In reaching his decision, Judge Stanton recognized the licenses that DMX has secured directly from music publishers in competitive market transactions as an appropriate bench mark for setting reasonable license fees. To date, DMX has signed licenses representing more than 7,000 publishing catalogs directly from music publishers and those numbers continue to grow.

According to Christopher Harrison, DMX’ General Counsel, “DMX believes that securing licenses directly from music publishers presents an opportunity for the publishers – and the writers they represent – to receive greater royalties through DMX’ increased use of their musical compositions. In addition, DMX’ royalty reporting is completely transparent, allowing publishers to see exactly how many times each one of their songs was performed on DMX’ service and the resulting royalty payments.

R. Bruce Rich, senior partner and co-head of Weil, Gotshal & Manges’ IP & Media practice, who represents DMX, describes Judge Stanton’s decision as “a gratifying affirmation of the role of the BMI rate court as a means of establishing meaningful alternative license structures to the blanket license. The Court’s implementation of a sensible crediting mechanism against blanket license payments otherwise owing where a user such as DMX has made significant investments in direct licensing should have broad application for other industries.”

About DMX, Inc.
Recognized as an international leader of experiential marketing services, DMX creates cohesive brand experiences across physical and digital environments. From mobile-enhanced in-store activation, to branded digital music microstores, from branded streaming music players embeddable across social networking sites, to turnkey music promotions, DMX’ interactive strategies leverage a brand’s physical and digital properties to create unique customer experiences. DMX’ in-store services include music, video/digital signage, and scent marketing. For more information please visit DMX at http://www.dmx.com or download the DMX iPhone app. at iTunes.

L.A. Scoring Strings “Lite” contains full section patches, but not the divisi ensemble patches nor the first chair solo strings. LASS Lite work have the same patch functionality as the full version including the ART and Auto Arranger scripts, plus all the remaining scripts that come with the full version. LASS Lite also has the LASS legato sound and short articulations. It’s priced below $500 U.S.

Priced below $400 are the L.A. Scoring Strings First Chairs which are the solo strings recorded in the same stage position as the full library.

A combo package for both libraries is also available.

Audiobro has set up a dollar-for-dollar upgrade path to the full library L. A. Scoring Strings Library.

Both libraries are downloadable in Kontakt 4.1 format using the new Native Instruments NCW loss-less compression format that saves both hard disk space and reduces download times.

See www.cinesamples.com for products and demos.

PA: First off, how and when did you guys meet?

Cinesamples: “This one time at band camp”….  No seriously, that is where we first met.  A fancy band camp called USDAN on Long Island.  At the time we had both managed to get jobs accompanying musical theatre productions for children.  This must have been around the summer of 2000, just after getting out of high school.  It was really quite a nice job for two college students and we pretty much enjoyed ourselves heartily (well, except for the musical theatre part).  We did spend a great deal of time at lunch discussing the more interesting points of film music, mostly relating to obsessive John Williams observations.

PA: Briefly, what musical training do you both have, and if you studied privately with someone, who?

Cinesamples: For not knowing each other as children we share remarkably similar, musical, pasts.  We were both were trained as classical pianists from Julliard trained pianists who lived locally.  We both grew up playing a healthy diet of Beethoven and Billy Joel (the local hero).  In school Patti played cello (and continues to do so) and Barry played clarinet/bass clarinet.  In college we both started paying attention to composition - continuing studies at the USC Film Scoring Program under Brian King.

PA: Both of you have excellent professional composing credits. And I know from your web sites, that Mike B. is a concert pianist. With all these professional writing and performing opportunities in front of you, why did you each decide to join the growing ranks of composers who produce sample libraries?

Cinesamples: It’s actually quite a simple answer, we were looking for a way to do realistic harp glissandi on a project.  After searching all around for a solution we couldn’t find a really comprehensive answer so we decided to create CineHarp.  After using it by ourselves for a while we decided to make it public.  For most of our libraries this has been the same principle, record something that we need and can’t buy or something we really want.

PA: You’re the first sample development team to live on two coasts. With 3000 miles between you both, what’s your collaboration procedure?

Cinesamples: Instant messenger! — well until Barry moves back out to Los Angeles.  And lots of crazy phone calls.

PA: How did you meet Tim Starnes and what is his ongoing role with Cinesamples?

Cinesamples: Around the time we attending USC we both lived in this studio apartment building off of Hoover near downtown Los Angeles.  Despite the occasional drive by shooting, it was a charming place and our good friend Patrick Kirst (now on the USC Faculty) lived there also. Patrick was good friends with Tim from their undergrad studies and we met that way.

Tim is our audio quality control expert.  He also mixes and engineers most of the libraries.

PA: Are you recording most of your libraries in New York City?

Cinesamples: Yes and no.  For our larger ensemble works we like to go to Seattle - Bastyr is such a lovely place to record and the gear and crew there is first rate.

[Editor's Note: Bastyr is a European-styled chapel built in 1958 by Ralph Lund. It's five stories high, 140 feet long, and has 36 stained glass windows. The original score soundtracks About Schmidt and Die Hard With a Vengeance were recorded there. Click the Bastyr link above for more details on how recording takes place there.]

