This is a guest post by writer Andy Meek. This story was updated with a comment from Imogen Heap. 

Imogen Heap, the statuesque singer-songwriter who scored a massive hit on her own with the a cappella “Hide and Seek,” is a gadget and technology super-fan.

The Grammy-winning artist constantly is advocating for, supporting and even helping develop new tech toys that serve all manner of purposes, from connecting her more closely to her fans, to elevating her own music to simply using tech to perform music-related tasks.

Those tasks include jogging. At the moment, she’s working with Intel to develop a jogging app. “I love jogging + music but I can’t listen to music when I run,” she tweeted about the so-called “generative” music app. She explained further on her Facebook page, saying that she has been working on and off over the last few months on an application that plays “music that changes according to the intensity of your run, building and growing over the distance, interacting with you and the outside world. The music you hear will never be the same twice yet all threading on musical themes and a feeling that is related to the app.”

As part of the app-in-progress, Heap also has asked fans to send her snippets of cheers and encouragement, because she wants to drop something along those lines into the app to cheer on the user after they’ve reached distances of a certain interval. An assortment of sounds from fans that Heap has collected – the requisite attaboys and you-can-do-its – can be heard at this Soundcloud page.

The effect she’s going for here reminds me of “Scape.” That’s a new app from Brian Eno, the composer and producer who’s worked with acts like U2, Coldplay and Paul Simon. It’s available in the app store now, and it’s a minimalist little gem for which the user touches the tablet screen to create random beeps, dings and pleasant sounds that randomly combine to form incredibly tranquil soundscapes.

Like what Heap is creating, Eno’s app – produced with Peter Chilvers – also is a “generative” music product. An example of it in action:

Heap’s jogging app, meanwhile, is only the latest in a line of tech-fueled endeavors for which the British musician has been getting some big exposure. Another example: outlets like Wired – as well as the TEDGlobal conference in Scotland in 2011 – detailed a pair of high-tech musical gloves Heap unveiled.

Fans and audiences at her shows know that Imogen’s concerts are often part performance, part mixing session. She’s generally alone, and she’ll lay down a percussive track, then run to a different machine and produce some ambient noise, pick up a keyboard and play a few notes, layer her own voice over itself a few times – all mixed live.

It’s a frantic exercise, and she was inspired by gloves at MIT’s music lab which do that work for her. Using hand gestures, arm movements and finger flutters, she can create a wide array of sounds, and the visual effect is akin to watching Imogen serve as her own musical conductor.

“My brain…exploded with possibilities after being inspired by Elly Jessop and her VAMP glove in 2009 during my visit there [to MIT],” Heap told VentureBeat. “I set to developing my own pair with Tom Mitchell from UWE as soon as I got home and we are now a core team of six based in London, Bristol and Berlin.”

Pick up around the 5:30-minute mark to watch her get going:

Learn more about the team that built the gloves here.

Andy Meek is a journalist in Memphis who frequently contributes to outlets including Fast Company, Forbes, Politico, and several tech blogs.

Image credit: University of the West of England

This may be the Holy Grail for music technology. The team behind Playground.fm has found a way to give you unlimited free music on mobile without paying those pesky royalty fees that have crippled the competition by using songs that its user community owns.

Playground.fm is a free music service for iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad, and it’s launching today. The app is the brainchild of Austin Soldner, a designer-cum-DJ, Vivek Agrawal, a web developer who co-produced the award-winning soundtrack for hit flick “Slumdog Millionaire”, and Mehul Trivedi, an Apple-trained engineer.

Playground.fm’s cofounders

The company’s tagline is “human powered radio,” which takes a page from Pandora’s book. However, unlike the Internet radio giant, it’s not designed to be a solo listening experience.

Download the app and you’re immediately prompted to log in with Facebook. You’ll then be offered a selection of music playlists created by the several-thousand strong Playground community, such as ’90s hits or Indie Rock.

It’s easy to create a playlist: Simply drag and drop songs from your iTunes music library or Spotify premium account. This is how the company avoids the royalties problem — the songs have already been paid for by individual users. Fuzz, a recently launched music startup, has a similar solution to avoid paying licensing fees. 

“We loved the ease of a leanback music service like Pandora, as well as the power of a strong social music community on Spotify,” said Trivedi, Playground’s cofounder and technical lead. “So we asked ourselves, how could we build a service that brought the best of both worlds?” Trivedi and Agrawal, both software engineers, initially formed the idea for the service as students at Stanford University.

Playground.fm merges the best of its competitors: Turntable.fm, Spotify, and Pandora. There are no ad breaks, so it’s ideal for a party, or you can tune in during your morning walk to the bus. The lack of gimmicky “gamification” features makes for an easy, ambient listening experience at the office.

Social elements are weaved into the design; at any time, you can see which of your friends are listening and follow them on the app. In a cool twist, once you start listening, the algorithm suggests you follow strangers with a similar music taste. It’s an evolution from Pandora’s recommendations engine, as you can discover music through your friends, rather than through genomes or editorial teams.

We have been following these guys for months — they frequently host “bring your own beats” events in San Francisco to bring together the budding user community. They are also on the radar of top music bloggers, artists, and DJ’s, who have created their own playlists.

The major step for the company will be to experiment with revenue models that don’t disrupt the user experience. Similarly to a competitor service like TuneIn (full disclosure: I worked at this startup for a summer), in-app ads and strategic partnerships may be their only option.

As with other music startups, Playground.fm may also experiment with ways to mine its user-generated data — as it scales up, it will have valuable information about our listening habits.

The company has raised $850,000 from DCM, Charles Huang (co-founder of Guitar Hero), and Andie Simon (former VP of Warner Music) among others.

Top image via Shutterstock