bbc

Flared music – who worked with whom

| jamesstodd

The great thing about the BBC is that you can be pretty sure that there;’s a team of people working behind the scenes on new and clever ways of doing things with content and online data.

I found a link to a project called DATA ART – a partnership between BBC Learning, the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the University of Westminster.

You can find details of some of their projects here:

I’ve not yet delved into all of them yet, (writing this on the train on my non Flash-friendly iPhone). But there could be some interesting possibilities with one of these projects – Flared Music.

The site notes that “Flared music lets you visually research relationships between musicians and bands using the Musicbrainz database an online community resource that the BBC is working with to collate music information”. Enter the name of an artist or producer and let the app search out connections and collaborations.

I entered “Paul McCartney” and it listed collaborations from the obvious (Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder and of course The Beatles) but also, bizarrely , a connection to Su Pollard. Ok – she was on Ferry Aid! But, it set me thinking – maybe it could be a starting point for a musical feature on the radio? Or the basis of a fun online game?

Take a look – try it for yourself – and see what strange connections it throws up.

And thanks to @backflipltd for flagging this project up.

Who’s Getting Disruptive?

| jamesstodd

Do you recognise this sound then…?

 

IMAGE (C) BBC

I heard this fantastic bit of “disruptive” audio this morning during the Chris Moyles Show on BBC Radio 1. This was produced by BBC Radio X-Trails – a team I’m shortly joining as a producer – and is a great example of doing things a little differently from the normal. It is, in effect, a teaser trail, for the new series of Doctor Who which starts this Saturday night on BBC1. However – the premise for this is effectively that the Doctor has crashed his TARDIS into the radio station – works out where he is – andsays stuff that points towards the new series – without giving a direct call to action.

What makes this effective is the fact that the “break in” to programming is fairly obvious – and that the TARDIS sound occurs fairly early on – making it effectively a “sonic trigger”. Promotion for the new Doctor Who series is all over the media at the moment – from Youtube to the BBC Website – and with the new Doctor appearing on shows such as Friday Night With Jonathan Ross and the likes – this is a clever way to build audio into the mix. My guess is that more traditional trails with a specific call to action will follow.

And have you ever heard a DJ interrupted mid-link before? Takes a bit of preparation beforehand – but sounds quite clever too!

So how could you make this sort of thing  work on your station? Get thinking…

[All audio (c) BBC. We acknowledge all rights held by the owners, creators and performers of the recorded works which are included solely for the purpose of review].