’s going and is interested in a lift-share from London/High Wycombe or has any accomodation or a couch going then get in touch via comments.

I was catching up on some blog reading today and noticed a great post by Jonas Woost who runs OpenMusicMedia with me. In it he makes the astute analogy that music is like a rumour. Here’s the premise:

I like it. The key to success for anyone involved in the music ecosystem is to understand and accept these characteristics. Then instead of fighting against them, take advantage of them.

You can follow Jonas on Twitter and read his blog here (includes his radio show). And just as a bonus here’s Jonas looking all serious on the Finnish news.

I had the pleasure of being invited by the University Of Wales, Newport to take part in something called the Future Music Lab at their Creative Capital event this week. Before arriving I had no idea what the agenda was other than that I was to take part with other ‘industry experts’ in a two-day sandpit event. The first day kicked off with presentations delivered by Huw Stephens, Jeremy Silver, Gerd Leonhard and Ron Berry (working on the Isle of Mann flat-rate for music). And the second day saw us delve deeper into the ‘lab’ aspect of the event, working in teams to explore the future of music over the next 10 years time and developing ideas alongside. Personally, as someone who is no longer in the business of actually ’selling’ music, I thought there was slighlty too much focus on the future of the existing music industry rather than simply the music ecosystem itself. But the discussions on the whole were quite thought-provoking.

I’m not sure how many tangible results the lab itself actually yielded, but for me that wasn’t necessarily the point. It certainly provides a good platform for further work to be done by and with the University. I also enjoyed two days of exchanging ideas and expressing points of view with a group of peers from right across the music industry. And the whole event was superbly put together.

But as we sat down on the first evening to enjoy the dinner and the catwalk show that the University’s fashion students had put on I stopped for a few minutes to check Twitter and noticed some relevant and wise words from the Hype Machine’s Anthony Volodkin (@fascinated)

I see a lot of value in the two days I had at Creative Capital. And one of the reason’s why I setup the OpenMusicMedia meetup was because I firmly believe that it’s important to educate and connect people in order to push things forward (the majority of the established music industry is still so hung up on the past, even now).

But it’s important to remember that it’s a hell of a lot easier to ‘talk’ about the future of something than it is to actually do it.

I love the idea of micro-publishing and lifestreaming in its many forms. I especially like the idea of objects that we interact with on a daily basis being able to passively make updates to our personal data streams. Some slighlty more out there examples include everything from a house that tweets its electricity consumption to the ultimate mum-geek must have, a pregnancy belt that tweets every time the baby kicks. We’re definitely going to see more and more of these types of applications and integrations being built as our everyday objects and hardware become connected to the interweb (and geo-aware).

Whilst it’s not exactly as crazy as the pregnancy belt, I was really interested to read last week that Richie Hawtin had developed a way to automatically tweet directly from the DJ booth. Here’s the lowdown via Beatportal:

Pioneering techno DJ Richie Hawtin has announced the development of a new Twitter application that enables him to broadcast his Traktor tracklists in real time over the network. The custom Twitter application was developed in-house by Richie Hawtin’s label Minus, and it works by uploading song metadata through Traktor Pro’s inbuilt broadcasting functionality. Track details are automatically posted to Richie Hawtin’s Twitter account every 30 seconds (you can already see Traktor tracklist updates on his Twitter), giving anyone access to the tracklist of his performance, and providing exposure to the artists and labels whose music is being played.

This is a really cool development, but as with a lot of data of this nature it gets a whole lot more interesting when it can be aggregated and context added. The individual tweets on Hawtin’s stream are actually quite dull just on their own. They really need to add a hashtag or two eg. #dj #minimal - then as more DJ’s started tweeting their sets somebody could build a third party site that pulled in all the data, created set lists from popular DJ’s and added other context such as listen/buy links. A site like that would be a gold mine for all the trainspotters and avid fans out there who like to be upfront and know what all they’re favourite DJ’s are playing. Let’s hope we could seeing something like this in the future.

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• Traktor to Twitter launched by Ritchie Hawtin. (wiretotheear.com)