The Norwegian Sound-picture.

In a moment of temporarily insanity I went ahead and experimented with visualization of sound and place. The result seen here:

Urørt

NRK -the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation.  The major Radio TV Online media provider in Norway.
Urørt -translating into untouched, for those not familiar with the norwegian language, is a place where norwegian bands can upload, store, promote and distribute their music ..and where you can download it. all for free and in order to bring young “untouched” bands to the public. Urørt picks out the best of the uploads to be played on radio. There is “this weeks urørt/untouched, the untouched of the month, and untouched of the year. 
The winner gets chosen by the audience and a jury consisting of mostly music journalists. The band or artist get 25.000 NOK. (about 4.370 USD.) and playing time at norwegian music festivals (by:Larm and Norwegian Wood)

..Not to mention the hype that follows being the next big thing.

Artists winning the recent years has been  2002: Ugress  2003: Sissy Wish  2004: Side Brok  2005: Anja  2006: Heroes and Zeros  2007: Ida Maria  and  2008: Matias Tellez

Other Artists/Bands that have managed to get up and about because of Urørt are
Unknown Joe, Cranleigh, Label, Elektrofant, Jef, Tungklovn, Freakshow, Anci, x.lover, Superfamily, Mayflies, Rigmor, Fabio Matador, MUA&Shaun Bartlett, Popgun, Keem & Roma, The Beautiful People, superJupiter  Marble Arch, Bercedes Menz, Palisades, Noelle, Cam’n A-lee feat. Chicosepoy, Suzuka, Animal Alpha, BNC, Ensenada Strawberry Sadness, Bellman, The Fernets, Monomen, DonkeyBoy, Desperado, Caddy, Orangebox, Herreløse The Royalties, X-Queen of the Astronauts, Nina Nielsen, Karatkorn, Sirka Ragnar, FORK!, Rektor, The Fuel, The School Katzenjammer, Soul Theory & Keem One, Dobbelmono, Dylan Mondegreen, Simon Says No, Magnus Sinnes, Howl, The Work, Pirate Love. etc.
(Names and numbers cut and pasted from wikipedia.)

-In designing for Urørt I’ve tried the last week to go back, as an old, long lost user, to see how to possibly improve the UX of what once used to be a fantastic tool for finding up-and-coming great bands, untouched by the filthy hands of commercially thinking, marketing people. I have rediscovered my love/hate relationship with hits. I do love good music, almost as much as I hate really bad music. The search for good music, unfortunately, normally means going through a lot of ,well, crap. And here comes why I love (some) hits. They already have proven something. People have listened to them and actually liked what they heard.. and pushed forward. In very plain and simple words: The more people who likes a song, the more that song is a hit.  (and normally, the more money it generates.) 
Urørt was a place where you could find the next big thing in any genre,  though as mentioned, restricted to norwegian artists/bands.

Findings from last weeks rediscovery of Urørt.
1.It seems like they are trying to keep track with web 2.0 circus of my space, facebook and last fm, all in one.
2.It is graphically messy, and hard to find whatever you’re looking for as a download junkie. 
3.Its easy to find people who seem to spend much time there and have a similar taste in music as I do, so finding content through browsing peoples mix-tapes is pretty easy, but leaves me feeling like a stalker and someone who just copies others. 
4.They function to a great extent as a storage space for 2.0 people, just creating and dumping stuff every where. -a problem also becoming an eye soar with the new music video option launched. (as the musicians don’t have a lot of recourses, the quality is, I dare say, not very good.) 

5.I’m not sure Urørt is an attractive place to upload your music to, as I find several bands have had songs deleted by the admins. due to provocative lyrics. 

6.In typing a search word -the name of my home town, to find half decent stuff from an other, more personal point of view..basing it on location and a  point of reference where I have more patience, I find content appealing to me as it feels like I’m finding my way back home and become bias like no one before me.. I’m finding people I want to listen to because I used to know the drummer in that band or simply cant believe anything electronica can come from the tiny fisher-mans island two hours into the North Sea.. All of a sudden I’m a patriot and spending a lot of time in the Urørt site again, hitting download and even leaving comments.

My wants for Urørt, going back to their original vision; getting young untouched bands up and out.. as a launching platform into the hype and all that follows: My idea is to do this on a very narrow / small scale, making it easier to find content of special interest, and by this finding new ways of promoting for them. (to sum up; enhance findability and scale down on much of the other stuff.)

Back to school

Having been preoccupied for quite some time (about 3 months) I’m now heading back to my studies of Interaction Design and Rich Social Media at AHO, and by this picking up the blog from last semester. 

I have not been blogging much since I left to attend a summer program of Entrepreneurship at UC Berkeley’s Sociology Department (collaboration between UC Berkeley,Innovation Norway and the University of Oslo called Gründer Skolen) as well as working as an intern at Vuze in their UX dep. For some reason there was not time.

Trying to prepare for tomorrow (which is today, as I’m super jet lagged still) I’m trying to sum up the 2.0 products of my recent usage.

Going -for people who love to go out- finding out where I want to be and not before I go. Checking who I might run into, and basing it all on the experiences of people I don’t know but have similar likings as.

Thrillist -newsletterish updates of stuff worth doing in my neighborhood. 

(west coast US only in the big cities) popping up in my inbox 

Yelp- searching for the best shoe shops, french bakeries, hostels, hairdressers, i.g. stuff you want to check out in your (new) neighborhood. Yelp provides you with maps of cool stuff and what others think of it. (I was mostly a lurker here) Yelp also has stickers to put in shop or restaurant windows, saying “people love us on Yelp” for those who should just stumble upon the store in the physical world.

Flickr -upploading and sharing pictures – finding and receiving kudos and inspiration in everything 2D (Mail and comments.)

Facebook -staying in touch with friends far away or new people recently met. (need to add that I am an app hater on facebook. I have 

Vuze -my new movie-theatre / tv / tv-guide. -browsing, downloading (and uploading)  and sharing or recommending torrent stuff (HD). -i.m. between my online contacts. (and as mentioned my charming workplace) 

Skype -for calling home, meetings, and other small stuff.

Underskog -my norwegian favorite event calender, keeping track of concerts, art stuff and general friendly happenings. A huge mishmash of forums for every tiny narrow interest you can come up with.

Second Brain -trying to make the whole web 2.0 mess come into one place. -highly addictive and time consuming. the last thing is entirely my own fault.. I have faith that in the not to distant future it will help me save time though.

WordPress -blogging, this thing now.. keeping notes and shouting out opinions mostly for my own pleasure.

And there is,  God help me, thousands of others. The need for most of them are simply not there but, some manage to stand out and reinvent wants from latent needs. This semesters focus -for me at least, will concern the findings of latent needs in social applications.