Topic: Editing audio in the cloud

[dyneq]

Did anyone play with Myna from Aviary before it went down? This was a cloud based audio editor that they decided to cancel. Article about it here:

http://createdigitalmusic.com/2012/07/cloud-music-making-just-vapor-amidst-shifting-businesses-standards-aviary-closes-shop/

Just putting this out there to discuss. I know that for many of my shows where no advanced editing is necessary (e.g. just fades, normalization and tracking), it would probably work just fine. One drawback I can think of is uploading the raw data, but I like having an online backup (e.g. LMA) anyway. Is there anything else like it out there? I've never played with soundcloud, but I'm guessing it includes some basic editing functionality?

Tawwk amongst your selves 

[rastasean]

Well this doesn't seem too surprising as most people have a studio with lots of audio recording stuff. Most tapers also have nice computers dedicated to audio editing, even if the taper doesn't spend a lot of time editing the recording.

I could see this being useful for up-and-coming artists and/or audio engineers who don't want to spend several grand on audio hardware and try out the profession for a little while to help them land a job.

Cloud based things are popular but it seems you have to find a specific market to make money or be useful.

some cloud based things I like:
http://cloudshark.org/
https://www.cloudcracker.com/
http://tarsnap.com
There's also plenty of telephony things that run really well in the cloud.

[dyneq]

I think cloud-based computing really excels in 2 areas:

1. Having a backup copy of your data. There are other ways to backup data, so this isn't that compelling for me.

2. Collaboration. If you needed to work with someone on a mastering or mixing project or allow people to 'mark up' your data (soundcloud has this feature, but it's more socializing than collaboration), then I could see where it could be useful.

It seems like cloud photo editing has really taken off. Perhaps because we are primarily visual creatures. Listening to audio seems to be something that people do while they are doing something else (typically visual stuff like web browsing, TV, reading).

[rastasean]

can you tell me more about photo editing in the cloud? Do you mean flikr or photobucket (or the like) because that seems more on the second point of collaboration. I would also agree on your assessment that people are visual and can handle editing pictures (or adding text, etc) over trying to mix a recording;  although, it would get pretty boring trying to determine what color of grey looks better in a series of photos.

[dyneq]

I guess I was thinking about the recent popular photo editing apps like Instagram.