It’s official: The crowd rocks.
We mean this not as a vapid recapitulation of basic crowdsourcing theory, but in terms of the real results from an experiment in crowdsourced music that created several songs that sound, to these ears anyway, pretty good.
Last month, we unleashed a bass track, a guitar track and a drum track on Indaba Music’s collaboration and production platform and invited Wired.com readers and the Indaba community to create the best tracks they could using that foundation. Entrants made tracks and combined each others’ tracks using any software to build songs on raw materials we laid out: a drum track from Indaba’s Josh Robertson, a bassline from yours truly and a guitar track from Indaba CEO Dan Zaccagnino, recorded during an afternoon last month.
Our collaborative recording session on Indaba ballooned to 122 members, 85 files and 923 member events (comments, uploads, downloads, mixes, deletions and membership changes) during the month of May. This week, we booted everybody from the virtual studio, and are pleased to post what we judged to be the five best songs created by the crowd.
As often happens with crowdsourced contests, entrants self-organized into super groups and incorporating others’ work into their own.
Now, you be the judge. Crowdsourcing has taken us this far, so it only makes sense to extend the concept further and ask the crowd which song they like the most. Then, of course, we’ll take the experiment to its logical conclusion by crowdsourcing a remix of the winning song.
Crowdsourced Songs
Listen to the following five songs here (listed in alphabetical order by uploader — credits below). Then vote each track up or down in the poll:
An Auditory Artist and Ran Doshus – “Tripwired Auditory Missprint Doors B3”
Bungalow Bill – “I Can Hear Music”
gracetone – “Wired Session Remix”
David Minnick – “Technology Is My Religion”
Nathan V. – “Technology is My Religion (Future Tech Mix)”
Now, vote:
Credits
David Minnick – “Technology Is My Religion” Dale Crowley and David Minnick: lyrics Dale Crowley: rhodes electric piano Mike Stone: drums (real) Eliot Van Buskirk: electric bass Misprint Thursday: mood vocals Surgeon Kerosene: melodica David Minnick: drum loop programming, guitars, synth bass, organ, marimba, vocals
Bungalow Bill – “I Can Hear Music” Bungalow Bill: production, instruments Original contributors
An Auditory Artist and Ran Doshus – “Tripwired Auditory Missprint Doors B3” an auditory artist: production, various elements Ran Doshus: vocals Misprint Thursday: mood vocals Original contributors
Nathan V. – “Technology is My Religion (Future Tech Mix)” Nathan VanMiddlesworth: production, mixing, instruments All from “Technology Is My Religion”
gracetone – “Wired Session Remix” gracetone: drums, keyboard, software, instruments Original contributors
Here’s the original without the crowd’s input, for comparison’s sake. What a difference a little crowdsourcing makes:
Thanks to Indaba Music staff for their help with running this contest.
