Romplr Makes Music Interactive
In an age of interactive media, how to do same for music has become an increasing part of the music creation and marketing discussion in recent months. Online collaboration and remix sites meeting like Indaba are part of the answer. But for less tech savvy yet no less engaged fans there have been fewer options.Into that void comes Romplr, a new smartphone app from Moderati, which debuts this week with Soulja Boy Tell ‘Em that allows fans to create their own mixes three hits – “Crank That”, “Hey You There” and “Turn My Swag On”. Using the key elements of the song, Romplr makes it easy for fans to mix their own unique versions and share them with friends.
In addition to the core song elements, the Soulja Boy Tell ’Em Romplr features seven additional samples to personalize their mixes. Mixes can be shared through Facebook Connect email or on Romplr.com, the online interactive music companion site. More Romplr artist apps will be announced soon.
Also launching this week is Romplr Dance, which contains three original dance tracks that can be remixed by fans. Romplr will also be extended to mobile platforms such Blackberry, Android, Java, Ovi and other mobile storefronts. The company’s Virtual Zippo Lighter iPhone application has reached over four million downloads and is ranked #18 on Comscore’s all-time highest iPhone application downloads list.
Really, who cares?
“Remix tracks from your favorite artists” has been around for years now. There was a company offering the ability to do this with Aerosmith tracks at E3 back in 1994. It’s been done for Radiohead, NIN, a zillion other acts.
How many people out there want to remix tracks? These companies act like it’s this huge untapped marketplace, and frankly it isn’t.
The only “remixing” that fans are really interested in on any mass scale is playlists, creating their own and sharing with friends. The modern iteration of the mixtape. Unfortunately, anyone who has launched a playlist model has gotten sued out of existence.
Word of mouth is the most powerful tool for building awareness. The mixtape/playlist concept is potentially one of the most powerful ways to turn people onto a band that ever came into existence.
Remixing is fun and will work for certain artists or labels, but the amount of consumer oriented websites and applications in the market far exceed the actual demand. It makes one wonder who is funding these companies…
Interesting perspective old record guy, but remixing might not be the only attraction for users.
Besides Romplr I found other applications in the app store that allow kind of a remix, but actually lets you enter an artists music as its provided in multitrack, which is fan engaging for the artists. Check it out, its called iklax and I think they’ve got a few there.
True that remixing seems to be a bit of a fashion of the moment, we’ll see where it leads!
I’d agree w/ Old Record Guy. It’s one of those cool new features that it turns out very few people care about. Of course, I’m judging from my own biases. But to suggest that there is a huge market for this type of content, and on top of that to suggest that there is money to be made, is probably a pretty bold assumption.