'Garage Band' - Confirmed! (officially, now)

Okay... but what is it?

Your very own Garage Band!

duh!

-Owl

Shouldn't the name be iGarage Band? 8)

Final Cut Express : Final Cut Pro
"Garage Band" : Logic ?

It's a consumer friendly music app. And it will be free. It's not a pro app.

Consumer friendly music *mixing* app.

Ie: [record into this, mix it up, start your own] Garage Band.

And Apple expects Soundtrack and Garage Band to coexist without unsurpassed customer confusion?

Soundtrack is a totally different kind of application.

Soundtrack is basically for non-musicians who want to drop their own funky beats.

Garage Band will (apparently) be FOR musicians, for mixing what they've already recorded, rather than pre-recorded samples in Soundtrack.

It is true that technically you CAN use Soundtrack for that purpose, but you can techically use Illustrator as a DTP application too.

The applications have a very different focus, and Adobe seems to keep the distinction between Illustrator and InDesign clear.

Barto

Barto,

I tend to doubt (we'll find out if I am wrong) that "Garage Band" is a FREE imusic app. How many musicians need software like that? 50,000? How many will buy a Mac because of it? 5,000? Why would Apple build an application that virtually no one in their core markets could care about?

Editing video is for the average consumer. They add pre-made music, not creating their own. The average consumer wouldn't know how to make music if handed their own recording studio (I count myself in there). This application idea seems ridiculously out of touch with the consumer. Many of the label signed bands out there are untalented musicians, now imagine opening it up to your cousin.

I would think that "Garage Band" is a way for existing bands to get their music out there rather than a free app to make music. If it is a music iapp, I think Apple has wasted its resources on a low priority.

I have an idea that garage band will be an app that apple will sell for the ipod platform that activates quality recording. if you think about it, there's no reason apple couldn't produce payware for the ipod...

i can just see all those musicians recording samples and sounds onto their ipod in beautiful stereo - or the spotty yoots thrashing at guitars whilst recording it onto their ipod.

just a thought.

atomicham, I totally agree with you. I would be very surprised if Garage Band was a free application. What it is for is amateur musicians basically, and is the market really big enough to create an iApp for? Doubtful. It will probably be in the same league as Soundtrack... non-pro, but still costs money.

I still believe this is very important, as it is a step in bypassing record labels. YOU the musician can play, record, polish and distribute music all yourself using your Mac. The distribution side needs work, it's still not easy to build professional web sites, but maybe Garage Band will help with that too. If you read Steve Job's interview with Rolling Stone, it's pretty clear he is no fan of the record labels.

Barto

iCaramba!

Yes and no. He's a big fan of their roles as editors, he just thinks that the big 5 are defending broken business models with abusive and counterproductive tactics, which is a fair cop. What he offers in Rolling Stone is a way for them to turn around, which suggests that he doesn't think they're obsolete.

I can see GarageBand as an iMovie. Think about it: no-one is targeting professional musicians here, any more than iMovie is targeting talented directors. The software doesn't require any sort of distribution architecture beyond what's available to iMovie or iPhoto (.Mac integration and media burning/book printing) because it's not about professional content creation, it's about recording things that are important to families and friends, and making some sort of finished product available in small quantities to families and friends. A free, simple music recording app would be a hit with garage bands all across the world - many of which suck, and most of which never get out of the garage, but who cares? How many iMovies would win at Cannes? It would be a hit with schools, who could record their jazz bands and such and present kids and parents with CDs. It might even be useful to pros in the way that iMovie is, as a quick way to sketch something up.

Think about how many children play instruments. Think about how many grandmothers would like to hear Judy's first string quartet, even if it sounds like so much caterwauling. That's GarageBand's market. It's pretty big.

But, wouldn't you just need an app to record from a mic for that?

There is a pretty cool app on the PC side for teaching kids an instrument. It has a microphone and records the notes you play comparing them to the notes being shown on the screen. It marks where you missed (or misplayed) a note and you can then send the recording and marking to your teacher, parent, whatever (via email).

