There’s been a lot of slowed-down action on the web in the past few days after a particularly hilarious slowed-down version of Justin Bieber’s “U Smile” generated over half a million plays on SoundCloud yesterday. Shamantis, the artist behind the recording, pulled off the hitherto considered impossible feat of making Bieber sound like Sigur Rós. The program Shamantis used is called Paul’s Extreme Sound Stretch–it’s a powerful (if not particularly multi-faceted) program that is capable of real-time playback of songs stretched to one million times their original length without affecting the pitch, effectively making an audio texture out of any track, clip, or sound.
If you’re in Berlin and interested in the open web, tonight’s Drumbeat event at Betahaus is not to be missed. The conversation kicks off at 7:30. Hope to see everybody there!
It’s been one week since Google and Verizon announced a policy framework proposal that would do away with traditional network neutrality in the mobile space and possibly prompt the establishment of a second “premium” internet. Apparently this proposal has touched some nerves, and there’s been a lot of great writing about it. Nearly everybody I’ve read is opposed to the framework, but there are a few interesting differences in their opposition.
Over on the SoundCloud blog, I’ve got a user profile up of the musician Solo Goodspeed. He’s a very nice guy, and his music is really interesting and eclectic, reminiscent (in a very good way) of some of the more symphonic Frank Zappa pieces. Some neat insights come out in the interview, and I really enjoyed talking with him. Here’s his track “Delirium Trimmings,” which is cool.