For the most part, I agree with the general sentiments in this thread (this is abuse of github), but the ability to change already distributed music is a great idea.
It would be really cool to open your music software and be able to listen to the artist's newest iteration of a song (like while it's being written or polished during studio time). You could follow the entire evolution of an album from birth to release. Or you could browse the various remixes and changes that others create. It would be a world wide jam that could extend for weeks or months that anyone could enjoy as either an audience member or a participant.
So is Github just an excuse to self-promote your album on HN?
Git is quite useless for binary data in the general case. I mean, did you use Git to manage your audio during production? If not, why use Github -- a service built around Git and collaboration? Based on the commit history it looks like you just threw a repo together so you could host it on Github.
I'm not an audio person, but if the component tracks (sublayers, like audio, vocals, guitar) of a song were separate, it seems like a reasonable use. People could fork songs with different vocals, combine different parts of songs for mashups, etc.
edit: As an aside, as an artistic statement on why autotune is terrible, I was thinking it would be interesting if someone would show the world what classic songs, ruined by autotune, would sound like.
> I'm not an audio person, but if the component tracks (sublayers, like audio, vocals, guitar) of a song were separate, it seems like a reasonable use.
Yeah, but not for Git. If you tried that with Git you'd basically have a nice wrapper around tarballing your work directory every morning.
Not so sure about that... Git would let you do something like this, and if the tracks are separately stored, you could pick and choose commits, and fork, branch, merge, etc.
It would be cool if there was some standardized "make" utility for multitrack audio, where you could distribute component tracks, and people could fork, come up with their own mixes, effects, mastering, etc. and generate a text file that contained all the metadata required to bounce the tracks down. Of course, effects would be a problem, since most of them are commercial and everyone uses a different toolbox of effects.
I'm sure if everyone agreed on a DAW suite, something like this would be rather easy to implement.
I fully recognize that Git/hub is not ideal for this use case, and actually considered trying to build a service around exactly this, but decided it would be too much of an undertaking as a side project, and I'd rather just get the music out there instead.
Also the main reason I used github is the ease of forking, and strong community behind it.
You're right, it's Git's. Github did set a good precedent, though, by allowing you to see the diffs of images in a few different ways. That's a really clever feature that gives Git new functionality.
Image diffs make sense, though, because a lot of projects have images (Web sites, resources for UIs, and so on). Audio is probably present in far fewer projects, so I'd expend much less development on it.
I understood why there was an ebook being hosted on GitHub (since they were still making changes to the source code), but this is just wrong. They are making GitHub pay for the distribution costs of their MP3s.
This sort of abuse (along with using DropBox as a CDN) needs to be stopped. It isn't a new cool way of doing things; it is draining the wallets of services we know and love.
The idea is interesting―imagine, as an artist, publishing a song and then having people fork and remix it―but unfortunately, git (and hence GitHub) don't understand binary music files.
I think this is a cool idea (despite the lack of practicality wrt audio file diffing), but it would've been far cooler if they would've included their DAW project (i.e. the Logic project, or maybe a GarageBand project so it's more accessible) - that way people actually could build on each other's forks.
I actually built something like this as a startup out of Rails & Flex... but, after ~12 months of being unable to solve some UX problems and pursuing the wrong business model, it's now just sitting online. URL = http://youphonics.com, behind a beta-wall.
Since some of you actually seem to be into the idea of Github'ing music (ericb, baddox, asarazan, xpaulbettsx, mrspeaker, zcid, JoachimShipper, johnny22, beaumartinez...), it'd be neat if any of you want to help me package and open source the code base!
28 comments
[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 68.3 ms ] threadIt would be really cool to open your music software and be able to listen to the artist's newest iteration of a song (like while it's being written or polished during studio time). You could follow the entire evolution of an album from birth to release. Or you could browse the various remixes and changes that others create. It would be a world wide jam that could extend for weeks or months that anyone could enjoy as either an audience member or a participant.
Git is quite useless for binary data in the general case. I mean, did you use Git to manage your audio during production? If not, why use Github -- a service built around Git and collaboration? Based on the commit history it looks like you just threw a repo together so you could host it on Github.
edit: As an aside, as an artistic statement on why autotune is terrible, I was thinking it would be interesting if someone would show the world what classic songs, ruined by autotune, would sound like.
Yeah, but not for Git. If you tried that with Git you'd basically have a nice wrapper around tarballing your work directory every morning.
git branch newleadsinger
git commit -m "added new main vocal track"
git commit -m "trying new drum track"
git commit -m "guitar track moved up a key"
git commit -m "more cowbell"
git commit -m "less cowbell"
git commit -m "deleted cowbell track"
git commit -m "added echo to vocal track"
I'm sure if everyone agreed on a DAW suite, something like this would be rather easy to implement.
Also the main reason I used github is the ease of forking, and strong community behind it.
Image diffs make sense, though, because a lot of projects have images (Web sites, resources for UIs, and so on). Audio is probably present in far fewer projects, so I'd expend much less development on it.
/me is ignorant of such things
This sort of abuse (along with using DropBox as a CDN) needs to be stopped. It isn't a new cool way of doing things; it is draining the wallets of services we know and love.
The idea is interesting―imagine, as an artist, publishing a song and then having people fork and remix it―but unfortunately, git (and hence GitHub) don't understand binary music files.
Since some of you actually seem to be into the idea of Github'ing music (ericb, baddox, asarazan, xpaulbettsx, mrspeaker, zcid, JoachimShipper, johnny22, beaumartinez...), it'd be neat if any of you want to help me package and open source the code base!