Giving everyone a mic…

As you may recall, WeMix.com uses MyVox technology to create a kind of universal access recording studio—artists use the phone as microphone to record their raps and music. The idea is taking off. Fortune wrote, “This week’s favorite is Wally J.’s ribald ‘Booty On My YouTube,’ which has been played 614,938 times.” So, it seems as though people are recording, and listening.

If this is working for the WeMix communty/ies, then what are the other contexts where this technology would be useful? Where could we use the phone as a microphone to speak to, and create, large interactive communities?

Karaoke & Nike

One of our side projects has been getting a phone-based karaoke system up and running. We haven’t been able to talk about this as we built the first version for a Nike promotion, but now that the promotion is live, we can speak about it freely.

Basically, the system lets you make a voice recording while you hear another track – presumably, a music track – coming through the earpiece on your phone. This means you can sync your vocals with the music track, recording to the beat. We then save both the vocals-only track, and a mixed-down version that combines the vocal with the instrumental.

Nike is using the system as part of a promotion around the Summer Olympics and the USA basketball team. You can call in and record a track over Just Blaze’s “Listen To The Anthem” track. If your track is selected as the winner, your vocal becomes part of the Listen To The Anthem track itself, and you get other prizes as well. Here’s the promotion page; to try the line, just call 866-936-USAB (8722).

Karaoke is not yet opened up in the MyVox API, but we may do exactly that.