For our percussion projects we like to record at Manhattan Center Studios since that’s where we originally recorded Drums of War and it seems to make sense to keep that all in the same hall.  Both studios are fantastic and contain an incredible mic cabinet which we love to take advantage of.

Recently we had the honor to do the final sessions at the legendary Clinton Studios in Manhattan.  We were made aware of an opportunity to sample the actual piano used in Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue and Glenn Gould’s Goldberg Variations before it disappeared.  It was an amazing and emotional experience; we even managed to get the original microphones from the Davis sessions.

PA: Many of the independent composer/developers have opted to sell direct. Why did you make the decision to assign sales to a national distributor?

Cinesamples: We have established a mutually beneficial relationship with Big Fish Audio.  Tom Meadow and his staff have twenty years of experience in the market and the work they do allows us time to make new libraries and pursue composing gigs. It really works out for both parties involved.

PA: For a while, you provided libraries in both Kontakt and EXS24 (Logic) formats. Now it appears starting with Hollywoodwinds that your focus is on Kontakt exclusively. What prompted that decision?

Cinesamples: Well, it basically comes down to the scripting and DFD power of Kontakt.  A script heavy library (as most of ours now tend to be) simply cannot exist in any other form at this point.  For example, the time syncing scales in Hollywoodwinds are impossible in EXS24 format.  Also our customers prefer Kontakt to other samplers at a rate of 25 to 1 according to a poll we ran.

PA: Of all your libraries to date, Hollywoodwinds is the most unusual compared to the “standard” woodwlnd libraries currently on the market. How did you decide on the instrumentation?

Cinesamples: The instrumentation is rather standard, woodwinds in three’s. [Editor's Note: Woodwinds in three's were first used by Wagner, continued with by Mahler. In film scoring, John Williams often uses this section size.] It’s the usage of the section that is indeed different.  Whenever practicable, we like to record sections together because it is much more musical for the players in that manner.  If you, for example, have a “clubo” (clarinet, flute, oboe) unison they will naturally balance each other on the stage in a way that is impossible to get by recording them separately.  This was the entire principle for HWW and for all the ensemble patches we do.  So on HWW what you hear is what was we heard on the stage, we didn’t “stack” at all in post. It’s all natural.

We also knew that we needed to concentrate on capturing the piercing qualities of the piccolo and flutes in an ensemble patch - something which we were sorely missing from other libraries.  They are the only part of the WW ensemble you hear during a fully orchestration action scene and needed the attention.

PA: In your own music, how do you personally use Hollywoodwinds?

Cinesamples: Mainly we use the three keyboard patches while we are writing, mostly the tutti patch. We also have all the different tunings for each scale loaded in our template now that Kontakt 4.1 is out and memory is less of an issue.  Also we like to keep the atonal/tonal rips handy.  The other patches we go to when needed.

PA: What made you decide to release this library commercially, rather than keeping it to yourselves as part of your own competitive sonic arsenal?

Cinesamples: We like to share! By the way we love the way it works in collaboration with CineHarp and the way it will work with our future string libraries (which exist only in our minds).

PA: VOXOS. With Symphony of Voices, Symphonic Choirs, the many vocal libraries from other companies, and the newly released Vienna Choirs, Tonehammer Requiem and the recently announced Quantum Leap Choir - why VOXOS? With all these libraries in the field and coming, why add to it? What’s different about what you’re doing - especially since! All of your competitors are also composer/developers like yourselves?

Cinesamples: After VSL Choirs we were the first to announce a new choir library (before TH and EW) - we have just really taken our time in the programming phase.  The reason is simple: to make a choir library this large and complex takes a great amount of time and we didn’t want to rush in with an unfinished product.  For example, in our “phrase builder section”  there are over 100 different recorded samples per pitch. Multiply that by the full range and you can see how large the library gets and how long it took to record.   The key to the library is the concept and programming.  All the programming was well thought out and tested before we recorded a note, the concept and programming is uniform.

We think the VOXOS GUI (graphic user interface) will distinguish itself as being the finest solution possible within the Kontakt Engine which is the preferred sampler of most composers. Our Legato section also features SATB and fully legato soloists in cinematic style. For example the Soprano is based upon a Morricone model, the alto after Lisa Gerrard and the boy soprano was ever done in a cinematic style.  We decided to go cinematic rather then operatic.

PA: Let’s talk about syllables. In the YouTube video on your site you see a grid in the Kontakt player that contains 30 syllables. First, how did you decide on these syllables?

Cinesamples: Having 30 syllables (it may be up to 40 by release or in a future update) allows the composer massive flexibility in composing “lyrics” that sound different from one another.  I mean lets face it, in a typical trailer cue the human ear is not going to be distinguishing lyrics so easily. However, having 30 sounds based on five vowels allows you to make a very realistic sounding lyric, with only a few clicks and one pass on the keyboard. Having actually recorded all of these live on every pitch pays massive dividends on the short articulations.  Artificial synthesis hits a brick wall on shorts, having 3-5 micro cuts on a sound lasting a quarter second is going to sound fake.

The 30 words in the matrix are all from Latin and all take place in the Mozart Requiem which was the foundation for the lyrics.  We tried to find a way to balance the words so the user could really make some familiar words when needed “Dominus, Kyrie, Sanctus etc..” and also made up words which might better represent a made up language, which has its appropriate moments too.

