Ambient Music Garden has launched a new category to present the most popular music for royalty free use in commercial uses.

“We’ve had some interesting success so far even though we have not publicised our commercial licensing business”, said Guy Lewis, founder of Ambient Music Garden. “Businesses are finding our music catalogue perfect for online browsing and downloading for their own business projects. We have businesses using music for PowerPoint presentation background music, Flash embedded music projects, web sites, background music for retail outlets and also for DVD & CD projects. There are many other uses for music and Ambient Music Garden has geared up for them with the new category.”

“However you don’t have to choose music within the Royalty-free category only, that only presents our most popular music for commercial use. Check out all the categories of Ambient Music Garden as almost all our music is available for commercial licensing as well.”

Click Here To Go To Ambient Music Garden’s Royalty Free Production Music Top Page Here. Don’t forget to check all the other categories for royalty free music for business use. Just change the license option at the bottom of the page to purchase the music for business use.

Ambient Music Garden:
Using our Royalty-Free Production Music License you can use our music as background music in powerpoint presentations, in retail, galleries and restaurants, on-hold music, Flash & website music, music for commercials, music for video games, film music, and music for video / dvd production.

Why Flash Is Infinitely Better At Delivering Music Across The Web Than MP3.

Introduction

“…it is Flash that arranges the audio and adds functionality that enables the music file to go further than an Mp3 can ever do”

Flash has been around now for quite a while. And whilst innovative Flash artists have primarily focused on designing and engineering some jaw dropping animated creations Flash has for many, slipped into first place as the technology of choice for delivering audio alongside web site content.

Why is this? Why doesn’t everyone know about Flash’s ability to create a better user experience? Well, within this document I explain why it really is better and why your next website refresh should include Flash embedded music at minimal overhead to your customers.

Flash Background
I won’t go into the history of Flash here (you might well loose interest) so lets just say it had humble beginnings yet was seen by a few far seeing individuals who took it to the next stage from where it captured the imaginations of zillions of web developers, web artists & animators.

I can remember in 1999 being excited by MP3000 produced by CleverMedia which is an online tool for creating your own mix of a range of beats, melodies and sound effects. It is still a fun interactive music tool that holds its weight many years after it was first created. This shows clearly that given good design Flash has an astonishing ability to last even while technology continues to change around it. Dont forget, this little app is nearly 10 years old and still is pretty cool.

As Flash developed over the years there were a number of technical improvements that enabled even better delivery of sound along side the animated creations. Once such advance was Flash’s ability to deliver more control of audio and multi-track playback.

So Why Is Flash Better than MP3s?

Whilst many gain competitive edge by adding music with Flash technology to their sites, those outside the Flash community with little awareness continue to use mp3s. So why is Flash as a proprietary technology standard still so compelling?

Well for a start, perhaps I should clarify one thing. This argument focuses on why you should deliver your music using Flash that has compressed (for example) a WAV file into mp3 and delivered via a Flash file. The Flash file would have the suffix ‘.swf’. So Mp3 technology is still in there compressing the audio yet it is Flash that arranges the audio and adds functionality that enables the music file to go further than an Mp3 can ever do.

The following is a list of the key benefits for you the website owner.

Quicker Than The Equivalent mp3 at being downloaded:
This is where Flash saves the day. Imagine having three instruments that were the equivalent size of three loops. Instead of playing three loops one after the other, with Flash a professional Flash developer & composer will be able to construct a piece of music that mixes these three different parts of the same music and multiply the variants of the same tune to as many as twice that amount. So instead of getting three 10 second loops you will have a total of a whole minute of music for the same time it takes to download 30 seconds of mp3 based loops.

So, with that in mind you can consider using an intro that allows your customers to view your welcome page for 30 seconds. Then you might feel you would like to draw them further in to view product pages for example. So, you could consider turning off the repetitive loop, implying to the customer that they have seen all that there is to see and its it time to move on. Once in the product area you may want to consider using a full one minute (for example) music track that loops gently in the background with a quieter volume.

Customisation
You can create a control interface specifically tuned to your customer’s tastes as part of the object that has the audio embedded or linked to it. You don’t need to be restricted to the audio players on the market such as RealPlayer ®, Windows Media Player ®, Winamp ® or QuickTime ®. What if you choose to deliver your audio via one of the player specific formats and many of your customers don’t have the ability to play them? Simply create your own player in Flash knowing that 97% of the world’s connected browser users can then view and listen to your audio. In terms of design and appearance, literally, if you can imagine it, you can create it and it will work in all the known browsers to the modern world (and perhaps some others on other planets too). There are many Flash Players for sale if you wish to purchase one instead. There are lots of fun designs out there to meet all needs.

