Some previously available info on new immersive music push is now available also in the May issue of Mix magazine dedicated to Dolby Atmos music - you can
download it for free if you're ok with supplying your credentials. However, there are also not so familiar facts presented:
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Thanks for putting us on to this,
@haikubass. It's well worth a read, even if it means getting on a bunch of marketers' email lists (which I assume I can always "unsubscribe" from).
QQ's own
@Steve Genewick is featured prominently throughout the issue: we get some circumspect remarks about the process that led to the Atmos
Automatic for the People, for instance, as well as his "10 Things I've Learned About Mixing for Atmos." It's also confirmed that he, Greg Penny, Nick Rives, and Colin Heldt were the "core group" who mixed those "2000 songs" we keep hearing about. (More about that in a minute.)
As haikubass says, this special issue reruns
some stuff we've already heard about: Greg Penny on"Rocket Man" and David Leonard on "When Doves Cry"; David Rideau on working with Genewick on
Sketches of Spain and
Kind of Blue, etc. But there's also news about upcoming releases that I had
not known of: George Massenburg is doing an Atmos mix for the new Alicia Keys album, for instance; John Hanes is mixing The Weeknd's
After Hours; and (most exciting to me) Michael Romanowski is doing Fantastic Negrito's
Have You Lost Your Mind Yet?, which will be out in August. There's also a feature on the U.S. Army Field Band recording a new album at Skywalker Sound--where, we learn in a parenthetical aside, Jim Anderson just finished a new Patricia Barber album.
So at least we know there are a few actual
albums in the Atmos pipeline.
Other signs are less encouraging, and they make me fear that Dolby and UMe are gonna screw the pooch on this one by hawking streaming songs--emphasis on
songs (and streaming)--to the near-exclusion of everything else. (As many of us have complained here on QQ before: the fact that they decided to limit the first big rollout of Atmos to delivery & playback systems that don't really showcase its possibilities shows questionable judgment at best.) Editor Tom Kenny keeps insisting that there are "countless reasons why this time around is different than 5.1," and that those of us who are doubtful and frustrated should remember that "Dolby Atmos Music is still very much in its infancy" and that "[t]he rules are still being made." I don't know if we should trust the rule-makers when they keep emphasizing songs and streaming, though. If all those streaming subscriptions are what pays back their investment and helps them subsidize the distribution of Atmos on Blu-Ray and high-res downloads, too, then fine. But no one's even talking about that yet. There's also this, which Kenny drops in his editorial and elaborates upon in his cover story: "Dolby and many, many other manufacturers are betting the bank on headphones. It will happen, and the word binaural will become part of the audio vernacular." Oof.
To his credit, Kenny airs all of those objections--and more--near the end of the feature article, and he also reveals that some of the engineers and producers who'd been excitedly working on all those mixes felt baffled and blindsided when their brilliant work was finally unveiled to the world...on Amazon Echo. But then he puts on his Pollyanna hat again and encourages us all to "Give it time." And he finishes with a quote from Giles Baker, Dolby's "Senior VP for Consumer Entertainment":
“There are four key things that need to be present in order for us to feel like we have a healthy ecosystem,” [Baker] says. “First, do we have enough content being created? Second, is that content being distributed on services that people can get? Third, is it available on devices that people have? And then the fourth piece, is there buzz around it? Do consumers want this? Are content creators excited about creating it, and are they telling the world?"
Well, good questions. Plenty of "people" can get Tidal and Amazon HD, I guess; it's just that they tend not to be the people who are already eager to hear Atmos--and the Atmos tracks on Tidal and Amazon HD are emphatically
not available on the "devices" we already have. So give them to us, already.
We are the "consumers" who actually want this, and if we had it, we'd be more than happy to help create the buzz.