PA: Right now there are literally thousands of choral composers, and tens of thousands church music directors, not counting companies that publish choral music. From the perspective of musical genre, can VOXOS with its legato program also do Palestrina? a Bach chorale? a traditional 4-part hymn?

Cinesamples: The full SATB  legato is extremely powerful  and something we spent a great deal of time recording and tweaking.  It seems SATB is the only way to go to achieve the Bach type choral writing properly.  For example, if the the sopranos had a melody line beginning in the alto range and jumping up to the pure soprano range how will that sound convincing without SATB?  You can witness in the YouTube videos, especially video #2, the power of keeping the voices separate and the convincing results they allow you to achieve.  Aside from the full SATB Sectional legato you get the boys legato and the three soloists.  That’s eight legato sections within VOXOS.

PA: What was your thinking about including a children’s choir?

Cinesamples: James Horner. No, really, we just knew we had to have it. It’s a modern piece of the orchestra nowadays and we were sure our clients would expect us to include it.  The boys were very charming to work with.  The solo boy is just one of the most emotional sounds a composer can present in a cue - perfect for those epic moments where less is more.  It’s a joy to play the solo boy legato patch, We were lucky to get a brilliant young man at the prime of boy voice.

PA: In the first video, you stated that you were adding to the library every day. At this point do you see you have a final design in place?

Cinesamples: Yes everything is recorded, chopped  and pretty much finished.   The entire library will be completely done and handed over to Native Instruments relatively soon. We like to spend time tweaking each legato sample and getting it just perfect so we don’t have update headaches and unhappy customers.  Regarding a final file size we don’t have one yet - but yes it will be over 30 GB.

PA: Finally, what Kontakt version will it be in Voxos ships?

Cinesamples: VOXOS will ship (or be downloaded) with the Kontakt 4 player.  The Kontakt 4 player is the only way we could have made such a powerful GUI and such user friendly scripting.  K 4.1 is an masterful achievement from NI. It should be the main sampler for most professionals by now.

PA: Fellows, thanks for your time. We’ll check back when VOXOS is released!

VOXOS DEMONSTRATION VIDEO WITH MIKE PATTI

PA - Originally you had a “monster” system spec for LASS to be spread over two computers for best results. So staying with your original spec for the moment, given that i7s are much cheaper now than last summer, would you still suggest LASS being spread over two computers? And if so, what would their specs be?

ANDREW - There are many users who use LASS on one machine without issues (I’ve been accused of being overly cautious with my ‘recommended’ system requirements — especially considering some of today’s faster computers. 4- and 8-core machines). When I started developing LASS, Quad and 8-core machines were scarce, but now it seems everyone has them. So if you have a decent 4- or 8-core machine with a good 7200RPM drive, you should be good to go. But even for those who have lesser computers, you can use the full mixes or you can even use LASS to the fullest by rendering MIDI tracks. However, as a safety dead-line precaution, I only recommend two computers for those “prime-time” professionals who would use LASS to the fullest with deep divisi writing on all string sections simultaneously and playback everything in real-time with no glitches at the lowest latencies.

PA -SSD drives have recently come into the forefront for newer libraries. I checked out Best Buy and found an Intel X25-M Mainstream 80GB Internal SATA Solid State Hard Drive for under $230. Since LASS is 40GB on a complete install, would you consider an 80GB SSD hard drive sufficient?

ANDREW -More than sufficient!!! An 80GB SSD would be beyond our recommended specs… but it never hurts to have the “latest/greatest” drives if you can justify the cost.

PA -Looking ahead, you have a 1.5 update coming, the muted strings collection, and you’ve also announced a LASS 2.0 at some date in the future. Looking into the Developer Crystal Ball, how big are you guessing these libraries might be?

ANDREW - Well, the upcoming 1.5 update will include a new ground-breaking performance feature allowing real-time capabilities that that have not yet been achieved with sampled strings. We should have videos posted about this in the next week or so. This is a script-based update and will not increase the sample footprint of LASS. And this will be a free upgrade to all LASS owners.

LASS Legato Sordinos will have a substantial footprint, I’m guessing 8-16Gigs. This depends on whether we include 16-bit and some other criteria. LASS 2 will also be quite a few Gigs… but it shouldn’t be over 40 GIgs. At least we’re going to try to keep it, “lean and mean”.

PA -With Kontakt 4 64-bit now out as a public beta for registered K4 users, in your view is a 7200RPM SATA drive sufficient provided the user’s system has enough RAM?

ANDREW - Absolutely. That’s what I use. That’s what almost people I know use, or FireWire drives, too.

PA -With an i7 Quad Core, do you see a value in spreading LASS across several drives within the same system?

ANDREW - That depends on your writing style and work methodology. I was given some good general Hard Disk advice by someone who said when putting your sample libraries on a drive, do not fill up your hard drive. Rather, use a large capacity drive (500+ Gigs at last 7200RPM and 16 meg cache) and only fill it up to 50% or maybe 66% capacity. This does two things:

1) Forces the files to be written to the outside portions of the HD platter providing faster data transfer.

2) Eliminates (or greatly reduces) fragmentation.

