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Get Imagine Dragons' League of Legends song for free
League of Legends has an official song for its 2014 World Championship, and you can get it for free today. The song is "Warriors" by the band Imagine Dragons. "To kick off the start of the action, we set out to craft a war cry to rally behind in a creative collaboration with Imagine Dragons," Riot posted on its site. "Whether you're a solo queue warrior or fighting off the LCS jitters –- every moment counts." The MP3 is available for free on the site, but if you want the full animated music video, all you have to do is hit the jump below.
Linkin Park's 'remixable' music video created in Project Spark
Musical group Linkin Park is now one step closer to the world of video games thanks to Project Spark developer Team Dakota. The developer created a "remixable" music video for Linkin Park's "Guilty All The Same" in Project Spark, which includes an audio remix station so players can build anything they want in the level. Project Spark is a robust game creation tool currently in beta for PC and Xbox One. The "Guilty All The Same" level isn't the first time an interactive game experience was built around an existing piece of music. Just last month, Radiohead launched an experimental iOS and Android app called PolyFauna for imagery and sounds from its song, "Bloom." Microsoft opened Project Spark's beta version to all Xbox One owners this month and also removed the game's Spark Time microtransactions. [Image: Linkin Park]
Xbox Music brings '92,000' music videos to Xbox One
Hoping to pick up the ball that MTV dropped so long ago, the Xbox Music service now offers a selection of 92,000 music videos to Xbox One owners. According to Xbox Wire, watching these new vignettes is simple. "Find your playlist, say 'Xbox Play,' and watch the videos appear on screen. You don't have to spend hours tracking down videos for each song - it's all rolled into one easy step." The explanation makes no mention of planned future additions to the music video collection, but it does note that each is displayed in high-definition. Before you rush off to watch whatever passes for "buzzworthy" these days, know that access to Xbox Music is not free. If you want to use the streaming service, you'll need to shell out $10 per month. There is a free, 30-day trial of Xbox Music available, but if you're only in it for the videos, you could save a lot of money by just scouring the Vevo YouTube channel. [Image: Microsoft]
Dylan's 'Like a Rolling Stone' gets awesome interactive music video 48 years later
The jugglers and the clowns are out in full force for this one. It's probably not exactly what Bob Dylan was envisioning when he penned "Like a Rolling Stone" lo so many decades ago, but it's a pretty terrific tribute to the folk-rock classic directed by YouTube hero Vania Heymann. You can flip through several stations featuring the likes of Marc Maron, Drew Carey, Danny Brown and the Pawn Stars synced masterfully with the track. The video commemorates the recent release of the 47-disc set The Complete Album Collection, Vol. 1. [Thanks, Jeff]
Guild Wars 2's Nightmares Within release takes toxic cleanup seriously
The Nightmare tower will be assaulted head-on in the next Guild Wars 2 content release, and players get to disregard the lessons taught by every horror movie ever and step inside. What do you mean, Marjory Delaqua already sent a team in and they didn't come back? Pfft, they were probably amateurs. You can handle it. Players who storm the tower can unlock a nifty gas mask skin that can be applied to any head armor, as well as a version of the standard underwater breather to wear on dry land. Other rewards include a toxic spore backpack skin and two Toxic Krait miniatures, but you can only access them if you come back...alive. To top things off, ArenaNet is hosting a Rock the Nightmare music video contest. Break out your best editing skills to create a one-minute video for the song "The Nightmares Within," which can be found on ArenaNet's Soundcloud, and you could win a 3D-printed GW2 guitar or some SteelSeries gaming gear! Nightmares Within will go live on November 12th.
Assassin's Creed 'Warrior Concerto' music video features wubs, guts
This fan-made Assassin's Creed video has it all, baby. You want some dubstep? Check. You want some cool dudes jumpin' off of stuff? Double check. You want a complicated, super long epic of deceit and mystery? Oh, well then how about some guys getting stabbed a whole bunch? That's what I thought.
Dead Island: Riptide's fake rap video stars real artist Chamillionaire
Dead Island is famous for having arguably the most dramatic, memorable advertisement of 2011, with its backward, slow-mo gore fest featuring an undead child. With Dead Island: Riptide, the marketing team is taking a decidedly different approach: They've decided on "No Room in Hell," a rap music video from in-game character Sam B, featuring real-life artist Chamillionaire.In the Dead Island universe, Sam B is a one-hit wonder for his song "Who Do You Voodoo, Bitch?" and "No Room in Hell" is the last single he recorded before traveling to the Royal Palms Resort Hotel on Banoi. Considering what went down on the island when he got there, his fake record label fears this might very well be his last single, ever.
Vevo's website redesign simplifies the video watch page, adds artist pages
Chances are you've enjoyed Vevo's music video catalogue in one form or another, and purists who prefer .com access are being rewarded today with a fresh website design. The "video watch page" was previously littered with related clips, a playlist and other distractions, which have now been dispatched for greater focus on the tune at hand. Much of this has been moved to "artist pages", a new pop-up hub (pictured above) which is full of extra info on your chosen act. Head over to Vevo to see the enhancements for yourself, and with impending OUYA support, you might want to consider it your primary dispensary for that daily dose of Biebzilla.
