Author: zweimalsommer

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Spinnin’ in circles

In this article I’d like to share some experience with remix contests. I’m heavily contributing my time and work for remix contests on three different platforms: Spinning’ Records, Wavo and Splice. So far my experience is very (re)mixed.

Spinnin’ Records

Probably the biggest remix contest platform is Spinnin’ Records. It’s a Dutch record label, located in Hilversum, Netherlands.

Spinnin’ Records mainly tries to promote their own artists. With a Spotify account, it’s easy to participate in the contests: After they have subscribed your account to multiple Spinnin’ Records Spotify Playlists, the stems can be downloaded. Submitting the remix is also quite easy. It needs to be uploaded to your own Soundcloud account and is then linked to the remix contest page of Spinnin’ Records.

Pros

– Spinnin’ Records has a lot of traffic on their website, your music can attract a big audience
– the copyrights of all remixes are automatically whitelisted on Soundcloud
– the stems are downloaded from Spinnin’ Records directly

Cons

– no support at all
– there is no communication of the contest winners. In the Terms of Service they are even allowed not to chose a winner at all (contest rules exctract: “The Organization is not under the obligation to (and shall not) correspond with participants, in any way, about the selection of the winning Tracks. … The Organization may choose not to select a winning Track at all.“). This is a very bad fact because this way it’s not possible to learn from the winners.
– they are pushing so many Spinnin’ Records playlists into your Spotify account that you have to clean it up frequently
– remixes are limited to songs of Spinnin’ Records artists
– there is a huge amount of vote4vote comment spamming, no mechanisms to avoid this spamming
– on the weekend abound April 14-16, during the simultaneous ending of three contests, the Spinnin’ Records servers were down and all remixes disappeared from all user profiles, see screenshot below of my own profile (just a spinning “S”).

Screenshot of my Spinnin’ Records profile on April 15, all my remixes have disappeared.

Wavo

Wavo is a very suspicious platform. Looking at the Terms of Service, it seems that the main contact person is Conor Clarke in Canada. There is also an office address mentioned on the Wavo website (3414 Av du Parc, suite #320, Montréal, QC H2X 2H5) but the office building looks “very interesting”.

Also, the domain wavo.me was actually registered to Gabriel Lesparance in Paris. There is no more activity on his Twitter account since 2014 and his Instagram account is private. There is NO reaction to any support requests. Wavo is mainly selling music promotion but all these facts don’t really build up confidence that this is a professional company.

Pros

– remixes are not limited to artists of a certain label, occasionally it’s possible to remix superstars like David Guetta
– occasionally the artists themselves comment on your remix
– contest winners are communicated, but almost never in time

Cons

– no support at all
– the Wavo remix contests websites have only very little traffic, without additional promotion there are only a few listeners on your music (much less than on Spinnin’ Records)
– the copyrights of remixes are not always whitelisted on Soundcloud, it can happen that you upload a remix and it gets removed immediately due to a “copyright violation” -> no support
– the stems are sometimes downloaded from Wavo directly but sometimes also from the record labels directly with annoying procedures and different Terms of Service
– you need a Facebook account because they take it as an evidence that you are a real person. Excellent joke!
– there are deadlines mentioned when the winner will be chosen but they are almost never met

– the website has a strange architecture and in case of the David Guetta “Like I Do” remix, the contest webpage is no more accessible, see screenshot of https://wavo.me/pages/competitionsall/ (it’s not possible to click on the David Guetta remix contest anymore, status of April 15. Even after reporting this to Wavo two times, there was no reaction).

Splice

Distributed Creation Inc. is performing their operations under the name “Splice”. It’s a platform mainly selling music sounds and instrument plugins but also hosting remix contests. Founded by Steve Martocci and Matthieou Aimonetti, two different office addresses are listed in the internet: 36 EAST 20TH STREET, 4TH FLOOR, NEW YORK 10003

or 35 EAST 21st STREET, 4TH FLOOR, New York 10010 (according to the Splice Terms of Service):

Even though it’s not a professional record company, the support of Splice is excellent! The response time is quick (within one day) and they are actually solving problems.

Pros

– EXCELLENT support!
– remixes are not limited to artists of a certain label but in general the artists are rather unknown
– the stems are downloaded directly from Splice
– very clear Terms of Service for each remix contest
– contest winners are clearly communicated

Cons

– the Splice remix contest websites have only very little traffic, without additional promotion there are only a few listeners on your music (much less than on Spinnin’ Records)
– the copyrights of remixes are not always whitelisted on Soundcloud, it can happen that you upload a remix and it gets removed immediately due to a “copyright violation” -> they will fix it if you inform them!