Also, distributing the libraries on different drives also increases performance. Also, Stevenson (from our forum) gave this advice:

“another tip with regards to drive efficiency is to partition the drive. the top most partition is the segment that is on the outside of the platter. therefore partition the drive and keep your samples on the first partition but you can use the other partition for backing up, or non-performance dependent data, thus not wasting the drive space but also preserving the performance.”

PA - What customer reports have you received back on running LASS on the same system as the Vienna Ensemble Pro?

ANDREW - Initially, VE Pro had issues running some heavily scripted libraries… but I must say that the Vienna people did a great job of fixing these issues and now it seems LASS runs great on VE Pro.

PA - For the person wanting to put LASS on a separate system, do they need a Vienna Ensemble Pro or can they use LASS with just MIDIoverLAN and an audio card?

ANDREW - I use MIDIOverLAN along with RME 9652 cards (on my PCs ) an the RME RayDAT card on my Mac. Others might use a hardware MIDI box if they have it lying around. Also, A lot of people are using Plogue Bidule to host their VIs since it’s so flexible and efficient. Others use VE Pro.

PA -At one point, you had written on the VI-Control forum your plan to provide alternate EQ settings to transform LASS into mimicking the string sound of other composers in a selected group of films. Is this still in the works?

ANDREW - Well, in keeping with my approach to a, “Living Library”, everything is always in the works. Currently, I set up a thread on our forum for people to contribute EQs. EQ is such a personal thing. Quite a few people use LASS without the preset EQs… they prefer it, “au naturale.”

PA - Since Kontakt only has a 3-band EQ, have you considered releasing alternative settings for 5-band EQs that come with many of the sequencing programs?

ANDREW - No, not really… since there has not been the demand for it.

PA - As a working composer with many film/TV credits on IMDB, would you consider sharing what some of the other string libraries are you use to supplement LASS?

ANDREW -Well, I’m a big believer in, “you can never have too many good sounds.” So, have something from everyone lying around on my drives ready to use in a pinch, but I use mostly LASS, a some custom libraries, Sonic Implants, and QLSO has some nice aleatoric rises.

PA - A number of months ago you announced the release of LASS Lite and First Chair solo strings. Is that still in the works for 2010?

ANDREW - Actually, they are finished. The reason they have not been released yet is they will be downloadable and we are putting te finishing touches on our new download delivery system. We’ve never done this before, and the infrastructure for this is more daunting than we though because we are doing it all in-house. We’ aren’t using a “service” to do it for us. This way, we’ll have more control in the future. The god news is that we are very ver very near completion of this downloadable infrastructure… and all future downloadable releases will be able to be released without delay.

PA - Any hot news we can publish first?

ANDREW - Well, I guess it’s OK if I tip my hand a bit. We are about to release LASS 1.5, and that release will feature Auto Arranger (AA)… a new scripted option which (among many other things) will be able to do auto divisi in real-time. No longer will you have to play 2, 3 or 4 passes of divisi strings to get chordal legato, port or glissando passages. You can now do it in 1 take in real time. It will also allow you to split up two-hand performances into violins, violas, cellos and basses in real time. Or with your right hand, you could play some nice chords and voice leading, and AA would voice the violas down an octave (for example) and make them divisi…. AND have them retain Real Legato perfromances. It will be easier to explain on a video… but it’s pretty cool… and Gabor (the programmer) worked very hard on it!!

PA - Andrew, thanks for your time.

ANDREW - You’re welcome.

First of all before I lift off into social media spheres I wanted to mention that of course the most important thing is to be a good composer. What do I mean with being a good composer?
 It’s fairly simple: You are skilled, you have experience, you know what you can do (and what you can’t), you know your gear and you are a nice person, which I consider the most important thing at all – nobody likes to work with assholes, we all know that. Period!

Okay, so now what is social media?

Generally social media consists of all those socializing platforms you should have at least heard once. If Twitter, Facebook or MySpace doesn’t ring a bell, you are either a very successful composer who doesn’t need it at all … or you do something wrong! Seriously, I mean it … look back a few years into the past and think about a few “vintage” social media platforms. There were letters, then there was the telephone, then we had emails and messengers, … and now we simply have social media. It is just the next step of communication – nothing else.

So, if you think that Twitter is just good for people who want to tell how their apple pie is tasting or that you are becoming too transparent when using Facebook you should stop reading here. Everyone else who is further interested in this topic and what social media can be for us composers, I would welcome you to read on!

Generally I want to add that if you don’t like social media, there is no problem at all. There have been people who don’t like to talk on the phone or don’t like writing letters or email. This all is absolutely no problem and there are always solutions to make it and reach your goals – but you have to admit that it can be a disadvantage to tell a customer that you don’t like to talk on the telephone, which has kind of an insulting touch – something like: No, I don’t like to talk to YOU!

And what does it mean to we composers? 
It’s really simple again, the two main reasons why social media is important to we composers is:

1. publicity
2. staying in touch with people

I am sure you know the situation. You received a call from a client, you talked about the project and all its details, you started working together … and after the gig was done there have been those obligatory words:
Thanks for all your good work, let’s stay in touch! … and then there was silence! 
Okay, there are several different reasons why there is silence. Humans are just complex chemistry and sometimes it just doesn’t ignite, .. but most of the time it is simply the case that everyone is so damn busy that you or your client just forgets about to send that “Hey, how are you” message from time to time. Now, here comes the strength of social media platforms … and now let’s dive into it and how we can make advantage and use of social media as composers.

