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Composer, performer, producer. Visionary, innovator, cultural ambassador. Any list of Jean-Michel Jarre’s countless factettes would inevitably come short of his actual significance in music history. “JMJ” is a living legend and often referred to as the “Godfather of Electronic Music”. When Jarre launched his landmark- debut album “OXYGENE” in 1976, he opened a new chapter in music history. The record has sold over 18 million copies and laid the foundations for his exceptional career. Jarre’s pioneering work gave birth to a veritable cult and the fastest-growing trend the music industry has ever stood to witness: the rise of electronic music.
In yearly 2021, Jean-Michel Jarre worked on a new album called Amazōnia – an audio experience with sounds from the The Amazonas. The album was mastered in normal stereo, but a special version of the album was mastered in Binaural audio, which creates a 3D stereo sound sensation for the listener. Jean-Michel wanted this version to be available as a digital download for people who bought the album, amongst other tracks that was not included on the album.
Claus Lundholm, who is one of the co-founders of SODA, was already working close with Jean-Michel on an app that generates music on the fly using AI. The app is called Eōn. Therefore it was obvious for these two to develop a solution for music sharing.
Claus searched the internet for a platform to host digital audio files. The platform needed to have a mechanism to lock down the access to the music files, that would limit access to people with an actual code. No results came up, and Claus build a custom made one time solution to Jarre’s official website.
Quickly, a few challenges came to surface:
With the next album release ‘Welcome To The Other Side’ from Jarre, the need for a dedicated platform was obvious.
Claus Lundholm teams up with Claus Jacobsen, Solution Architect and Klavs Wismann, Developer, and they begin designing a new platform from scratch. The platform needs to be able to solve many of the issues and missing features and functions + have a way to store data securely.
The future will bring more challenges. New ways of distributing digital music are emerging on daily basis. For SODA and Jean-Michel Jarre it means we will continue the innovation and exploration of new ways to accessing valuable music for the consumer on digital devices.
Jean-Michel Jarre is a creative contributor to SODA in regards to the development of ideas and features.
