"Brap 3", Why'd They do it?
Nettmedia began in 1995 as an offshoot of a small Canadian record label, Nettwerk. The company was originally designed to take advantage of the burgeoning World Wide Web in order to promote Nettwerk based bands. However, Nettmedia became more interested in the then new blue-book standard for enhanced audio CDs. Their first successful E-CD product was for Sarah McClachlan's "Freedom Sessions" Live CD. At the time, she was the only artist on the label's roster to have had any mainstream success. Since then, Nettmedia has produced a bulk of the E-CDs available. Along with becoming one of the forefront producers of E-CDs, Nettmedia has also become one of the most prestigious web developers involved with the music industry.
Nettwerk began in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada in the early 1980's. The label featured local bands, mostly electronic. The most successful band during Nettwerk's early years was Skinny Puppy. Over a sixteen year career, the band released 12 full-length albums. Although mainstream success was never in the cards, the band acquired a loyal following, allowing them to tour small venues world-wide. The band came to a tragic end in 1995, after one of the members, Dwayne Goettel, died of a heroin overdose during the recording of their final album. In 1996, Nettwerk released a posthumous double CD set, "Brap 3...Back and Forth" to honour the band that carried the label throughout the eighties and early nineties. Featuring a collection of out-takes, demos, and live recordings, Brap 3 was not a "greatest hits" package. It was however, Nettmedia's most ambitious project to date. Filled with new technologies, most of which could not be fully viewed without the most powerful computers, Brap 3 is still one of the most dazzling E-CD projects ever undertaken. But it's importance is not as much for it's technology, but rather for the risks that were taken during its development.
In order to more fully understand the E-CD format, it's history and development should be explored. After the great technology step from cassette tape to CD, musicians had more space to fill on a full-length album release. Conventional cassette tapes usually had a length of 45 minutes, which was plenty to satisfy listeners. The Compact Disc holds up to 74 minutes of audio, often leaving empty space. The advent of the CD-ROM, gave record companies the idea of filling the unused space with computer material.
In the beginning, it was liner notes, crude video, song lyrics. Recording Companies were reluctant to spend money on developing a CD-ROM like interface that they would be giving away for free along with the music.
The first E-CDs began appearing in 1994. At that time, they were Mixed-Mode Cds. Requiring the user to manually skip the first track in an audio CD player. Often times, the CD had a loud stickler on the cover reminding the consumer. Those who didn't we're often rewarded with loud, horrible noise. Sometimes actually damaging to speakers.
Around late 1995, the pre-gap E-CD was introduced. Developers were able to place the CD-ROM portion of the enhanced disc in the pre-gap area just before the first track of audio. With this method you did not have to manually skip the first track when playing the disc in your CD player, because the interactive data in the pre-gap area is generally unnoticed by the audio CD player. Unfortunately, older CD players could not understand the pre-gap solution, rendering the audio portion of the CD unreadable.
In 1996, Apple Computer, Microsoft, Phillips, and Sony Music collaborated to establish the bluebook/multi-session standard. The audio was written on the CD first, followed by a second session to write the data. By that time, most CD-ROM drives in circulation were capable of reading multi-session discs. It solved all problems previously associated with the E-CD. Since then, E-CDs have become more and more prominent on record store shelves.
The Brap 3 E-CD set was the first great exception to the lacklustre E-CD protocol. It was one of the first bluebook solution E-CDs to be released. The fact that it is actually a set of two distinctly different E-CDs brings even more excitement to the genre'. Two E-CDs, each chronicling a chapter in the bands long career, contain a startling amount of music, and an even more startling amount of data. The project began as a collaborative effort between Nettwerk, Nettmedia, and Skinny Puppy member, Cevin Key.
The idea was instigated after Cevin Key returned to Nettwerk records with his new project, Download. Rather than releasing a new band, the label decided to release a final Skinny Puppy project beforehand. The label had been inundated with letters from fans begging for another release.
Cevin Key then spent two months searching through old studio sessions, video recordings, and other media. As this was to be the "last" release, it was decided to make the release a dual CD set: "Backwards" and "Forwards".
The name Brap comes from jam sessions that the band held in studio. More often than not, these "braps" were recorded. Many of the tracks on the E-CD set were acquired this way. The audio was transferred to digital format by Cevin, and Adam Drake of Nettmedia. Rather than performing a digital re-mastering process to the tracks, they were kept reasonably the same. The two simply applied basic noise reduction and compression to the audio. The audio portion of the E-CD, as most would assume the most important part, was done in a day.
Home video and concert footage was treated a bit more carefully than the audio. The home video footage was shot in Hi-8 video format. It was then transferred to digital by Vanessa Smith of Nettmedia. After Effects filters were used to clean the video, cut the Frame Rate to 15 frames per second, and optimise it for conversion to Quicktime. Cinepak compression was then applied, and the screen size was set to 160 X 120, at 16 bit colour. At these settings, ten seconds of video occupies approximately 1 megabyte of disk space. For an E-CD, this might seem an excessive amount of memory, but keeping the video at that quality allows for a clearer picture when doubled in size; which is the foremost mentioned option in the interface. Concert footage was treated similarly, with exception of the size being set to 240 X 180.