It just doesn't seem like Apple's area to me (a third party with help from Apple would be better off IMHO). Maybe just I can't see the revolution ahead... Only about 15 hours until we find out.

does it come with a fan club (i.e. teenage girls)? lol....

Yeah, but why do you need iMovie for your home movies when you could just burn it without fiddling with it?

Well, after a while I start to wonder how many "Trojan Horses" and free this and that Apple can produce and not waste huge amounts of manpower and capital. That is, how many free or nearly free apps can Apple make that their paid products can support? Having said that, Garage Band would probably be deceptively simple, most of the work being done with the UI and most of the under-the-hood stuff being done between QT frameworks, Audio Units and such that's already been invested in those pay channels.

But at the start of the article he says they'll never stop piracy. They've done the research and it's here to stay. Pretty strange comment from somebody running an online music store. How do you explain the apparent contradiction?

Jobs' point is like petty thievery all over the world today. You'll never stop it completely, no one ever has, no one ever will. People really don't expect to eliminate it. But you can minimize it by competing with the black market and in terms of quality, convenience, peace of mind (in that you know what you're getting, not in any moralist sense), fair price, support, etc.. Piracy will never go away, and those who think they can stop it completely are tilting at windmills. There will always be thieves, but there are fewer thieves when legit purchasing has more value than stealing. It's not all or nothing.

Maybe the iTMS will have a section created in it for "the rest of us" in which any "garage band" can upload their music for maybe a low yearly fee...it would be a very Apple thing to do.

That's actually a pretty cool idea.

I agree with that. But try as I might I can't see that any of the existing online music services offer that amount of value. They might flourish for a while but they won't survive in the long run in their current form. Strip away the hype and what you've got is a music store - online. And when the novelty wears off and people realise it's more of the same old same old, the music industry's going to find itself right back where it is at the moment. Screwed.

Another interesting question associated with this is: will they produce companion hardware (as they did with ichat av in the form of the isight)? Will there be a low-cost, reasonably high quality usb/firewire audio interface box coming out of apple?

God knows, the kind of "mixing" you'd get out of the 1-channel inbuilt audio would be mildly distressing, to say the least.

Perhaps they'll encourage people to buy emagic's product, tho'.

They should find a way to integrate this type of technology into it:

http://www.zero-g.co.uk/index.cfm?articleid=805

Yeah, but they'd have to rename it iBritney.

I keep wondering if "Garage Band" could be the name of software to help small groups to get their music onto the iTunes Music store. I don't have any real reason to believe it, just thought I would toss it out there.

I have a feeling this is going to be the iTunes version of MP3.com, where anyone can put up their music for sale/download.

Mixing software would be cool (especially if it's as flexible/better than Mixman), but I just don't see it. Of course, I'd love a "Sountrack Lite" so I'd love it if GB actually is that...

CONFIRMED!

Aye, fixing title to match. Confirmed indeed.

Ewww guess you haven't listened to the demos.

I hope is has ReWire so I can use it with Reason. It looks pretty good, though. Especially considering it's either going to be free or part of iLife.. either way, it's a nice bonus app.

Well, since this is now officially part of "iLife 04", it belongs in the Digital Hub forum. Moving now...

OMFG $49 for the whole thing, all of iLife 04. WOW.

Hey MS: pwn3d!



Seriously, the new iLife suite looks pretty sweet. Happy about the improved iPhoto capacity and speed especially, and garage band is going to be a lot of fun to play with. I'm all over it.

Wow. Totally surprised by Garage Band as an iLife app. Curious to me anyway.

I'm actually interested in the Apple branded MIDI controller. I might just have to get this. Cool.

Edit: I now see that it is not an Apple branded product. I'm still interested.

WOW $49 is crazy. I was hoping for $99 thinking $129 could be justified. I can't wait to get my hands on it!

wow, to me this is the best MW ever. Being a musician and seeing the price tag for ilife with garage band I am blown away....a tear.
new ipods look sweet also. All of us together now....APPLE RULES

Did anyone notice how the new GarageBand app actually sported a new look? Last year AI reported on a new "brushed metal" appearance that was supposed to be darker, I guess that might have been it... It looked even more horrible in my eyes...

good job apple. way to please the minority of the minorities.