Switched on my iPod yesterday, it turned on, scanned a few tracks and froze. Now it’s not responding to anything. After running down the battery and recharging it seems to be working, but then freezes mid-track again. I’m in China now, I haven’t found an Apple Centre, the Apple website has nothing to offer and their Chinese site is only available in Chinese.

Now seriously considering moving over to an iRiver…

Teetering on the edge of a bright red Ikea lounge-chair on a Norwegian fjord, I’m hyping up for one of the best festival line-ups this side of All Tomorrow’s Parties. Sonic Youth are up in the mountains on retreat, the organisers are building a submerged bridge across the river so Polyphonic Spree can walk on water, and they keep telling us that Babyshambles are already in Norway and doing a ‘Middle of Nowhere’ tour from Bergen to Oslo, playing gigs wherever they stop.

Things didn’t start well. I crashed into Oslo after a nightmare trip from typhoon drenched Shanghai – three hours on the runway at Pudong aiport waiting for clearance, missed my connection at Copenhagen and was relieved to arrive in Oslo – and then my bags still hadn’t shown by 2am. Things picked up the next day, my bags and friends arrive, and we immediately set about starting over, diving into the pastel-est red light district you could imagine, where the town’s shadiest (i.e. not very shady) wobble by on heels.

We tried on some Norwegian sweaters (the kind with lots of snowflakes and other cute patterns), checked out Viking ships and hobbit houses covered in grass. But then it was time to get serious. Music. Seriously, months worth of great gigs smooshed into four days. We checked into national youth broadcaster P3’s sixties poured-concrete home to meet up with local DJ and presenter Kristin Winsents, who proves a great contact over the next few days. The psychotic interns laugh and then we’re off to a first night club night featuring almost 100 bands playing side-streets, cafes, clubs and restaurants. I spot Ramones-esque Beijing band Subs leaving and tail them to tiny NY-style bar Last Train. Singer Kang Mao bursts onto the stage, a five foot dervish on stage, totally nuts, her short black bob swinging around her head as she screams out her lyrics. On either side, two guys with big afros and bad arse black t-shirts play a heady mix of SST hardcore, rockabilly and heavy ‘70s rock.

The hotel’s filling up with rock stars, but we stuck with our own and got down to some solid music geekery with a handful of international journos. Oya’s the first festival I’ve been to that’s invited online journos – there were writers from Playlouder, Pitchfork, and Drowned in Sound.

Self-styled Sydney music impresario Phil Tripp and some random called Talkshow Boy give their take on the music industry in the latest issue of Sydney website/mag Mess & Noise. Obviously, Tripp’s article is a plug in the leadup to his upcoming music biz conference in Sydney, targeted at people who want to make big money from their music. He’s caught up in that to the point that he makes this comment.

“I don’t go to gigs so I don’t have to suffer the shoegazer bands that have no performance potential…”

Talkshow Boy might not make you a truckload of cash, he might not even make great music, but his optimistic article is totally refreshing, and in the increasingly participatory world we live in, where labels have to spend massive amounts to recoup investments and many artists struggle to break even over time, his take of just making music and getting it out there is pretty compelling.

It’s been a hectic month for music on the Internet. The guys from Big Champagne have been drumming up plenty of coverage in the magazines you find in airports across the world for their analysis of music download data, this week Chris Dahlen at Pitchfork captures its power in his excellent piece.

A friend in Australia told me about deal between Sony/BMG and a UK ISP linked to music website Playlouder to build walled P2P-friendly music sharing service bundled with a broadband deal. The radical deal is set to allow subscribers to share any Sony/BMG releases with anyone else on the network (because it’s a closed network they can monitor exactly how much and share the proceeds.

Last, it seems like the Australian indie distributors got together and decided to jump the online bandwagon. First up, Inertia launched a new website, including long rumoured digital distribution service along similar lines to Warp’s Bleep site. It’s very retail-oriented, which should be a kick in the teeth for the increasingly generic record shops in Australia. You can search their entire catalogue, buy directly from the site and buy digital downloads will shake things up. It’ll be interesting to see how they get around conflicts – being a label, distributor, retailer? Creative Vibes have jumped in too, though their site isn’t super friendly.

I’ve read plenty of Australian music journo Divola’s pieces over the years in places like Drum Media, the SMH and Rolling Stone Aust, he makes a few interesting points in this interview on AMO.

My blog’s been pretty quiet of late, but I’ve got a reasonably good excuse: blogspot is blocked here in China. So I’ve set up a site using Word Press and so far I’m pretty happy. It’s not so plug and play as blogspot, but that is sure to be great once I’m comfortable enough to start messing around with the environment here.

Anyway, spread the word! I’ve got lots to catch up on, the past month or two have been far from quiet.