KIZINA powers Nemesis Fixx's upcoming album, Esoteric (2016), as the World's First Self-Executing, Interactive Music Album!
This is the world's first ever self-executable, fully interactive music album! Think of a music album that doesn't ask you for a music player - it just plays itself. And that's just the start...
#Background
I'm a hacker and researcher, but also a serious Hip Hop emcee (yes, still underground, but...). So, this year, I'be been working on my debut music album, Esoteric, and was wondering, "How do I best distribute this music, given I have no promoter, no manager, no record label and few fans at the moment?"
I have already tried SoundCloud, I have created a website, I have uploaded lyrics to Genius, and have even had some traction talking to the good nerds at HN. But, as a tinkerer, I still wasn't satisfied. This album is by essence a big challenge to the status quo, and so, I was thinking a night before, "Why not disrupt music distribution/publishing as well?" And yes, an idea occurred to me... Why not make self-contained, self-executing music albums?
#THE IDEA : KIZINA
(Yes, that's the name of this technology, and the word means "Song" in Runyoro)
KIZINA is a novel technology of music packaging, and distribution, that would allow:
- Albums that just aren't files rotting away on a CD, or DVD, but which are full-fledged, interactive, immersive apps.
- Albums that contain not just audio, but video, animations, chatrooms (yes, so the fans can talk with each other as they listen to the music, and also talk directly to the artiste), history/bios, image galleries, etc.
- This is the FUTURE of MUSIC, or so we are creating it right now!
#THIS VERSION
Because this is entirely new technology, and because we are just toying with this concept, not everything might work as expected, and definitely, your experience with the tech might vary based on your device and Android platform. But, in this first attempt, KIZINA V.1, which is being used to package just 2 of the songs off my album - the songs are "Beautiful Mind" and "One Fateful Nite", the following features are currently supported:
- Listern can play the music while watching interesting visualizations (one even has dancing robots - thanks to the cool hackers on CodePen)
- Listener pause, or continue to listen to the music, while reading the lyrics of the currently playing song.
- They can likewise read some background/historial notes about the song, by the artiste themselves.
- They can browse an included image gallery -- think, album or song art (more than a single file per song is possible!)
#SHOW, DON'T TELL
Fine, I've been busy hacking for the last couple hours non-stop (this project isn't yet older than 24hr). But, check some of these features in the screenshots below...
#DOWNLOAD THe ESOTERIC ALBUM RIGHT NOW!!! #http://tiny.cc/esoteric-album
- There will be the ability for listeners to chat (the album basically is the same place where the fans meet each other, as they listen to the songs or study the lyrics and other stuff). They can talk about the lyrics, the artiste, the gallery, background info, whatever...
- Similarly, the fans will have a facility to talk directly to their hero, the artiste, in private chats, directly within the album! Shh.. don't tell Gagga fans about this feature yet!
- Perhaps the ability to get recommendations and notifications about the artiste's activities; tour iteranery, upcoming projects, etc.
#OPEN SOURCE
We at NuChwezi, believe in empowering people, by building innovative technologies that don't just solve one problem, but which open up a whole cascade of potential solutions to other, even yet-unknown problems. In this vein, we are choosing to make this lucrative technology open source, so that it can immediately inspire and be of benefit to those with interest in such fringe ideas.
Who might use this sort of tech?
- Those who wish to release and sell their music using unconventional means - like I.
- Those who want to use existing app stores to directly sell their music (yes, now it's possible to build an app for your music single, and instead of selling the audio on iTunes or Bandcamp, etc put it directly on for example the Google Play Store!
- Those making special publications that might need to embed playable audio, images, text, interactive animations, etc, and yet still want this stuff all easily distributable as a mere app.
- Many many more applications...
#BUSINESS?
Sure. NuChwezi is a startup. Much as we build lots of open source stuff, we also have hopes of making BIG Money (and we shall). Okay, so how can we benefit you? We can do all the above for you, and can take it a step further - to package a sleek KIZINA package to best suit your particular needs. Good for those who want to work directly with the inventors... ;-)
There's lots of ways to use this to disrupt many projects that currently use some form of publication that could leverage media and a self-contained community. Get in touch... sales [at] nuchwezi [dot] com.
#Nemesis Fixx?
Yeah, it's me. You can support my music by downloading this album and sharing it with your friends, mum and dad. But, you can also get more adventurous, and contribute to making this technology more awesome. Fork the repo, make pull requests, give feedback. Let's evolve music and culture, as we have fun with tech...
Don't hesitate to checkout my SoundCloud channel, my Genius page and my YouTube. But, note that not the entire album has been published yet, and stuff is somewhat scattered over the interwebs, but there will definitely be new stuff as time goes by, and the proper packaging will be made for FREE downloads some time in the future.