Niko Bolas is an American music producer, sound engineer, and consultant. He is also a business developer in the fields of virtual reality and Internet radio. In 1989, Bolas founded Fakespace Music with Mark Bolas, Ian McDowall, and Christian Greuel. In 1995, Fakespace developed the Soundsculpt Toolkit, a software interface which lets music communicate with graphical elements of virtual reality.
In 1999, Bolas became the CEO of Sonicbox, Inc., [1] an Internet radio company he founded with Mark Bolas and McDowall. Sonicbox changed its name to iM Networks Inc.; [1] it developed and marketed the first internet radio device which was sold in consumer stores through a licensing agreement with the Philips Consumer Electronics Company. iM Networks Inc. received three patents for streaming technologies [2] and put the "iM Band(TM)" alongside AM and FM on the radio dial, allowing consumers to access Internet radio content from around the world.
His current music enterprises are DayDream VR and The Surf Shack Studio in Ventura, California.
Among his most notable production works are Neil Young's This Note's for You , Freedom, Living with War , and Barn, Warren Zevon's Sentimental Hygiene , Steve Perry's first solo album Street Talk , and Melissa Etheridge's debut self-titled album. [3] Bolas is known for his clear and loud recordings of vocals.
In the early 1980s, Bolas collaborated with American hard rock band KISS. He worked on their album Creatures of the Night , recording Eric Carr's drums. Bolas appears in the cover of the Toto album, Fahrenheit (1986); he is the guy walking in the photograph and watching a woman. Bolas is a friend of Jeff Porcaro; Porcaro wanted Bolas on the cover.
Napster was a peer-to-peer file sharing application that originally launched on June 1, 1999 with an emphasis on digital audio file distribution. Audio songs shared on the service were typically encoded in the MP3 format. It was founded by Shawn Fanning, Sean Parker, and Hugo Sáez Contreras. As the software became popular, the company ran into legal difficulties over copyright infringement. It ceased operations in 2001 after losing a wave of lawsuits and filed for bankruptcy in June 2002.
Streaming media is multimedia that is delivered and consumed in a continuous manner from a source, with little or no intermediate storage in network elements. Streaming refers to the delivery method of content, rather than the content itself.
A digital music store is a business that sells digital audio files of music recordings over the Internet. Customers gain ownership of a license to use the files, in contrast to a music streaming service, where they listen to recordings without gaining ownership. Customers pay either for each recording or on a subscription basis. Online music stores generally also offer partial streaming previews of songs, with some songs even available for full length listening. They typically show a picture of the album art or of the performer or band for each song. Some online music stores also sell recorded speech files, such as podcasts, and video files of movies.
Steven Lee Lukather is an American guitarist, singer, songwriter, arranger and record producer, best known as the sole continuous founding member of the rock band Toto. His reputation as a skilled guitarist led to a steady flow of session work beginning in the 1970s that has since established him as a prolific session musician, recording guitar tracks for more than 1,500 albums spanning a broad array of artists and genres. He has also contributed to albums and hit singles as a songwriter, arranger and producer. Notably, Lukather played guitar on Boz Scaggs' albums Down Two Then Left (1977) and Middle Man (1980), and was a prominent contributor to several studio albums by Michael Jackson, including Thriller (1982). Lukather has released nine solo albums, the latest of which, Bridges, was released in June 2023.
Toto is an American rock band formed in 1977 in Los Angeles, California. Toto combines elements of pop, rock, soul, funk, progressive rock, hard rock, R&B, blues, and jazz. Having released 14 studio albums and sold over 40 million records worldwide, the group has received several Grammy Awards and was inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum in 2009.
Toto IV is the fourth studio album by American rock band Toto, released in the spring of 1982 by Columbia Records.
Isolation is the Gold-certified fifth studio album by Toto, released on October 18, 1984. Isolation is the first album to feature longtime bassist Mike Porcaro and the only album with Fergie Frederiksen as the primary vocalist. Isolation failed to achieve the popularity of its predecessor, Toto IV, although it achieved gold record status and gave the band their highest charting mainstream rock single "Stranger in Town". Relatively few songs from this album were featured in live performances after 1985's Isolation World Tour.
Streamium was a line of IP-enabled entertainment products by Dutch electronics multi-national Philips Consumer Electronics. Streamium products use Wi-Fi to stream multimedia content from desktop computers or Internet-based services to home entertainment devices. A Streamium device plugged into the local home network will be able to see multimedia files that are in different UPnP-enabled computers, PDAs and other networking devices that run UPnP AV MediaServer software.
Napster is a music streaming service based in Seattle, Washington. Napster started as an audio search engine named Aladdin that was purchased by Listen.com in May 2001 and became the basis for its new streaming service, called Rhapsody, that launched in December of the same year. Based on the Open Music Model principles, Rhapsody was the first streaming on-demand music subscription service to offer unlimited access to a large library of digital music for a flat monthly fee. In August 2003, internet media behemoth RealNetworks, anticipating the launch of Apple's iTunes store, acquired Rhapsody. On April 6, 2010, Rhapsody relaunched as a standalone company, separate from former parent RealNetworks. Downloaded files come with restrictions on their use, enforced by Helix, Rhapsody's version of digital rights management enforced on AAC+ or WMA files.
