Being the futuristic producer that he is, Timbaland has to constantly be thinking of ways to innovate. Recently, his brightest idea has been "sanding down the already smooth edges of blown-out radio rock (see: OneRepublic)," [rotf.gif] but his newest experiment is a little more intriguing, at the very least.

According to a press release, Timbaland will follow-up the massive success of Shock Value by creating a "mobile album" available exclusively through V Cast, Verizon Wireless' music & video service.

The "mobile album" looks like this: For the rest of 2008, Timbaland produces a song a month, collaborating with a different artist each month, all while touring the U.S. on the Verizon Mobile Recording Studio Bus. Behind-the-scenes footage will make its way to V Cast subscribers via a Timbaland channel. According to Billboard.com, within days of when a song is produced, it will become available as a download, ringtone, and ringback (whatever that is) via V Cast and Verizon. Then, at the end of the year, Verizon will release a compilation of all the tracks in some form or another.

Timbaland explained his involvement in creating the "mobile album" to Billboard.com as follows: "Every place don't get a CD [but] everybody has a mobile phone." It's hard to believe that people without the means to play CDs would nonetheless have cell phones, but Timbaland's other reason for working on the project makes a little more sense: professional pride. "Just producing a mobile album has never been done. I'm the first to ever do it."

The first song from the project, which features Timbaland protégé Keri Hilson, will debut today (Feb. 8) at a pre-Grammy party. According to Billboard.com, some attendees of the party could collaborate with Timbaland on future installments of the "album." Among the party's guests are Paramore, Flo Rida, Chris Cornell, Natasha Bedingfield, and, of course, OneRepublic.

source: http://www.pitchforkmedia...th-verizon

MikeMatronik said:

Thanks for posting Mike. This is a fascinating article. That being said, I think he will be one of the last to do this. I can't imagine this really catching on.
Is the mobile provider he is doing this with, the biggest? I'm shocked he isn't teaming up with Sprint.

Either way, this might be another way to bullshit about sales figures and make an artist's hype bigger than it actually should be.

Vanilli said:

I think this will turn into another may to manipulate a chart position, as if there arent enough ways already. The main problem with this is that all these companies, like Verizon,Viacom,Clear Channel,Universal record,Steve jobs and Apple all have stock in each other and in Nielsen Soundscan, so how is any of that not a "conflict of interest" when the company that counts and reports has its stock held by the very people it counts.