The remainder of the media, print, text or otherwise, were imported into the various Director files used. Rather than compiling one large .dir file, tasks were delegated to individuals or small teams. The resulting files were simply linked instead of being integrated. This method saved development time, and allowed for a more flexible file association. Balancing file sizes between two E-CDs is much less difficult when you have more than two static options. Using this sort of "jigsaw" approach, gave Nettmedia a myriad of possibilities to adjust to the final audio size of the E-CDs.
The main interfaces for the E-CDs were designed by Angelique Crowther and Petra Ersenuk of Nettmedia. Both were designed using Director as the framework. The first interface, for the "Backwards" E-CD is an interactive CGI room. Mouse commands run the interface through a series of layers. Once a layer is activated, certain things happen in the room. Each CGI layer is linked to a different director file. The changes between projectors are seamless thanks to Lingo script commands. The secondary interfaces are very simple, if at all apparent. Interactivity is limited to mouse clicks. Most are simple slide-show style.
The "Forwards" interface is much more exciting, and CPU intensive. After the introduction a Quicktime VR image appears on the screen. GIF files taken from Skinny Puppy album covers were imported into Quicktime and assembled into a 360 degree panorama. As you move around the environment, mouse-overs indicate areas of interactivity. The resulting interfaces are as simplistic as on the "Backwards" E-CD, but in the "Forwards" style.
The combined interfaces immerse the user. For a project like Skinny Puppy, an immersive interface is a logical choice. A static layout would exhaust all material in an orderly and efficient manner. Leaving the consumer bored after the first few views. When you have to really try to find everything that there is, it keeps your attention for longer. In the logical progression of an E-CD project, major decisions like this must be made in the beginning. The fact that it is for the most part, the right decision, proves that Nettmedia already possessed an insight to the medium.
Marketing an E-CD for a band who never sold more than 100,000 copies of an album can be difficult to say the least. A double E-CD full of out-takes and inferior recordings does not make the job easier. Why would a small label, who are just beginning to venture into technology, put so much effort into a product that belonged to such a niche market? Loyalty aside, claiming leadership in a new CD format is a valuable reason to spend empty money. Skinny Puppy had always been more of a multi-media band, especially with their live shows. That fact provided the designers at Nettmedia with a huge amount of material from which to pick and choose for the project. The technological aspect of the band provided a demographic with CD-ROM drives. Out of 100 people surveyed from the Skinny Puppy fan club, over 80 had computers that could play the discs.
At the time, the fan club had a base of 30,000, therefore approximately 24,000 could view the discs. Providing that half the members bought the E-CD set, "Brap" would be the largest selling E-CD of all time. HTML links imbedded into the disc offered a convenient feedback forum as well. "Brap" was an experiment.
The label promoted the project quietly. Members of Nettwerk's mailing list were offered a pre-release mail order option. Members of Skinny Puppy's fan club were offered a discounted price. Mail order made up for a bulk of the initial sales, with most major music outlets purchasing only one copy for their catalogues. Independent music outlets were offered publicity posters in exchange for purchasing more copies.
Nettmedia however, publicised the project very heavily. It was their first landmark project. As the World Wide Web was still in it's infancy, E-CDs seemed a logical choice for the company to emphasise upon. A major creative project would hopefully boost Nettmedia's position in the E-CD market.
"Brap" did just that. Nettmedia, and E-CDs in general, felt a rather large boost following 1996. In 1997, Sony, one of the original pioneers of the format, set up it's own E-CD division: Sony Music 550. 550 originally began as Sony's smaller recording division, featuring alternative rock, and electronica acts. 550 joined forces with Nettmedia to benefit from their project experience. The result was a 400 percent rise in the number of E-CDs released the following year.
Nettmedia's place in the E-CD market was set. Future projects included E-CDs for artists such as the Wu-Tang-Clan, REM, Backstreet Boys, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and KRS-One. The music channel VH-1 used Nettmedia to enhance their "Cross-roads" project.
All that success led Nettmedia back into the internet market full-force. By far their most distinguished project to date is the creation of Bowie.Net. Launched September, 1998, Bowie.net is David Bowie's ISP project. Nettmedia was called upon to design the interface for the web-based portion of the project. Nettmedia also hosts sites for BMG music, Lilith Fair, and REM.
What began as a small office in Vancouver has in five years become the largest provider of interactive and internet-based technology for the music industry. Can it all be thanks to "Brap"? Of course not, but, that project proved that Nettmedia had their proverbial finger on the pulse of the format. Since then, they've just kept on proving themselves.
To find out more about Nettmedia, or the Brap E-CD, Click here.
Please be sure to read my other essay on "Brap 3", also on this site.