Get your shinebox and head on down to Rapture with Brentalfloss
Nothing quite says "underwater dystopia" like old-timey ragtime tunes. Brentalfloss clearly understands that relationship, as evidenced by the BioShock-themed music video he created with some colleagues recently. And hey, no casual racism! All the fun of the early 20th century without the awful societal norms!
Stop-motion music video relies on OpenOffice and Excel, finds formula for success (video)
It's already considered a grind to produce stop-motion video -- imagine creating a clip using the spreadsheet app that many dread seeing at work every morning. Joe Penna, better known to the internet as Mystery Guitar Man, isn't afraid. He and his team recorded a performance against a greenscreen, gave the video a mosaic look in After Effects and proceeded to recreate 730 of the frames in OpenOffice (and occasionally Excel)... by hand. We don't want to know how long it took Penna and crew to wrap up their work, but the result is probably the liveliest you'll ever get out of an app meant for invoices and corporate expenses. The fully produced video is above; click past the story break if you want to smash illusions and see how the pixelated rumba came to be.
OUYA wrapping up funding with limited brown metal console, Vevo deal
To put it mildly, the OUYA console has had a better than expected funding run -- the project is now past the $6 million mark, or six times what it originally needed. The team still wants a little something to end the last week of fundraising with a bang. It just unveiled a limited edition brown, brushed metal version of the console with a controller to match; all it takes is a $140 pledge during the final push to August 9th and you've got the Yves Behar-chosen color for yourself. The special run should arrive as part of the wider March 2013 launch. If the original silver hue will do just nicely, thank you very much, OUYA has struck another content deal and will launch Vevo's music video hub side-by-side with the console. Click past the break for a peek at the controller, and consider a pledge on Kickstarter if you just can't stand the thought of having the same console as everyone else.
WoW Moviewatch: I Went Fire On My Mage
Adam didn't convince me to do Moviewatch today -- I just decided to help myself to the job. I have a soft spot in my heart for machinima, mostly because I've always wanted to be a machinima artist myself. Unfortunately, I'm held back by the fact that I use a Mac. Yeah ... Anyway, today's video is a music video for Sharm's I Went Fire On My Mage, a parody of Set Fire to the Rain by Adele. The parody tells the story of an arcane mage who decides to switch specs to fire after she realizes she doesn't have the physical endurance to continue playing arcane. (That will make more sense after you watch the video.) Sharm's lyrics are brilliantly funny and fit in well with the original music. In terms of the lyrics, it's definitely one of the stronger WoW music parodies I've heard. And as usual, she nails the execution of the song with her lovely voice. What else would you expect by now? The video was created by machinima artist Rogahar, who uses a combination of footage from in-game capture and WoW Model Viewer. The video adds a lot to the song, impressing a tone to it which I don't think I'd have noticed nearly as much if I'd just heard the song on its own. The opening and closing shots of the video in particular really set a sad and then remorseful mood to the story. My only complaint with the video is that by the third chorus, some of the images become a bit too repetitive, but seeing as this is Rogahar's first machinima (to my knowledge), I think it's forgiveable. For now, I'm looking forward to see more from this new artist. Check it out! Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an email at moviewatch@wowinsider.com.
More music videos coming to 3DS today
Nintendo Video, the bizarrely unpredictable passive-delivery video service for 3DS, is getting an infusion of new music. If you've left SpotPass on, your system is likely already downloading music videos including Wale's "Sabotage" and B.o.B.'s "So Good."Future releases include The Shins' "The Rifle's Spiral," OKGo's "Skyscrapers," Skrillex's "Breakn' a Sweat," Death Cab for Cutie's "Underneath the Sycamore" and "Save World Get Girl" by chiptune/rock band I Fight Dragons.We were just wondering what bands did with the expensive music videos they were still producing in 2012 for some reason. The answer, it turns out is YouTube and Nintendo Video.
Vevo app brings ad-supported music videos streaming to the Xbox 360
The video services Microsoft announced would be coming to Xbox 360 continue to trickle out and the latest is from Vevo. What it brings free of charge (with the exception of the req'd Xbox Live Gold subscription, of course) is a library of music videos that's big enough (45,000 deep) for you to remember when the M in MTV stood for something. An additional bonus is that many of the videos are actually in high definition, unlike the ones broadcast on MTV and Fuse's high definition channels, and when we talked to the company ahead of the launch we were told the audio and video have been reencoded specifically for TV viewing.There's the requisite Kinect integration for voice and gesture control, and users can create a queue of videos and skip through them without pausing the action, and of course share what they're playing with other users on Xbox 360 and services like Facebook. Best of all, it's not a pay-per-view setup like iTunes or the standard Xbox music videos. There are a few quirks however, like needing to create a Vevo account to get access and the number of clicks it takes to add videos to a playlist. Still, whether you want to autoplay all of your favorite artist's videos or pick one at a time it all works pretty well -- the only problem now is finding something worth listening to. Check the Xbox 360 app marketplace to download it or give the video demo (embedded after the break) a peek.