In my opinion the most important social media platforms for composer are: Facebook,
 Twitter
, MySpace
, YouTube,
 Vimeo,
 Soundcloud, 
and ReverbNation

Disregarding your profession you should make sure to be present on LinkedIn and XING (if you are living in Europa) and of course have your own website!

FACEBOOK
In my opinion the best way to stay in touch with your friends, customers and fellow composers. I always like to see the timeline as a customized newspaper about all the news from people and topics you are interested it.
The options are to either publish your projects and valuable thoughts through your personal profile or via fanpage. It really depends on what you prefer. Don’t get irritated by the word fanpage. I simply see it is as a good option to separate your private from your business life. Also there is a variety of applications (such as MyBand, powered by ReverbNation) to help you boosting your profile or your fanpage.

Basically you can do everything you think is right and fair to boost your career such as publish new tracks, post news when a video game or movie has been released etc., but there are a few important things I would not do:

Facebook Don’ts
There is an option to invite friends to your fanpage. It is okay to suggest your page once … maybe a second time to all your friends after a few months (remember, we are all busy, some things are simply not that important or get lost over time). It’s also okay to suggest your fanpage to all new friends, but never ever suggest your page to everyone in your friend list every week. This makes an impression of aggressively trying to boost your fan count. Remember you are dealing with real people here, not with words or little icons. Just compare all those situations when dealing with social media with real happenings. Would you call your client every week and trying to convince in your studios guestbook once he friendly rejected the offer?

Don’t publish content for the sake of publishing! What would be the purpose of reaching out for a lot of people but deliver them tracks which are done in a hurry? Most important thing is, there are a lot of experienced and professional composers out there and they can easily comprehend how long one actually worked on a track and how much passion was invested! What’s even worse is to post tracks with the notice that it is WIP – “work in progress”. This is by far the poorest excuse to always have the perfect excuse if someone throws you a negative comment!

Never react angry to negative comments! Be nice! If someone posted a negative comment to a track of yours, be thankful! 
In the end someone invested time to react on your action! You wanted comments?! Here they are, now also deal with the negative side. You simply can’t expect the whole world to love your stuff. Even if you would have the writing and creative potential of hundred combined skilled and experienced writer, there would be simply people disliking your stuff. Why? Pretty simple – Taste! :)
But of course, if someone writes something like: This track sucks!!!11!!!11one … it would be okay to at least ask that it would have been nice to know WHY the track sucks!
Most people see that you are interested in their opinion and that you care. Maybe you get even more valuable information, maybe you get even more stupid comments. Live with it!

Never tell anyone that he/she doesn’t have a clue about what he/she is talking when it is about your music. Remember, you are the guy who did the music, but others are the ones who have to listen and deal with it. If they don’t like it, then maybe because there is TASTE?! (again). If someone states that he/she didn’t like the track, it doesn’t mean it is bad. It just stated that it is something which simply doesn’t fit his/her taste.
On the other side, we all agree that it is always nice if the commenter would write something like: Certainly not my style and I don’t like it, but it is well done! … but again, live with it and simply be thankful that people took the time to listen to your music!

TWITTER
This is a really cool way to quickly let people know what you are working on, what you are doing, where you are etc.
Twitter can be also very very informative. Not only you see what all the people you are interested in are doing, I also added all the companies I am interested in.
Within a few minutes of reading every morning you are totally aware of new released vsti’s, plugs, gear and updates. Considering that there are people out there who shake their head when they hear “Miroslav”. I think you get the idea! … I think it is very important to stay in the flow technique and soundwise.

As mentioned in the beginning. I know a lot of people who think that Twitter is just good for writing stuff like: Going for a shower, eating a burger, feeding the dog.
Let me ask the other way round. A one million bucks piano can be lame too if you just play one key over and over again and don’t care what this thing is capable of – it is what YOU make out of it!

Twitter Don’ts
Don’t try to force people to follow you. It becomes pretty obvious when a person is just trying to boost the follower count. If you post valuable information, people start following you automatically.

Don’t use words like e.g. hate in combination with your profession. If you write something like: “I hate working on my current track”, the client you are currently working for can easily comprehend. If you feel like expressing yourself, then maybe write it down on a piece of paper, ball it up and throw it in the corner of your room. Never express negative feelings regaring your own work to the public!

It is a nice move to follow someone back. Don’t think you are a superior composer than anyone else, even though the guy is only working on hobby projects. Things may happen even quicker than you think and suddenly that guy is in a major position and providing others with lots of work. I know it is a lot of if’s and when’s but you guys all know how life can be!

Even though there are tools such as Twitlonger etc. you basically have 140 signs. Think well about what you write!

You are a human being and there is no mistake by showing it to the world. If your little profile description or your posts just say: “We deliver the best music, we create awesome sound, all for the lowest price” … does that sound good? 
Let people decide if you are awesome and deliver the best music. You like to ride your bike? Cool! Maybe that one client who is thinking about hiring you for his next projects is a passionate bike driver and likes to ride in the mountains. Not only sh*t happens!

