28/11/2015 Click - Short Edition

We'll have Newswatch in about ten minutes - but first, here's Click.

Everyone has heard something that has come from here.

To the untrained eye, like mine, this does not look like one

of the most iconic recording studios in the world.

Opened in 1931 with Edwards Elgar's Land of Hope and

Glory, these walls have heard some of the greatest sounds of all time.

From music legends to magical soundtracks.

Abbey Road has been a hotbed of acoustic trial and error,

pioneering recording techniques and technologies that have defined

modern music, from the acoustic treatment on the walls in Studio One

That was nicknamed by none other than John Lennon?

OK, so, essentially by using both machines together you

can create an artificial sense that there is two people singing.

Artificial double tracking has become a creative tool to create

a wobbling, ethereal sound with a lot of the tracks from the 60s.

Today, Abbey Road even runs and incubator

Over the years, the death of the music industry has

But the latest technological threat is not piracy, but streaming.

This is a whole new way of consuming, paying for

There are quite a few engineers and technologists looking at ways to

Jamie Bartlett has been to East London to meet one artist who

Their last record is one of the most critically acclaimed albums of 2013.

So, you would think they might be making some money.

Fractions of pennies for thousands of plays.

The problem is the music industry has been through

Only a decade ago, this is how most of us bought music.

Nowadays, most music is licensed or bought through online services.

There is little doubt that streaming and video services have helped

But for some artists it is far harder to make a living than, say,

Singer and songwriter Imogen Heap is one

I have been making music for 20 years.

It has always been this business that I do not feel

I thought, in an ideal world, what I would love to be able to do

is to have a song, put it up to a place, be paid directly, no

Having the right to choose what happens with my music.

For the last three months, Imogen Heap has been working with a handful

of music technologists to create a new way of monetising music in a way

Instead of these traditional contracts, they create smart

contracts where they can set up the ground rules for how they want

Systems like this would allow musicians to upload their music

and any associated data, including smart contracts,

It is based on the famous bitcoin programme and it allows you to

create public data chains that are very difficult to tamper with.

So when a song is purchased, they automatically trigger payment

in a cryptocurrency to the intended parties.

Imagine a single open database of all the world's music that anyone,

a fan or streaming service, could plug into and pull the music out.

It is reducing the number of barriers between the person making

the music and the person buying the music and making it as efficient

as possible and as transparent as possible so people know they are

It would mean that everyone, artists and listeners,

could see all of the contracts and how everyone involved is paid.

What I want to try and make sure happens is it does not

I want there to be a layer that is the artist layer.

But Imogen is not the only one working on this.

New age music publishing companies are creating similar ideas that puts

the artist at the centre of the deals they make.

Kobalt is one such company that recently signed a deal to collect

Everybody wants the same thing, being at the core.

How can we sustain the next generation?

Currently it is really difficult to be an artist.

Technology has transformed the way we listen to music.

It is hoped technology can help make a simpler, fairer,

What matters most is that musicians just want to create music.

We are interested in how the brain constructs reality,

because your brain doesn't actually see any of this.

All it ever sees are signals inside the skull, and it puts

So, the particular senses that you come

to the table with, eyes, nose, mouth and fingertips are just a portal to

But it is not the only way you can get information in there.

This idea is called sensory substitution,

finding alternative ways for one sense, in this case hearing,

What this vest has is a series of the cellphone motors,

it is the same motor that causes your phone to vibrate

and what each motor represents is how much of a frequency there is

You can sort of think about it like notes in a piano chord.

Speech follows these patterns and the stronger

the motor vibrates means the more of that note is present.

Right now is taking its sound from the environment to this tablet

and it converts it via a mathematically rigorous way to

make sure that information gets to the brain and is useful.

So, there is a speaker on the tablet that is picking up

Not only that but all the sounds from the environment.

The AC is going and it is capturing that noise.

If you're about to cross the street and a bus is coming,

The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.

You feel like you can really understand.

It would certainly take some training, for sure.

I went into a room away from Scott to see if I could feel what he was

He gave me simple words like up, right, down,

and left and asked me to say which words I felt through the vest.

While, of course, not a scientific experiment, I was surprised at how

The hope is that in ten years, this is something that might be

You wake up in the morning and put these things on

That is it for the short version of our music special. Much more on the

full-length version, including, this. You will want to know what it

is, won't you? Go and watch it now. I am working on my masterpiece.

Leave the genius in peace.