Mood-based technology might zap us to better understand how music relates to human emotions. In their press release, Syntonetic says they’ve “cracked the emotional codes found in music to create an intelligent system that deciphers every musical property in a song, including moods and emotions, as well as musical genres and sub-genres, styles, tempo/beat, vocals, instruments and production features.” The way I see it, we’re only on the brink of emotion technology. App enthusiast Diego Balbuena says, “I do think that these type of programs can be the next killer app” but he stresses the importance of the apps being human-like. The more users that use the app, the more data they’ll have, and the better the algorithms will be. Happiness is a warm iPhone.

Listeners: There is music that you can download for free—legally or illegally—and there is music that you can stream for free. The trend is towards streaming. I support bands that are giving their tracks away for free. I’ll even admit it—I’m offended when bands expect me to pay for an mp3 download. Am I completely off base here, or do you agree?

Unlike these records, mp3′s can be easily duplicated and shared for free. We are in a new time and we need new rules. Welcome to the digital revolution.

Bands: Giving downloads away for free is an excellent promotional move. It puts out the message that you care about your fans, and that you want them to hear your music. It is a leader into other revenue streams. I recommend collecting fans’ email addresses in exchange for free downloads. This can be achieved nicely by Bandcamp, which, in my opinion is a super-slick service. Bandcamp enables downloads in multiple hi-res formats, and the platform encourages sharing on social networks. They even offer pay-what-you-want pricing options—the only drawback is that PayPal takes a percentage. [Demo: My Bandcamp Page]

I hope paid download services shift their business models to make the music more “free” for listeners. I think services could generate ad revenue that the artists could share in—in such a way that bands could choose the ads on their pages as to match the right advertisements with the music. I recently commented about Amie Street implementing this idea, but imagine if a mega-service like iTunes could work magic like that.