Victory is the fifteenth studio album by the Jacksons, released by Epic Records on July 2, 1984. The only album to include all six Jackson brothers together as an official group, Victory peaked at number four on the US Billboard 200 albums chart. Its most successful single, "State of Shock", peaked at number three on the US Billboard Hot 100 songs chart.
Steve Albini is an American musician, record producer, audio engineer and music journalist. He was a member of Big Black, Rapeman and Flour, and is a member of Shellac. He is the founder, owner and principal engineer of Electrical Audio, a recording studio complex in Chicago. In 2018, Albini estimated that he had worked on several thousand albums over his career. He has worked with acts such as Nirvana, Pixies, the Breeders, PJ Harvey, and former Led Zeppelin members Jimmy Page and Robert Plant.
Falling in Between is the twelfth studio album by American rock band, Toto. The album was released in February 2006 on the Italian label Frontiers Records, the band supporting the album with a world tour. It was the band's first studio release since Through the Looking Glass in 2002, the last one with lead vocalist Bobby Kimball and the only one with keyboardist/vocalist Greg Phillinganes. Phillinganes originally began playing with Toto as a touring replacement for David Paich, who had retired from the road. Another Porcaro brother, Steve, continues to work in the studio with the band, though he also retired from touring following the Fahrenheit album in 1987. Similarly, Lenny Castro has never been a member of the group, but has consistently contributed to their recordings since their first album in 1978. This is also the band's last studio album to feature bassist Mike Porcaro and drummer Simon Phillips; Porcaro retired from touring in the following year due to symptoms of ALS taking away the use of his hands and died in 2015. Phillips left the band in 2014 to focus on his solo career.
Steven Maxwell Porcaro is an American keyboardist, songwriter, singer, and film composer, known as one of the founding members of the rock band Toto and the last surviving Porcaro brother ; as the songwriter of "Human Nature" by Michael Jackson and songs by Toto; and as the composer of the TV series Justified. He has won three Grammys, including Record of the Year for "Rosanna" and Album of the Year for Toto IV, and three nominations.
Mark Bolas is a researcher exploring perception, agency, and intelligence. He is a Professor of Interactive Media in the USC Interactive Media Division, USC School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California, Director of their Interactive Narrative and Immersive Technologies Lab, Director of Mixed Reality Laboratory at USC's Institute for Creative Technologies, and chairman of Fakespace Labs in Mountain View, California. Bolas is currently on leave from USC, working on the Hololens team at Microsoft.
For the Love of Strange Medicine is the second solo studio album by Steve Perry, released on July 19, 1994 through Columbia Records. The album came after a lengthy 8-year hiatus following the breakup of Journey. The first single "You Better Wait" received radio airplay, reaching the top 10 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart and peaking at #29 on the Billboard Hot 100. The album was certified gold by the RIAA in September 1994 and followed by a tour from 1994-95.
The Seventh One is the seventh studio album by the American rock band Toto. It was released in 1988, and became the best-received Toto album since Toto IV. The title track, "The Seventh One", is featured only on the Japanese version of the album and on the B-side of the single "Pamela". It was also released on some compilations on a later date. It would be their second and last studio album with lead vocalist Joseph Williams until Toto XIV (2015).
In the first decade of the 21st century, the rise of digital media on the internet and computers as a central and primary means to record, distribute, store, and play music caused widespread economic changes in the music industry. The rise of digital media with high-speed internet access fundamentally changed the relationships between artists, record companies, promoters, retail music stores, the technology industry, and consumers. The rise of digital music consumption options contributed to several fundamental changes in consumption. One significant change in the music industry was the remarkable decline of conventional album sales on CD and vinyl. With the à la carte sales models increasing in popularity, consumers no longer downloaded entire albums but rather chose single songs.
"Africa" is a song by American rock band Toto, appearing as the tenth and final track on their fourth studio album Toto IV (1982). It was released as a single in the US through Columbia Records in October 1982, the album's third single overall and second in Europe. The song was written by band members David Paich and Jeff Porcaro, produced by the band, and mixed by Grammy-winning engineer Elliot Scheiner.
David Nathaniel Kerzner is an American musician, songwriter, producer, and sound designer as well as founder of the sound sampling development company Sonic Reality Inc. Along with Simon Collins, Kerzner is the co-founder of the band Sound of Contact. He is also the co-founder of the band Mantra Vega. His debut solo album, New World, was released in December 2014.
Old Is New is the fourteenth and final studio album by the American rock band Toto, released as part of the band's All In box set on November 30, 2018, and separately on April 3, 2020. The tracks "Devil's Tower", "Spanish Sea" and "Oh Why" feature deceased band members Jeff and Mike Porcaro.