Are Service-Based Business Models of the Video Game Industry Blueprints for the Music Industry?

Article to appear in the International Journal of Services, Economics and Management

Abstract: The internet, peer-to-peer technology and mobile devices are radically changing markets for digital media such as recorded music. Incumbent companies in these industries have severe difficulties in reacting to these changes and finding effective business models. The fundamental challenge is how to capture value from delivering digital music files which users expect to download for free. It is the consumer’s capability to handle digital content that opens up possibilities for new business models where consumers are active partners helping to co-create value along with companies. Compared to the music industry, the video game industry was more successful in adapting its business models. By conducting an exploratory study among recently founded video game startups and two case studies of music-technology startups, whether and how the video game industry is a vital source from which to draw analogies for the music industry will be analysed in this paper.

Vegaschleife at Analoge Anischten II

Vegaschleife is an installation that evloved out of the work I was doing with Acid Pauli for RjDj. It is shown from  04.05.-31.05.2012 at Analoge Ansichten II (in the entrance hall of the Department of Sociology at the University of Vienna). Vegaschleife listens to percussive sounds in the environment, records them, and plays them back in rhythmic patterns

Developing an agent-based model of markets for digital cultural goods

I took part in the PhD-Colloquium at the The 21st European Meeting on Cybernetics and Systems Research, Vienna,  10–13 April 2012. I presented the the agent-based simulation model of markets  for digital cultural goods I am working on.

Read the rest of this entry »

Emerging Service-Based Business Models in the Music Industry: An Exploratory Survey

In February I participated at the Third International Conference on Service Sciences in Geneva, Switzerland. In our contribution we were analyzing business models of recently founded music startups. Here’s the list of music startups (including links) founded between 2005 and 2011 that we have been looking at.

Read the rest of this entry »

Cross-Industry Innovation: The Transfer of a Service-Based Business Model from the Video Game Industry to the Music Industry

We contributed to the The 2-nd International Conference on on Emerging Intelligent Data and Web Technologies (EIDWT-2011) in Tirana, Albania. How does one capture value from delivering digital music files which users expect to download for free? Well, one source for inspiration to solve that problem could be the video game industry. There might be some promising solutions copy.

Read the rest of this entry »

Radio Drama by Velo

A series of three short radiodramas (in German), each about a special holiday (World Savings Day, Valentine’s Day, World Day of Socially Insured Artists). Originally released in December 2010 on Festtagsaufschnitt by Landjäger magazine.

Written and produced by Velo (Sven Matt, Robert Rüf , Florian Waldner).
Voices: Stefan Pohl, Michaela Bilgeri, Robert Rüf (on Weltspartag)
Voice Recording: Heike Kaltenbrunner

To listen press Read the rest of this entry »

Upcoming RjDj Scene “Eden”

I am currently working on an new RjDj scene called “Eden”, inspired by Stansliaw Lem’s great science fiction novel Eden. What I am trying to create is a hybrid between a game soundtrack and reactive music. You can navigate a starship around and discover some extra musical content. But be careful, gravity pulls you towards an alien world called Eden!

Auditory Illusions

While reading Bregman’s book Auditory Scene Analysis I made a couple of Pure data patches to demonstrate auditory illusions mentioned in the book.  All patches are done in Pd vanilla and include short descriptions and a reference to the publication the illusion was reported in.  Until now there are patches for:

• stream segregation in a cycle of 6 tones (Bregman/Rudnicky)
• masking / mental synthesis (Dannenbring)
• loss of rhythm in an ABA sequence (Van Noorden)
• high and low tones on left and right ear mixed up (Deutsch)

Download the patches (ZIP) here.

Sensor Bird for “The Birds according to Oskar Sala”

“The Birds according to Oskar Sala” is a radioplay by Ammer & Console. The play was staged live at the German Museum in Munich 16th and 18th July 2010. I equiped the plastic crow in the picture above with a G-force sensor using a wireless eowave sensor box. The bird screamed and fluttered depending on how it was moved and was used on stage by the actor playing Hitchcock’s part.

Oskar Sala is a german composer and pioneer of electronic music who created the soundtrack for Hitchcock’s The Birds using his custom built instrument the Trautonium.

Does It Sound Like I Was Here?

Does It Sound Like I Was Here? reacts to the sounds surrounding the listener and incorporates them in the installation. With mobile devices, headphones and a microphone, the installation accompanies the listeners in their everyday lives and creates an extended, acoustic reality. The software is at the heart of this and determines how the composition reacts to conditions and changes in the listeners’ sonic environment. Pics on flickr. Sound on Soundcloud. Video on youtube.

German text: Read the rest of this entry »

Wave Lands II

This sound installation is based on eight high-frequency speakers hanging from the ceiling and floating free 1cm above the floor. Each speaker plays back filtered sea wave sounds I recorded with different microphone placements on an area similar to that of the installation. Visitors are free to swing the speakers and therefore shape the sounds with varying reflexions from the floor and Doppler effect.

Wave Lands II was exibited at the Mobile Music Workshop 2008 in Vienna and The Essence 08 (annual exhibition of the University of Applied Arts Vienna).

Special thanks to Martin and Thomas at Protozone who did great help in building the speaker cases.

Video: Read the rest of this entry »

Processing and the RjDj API

The picture above is a section of a visualization that displays the number of uploaded recordings made with RjDj scenes available on http://rjdj.me/music/. The picture was made using Processing and the RjDj API . The length of the bar indicates the number of uploaded recordings. The scene on the bottom is the oldest, the one on top the most recently added.

A very helpful and well documented tutorial to start using Processing with JSON is on http://blog.blprnt.com.

Here is the link to the source for the RjDj API visualization: http://13bit.at/RjDj_API_Recordings.zip To run this sketch you will need this JSON Processing library.