Interaction
As mentioned above, you can even get your customers to choose the mix of the audio file they are listening to, lift the base, lower the snare for example, remove a loop or make a choice over a number of loops. Give your customers this sort of control and they will be back for more and more.

Control
You can create a flash player to control your music; you can create controls for pan, volume, play, rewind, stop and forward. You can create a list of audio files to play; you can even create animations and buttons that trigger the audio files if you want to create an interactive experience between music and animation for your customers.

Efficiency
Flash compresses the audio files and provides options for streaming and downloading that provide the designer with choices that match the needs of the content and end user. Additionally, because with all Flash content, once it is downloaded it can be replayed again and again, designers and engineers are creating cleaver long play musical and audio pieces that are a fraction of the original WAV, AIFF or MP3 (or other!) file size. These Flash designers compress files according to the dynamics of the audio and create highly accurately synced loops that work with each other to create layers of music much like how each musical track would be arranged within a modern computerised Digital Audio Workstation.

Ubiquity
Even thought Flash is owned by Adobe and is not open source 97% of all browsers connected to the Internet have the Flash Player plug-in installed. The player comes as standard within many browsers and is quick and easy to upgrade to the latest version of Flash. So, whilst still proprietary as a standard (it isnt an ‘open standard’ in the same way as mpeg is for example) it hits all of the user base of Internet connected surfers that you will want to turn into customers. The 3% that don’t use Flash aren’t interested in seeing graphics or listening to music.

Compelling
Flash provides many digital designers and artists with an incredible creative tool that they use to blow the minds of web users. They have been achieving this for many years and will continue to do so for many years to come.

Summary And The Future
What does Adobe need to do now to develop Flash’s audio capabilities? Whilst the features of today make Flash compelling for audio delivery many of the Flash audio community are frustrated by the lack of audio features within Flash. Here are a number of features that would greatly enhance Flash’s ability to deliver audio more successfully:

1) Make mp3’s loop seamlessly. Currently if you add an MP3 into Flash and publish it, Flash will create a small gap before replaying the mp3 file thus destroying any loop’s effect. The only way around this today is to avoid importing mp3s, import WAVs (for example) and have them compressed down to mp3 format for publishing. Bizarre but true.
Adobe get features like that into Flash when Flash needs this functionality to achieve perfectly synchronised loops.

3) Audio Plug-Ins: Link with the music community so that Flash is opened up to the plug ins available to add more richness to those who do not have access to more complex Digital Audio Workstations such as Bias Peak and other Adobe products.

4) Make synchronising easier: some developers find some sound files (mp3 or WAV format) go out of sync over time when there is no reason. This feels like a bug.

5) Making Movie Clips within movies playable within the stage whilst being developed would avoid developers having to work blind on a lot of audio / visual synchronising. There are some Flash components for sale that achieve this but are not part of Flash as standard.

Copyright Kesseny ltd 2008 All Rights Reserved except for:
Flash® (a registered trademark of the Adobe Corporation). &
MP3000: Copyright © 1995-2008 Clever Media. Note: Clevermedia gave permission to reference thier work when Ambient Muisc Garden was named Ambient Music Garden.com
RealPlayer ® 2008 RealNetworks, Inc. Patents Pending. All rights reserved. RealPlayer, is a registered trademark of RealNetworks, Inc
Windows Media Player Microsoft is either a registered trademark or trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.
Winamp ® is a registered trademark of Nullsoft Inc.
QuickTime is a trademark of Apple Computer, Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries.

Ambient Music Garden & Flash Soundtracks are trademarks of Kesseny ltd

www.Ambient Music Garden.com

How To Use Ambient Music Garden Music in your Therapy

First Things First: Royalty Free Use

Ambient Music Garden music is royalty free so you are able to play the music as part of your professional therapy sessions and group meetings. It also means you are able to play the music in shops and galleries if you are connected to one as part of your therapy environment. Normal CD music requires you to pay the royalty collection agency of your country a fee that can be the cost of 10 to 15 Cds per year for this privilege.

Playing Ambient Music Garden music via your computer

If you have a low noise computer such as a laptop you can simply  play the music via your computer using your chosen music player such as Real, iTunes or Windows Media Player. We would recommend in this case using some reasonable external speakers that plug into your headphone socket. There is usually a choice for sale at computer stores. The better ones will power themselves and so give off a better sound. The better the speakers the more effective the music will be to your client. Normally computer speakers are weak at playing the lower sounds in a song so please bear this in mind.