The follow friday! … if you “meet” nice people during the week you have the chance to feature them on the follow friday (which is basically setting the hashtag #ff in your post).
To be honest I am just a few months into Twitter, but I certainly fell in love with Twitter … I experienced the follow friday quite a few times now and I find it is a cool feature which is going on there. So remember, write some valuable stuff and people might think of featuring you on the #ff

MYSPACE
To be honest I don’t have too much to say about MySpace. If you are not really into HTML or other languages making your MySpace site look fancy can be very time consuming and mind boggling.
General usage of MySpace is kind of clumsy and kinda constructed out of little pieces … to me it seems it’s not really a complete thing such as e.g. Facebook. Nevertheless you shouldn’t ignore it, since you will meet very nice people!

MySpace Dont’s
Lots of people use the comment section to feature their own material. To me this is okay, but please dear posters - if you post material such as YouTube videos, make sure that autostart is off. 
I experienced the situation that someone posted a video to my comment section and as soon as someone, including me, visited my MySpace site, I heard someone else’s music. This can give a wrong impression.

YOUTUBE/VIMEO
The same here, not much to say about those two platforms. It is simply great to not only have your audience listen to your latest track, demos or project but also combine it with pictures or videos.
Most people are visually driven. Meaning if they listen to something they try to go back to something different. If there are pictures or a video going on, they might stay a bit longer with your compositions.

SOUNDCLOUD
By far the most fancy player around. If you don’t have a host or a place where to put your files, Soundcloud is really a cool thing to go with.
Besides the fancy player you get a lot of sharing and embed options. Definitely worth to check out.

REVERBNATION
This place is simply awesome! The features, options and widgets on how to present your music and yourself is awesome. Without a doubt even this platform would burst this post!
Just go and try it yourself!
Some more important things? YES!

Now, we have gone through the most important social media platforms. To get a clearer picture on each, you simply have to check it out. Also you have to be patient. It is not enough to simply create a Facebook fanpage you will get your first contract to a Hollywood movie the other day. It takes time and effort to care about those profiles. It is important to stick with it and don’t let your fans, followers, friends or simply interested people hang. You want attention? Work for it!

Now since you created profiles on some, most or all of these platforms it is important to kind of close the circle. Make sure to feature each of those platforms on your website. Make sure to get a Twitter plugin on Facebook and link back to your website. Then again make sure to post about your YouTube or Vimeo videos on every other platform. Most, if not all platforms offer you crosspostings, means that you can activate your Twitter stream inside ReverbNation or LinkedIn. The reason should be obvious to do so. Once someone shows interest in you or your music it is the most important thing to keep his/her attention and – in a positive sense – catch and hold this person as long as possible.

Now it’s up to you! I hope you enjoyed this article and you can gain some info from it … and always remember, social media is not the holy grail to your goal, it is just another tool to present you, your company and your music. Don’t expect million dollar deals within the first weeks, but if you stick to it, you will see all kinds of little wonders happens.

Finally and of course, I would be very happy to get connected to you guys. You will find all my social media profiles at the very left of the screen. Let’s get connected!

Oh! And since we’re talking of humanity and not being perfect! Just in case I forgot about any important platforms I would be happy to hear from you!
 Use the comment section below.

Thanks a lot for your time and now spread the word!!

That’s when Inon Zur’s award-winning music for the dark fantasy role playing game Dragon Age™: Origins will be performed by the Malmö Symphony Orchestra at the “Joystick 3.0″ symphonic video game music concert in Sweden on May 21st, 2010.

The Joystick concert series currently holds the world record for a game music performance with an attendance of 17,000 at the first show in 2006. Tickets for the concert can be ordered from the Malmö Symphony Orchestra website www.mso.se.

“We are very pleased to invite the music from Dragon Age: Origins into our family of game music,” said Joystick concert producer Orvar Safstrom. “Inon Zur’s compositions transcend the genre, by not only enhancing the game’s scenes but also by contributing unique and powerful elements to the overall atmosphere and storyline. Our audience is in for a real treat.”

Dragon Age: Origins was recently honored with Best Original Song (”I Am The One”) and nominated for Best Original Score at The Hollywood Music In Media Awards. The soundtrack album is available for download from popular digital music stores including iTunes and reached #1 on Amazon UK MP3 Soundtracks Chart in December, 2009.

Developed by leading video game developer BioWare, a division of Electronic Arts Inc., Dragon Age: Origins was named the “RPG of the Year” by Game Informer, G4, Spike TV, AOL.com, and PC Gamer and received over 30 “Best of 2009″ awards from a wide range of respected media outlets around the world, including USAToday.com, CNN.com, MSNBC.com, The Associated Press, GameSpot, IGN, and many more. For more information about Dragon Age: Origins, visit www.dragonage.com.

EastWest has also resumed taking advanced orders with discounts of US$200 off the list price.

Earlier this month, on April 8, EastWest announced a public beta sign-up to test PLAY 2.0, replacing PLAY 1.2.5, the current version. Prospective testers were asked to submit system specs and those selected will begin beta testing sometime the week of April 19 once an NDA (non-disclosure agreement) has been signed. Specs for Hollywood Strings require an Intel-based system with a minimum Core2Duo processor.

