A little over a month ago, I attended a conference on “ideas, techniques and technologies for building community dialogue” called New Connections. It was a great, shambolic and inspiring event. At the time, I blogged about Mark Pesce’s keynote address - his renaissance span of ideas is totally inspiring - but I always meant to cover a few of the other sessions.

Only a few days after the Australian federal election, and organised by Tom Dawkins and Cassie Charlton from Vibewire, politics was always going to be a crucial part of the “community dialogue” discussed. In the first hour, we heard from media communications academic/lobbyist Julie Eisenberg, founder of the Internet Advocacy Roundtable Alan Rosenblatt, Carol Darr from George Washington Uni, online strategist for the Kevin07 campaign Camilla Cooke, and Brett Solomon the director of Get Up! Australia. An impressive panel. Or it would have been if phone connections worked (the US speakers were on a glitchy line).

“Lack of understanding of the medium did the Liberals a disservice,” said Camilla Cooke. But while there was a general feeling among the Australian attendees and panelists that the election result repudiated the Howard Government, the reality, as pointed out by Brett Solomon, was that only a few per cent of the population shifted. It’s no Rudd-slide (in fact, final numbers look even closer - looks more like ambivalence on the part of the electorate). And with 250,000 active members, Solomon’s online organisation, Get Up!, had the potential to make a difference in swinging electorates, with, he said, “thousands added to crucial electoral rolls.”

US blogging culture is different to Australia. Per capita and real numbers are far far bigger there, and the move to mainstream acceptance here has been slow. There are similarities, however. As Carol Barr pointed out, “People engaged in these blogs tend to be very influential in their local communities. Tap into them, and there are clear benefits.” (Or was she just trying to get all the bloggers onside? - it worked with me).

“It’s still just 9am!” she announced, with respect to online take up in politics. She emphasised the importance of constituent relationship management, micro-targeting, but warned of privacy implications. And, what I found interesting, was IP-targeted advertising by postcode. Camilla Cooke said this was carried out in the 2007 Australian election. That is, ads served up on your favourite website that relate to you, because you’re in a marginal seat, because there’s a hot local issue, and so on. Seems later than 9am, but I guess politicians get up early.

Much of the greatness of this day was about the informal chats between sessions, the race across to Single Origin for great coffee, the not quite tangible flashes of inspiration at ideas. Later, Tom Dawkins announced he was abdicating the throne, moving to the US to work with comparable organisations (Vibewire’s been his baby from day one) - I suppose there’ll be a new leader, I wonder how the organisation will make the transition?

I joined a panel on print media - “why bother with print?” - with Rachel Hills (New Matilda) and Matt Khoury (City News). I’m not sure how interesting it was for the audience, but I basically discussed the Cyclic Defrost model. How it works. Why we do print. To cut a long story short, print’s great for reaching new readers, and Cyclic’s focus is exposing readers to artists they aren’t familiar with (web’s great on the other hand for building relationships with established readers and people who are looking for specific artists); print’s portable and very readable; and there’s a sense of finality to the printed word you often miss online. There was a lot more, but I could go on all day.

Speaking on that panel, I missed discussions of the legal issues around digital technology, health and technology, and engaging young people in rural areas, but after wolfing down one of the last sandwiches (our panel ate into the lunch break), it was time for the session I’d really hoped to catch, on web 2.0. The interactive web if you like - though a lot of the audience had trouble getting their heads around it, let alone get into any real discussion. Conversation swirled around corporate and government influence; the shift from “god-like” journos making pronouncements from on high to the user-generated content model, and the related shifts in quality; egocentric networks, preening parlours (myspace), and the modularising of the web. Heady stuff.

Vibewire has just relaunched with a social media/web 2.0 look too.

I found myself wondering what all this social media is doing/will do to our social abilities. Communities develop by adults reinforcing childhood growth, and children imitating adult behaviours. But where people communicate primarily online, do we run the risk of evolving into otaku?

I walked up to the Teachers’ Club on Reservoir Street, Surry Hills, on Friday morning, sure of only one thing. I was going to get some good coffee. Across the street from the club’s new conference facilities is one of the top two coffee purveyors in town, Single Origin Roaster (though as this review says, the owner can be a little unnervingly friendly at times) - I needed that after radio the night before, DJing alongside SYLK and Catcall at the Oyster magazine launch the night before that, and the day job - suitably refreshed I crossed back to the Teacher’s and into the mass of people making/hoping to make new connections.

Most of the conferences I attend are organised by professionals, with months or years in the making, and this one was nothing like that. Tom Dawkins and Cassie Charlton, the organisers from Vibewire, had blu tac and posters and programs and all manner of other paraphernalia spilling out of arms and bags, and, half an hour after the keynote was to begin, the posters were still being affixed in the main auditorium. But given they had six weeks to get it together, at the same time as running their electiontracker coverage - well it was a pretty good effort getting it together.

Billowing masses of jargon clouded up the place in Mark Pesce’s keynote, but his sharply inspiring ideas cut through the obfuscation relatively unscathed. Instead of dwelling on technology, he stepped back and looked at the way people interact socially in terms of human nature and biology. His basic premise was that left/socialist and right/libertarian philosphies, the two bookends of partisan politics, are rooted in basic biology.

The tension between altruistic and selfish behaviour.