Alternatively some more modern Hi-fi’s will have an input socket that allows you to connect your computer headphone socket to your hi-fi so that you can play your music via a better amplifier and speaker combination.

The complications with this method will tend to focus on sourcing the right stereo cables and plugs along with finding (possibly) the AUX button on your player.

Playing Ambient Music Garden music using a CD

Perhaps the less complicated method is to burn a CD of the tracks you have purchased in the order you choose and use a home or portable hi-fi / CD player.

Burning software is available online or at your local computer store. Ahead Nero and Roxio Toast are two that are popular. You may already have something on your computer that burns CDs for you so check before you purchase something new.

How you burn your music onto a CD depends on what type of Cds your player can play. For instance, older CD players will not be able to listen to mp3 formatted Cds. So, when you burn your music you will need to choose another format and clearly the only format suitable for older players will be the standard CD-Audio format that is the format that Cds from the shops come in.

Finally..

Ambient Music Garden provides the above information to help you get started with integrating Ambient Music Garden music into your therapy sessions. We can not support your technical issues as these sort of queries can be varied and can we are not set up or have the time. Ambient Music Garden provides music as mp3s because it is a universally standard format that will work across the world. If you do have any queries about this information of any other questions before you start then please use the Contact Us page to send us a note.

What is Royalty Free Music?

Royalty Free Music is music offered for use without the professional user needing to pay additional costs for using the music within their own line of work, just the initial purchase price.

Don’t get the term ‘royalty free music’ mixed up with copyright. Copyright is about the ownership of a piece of music. Each artist will aim to retain the ownership of their piece of music unless they specifically sell it, or hand it over to a record label as part of their contractual agreement (although this is changing with the entry of net labels such as Ambient Music Garden.)

Music you hear on the radio costs the radio stations for each broadcast. Music you hear within a film production has to be purchased specifically for film making. Music played in the background of shops and galleries requires additional costs to cover royalties. However Ambient Music Garden music is royalty free so you can play our music within your theraputic sessions without being charged any additional costs.

Each piece of Ambient Music Garden music is licensed to an individual for their use within their own theraputic work and also for those that are self healing. A different agreement is required where the piece of music is going to be used with large audiences or for large health organisations. This agreement is included within the terms and conditions of sale.

Musicians are protected by international treaties that enable them to collect money from users of their work.

There has never been a better time to try to go it alone as opposed to sell your music via a record company. Clearly record companies do offer benefits still, however for the smaller circulation musicians the Internet offers a fantastic opportunity to get access to a global market (although I have to stress here that Ambient Music Garden does not currently market to the whole world for security reasons).

Within the western world I have all probably witnesses and even been involved in the increased acceptance and interest in alternative therapies. In addition to this, ‘alternatives’ have become ‘conventional’ & increased their popularity even more.

With broadband so available now in western countries alternative and conventional therapists looking to music to enhance their client and customer’s experiences now have a great opportunity to browse and download a better range of music to suit their needs than that which is physically available on CD in the small genre collections at the local music shop.

Additionally those of us who want to use music to assist in our own healing or simply relaxing or meditating can browse and buy so much easier online. As one artist put it recently, “…this is a type of music that is traditionally hard to obtain…i.e. sifting through endless whale song Cds and Tin gongs down ur local record shop!”

Holistic therapy seems to me to becoming a strong competitor to hairdressing for like-minded young people entering college today. Each one of these new therapists needs quality music to suit their therapy style.

Additionally, music therapy within conventional mental health trusts is coming of age with new initiatives to support a range of mental health problems. So, although Ambient Music Garden today focuses on the single therapist, and the license that is sold covers single therapists there are opportunities to sell to larger organisations.

I think this also gives a signal about what I can achieve together. Avoiding stereotypes of fluty meditative tapes with comically patronising voice-overs I have the opportunity to create a new direction for therapy music.

New article on the use of relaxation music for relaxing users via mp3 music downloads here by Dr Harry Henshaw

A fun looking tool for relaxation. Listen to ambient music without Internet radio adverts with this downloadable device. Check it out here

Ambient Music Blog announced yesterday the new album: In Between Words by Christopher Bissonnette. Check out the article here.

New mp3 music for download has become available at Ambient Music Garden.com

Today Kesseny has released some of his current music on Ambient Music Garden as 128kb/s versions for free.

Check the free samples below or click here to go directly to the free mp3 download category at Ambient Music Garden straight away!

SimogenJo (Calm) Free Mp3 Download. Here’s a Sample of the full piece.

The higher quality mp3 versions remain at a low affordable download price also.