It would be a sin if WeJam didn’t come in at number one, and it is not for the reason of tooting our own horn. Here at WeJam we provide a fully interactive music studio for groups between three and six people. The technology we use combines the thrill of jamming out to all your favourite songs, being a rocker and spending quality time with friends and family. The unique aspect of the experience is that you don’t even need to be an experienced musician to participate. Our team of tech engineers, songwriters and studio room facilitators will turn even the clumsiest of drummers into Ringo Starr throughout a single session. Using tablet devices instead of instruments, interactive graphics are displayed on the tablet which represents notes to play within the song of your choice. After a few successful notes are hit, and naturally your user’s confidence grows, the original notes are displayed to be combined.
Splashmob is a live performance, interactive synchronizing device experience that allows the artists to have complete control of the audience’s device screen, speakers and camera (with permission). The innovative glue holding Splashmob above other entries on this list is the fact that it doesn’t require an app to be downloaded by participants – it is a website. Simple. This makes the most sense when used at live concerts, rather than having thousands of fans flicking through their phone looking for the app store, navigate it, downloading the app on their device, deleting photos and videos for space, and then finally loading the app – participants simply need to scan QR code, which takes them directly to the website and permission signing pop-up.
According to Crunchbase, Splashmob already has money invested from Techstars, who invest money and expertise into tech industry innovators, but long term, CEO Blaise Thomas has integrated a tier system of payments for Splashmob. The size of the participants you want determines the price, however a completely free version of the app is also available up to a limit of just a few participants.
What’s interesting about Splashmob is that the application can be applied to other scenarios, it’s not solely for the live music industry to hoard. Their website confidently advertises that their application can be used for webinars, small events and presentations. While Splashmob would certainly make someone’s interview a lot more interesting, music artists could also utilize this to make at-home live concerts more interactive than ever before. Picture this, you’ve got your favourite artists’ live concert streaming on one device, then on another, you’re capturing completely different angles and cool visuals from another device of the same concert. Insane.
Audigo has set themselves the simple, yet brave task of reinventing integration between physical recording devices and collaboration with fellow musicians. The Audigo boxes can record audio on a connected smart device, before saving the files to cloud storage. From here, the high-quality files can be exported to social media platforms all over the internet, YouTube, Soundcloud or directly to another artist who can then record their awesome vocals over a rocking beat.
What sets Audigo apart from other organizations doing similar things is the simplicity of its inner workings. As soon as a connected device hits record, or you press record on the box, you’re all set to record. Then, just as easily as you got started, pressing the button to stop recording manages those files into a secure, seamless data storage station. How many times have you thought you pressed record, jammed out to a beat to your heart’s content, only to realize you never pressed record in the first place? Tragedy. Even worse, how many times have you been deep into a jamming session, already thinking of the stadiums you’ll be filling in next to no time, only to see that your storage got filled up and stopped recording while you weren’t looking? Heartbreaking. Audigo can record up to 10 hours of recordings before the files need to be backed up to an alternate storage centre. Until then though, rock out to your heart’s content.
Unidentified Landed Object (ULO)
The people at ULO are working on digital canvases that offer the perfect, otherworldly backdrop for the next up-and-coming band or artists wanting to add a bit more roll to their rock. If you hop over to their Instagram page, you can get a quick summary of the work that they are doing now. They are crowdfunding to get their development off the ground, however their potential for trippy, immersive backgrounds could extend from main stages to the stars. I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a near-perfect song that doesn’t have a great music video to amplify the song to new heights. A lot of artists go all out of their music videos, creating dance moves, mini-movies inside their music videos or even pushing the boundaries for what a music video is. Unidentified Landed Objects have tasked themselves with the mission of transforming micro-physical spaces into digital canvases for interactive, immersive experiences created by artists and brands. Picture yourself waiting at the bus stop, and just behind you, an artist is performing on a huge digital background. It would be like the screens at Piccadilly Circus, but all synchronized together for one artist delivering a mind behind the performance.
Entertainment Intelligence is a data analysis service that incorporates already established businesses and their data and funnels them into a simple, easy to visual form. EI gets its data from YouTube, Google Music, Amazon, Apple and Spotify – assimilating data based on demographic, geographic locations, the device they are using, where they streamed content from and how long for, the musical interests based on history and searchers. The applications of this can greatly benefit music artists who want to understand who enjoys their music, other music software developers and up-and-coming music creators who want to find their niche in the music world based on hardcore data analysis. It may be a weird thought to think that some technical advisor is watching you, searching for that obscure European band you heard a few years back but can’t remember their name.
Companies collect data on all of their users constantly and the majority are responsible for that information which is the main thing. The data is collected, in a roundabout way, to deliver a better music experience back to the fans, so music streaming platforms can provide more accurate suggestions of things you may like based on your past searches.
If you’re anything like us here at WeJam, you’ll love new experiences that you can share with friends and family. We offer immersive jamming sessions for those who want all the excitement of playing your favourite songs on a main stage, without needing to be a complete expert. Take a look at our booking page for more details about the different jam types you can book! We look forward to jamming with you soon.