If you already have the ExploreMusic App you know that you can share and tweet what you are listening to and have it show up on Twitter, Facebook and in the Discover list in the app.
Now those tweets will show up on the ExploreMusic website as well!  Check out the new and improved “List” on the front page of ExploreMusic for the latest recommendations and for a more comprehensive list check out “The List” page.
If you don’t have the app yet and want to contribute, what are you waiting for? Get it here.

If there’s one thing we can depend on, it’s that Bjork will always seek to expand on her Bjorkishness.  Swan dresses and beating up Thai TV reporters is passé,  Apps are where it’s at.

Bjork’s new venture is entitled Biophilia, which is described as an interdisciplinary multi-media project that involves a standard studio album, a series of apps, a new website, instruments custom-made for the project, a tour and even some educational workshops.  And we’ll need some educations because the goal of this project is to explore the universe and its physical forces, “particularly those where music, nature and technology meet.”

The press release goes on to say that project “is inspired by and explores these relationships between music structures and natural phenomena, from the atomic to the cosmic.”  In other words, a giant mash-up of quantum theory, Newtonian physics and music.

Ambitious, yes.  She worked with scientists, writers, inventors, musicians, instrument makers and app developers.

The first single, “Chrystalline,” is available through iTunes with Biophilia-related apps coming soon.  The live show premieres tonight (June 30) in Manchester.

Here’s more from the press release.  But be careful.  This could make your head hurt.

Biophilia comprises five elements:

I. ALBUM:

The songs from Biophilia will be released as a traditional 10-track studio album later this year, available digitally and physically across standard formats. The songs will also be featured within their accompanying Biophilia Apps, but with a more stripped-down structure for educational and game purposes, mixed by Damian Taylor and Björk. The album’s first single, “Crystalline,” is available now. The groundbreaking director and longtime Björk collaborator Michel Gondry is creating a music video for the song.

II. APPS:

The Biophilia Apps are a collection of ten apps, one for each song, which will be available via the central Cosmogony “mother app,” coming from Nonesuch Records/Warner Music Canada. This platform will serve as a three-dimensional galaxy in which the initial apps appear as constellations, and the others are added to the collection at regular intervals thereafter.

Every app has its own theme (in connection with its corresponding song) and combines a natural element with a musicological feature. The layers of content in each app include: an interactive game based on the song’s scientific and musical subject matter, a musical animation of the song, an animated score, lyrics, and an academic essay. The game enables the user to interact with musical elements of the song and to learn about different musical features while creating their own version; the musical animation and animated music score bring together conventional and innovative ways of representing music visually; and the academic essay explores the ideas behind each song and app and how they are realized musically.

The Biophilia Apps have been developed with a team chosen by Björk, comprising ten of the most groundbreaking and commercially successful app developers working today. The team is lead by Scott Snibbe Studio, creator of the bestselling apps Gravilux and Bubble Harp, and includes the creator of Sim City, TouchPress (pioneering designers behind the two top grossing apps Elements and Solar System), and a host of award winning designers, animators and leading experts in coding and encryption.

III. LIVE SHOWS:

The Biophilia live show will have its world premiere on 6/30 as part of the Manchester International Festival and continues as a three-year world tour of six-week residencies in eight different cities. In each city Björk will perform Biophilia twice a week, using the apps to play live a set of custom built musical instruments and evoking an atmosphere similar to being inside the app itself. For the rest of the week the venues will host a series of music-education workshops in collaboration with local schools.

Björk has commissioned a set of unique musical instruments to accompany her on the live tour. The team who created these instruments include an English inventor, an Icelandic organ builder and a graduate of MIT Media Lab. Among these creations are four 10-foot pendulum-harps, in which the swinging motion plucks the strings and illustrates the songs’ gravitational subject matter. There is also a unique 10-foot pin barrel harp called the Sharpsichord, a midi-controlled pipe organ and celeste (re-fitted with bronze gamelan bars), twin musical tesla coils, a hang player and an award-winning 24-piece Icelandic female choir. The Biophilia Live Show takes place in specially chosen spaces and museums, rather than traditional music venues. Björk will perform in the round to audiences of less than 2,000 people to create an intimate experience in which all audience members are within 20-feet of the stage.

IV. DOCUMENTARY:

A 90-minute documentary on the Biophilia project is currently being filmed by Pulse Films. The film will be an exploration of Björk’s creative process as she puts together the different elements of the project. Here we will see her at work in the rehearsals for the live show, in the studio working on the album, and through observational footage, interview and demonstration we will discover how the project was conceived and realized. Along the way we will also discover more about the fascinating relationship between music and the natural world. The climax of this element of the film will be the unveiling of her project; the premiere live performance of Biophilia. The documentary will be broadcast later in the Biophilia campaign.

V. WEBSITE

www.bjork.com has been re-launched for Biophilia, using the very latest HTML5 technology. The site is now uniquely animated and interactive to provide an artist website experience totally unlike any other. It features a unique immersive 3D galaxy with versions that can be enjoyed on almost all devices, and will be the hub for all Biophilia information.

If you’ve made it this far, here’s a song.

But this is interesting.  Specific Media has a partner in the deal:  Justin Timberlake.  And it’s kind of weird that he starred in The Social Network, the Facebook movie and Facebook is the company that killed MySpace.

So what’s he doing there?  He says he wants to take an active role in the development of the site as a place “where fans can go to interact with their favourite entertainers.”

