Digital music has evolved beyond simply distribution. Napster, iTunes, and Spotify transformed our expectations of being able to find and listen to music. On a parallel track, services like Pandora pioneered new ways to find music and the evolution of social networks let us discover music from our friends. There are new services like preamp that let us discover live music in a city or Spotify playlists that let us express ourselves through music, perhaps a natural evolution of the mixtape.

Music also connects us to memory and provide a hook to learning about history and culture. We also have incredible music collections, which are annotated with “meta-data” which can often position the music in place and time, and sometimes provide interesting connections and links.

• Smithsonian Folkways
• Internet Archive Live Music
• Wax Cylinder Collection digitization project

I’ve just started to discover new kinds of collections and interactive stories that create digital cultural heritage connections.

• Austin Music Map
• The Ballad of Geeshie and Elvie. New York Times article with embedded music tracks

I’m sure there are more out there and would love to add to these lists… just tweet @ultrasaurus or add a note in the comments.

I believe that speaking a second language can be intrinsically fun, but it often isn’t. I’ve been digging into the question of what we can do to make it more fun, more often. I think the trick is to learn in a social situation when you are actually having fun. To test this hypothesis, my Mightyverse friends and I created a card card game.

It began as a paper prototype for our next mobile app, which actually worked really well in person with simple cards. We’re still “play testing” the instructions and “helper” cards, if you buy a deck now you beta test the print-and-play even before it goes into production or if you live near San Francisco or Sausalito or are near me in my travels, give me a holler (@ultrasarus) and we’ll set up some time to play!

We have met our fundraising goal, but our real goal is to reach 100 Spanish learners who want to play our game. We need 36 more. Can you help spread the word? If you blog about it or talk about it on your podcast or something like that, just let us know, we’ll consider you part of our outreach team and send you a free deck.