Summary

Spinnin’ Records has clearly the biggest audience but it’s a shame that they do not publish the contest winner, if any at all. It rather smells like they are trying to push all their playlists into your Spotify account to promote their own artists, rather than taking care about newcomers.
Wavo and Splice both occasionally forget to whitelist the copyrights for their remixes on Soundcloud. Both platforms also have a very small audience on their remix contest webpages. Splice clearly stands out above all regarding professional support.
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Premium collaboration

Tesla was the first premium supplier in the EV market. All market players are trying to shape the future, creating a game changer, which Tesla certainly did. But now, in the next round of the game (FULLY autonomous driving), Tesla is not taking the lead anymore.

Waymo, the Google company developing a fully autonomous driver technology, has now partnered with Jaguar and unveiled the self-driving Jaguar i-Pace. The plan is to have the Waymo’s driverless transportation service available with the i-Pace to the public this year in Phoenix, Arizona. The Waymo Jaguar cooperation has the potential for a production of up to 20.000 self-driving i-Pace cars in the first two years of production.

The new Jaguar i-Pace seems to be even more powerful than two variants of a Tesla Model X, at least according to a challenge sponsored by Jaguar. 🙂

With all the fascination of a game-changer in self-driving technology, let us hope that governments will carefully control and restrict self-driving technology to make sure that the self-driving computer can not unlash the full power of this car. 
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Autonomous killing

Elaine Herzberg will unfortunately enter history. She is the first pedestrian killed by a self-driving Uber car. She was 49 years old when she crossed N Mill Ave in Tempe, Arizona at this place on March 18, 2018.

Elaine Herzberg was walking her bike across the street when an autonomous Volvo XC90 SUV from Uber approached the scene with Rafaela V. in the driver seat as a backup driver. Unfortunately neither the backup driver nor the Uber LiDAR system reacted. As a result, the car continued to drive straight forward, without steering or reducing speed, and killed Elaine Herzberg.

The video of Uber, which was handed over to the police, creates the impression that N Mill Ave is in the middle of nowhere because it is extremely dark. However, in reality, N Mill Ave is actually in the middle of the well-electrified city Tempe, with a population of about 180.000 people. Unless there is a power-outage, this is not a place in the middle of nowhere. A non-Uber video, driving along the same route, shows the real light situation (position of the accident at 0:34 min). 
It shows that the video of Uber is simply a joke – it was either edited or recorded with a poor camera (probably the same poor camera which is responsible for autonomous driving…). The pedestrian could have been seen already at 0:31 min. The accident happened at a position of about 0:34 min, so this opens up a reaction window of about 3 seconds for the car’s LiDAR system and/or the backup driver (assuming that the backup driver pays attention to the street and not to the phone). However, there was not even a steering or braking attempt.

Basically after we have successfully automated lawn mowers, we are now trying the same with automated cars on public roads – what a breakthrough in technology! An autonomous (smartphone-controlled) “backup driver” is the perfect combination for an autonomous car. Looking forward for autonomous trucks and busses on public roads and for autonomous drones coming down on us from above. Let’s carelessly adopt all this technology. It makes life so much more convenient. So sad!

Luckily the pedestrian in the video below was not distracted by his smartphone, when an autonomous Uber car run over a red traffic light, which was red already since 3 seconds. Another autonomous killing attempt…

How many casualties will we need to limit the speed of autonomous cars and to monitor them with attentive backup drivers, always keeping their hands on the steering wheel? Rest in peace Elaine Herzberg. Hopefully Uber paid at least for your funeral.
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Wallpaper

A new discovery is the Australian dream pop band Japanese Wallpaper. Together with Airling they produced a great song “Forces”. May the force be with you.

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Nightcall

Enjoy my work for the Spinnin’ Records Remix Contest of the Zonderling feat. Kye Sones song “Nightcall”. Please listen and vote here:

This is my remix at Soundcloud:
This is my remix on Youtube:

This is the original song:

Zonderling and Lost Frequencies are currently in the charts with their song “Crazy”, an excellent dance track.

UPDATE: This is the contest winner (it seems Spinnin’ Records removed the original Dafarra Soundcloud account and moved the remix into the Zonderling account):