According to a post by EastWest president, Doug Rogers, the 2.0 update will be free to registered users.

Los Angeles, April 15th, 2010 - Award-winning composers Inon Zur (Dragon Age: Origins, Prince of Persia) and Rod Abernethy (Rise of the Kasai, The Hobbit) have composed and produced an original score for the innovative massive multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG), TERA™. The atmospheric and emotionally engaging fantasy compositions written by Abernethy and Zur for TERA were recorded with the acclaimed Northwest Sinfonia Orchestra and feature traditional acoustic guitar, ethnic instrumentation and evocative vocal performances. Currently in development for PC by Bluehole Studio in Seoul, Korea, and published by NHN Corporation, TERA is the world’s first action-MMORPG launching in Korea in Summer 2010.
 
“The general direction for the music for TERA was to have an original score that sounded grand and to match the large-scale in-game world, mixed with some warm sounding music,” said Mr. An Yong Jin, Audio Director for TERA at Bluehole Studio. “Inon has created world-class quality, epic orchestral music, which is his best attribute; his sweeping symphonic music is outstanding. Rod’s beautiful compositions for TERA span a wide scope of musical styles. His expertly crafted blend of acoustic guitar and orchestral compositions is incredible for enhancing the musical atmosphere and their popular music appeal.”
 
TERA is an innovative massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) set in a richly imagined fantasy universe. TERA ushers in a ground-breaking interactive combat system that allows you to instantly respond to real-time combat conditions. Throughout a battle, you’ll move around your enemy and dodge its attacks as if you were playing an action game on your console. Furthermore, TERA raises the bar for visual beauty and varied gameplay in the MMORPG genre.

As a citizen of TERA, you’ll guard and eventually transform your world in a way never before experienced in online games. Unlike faction-based games, TERA unites players everywhere against truly dangerous foes: the rampaging monsters, insidious demons, and many horrors of a world torn apart by the gods themselves. Visit the official TERA website: www.tera-online.com.

About Bluehole Studio
Headquartered in Seoul, South Korea, Bluehole Studio, Inc. aspires to become the preeminent global MMORPG developer through its unwavering belief in its people and its core values. Bluehole formed in 2007 with an intense focus on attracting pioneers and innovators with a shared vision to create the next flagship MMORPG for the global market. The studio’s inaugural title, TERA, is scheduled to launch in Korea in 2010 and features a dynamic battle system, next-generation graphics, and a gamer-centric community experience. For more information, visit bluehole.net/eng. 
 
All trademarks are property of their respective owners.

BACKGROUND
As a musician, Miroslav Vitous is best known for his founding of the jazz group, Weather Report. For three years, Mr. Vitous was jazz department head at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. In music production, he’s best known for his orchestral sample library originally priced at $3500 on five (5) CDs. A while back, IK Multimedia licensed this library and re-released it as the Miroslav Philharmonik.

Reduced in price, the original library is available through ILIO Entertainments in several formats, most of which have been discontinued, but several of which can be imported into Kontakt.

Mr. Vitous’ initial entry into orchestral sampling paved the way for other developers particularly with the quality of sound.

Consequently, the announcement that Mr. Vitous was releasing a new string ensemble library created a great deal of excitement in the professional community. Unfortunately, weak demos, which were withdrawn, and other issues have kept the new library from achieving a healthy buzz.

For the record, the critiques I’m making I made a week ago and were forwarded to Mr. Vitous.

1. PRICE
Pricing at US$1399 for a single DVD with 6.5GB of material for the Miroslav Vitous String Ensemble is not competitive within the current marketplace. Currently, you can get the single disk from Big Fish Audio for $999.99 intro.

2. NO LOOPED STRINGS
In the first library, Mr. Vitous had both looped and unlooped strings in the palette. Not so this time with the Long programs. I tested several violin programs for lengths by recording a 30-second 4-part string pad. At 70BPM, Unlooped Longs are about a half note in length. Consequently, you have to retrigger, edit, etc.

Click the link above to hear the two new demos posted at Big Fish. Without looped Longs, or genuinely long Longs (!), a composer is restricted to using this library for medium to brisk tempos, or to cherry-pick the staccatos, pizzicatos, and other short bowings.

I can’t begin to tell you how disappointed I am to write this. The library has a great sound. A lot of money went into producing it. A lot money has gone into distributing it. To ship without looped Longs is just unimaginable to me in this current marketplace.

Unfortunately, the price and the unlooped Longs are the two deal killers for this library today.

3. DOCUMENTATION
Starting on page 16 of the manual is the Content listing all the articulations.

Going through the articulation list shows the high caliber of thinking that’s gone into this library. Unfortunately, Mr. Vitous, or whoever wrote the manual, didn’t bother to clue us in.

