About 9 months ago, I posted a blog about innovative musical developments. One of those, Melodyne Direct Note Access, was an astounding achievement. The other, Microsoft's MySong, wasn't. I mean, it did enable non-musical people to sing into a computer and have an automatic backing track constructed for them, but the contribution it made to several thousands years of musical art was so insignificant it couldn't even be measured.

Anyway, guess which one has made it out of research and into our homes first? Here's a clue, it's not the good one. What's worse is that Microsoft's ad campaign for the now-renamed "Songsmith" (and I'm presuming this ad is real, purely because I can't imagine anyone blowing that amount of time, effort and money on constructing a spoof) is based entirely on the notion that the product is utter garbage. Brace yourself, ladies and gentlemen; if you make it through to the end, you are a more tolerant human than I.


Of course, now I'm regretting linking to the damn thing and pointing out how abysmal it is, because that's exactly what they wanted me to do. Foiled! Curses!