But seriously:  examples of new owners taking a dying company and turning it into something relevant again are very few and far between.  MBA students:  provide case studies.  The turnaround of IBM has already been suggested.

Next question:  where does MySpace go from here?  Where can it go from here?

If you’ve been following the hacking antics that have affected everyone from Sony to the CIA to the US Senate  over the last couple of months, there’s been a new attack.  A group known as AntiSec hacked into the files of Universal Music Group.  They posted a bunch of passwords and user data.

I have no idea of the nature of this data, but anytime anyone gets behind anyone’s firewall, it’s a serious thing.

UV?  Isn’t that what we have to worry about on hot, sunny days?  Not this time.

This is an emerging media service technology being developed by Hollywood in an effort to get everything right that the music industry got wrong when it comes to selling and sharing—and yes, I did say sharing—media.

Basically, if you buy a movie and you have a UV account, you’ll be able to pay once and then watch that movie anywhere.  You’ll even be able to burn movies to DVD—an unlimited number of copies, too—completely legally and totally endorsed by the studios.

There are some restrictions, of course, but compared to how the entertainment industry has been handling this sort of thing, these UV proposals are pretty damned liberal.

There’s more to UV than I can explain here, but if you want to see what could be coming next—everyone’s on board except Disney (of course), check out this article.

There are two possible buyers and you never heard of either of them.  One is an ad network called Specific Media while the other is a private equity firm called Golden Gate Capital.  News Corp wanted $100 million, but the number being quoted this week is in the $20-30 million range.  That would be around 5% of what News Corp paid for it.

Meanwhile, it’s rumoured that there will be a HUGE round of layoffs today.

And here’s the big problem that no one has addressed yet:  No matter who buys MySpace, the rights to stream music does not necessarily go with the sale and then reside with the buyer.

It will be the most interesting of times at MySpace today and tomorrow.

More details here.

I received a password-enabled invitation to the private beta today, so I’ll try it out.  But will the finished product be available in Canada?

From the press release:

Radical.FM, Inc. ( http://www.radical.fm) announced today the invitation-only private beta launch of Radical.FM, it’s new, personal internet radio service.

Building and expanding on experience gained from Tomsradio.com, an early 21st century Swedish/American pioneer of internet radio, Radical combines user tailored music radio stations (like Pandora™ and Slacker™) with on-demand playlist functionality (like Rhapsody™ and Spotify™), and adds social networking and personal broadcasting capabilities.

For the first time all of these functions will be available in one integrated service. Radical.FM will initially offer free personal radio services, with full Play-On-Demand functionality for a paid Premium subscription tier available at a later date. In addition, the patent pending LiveShare™ feature permits personal music streams to be shared in real-time and DeeJay™ allows a user to speak to all who are listening to their LiveShare stream.

Bona fide music and technology journalists & bloggers as well as music industry professionals who have not yet received Radical’s private beta invitations, should contact ‘Maria(at)radical.fm’.

A public beta launch for the United States will follow soon, with international expansion planned for later this year. For the public beta sign up, go to Radical.FM.

Read the rest of it here.  Meanwhile, here’s a promo video that unwisely uses a Beatles song as background music.

Update:  I’ve been listening for most of the evening.  The interface is easy to use and it’s cool that you can eavesdrop on other people’s personal stations.  The music selection is limited, but hey, it’s still in beta.

Tech insiders say they’re getting closer.  As you’d expect, Facebook’s focus is in the direction of  listening to music, sharing it, talking about it and allowing people (and performers) to evangelize.

Reports say a redesigned personal home page will feature a new tab next to Photos and Friends called “Music.”  Click that and you’ll be directed to your Music Dashboard where you’ll see a bunch of things:  music notifications, songs recommended by friends (which you can listen to with a click of a playback button), your friends’ top songs and cover art of favourite albums.

And that’s just the beginning.  More will be unveiled when Facebook holds their annual f8 development conference in August.

Meanwhile, a few other theories are being floated here.

Just an image. Don't try to play it. Get back to work.

At first, it seemed like another harmless Google doodle celebrating what would have been the 96th birthday of guitar legend and multi-track recording pioneer Less Paul.  But once people realized that they could play music on the doodle by running a cursor, productivity went into the toilet.

It got worse when it became apparent that you could play the little keyboard thingy.  When people discovered that you could not only record what you were playing on the doodle but email it to friends, the economy teetered on collapse.

There were 740 million visitors, each of which spent an average of 26 seconds playing with the thing.  The results are in and it’s been calculated that collectively, people played with the doodle for 10.7 million hours, resulting in a loss of productivity worth $268 million.

Once inside their computers, he’d look for unpublished and unreleased songs.  Once found, he’d transfer the files to his machine and then sell them on the Internet.  His targets included Lady Gaga, Justin Timberlake and Mariah Carey. He also found some naughty pictures of Ke$ha’s computer, and took those, too.

Before he was caught, he made about $20,000.

But then people associated with these performers started noticing that all these tracks that were mysteriously escaping into the wild.  Anti-piracy people in the UK and Germany jumped on the case and tracked DJ Stolen down to a city called Duisburg.

He’s been sentenced to 18 months juvenile detention and will have to undergo addiction counselling for his Internet habit.

Dude:  If you’re going to steal stuff like this, the last thing you should name yourself is “DJ Stolen.”