It’s been a cloudy week around here.
On the heels of Google’s announcement of a lightweight operating system for the proverbial cloud and SoundCloud’s ascent as the social music platform of choice come major improvements to Indaba’s cloud-based recording studio, which is like an online version of Pro Tools for musical collaboration. Music production, too, is headed towards the cloud, a catch-all term for applications and data living on servers rather than on your computer’s hard drive.
“Before this, all the tools that were out there – including our previous version – were really about mixing and editing tracks that people had already recorded together, and had already applied effects to,” explained Dan Zaccagnino, co-founder and CEO of Indaba. “What’s exciting about this is that it broke down the barriers so that you can record high-quality audio directly onto the platform, so you don’t need [Apple] Garageband or Pro Tools or anything else. You can just use this.”
The key to Indaba’s breakthroughs in several key areas (improved audio quality, real-time effects, offline mode, and non-destructive editing) was its switch from running on Flash, which hampered some audio features, to Sun’s new JavaFX platform.
Ironically, this leap forward in cloud-based music production leverages the decidedly non-cloud approach of running an application on the client side, because there’s simply too much heavy lifting to be done in audio production for everything to happen on remote servers. The new Indaba will include a downloadable application; whenever you hit “save,” your changes automatically upload to the cloud.
Update: It was not possible for us to test the new Indaba console in advance, because the company did not compile and release the final code until this morning. There’s a known issue with Mac OS 10.4 that causes it to crash, which we have verified. Zaccagnino told us the problem lies with a Java issue that should be fixed in the next few weeks, when Sun releases a new version.
“We struggled for a couple years trying to get high-quality recording, and trying to think of hacks to do that, and trying to get the real-time effects, and we just could never do it,” explained Zaccagnino. “Part of the beauty of the way that we jumped ship from Flash and started working on Java and JavaFX is that it allows you to use a lot more of your processing power, so you’re not listening to low-quality MP3 previews anymore, the way you would online. You’re [working with] the high-quality audio, and using your computer’s processing power to do that.”
Over 200,000 musicians in 185 countries currently record on Indaba, and these big improvements will surely draw more, especially considering the move towards netbooks and cloud computing in general.
So, can we expect an audio netbook that runs on Google’s Chrome OS designed expressly for making music in the cloud? Zaccagnino wouldn’t rule it out. “There’s lots of ways to access Java locally and from a web browser,” he explained. “We want to keep all options open, and I think that would be a really interesting development.”
Indaba follows the freemium model, in that its basic version is free to use, while a $5 per month fee gives you more control over effects, access to additional loop libraries, and more room to store songs and tracks. At the high end, a $25 per month fee offers unlimited session storage, unlimited private sessions, and other features required by full-time session musicians and other heavy collaborators.
In addition to offering easy online collaboration, Indaba’s system is simpler than traditional audio programs such as Pro Tools or Logic, with their labyrinth of menus, options and features.
“It’s like a simplified version of any of these complex professional recording programs that no one like me knows how to use,” said Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo, who agreed to endorse the program although he says he normally refuses such requests. “It’s going to open the door for a giant population of musicians out there.”
