Will.I.Am Gets Hands On With Technology

Dan Gibson | October 14, 2008 2:00 am

What’s Black Eyed Peas frontman Will.I.Am up to when he’s not thinking about how his solo album stiffed at stores (hate to say I told you so) or working on another song about how dreamy Barack Obama is? He’s got at least two things up his sleeve, and after the jump we present them both in an easy-to-digest form.

First, he’s jumping on Nokia’s sinking ship called Comes With Music, even though the service seems a bit problematic: “We need a different type of digital store… iTunes isn’t enough. Nokia stepping up is fresh. Nokia got lock on—how many phones in the world? I travel the world. Everywhere I go, there’s more Nokia phones than anywhere else.” Hey, that sounds perfect for a press release, no?

Second, there’s a Black Eyed Peas disc in the works, but this time, the band’s grand vision has expanded beyond just that whole silly music thing.

“For the last remaining stores that sell CDs, this is the last Christmas that CDs will be in stores,” Will predicted. “It’s f**king scary.” He added that the Peas are exploring new methods of online delivery. “We’re just finishing the songs and collaborating with the software guys,” he said, noting that he wants music to be embedded with information and even “songs within songs” when the user clicks on a pop-up.

“I’m tired of making songs for the radio and for MTV,” Will explained to Billboard. “You should make songs for where songs are actually being listened and played. We have new people – software programmers. They are just as important as me, apl.de.ap, Taboo and Fergie. That’s us, the visual members. But nowadays it isn’t just physical with music and content anymore – you have to have proprietary software. Just borrowing other people’s shit doesn’t empower the growth and how you monetize that content, so that’s why it’s important that we got a software guy that is part of the Peas.”

I’m not sure how the software guy is going to fit into the band’s dynamic, but odds are he’ll be less irritating than the last person they added.

Mixtape Monday [MTV] Black Eyed Peas Plan Interactive Tunes [FMQB]

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