To put this into a perspective, Mr. Vitous recorded a large string ensemble of:

24 Violins
14 Violas
12 Cellos
9 Basses

He then recorded a chamber ensemble (his term) consisting of:

14 Violins
8 Violas
5 Cellos
4 Basses

Stating the obvious, no Violins 2. Now, consider some of these terms which are undefined:

Harmony Movements Fast
Harmony Movements Slow
Harmony Movements Lead
Harmony Movements Second Voice
Harmony Movements 2nd Voice Fast
Harmony Movements Slow Dvorak (?)
Harmony Mel. Leads
Det. Melody Lead Kontrapoint
Lead Parsifal Full

Clearly, Mr. Vitous has come up with a very inventive approach - but he doesn’t explain it either verbally or with demos. For example, does Harmony Movements Lead and 2nd Voice mean that the programs have been so edited that Lead is like Violins 1 and 2nd Voice like Violins 2?

Clarity is easily achievable with a new PDF that goes through and explains the concepts and gives suggested approaches.

3. BUILT-IN CRESCENDOS
This is a feature that drove us nuts with the first MV library. I’ve played through enough to know that a lot of programs don’t have it, but it should be marked which ones do. Again, downloadable PDF.

CONCLUSION
Make no mistake, this library does sound good. All honor and kudos for that! But as I see it, there are three deal killers that can be corrected within a few weeks to turn this library into a sales winner.

1. Loop the Longs. Best Service, Big Fish, and some of the other distributors all have download capabilities. No further disk burning required. But this is an absolute. I don’t know any working professional, given the tighter deadline structures we’re under today, who has the time to retrigger/edit, etc.

2. Price - $1399 list for one (1) DVD vs. spending $100 more and doing the pre-order special for Hollywood Strings Diamond? Or spending $300 less and getting LASS? Value to justify this price has yet to be established. The price needs to be lowered - drastically - to make it competitive and a justifiable business purchase.

3. The Documentation - Discovery should be aural. Features should be explained so that you know how to listen and what to listen for when testing the samples. Two-three days of work and you’ve got a new downloadable document that explains the thinking behind the design.

Deal with these three issues and watch the sales take off.

A lot of music retailers would really like to see that happen.

Disclaimer: Alexander Publishing is a Big Fish Audio dealer.

New York, April 6th, 2010 - Tom Salta, one of the most decorated and prolific music composers for multimedia, has produced an original music score for Prince of Persia The Forgotten Sands™ for the Nintendo Wii™ system. Salta is renowned for crafting memorable, emotionally engaging scores for the medium and delivers a melodic and deeply immersive soundtrack that is essential to the rich gaming experience of Prince of Persia The Forgotten Sands™. Developed by Ubisoft®’s Production Studio in Quebec and built entirely from the ground up, Prince of Persia The Forgotten Sands™ for the Nintendo Wii™ is a new chapter in the critically acclaimed Prince of Persia® The Sands of Time series, which introduces players to a brand new storyline complete with new characters, and powers that transcend both nature and time. Prince of Persia The Forgotten Sands™ is scheduled to be commercially released on May 18, 2010.

“An outstanding composer, Tom Salta is extremely passionate and truly committed to our project,” said Aurelien Baguerre, audio director for Prince of Persia The Forgotten Sands™ on the Nintendo Wii™. “The action and gameplay are remarkably enhanced by Tom’s beautiful orchestrations which unmistakably evoke Persian colors, providing a grandiose and emotional dimension to our game.”

To fully immerse players in the Prince’s new adventure, Salta composed and produced an intensely atmospheric and intricately woven original music score that captures the essence and spirit of the original Prince of Persia® The Sands of Time and supports the new story and gameplay of Prince of Persia The Forgotten Sands™ with a contemporary world music aesthetic. The score features performances recorded with globally revered percussionist Bashiri Johnson, dark hypnotic vocals by world music singer Azam Ali and ethereal vocals by international recording artist Judith Bérard, as well as world music and middle-eastern instrumentation such as doubek, kora, khangira, bowhammer cymbalom, lakota slide, walimba, ney, duduk and custom made instruments.

About the Video Game:
Prince of Persia The Forgotten Sands™ for Nintendo Wii™ is a new installment in the popular Prince of Persia™ series and presents a new adventure within The Sands of Time universe. After leaving his father’s kingdom to prove his worth, the Prince is drawn toward a mysterious realm. He quickly discovers that he must harness his acrobatic abilities and powers over the environment to not only survive, but to save a mystic palace from unfathomable evil. For more information on Prince of Persia The Forgotten Sands™ please visit: www.princeofpersiagame.com.

About Ubisoft®
Ubisoft is a leading producer, publisher and distributor of interactive entertainment products worldwide and has grown considerably through a strong and diversified line-up of products and partnerships. Ubisoft is present in 28 countries and has sales in more than 55 countries around the globe. It is committed to delivering high-quality, cutting-edge video game titles to consumers. For the 2008-09 fiscal year Ubisoft generated sales of 1.058 billion euros. To learn more, please visit www.ubisoftgroup.com.

© 2003 - 2010 Ubisoft Entertainment. All Rights Reserved. Based on Prince of Persia® created by Jordan Mechner. Ubisoft and the Ubisoft logo are trademarks of Ubisoft Entertainment in the U.S. and/or other countries. Prince of Persia and Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands are trademarks of Jordan Mechner in the U.S. and/or other countries used under license by Ubisoft Entertainment.

Wii and the Wii logo are trademarks of Nintendo. © 2006 Nintendo