Music Making Gets Social – Indaba Music Now Open
I briefly touched on Indaba Music several months ago when mentioning YoYo Ma’s use of it for his remixing contest. Here, I’ll get a bit more into it, as it is now up for public use.
Indaba is a DAW that works with Java within your internet browser. We’ve all seen a million little flash apps, my wife is addicted to some Facebook app game called Farm Town, but this is the first browser-based Java audio tool that shows a bit more promise because of the high quality audio, non-destructive editing, and integrated social element.
That is where Indaba needs to invest it’s resources. The social aspect of collaborating with other musicians online, and having a profile page where you can share your songs is where Indaba can find a niche in the overpopulated DAW market.
Should you not have an internet connection, you can download the mixer to your desktop to work offline too, so your creativity is not contingent on your amount of wi-fi. Though, if that’s your primary way of using Indaba, there are likely a million other DAWs that could give you more functionality for crafting your songs.
Indaba is subscription-based. They do have a free option, but it’s more for you to just test out the interface. With the free “Basic” plan, you only get 5 public sessions and 100 MB per session of storage space. You also do not get access to audio effects, the built-in sample library (which is a really cool feature), or the ability to work offline. For $5/month, you can step up to the pro account which gives you access to all of Indaba’s features, and a bit more storage space, and then at $25/month you get unlimited everything.
I don’t see this replacing my whole rig, plug-ins, and all the goodies I’ve invested in over the past decade; but the collaborative aspect of it is exciting to say the least. Ableton has started beta testing “Share” with Live 8, and that should be available soon. The primary difference is that Ableton requires you to make music, then upload your songs for your collaborators to pick up. Indaba lets you record directly to the net so your collaborators see it instantly.
Ableton has Indaba beat on current market-share and flexibility with third party effects though.
If nothing else, it ought to be quite apparent that music making is going online; and why not? Through my day, probably close to 95% of my functional communication is online, why not my music making? So whether you’re hyped up about Ableton Share, or wanting to test drive Indaba for a while, get ahead of the curve on online collaboration to see where your music might go.
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