Music video created with iPad and iPhone
As you can tell from our quiet start this morning, it's a slow day around the TUAW HQ -- most of us are still in the holiday mood, and with much of the United States off work today anyway, things aren't too crazy. But we're still here, and while some of us are buried under snow, we can still at least remember that somewhere on Earth, there are sunny skies and tropical breezes. In fact, you can see both in the video posted below, which was shot by Ron Nadel and Dovev Adar a band called Passion Pit, completely on an iPad 2 and an iPhone 4. [Update: We originally attributed the video to the band Passion Pit, but the music is incidental] The team used the ReelMoments app (and presumably the official Camera app as well) to shoot all of the footage, and then edited it together with iMovie on the iPad. It's well done -- I wouldn't say it's super groundbreaking (we've seen music videos put together like this before), but there is some really good stuff in there. That last shot is especially great, and, if you are like us and working today after the holiday, might remind you that at least someone's on vacation this afternoon.
Music video: iPhone games get real
This video by Australian band Hey Geronimo is the cutest thing. The group painstakingly recreated scenes and characters from popular iPhone games for their song, "Why Don't We Do Something?". I love the Angry Birds in the car, the flying Fruit Ninja fruit and the cat battling Flight Control airplanes (plus that flight attendant -- meow!). My favorite, however, is definitely the little Cut the Rope doggie. The video looks great as they nailed the look of each game. It's pretty much the perfect thing to watch on a busy Friday afternoon. Enjoy, and have a great weekend!
First music video shot with the iPhone 4S
A band called The Turnback nabbed a few iPhone 4Ses as quickly as they could, and scheduled a music video shoot right around launch, opting to be the first to fire off a music video using just the iPhone 4S and its new HD camera. As you can see below, it looks pretty good -- not quite as good as a full HD video, I think, but not bad. For a phone camera, it's great. The video was even shot in the new 1080p mode, and was cut together on Final Cut Pro. As a proof of concept, at least, it works, and it shows that aside from all of the splashy news around Siri, the camera adds yet another nice feature to the latest and greatest iPhone. [via RazorianFly]
Daily iPhone App: VidRhythm
When Harmonix (the makers of Rock Band and Dance Central) first announced it was creating a brand new iOS app, I was looking forward to a brand new music game of some kind. But the company surprised us all with VidRhythm, now available on the App Store for US$1.99. It's not really a game, really; it's a casual (and fun) remixing tool and music video maker. The game has a bunch of tracks (mostly original, though there are a few classical songs in the mix as well) that are assembled out of little hits of sound, everything from bass drums and high-hat hits to various other beats and samples. Your job as the music video maker is to replace those samples with your own audio and video. The app tells you exactly what to do (like "say Bom"), and you can then record video of you or some gullible friends doing just that. Record all the samples, choose a video style, hit Go, and voila: almost instantly you have an original music video, made up of your own video recordings and audio mix. It's wild to see in action. There's no actual game to play, but it is a lot of fun to play with, and Harmonix has done a great job of hiding all of the video and audio processing that must go on behind the scenes to make something like this. You can see some examples of the videos on YouTube, but until you actually dive in and make one yourself, it's hard to tell just how magical the app really is. Essentially, VidRhythm is a cool toy, not to mention a fun creative tool. I'm a little disappointed that we didn't get a full game from Harmonix, but this is nice, too, and I look forward to seeing the kind of videos people end up creating with it.
Ice-T dropping new Gears of War 3 track tonight on G4 [update: And here it is!)
Music legend and adroit crime-solver Ice-T is a man of many, many talents, as evidenced by the very first part of this sentence, during which we explained that he is a music legend who solves crimes. Need further proof, for some inexplicable reason? The beverage-named gentleman, alongside his temporarily reunited musical outfit Body Count, will debut his newest music video on tonight's episode of X-Play: "Horde 2.0: Five Against All," a song inspired by Gears of War 3, which also features Ice-T's voice acting talents. We'll try to grab the video once it airs tonight on G4TV at 6:30 p.m. ET. Until then, we'll work tirelessly to corroborate these rumors that Ice-T did some of the programming on the fifth level of Gears 3, and also wrote a good hundred or so pages of the game's script. Update: Find the, uh, "music video" after the break.
Robot band covers Marilyn Manson, renders sullen teenagers obsolete (video)
Sure, we've seen robot bands before. But even when insecure and egotistical, they never quite capture the youthful disaffection we want from our mechanical pop stars. Until now. End of Life is a robot band consisting of a cello, and electric guitar, drums, and, for some reason, a flat-bed scanner -- maybe he's the cute one? The group recently covered Marilyn Manson's three-string anthem "The Beautiful People," and it sounds almost exactly like you'd expect: we'll call it "raw, visceral, and uncensored." We can't wait to see them sneer at Rock Band-playing robots too lazy to learn a real instrument. Catch them in the video after the break, and you can tell all your less-cool friends you knew them back before they sold out.
