Web Directions

Upload your city

• In: Blog
• By:John
• May 11, 2008
• Leave a response

Here at Web Directions we are big fans of DJ Shadow, one of the world’s great DJ/​Producers.

Quite by acci­dent the other day I came across a project he’s doing with Nokia (inci­den­tally this seems like a way bet­ter way of spend­ing one’s mar­ket­ing bud­get than putting up posters and ban­ner ads and the like).

You can upload sam­ples of the sounds of your city that you think are dis­tinc­tively part of the city, and Mr. Shadow may just take those and cre­ate a track using them.

He’s already done San Francisco, and look­ing for other cities. San Francico is well worth a lis­ten (there’s a link on that page).

Now, though, a cou­ple of criticisms.

This is a cool idea. But

1. I can only lis­ten to the track streamed via flash audio (as far as I can tell). Where’s the down­load­able MP3?

2. While from what I can tell Nokia/​Shadow main­tain their rights over the tracks cre­ated, you have to give them “unlim­ited rights to use, sam­ple and mod­ify your audio files in any man­ner what­so­ever with­out noti­fy­ing you.”

Here’s what I’d do to rem­edy this, I’d offer the track in a remix­able, reusable form, and licensed to allow that — a fair quid pro quo to the crowd from which you are sourc­ing all the raw materials.

So, one step for­ward and one step back on this. Still a cool idea and great track though.

One response to “Upload your city”:

1. • By:Ben Buchanan
   • May 13th, 2008
   

   So can we look for­ward to DJ Shadow at the WDS after party? ;)

   Distinctive Sydney sounds… hmm, cab­bie blar­ing their horn fol­lowed by a siren.

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