Brian Ibbott signing copies of Smooth Federation, the debut release on Coverville Records.

Nerds of a feather flock together, as they say. Brian Ibbott and jazz composer Andrew Allen have once again proven this adage to be entirely true. The two have paired up to produce another passion project that is sure to appeal to the dorkiest dweebs you know, Free Play, an album of traditional jazz renditions of video game songs. Their first Kickstarter-funded project was even geekier than that: Smooth Federation, an all jazz tribute to Star Trek. The new one, which has surpassed its Kickstarter goal, is slated to be the second release on Ibbott's Coverville Records imprint.

See also:
- Five noteworthy examples of how Kickstarter is helping make the scene more vibrant
- Save the Tank: Musicians unite to preserve an acoustic marvel
- YTCracker on the virtues of Nerdcore and the finer points of hacking

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Tom Murphy

The Lumineers are virtually inescapable these days -- in the world of music, obviously, but also in the realm of pop culture: From being in constant radio rotation across the nation to being name-dropped as a part of incidental plot lines on TV shows like Nashville, the Denver-based, Grammy-nominated act has received an enormous amount of exposure since its album was released last spring. As a result, the band is now in extremely high demand, and so are tickets to its shows, particularly when they're sold out. So it was odd not to see a single scalper hawking tickets on Colfax outside the group's recent shows at the Ogden Theatre -- odd, but not a coincidence, we've discovered.

See also:
- What New Year's weekend looked like in Denver
- The Lumineers shed light on life in Denver and their evolving sound
- The Lumineers' self-titled Dualtone debut goes gold and gets nominated for a pair of Grammys

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At what point does a band become famous enough that they begin to surpass the nouns they've co-opted? How does Google know you want Cake the band, not cake the dessert, if you only search for "cake" and no other words? Is there a band name that is un-Googleable? These are the questions that weighed heavily on our minds -- and, no, there wasn't much else going on. A few e-mails and a phone call to Google HQ later, we got some answers.

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Since Ticketfly straddles both the ticketing and social marketing worlds, it makes perfect since for the company to introduce its Facebook Purchase App, which allows people to purchase tickets within Facebook instead of leaving the network to log onto an external system to complete the transaction. So when fans hear about an artist's show on Facebook, they can share it with friends and buy tickets instantly using their Facebook identities. The app has been beta tested by venues San Francisco, New York and the New Parish in Oakland, which is now seeing close 25 percent of advanced sales coming from Facebook alone.

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Late last month, Beatport announced its newest venture, Baseware Distribution, a service geared toward helping the electronic musicians who already use Beatport to get their music to more outlets, including iTunes, Spotify, Rdio and Stompy.

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Are you ready to rock?

When Matt Finn was able to finally quit his job as an e-mail server technician thanks to the success of his ClearTune guitar-tuning application for smartphones, his world changed forever. From a humble office located on Denver's 16th Street Mall, Finn and his fellow innovators at BitCount have come out with another life-changing application, one that makes listening to music like nothing you have ever experienced: It re-creates the exact sound and acoustics of the venue of your choice.

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We're slowly getting to the point where music apps are bridging the gap between useful and cool. While plenty allow you to share music from device to device, others, such as the Central Park app, gives you a soundtrack to stroll around Central Park to, should you need one. Overall, it's making for an interesting era, where your smartphone can do practically anything.

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Daytrotter/Johnnie Cluney

Snake Rattle Rattle Snake

The popular (and Denver loving) music website, Daytrotter has announced a switch from its previously free-to-download model to a paid, subscription based service. It's not the first time the site has toyed with paid services; last year, it introduced high-quality paid downloads, but now it's moving toward a purely paid service for all of it's content for two bucks a month.

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Music apps for smartphones are getting more complex, as evidenced by the release of the full version of Björk's Biophilia, which is beyond impressive. Other new offerings in this week's round-up include an app that turns your music into a planetary expedition, an idiotic but entertaining Jell-O wobbler and more.

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You may have your opinions, but only one person (or group, we suppose) can be awarded Denver's Biggest Shameless Self-Promoter at Denver Web Awards by Westword on Thursday November 16. Nominate your pick in that category and eight others in the music section of the poll (on page 2.) The other categories are below!

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