An Idea: Customisable Music (and movies)

In a previous post, I explained that I collect Christmas music. One of my favourite songs of this year’s crop comes from a compliation album (WOW Christmas – get it at Kalahari.net), and is “Little Drummer Boy”, as done by Audio Adrenaline. AudioA is an alternative rock band, and they took the well known Christmas carol by the scruff of its neck and did a great rock version of it, complete with overdriven guitar and pounding bass.

But as each verse built up, I was looking forward to the obvious pounding drum solo. Yet, the only instrumental breakaway we have in this version is a guitar solo. Strange, I thought, and a little disappointing, to be honest. My brother is a drummer, you see. A good one, too, with a few bands, a stint as a full-time drummer in the Airforce orchestra, a session muso, and the proud owner of a fairly impressive electronic drum kit/rack. So, I’m a fan of the drums. But a drum solo never came. I wondered why not, and if we could get a version that did.

Then a good friend had a great idea. Given that, in our company, we make use of video and audio editing software, why can’t we just splice a drum solo into the song? Then, my thoughts went further. (1) Why not release the song in a multi-track version, ready for this type of individualisation (and actively encourage it)? (2) Then, why not create a secondary market for the sale of customised songs (so, you might not like what Mariah did to that song, but you might like what Graeme can do to Mariah’s songs…) – royalties to go to the original rtiset, of course, but a fair share to the “secondary musicians”? (3) And why not create software that is specifically geared to this sort of industry?

Well, there’s three great business ideas for the music industry and related businesses. I feel fairly safe putting these ideas out here in public, because no-one in the music industry is actually looking – they’re all spending time with their lawyers trying to work out how to find and prosecute more 14 year old music downloaders this year…. Wake up, and smell the coffee, people!

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