the whitestone blog

The first platform for interactive music experiences. On Kickstarter August 30!

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Reimagining album covers as interactive audiovisual experiences

Last month we had a great opportunity to work with students at the University of Applied Sciences in Amsterdam on a fun little project. We asked them to come up with interactive prototypes for a few album artworks. Within two days they experimented with the visuals, thought about animation and interactive layers and tried to envision how these artworks could become more than static images. Check out some of their experiments below:

Future Islands - Singles

Oneohtrix Point Never - Music For Steamed Rocks V.02

Blue Oyster - Cult V.01

Blue Oyster - Cult V.02

Interpol - Elpintor

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Visiting the World Intellectual Property Organization in Geneva

Hi everyone, Last week I visited WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization). They hosted the first global event to discuss intellectual property challenges in music, film and publishing. Our preview video was played during the event, right after a discussion between Edgar Berger the CEO of Sony Music , artist and innovator Imogen Heap, the composer Luis Cobos, singer/songwriter Tammy Weis and the composer Christopher Tin. It's great to see that our vision is spreading to such global events. Next we'll take part at Music Tech Fest in Berlin and right after atUnite Europe! We are also working on a bunch of interactive audiovisual pieces... stay tuned :) Later Roey and the Whitestone team

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We’ve Launched!

http://whitestone.io/

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The fall of music artwork and what Winamp and floppy disks have to do with it

As an artist and music collector, I find digital music players quite limited. Tomorrow we are going to change it!

A few years ago I started researching our listening behaviours. As a touring musician and graphic designer, I ended up spending most of my time looking for ways to put design to use in music (and vice versa). I was genuinely surprised to discover that our music player hasn’t changed since the last century!

Ever since the invention of the MP3 format in 1987 (when I was a happy 4 year-old banging on different objects to see what sound they make), all music players pretty much looked the same. Read more here

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Leaving to NY

Hi everyone, I'm writing you from the airport in Amsterdam. On my way to NY, then Austin and LA!! I'll be posting updates on my "private" Facebook profile. feel free to friend me. 

In a few days we’ll be launching our beta, and we wouldn’t be able to do it without you. THANK YOU! We’ll keep you posted soon

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Thanks For Testing Our Alpha

Hi everyone Things are warming up! We tested the alpha and we're fixing some bugs this weekend. We'll send more invites in the coming weeks, first to our Kickstarter backers and soon after to everyone else.

Also, we made a super cool design for a black shirt! We'll be sending them to all our Kickstarter backers in December (we needed to get everyone's surveys).

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we just launched our new homepage!!

www.whitestone.io

Have a look, there are some new things there, for example signing up for coming events to create interactive music experiences…

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Thanks! you awesome you

About 5 months ago I left my day job to focus solely on Whitestone. That week I produced a track in one night, actually about 4 hours. It was the first time in my life that a track came to me so naturally, so quickly. I published it on my Soundcloud page and thought I'd get back to it later (hence the name extension "draft 01"). I still didn't get a chance to open that session to see what happened there, improve it, mix it, maybe record the vocals properly... Anyways, I'm not sure where am I going with this story :P 

On behalf of all of us, Wouter, Marko, Martijn and myself I wanted to say thanks to everyone who supported us during these 5 months, close friends, far friends and new friends who pledged, shared, liked, discussed and did everything to help bring Whitestone to the world. We are going to make it! thanks for everything!

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We are getting close to the end of our Kickstarter campaign. Please have a look at the page (and not only the video) we put a lot of efforts to explain our vision and goals there.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/whitestonemusic/this-is-what-music-will-look-like-in-the-future

Experiencing Music Tech Fest was great! We have a couple of new leads and I can’t wait to launch the pre-alpha already! We hope to send some invitations to first member in November.

If you aren’t friends with me on Facebook please do, it’s probably the best place to keep up to date with news about the platform.

https://www.facebook.com/roey.tsemah

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Hackastones all over the world

We’ve been following the development of interactive music online for quite some time now. It seems like more and more artists create interactive experiences these days yet it is still a very small market - only a few hundred experiences were made to date. In that sense we live in a time quite similar to the late ‘70 where only few hundred videoclips were produced. It took the launch of MTV to really kick videoclips off.

As you may know on the weekend we launched our Kickstarter campaign we had an event to create interactive music, we called it (drums roll here) 

The Hackastone :P

We gathered a few artists, animators, designers and programmers and let them do their magic. In just a few hours we could already see some interactive action on their screens and after 2 days they managed to preview working prototypes!

Check out the video below for an impression of the first Hackastone weekend:

Creating an interactive music experience isn’t more challenging than making a videoclip or an album cover, it just involves different skills. The challenge lays in the fact that programmers and artists don’t normally hang out in the same circles and Hackastones are a great way to help connect them.

We are already planning the next ones in San Francisco and New York. If you are a creative join our lists and we’ll be in touch as soon as a Hackastone is organized in your city.

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www.whitestone.io

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Whitestone featuring Geoffrey Lillemon! 

Join us! Now funding the world's first interactive music platform on Kickstarter! 

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First week on Kickstarter

It's been a week since we launched Whitestone on Kickstarter. Today we are sending first invites to our backers, woohoo!! We can't wait to have you all join!

The campaign is off to a good start, we had some great discussions over the past couple of weeks with artists, animators and other creatives from Sydney to Tokyo and San Fransisco. It is obvious that Whitestone is needed and we are curious to see what artists will release on it in the coming months.

Keeping Whitestone independent should be important to everybody who cares for music. If every each of us shares the link today and encourage their friends to pledge, it'll make a big impact and get us closer to our goal. Please help us spread the word.

See below our special backers page and join us to be part of it!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/whitestonemusic/this-is-what-music-will-look-like-in-the-future

whitestone.io/cornerstones

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This is what music will look like in the future. Join our Kickstarter to take part #interactivemusic #whitestone http://thndr.it/1JNYZmX

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