The first day of April is a notoriously difficult time to report on (or read about) factual matters, as news organizations attempt to outdo each other with satirical articles in celebration of April Fools Day.
Music and music app news is no different. After polling this year's crop of amusing falsities, we present the finest "news" stories in music for this first day of April 2011:
5. Foo Fighters Merge With Credit Card Processors to Battle Rebecca Black
Dave Grohl and company were purchased by the credit card processing company FeeFighters for as much as $41 million. The newly-formed company, FoeFighters, plans to "eradicate the world of evil foes," including paper cuts, Charlie Sheen, "Friday" chanteuse Rebecca Black (who, incidentally, took over Funny or Die today), and, of course, Nickelback.
4. Toshiba Spectacle 3D Brings Realistic One-Eyed Reality to Music, Other Apps
We're only a few years from being able to explore music libraries, remix songs, play rhythm games and more, in three dimensions. The possibilities around 3D displays and music on mobile and home platforms are real -- but not so Toshiba Spectacle 3D, a single-lensed 3D techno-monocle that promises to bring the magic of three dimensions to the winking masses.
3. Moog Unveils Polyphonic Theramin For When One Isn't Annoying Enough
The theramin instrument, which varies pitch and volume based on a player's hand placement, sounds great in theory. Experienced players can coax truly remarkable performances out of them, but in the wrong hands, theirs is the sound of retro sci-fi nightmares. Moog announced a new addition to its line-up of music gear today as noted by Wired.com: the polyphonic theramin, which allows the player to manipulate ten individual theramins -- one for each finger.
Believe it or not, this new instrument runs on Iso Directional Inductive Oscillator Technology (or IDIOT).
2. Spotify Will Launch In America, Must Exit Europe
For over two years, Americans unable to score Spotify press passes have waited patiently for the popular freemium on-demand music service to launch here, if only so that they can see what all the fuss is about. This April Fools Day brings news from TechCrunch that Spotify will launch in the States next week (yay!), but that at investors' behest, it must shutter its European operations (boo!). Apologies to our European friends, but clearly, the U.S. is the only music market that matters.
1. Wolfram-Alpha Relaunches as Justin Bieber Fact Finder
Of all the tech start-ups to launch in the past few years, perhaps none are so nerdily ambitious as Wolfram-Alpha, whose goal is "to make all the world's knowledge systematically computable and accessible." But they had it all wrong. As it turns out, what people really want is access to as much Justin Bieber-related information as possible. To reflect this revelation, Wolfram-Alpha announced today that it is changing its name to BieberBeta and will henceforth dedicate itself to "Un-belieb-able facts."