Darwin broached it in the Ascent of Man saying morality provided no advantage to the individual, but immense advantages to the tribe or group (these quotes were abused by colonising Brits - probably a large reason why they’ve been dropped from the evolutionary canon) - and until recently biologists didn’t accept altruism as a natural phenomenon, expecting individuals to work for their own good and that of their children. Ants and bees, which don’t obey the selfish ’survival of the fittest’ laws and yet produce highly successful colonies, were a spanner in the works for biologists, but, just this year, biologists started publishing on the idea of “multi-level selection“. Suddenly you’ve got a scientific justification for the tensions between altruism and selfishness as critical factors in natural selection - and compelling support for politics/social media/human nature taking in elements of both.

Basically social groups do better for the individual/children if they’re selfish, but they do better for the group if they behave altruistically. You need both.

Dunbar’s work on social group size showed that humans have an optimal group size of 150. The first urban groups (1000+) appeared 10,000 years ago, and, since then, we’ve had more people in our circles than our cortexes can keep up with; competing groups, and real advantages to be gained from altruism. That’s skyrocketing. Pesce argues that, “In the network era, the benefits of altruism disproportionately outweigh selfishness.”

Wikipedia vs Encyclopaedia Britannica is a good example. Now everyone, no matter how marginalised, can make a contribution to society. And (here’s the important bit), Wikipedia gives a selection advantage to everyone who reads it, simply by giving them access to the facts.

Pesce discovered a community of amateur online psephologists (via Crikey) including Poll Bludger and Possums Pollytics. By sharing their election stats knowledge, these bloggers brought readers up to a shared level of understanding - a point where all parties could take part in debates and advance the group’s knowledge.

This idea of blogging communities isn’t as neat as the wiki resource, but it’s equally important. In this knowledge sharing environment, spurred on by the thrill of conversation and competition, the group makes advances in ideas and understanding that they wouldn’t have individually. This idea holds equally true with music blogs by people like Simon Reynolds, K-Punk and Emmy Hennings… try it.

“Sharing is the shape, promise and danger of the world to come,” according to Pesce, a future that’s described in John Robb’s Brave New War - equal parts good and bad. There were no easy answers, just (for me at least) quite a step up in thinking about where it all fits in.

More to come…

Here’s a fascinating article that in a sense reinforces things that you already knew, but hadn’t put into words. Or at least I instinctively knew but hadn’t articulated. It’s at NYmag.com, but I got it via Seb Chan’s Powerhouse Museum blog, Fresh + New.

People tackle risk in an emotional way that’s weighted towards immediate benefits over long term risks. It’s in people accepting the benefits of omega-3 oils in bread and milk even as they question the use of GM ingredients elsewhere, or driving home after a few drinks rather than wait for a cab or public transport. That’s the underlying concept here, I guess. Though we’re also talking a seismic shift in the way people interact online, a sudden shift forward in the internet’s evolution.

Web 2.0 - Flickr, Last.fm, myspace, del.icio.us - is an epic scale shakedown on privacy considerations. Even as campaigners take on government organisations, banks and big business to keep data collection to a minimum, the young public has taken to recording it all online, voluntarily.

In personal discussions with friends I’ve struggled to articulate just why it’s not an issue, or at least not an issue worth stopping me from doing things online. I guess it’s because although I’m not an under-25, as someone who’s had a vaguely public life through DJing, radio and writing, doing things online is pretty comfortable. I didn’t grow up with gaming - no online worlds like Second Life or WOW - but message boards and forums can be community every bit as real as anywhere else.

The New York mag article points out this is the first ‘real’ generation gap since the ’50s.

“Younger people, one could point out, are the only ones for whom it seems to have sunk in that the idea of a truly private life is already an illusion. Every street in New York has a surveillance camera. Each time you swipe your debit card at Duane Reade or use your MetroCard, that transaction is tracked. Your employer owns your e-mails. The NSA owns your phone calls. Your life is being lived in public whether you choose to acknowledge it or not.”

Like a great song, a great observation takes something so patently obvious that noone’s thought of observing it before, and uses it to enunciate a poignant reality.

“When I was in high school, you’d have to be a megalomaniac or the most popular kid around to think of yourself as having a fan base. But people 25 and under are just being realistic when they think of themselves that way, says media researcher Danah Boyd, who calls the phenomenon “invisible audiences.” Since their early adolescence, they’ve learned to modulate their voice to address a set of listeners that may shrink or expand at any time: talking to one friend via instant message (who could cut-and-paste the transcript), addressing an e-mail distribution list (archived and accessible years later), arguing with someone on a posting board (anonymous, semi-anonymous, then linked to by a snarky blog). It’s a form of communication that requires a person to be constantly aware that anything you say can and will be used against you, but somehow not to mind.”

It’s funny commenting on this here - should I cross-post to Last.fm and myspace?

I read on a friend’s myspace that he likes reading blogs by people he hates (!) and having posted at inthemix.com.au for ages, it’s second nature to remember that your throwaway remark, acerbically witty as it might be, the day after a second-rate club night, will probably be read (and remarked upon) by the promoter, the DJs, and a sub-set of people who were there.

That’s not to say it’s all good.

It’s important that people question what’s happening, and what’s going to happen with all this information. The people who control these sites, and thus the data, are huge multinationals as Jace/Rupture and Wayne comment here.

“I think im saying web2.0 culture is great, but the monetization/meta-data analysis of that culture could easily be applied to uses out of step with web2.0’s XML-y emphasis on collabo, trading, datamashup, sharing, etc.”

Wayne calls for “collabo-curatorial hacktivism…fostering DIY/p2p remix/mash culture thru the civilly disobedient sharing and tweaking and linking of things. &thus making eloquent arguments, in discourse and design, against the very status quo that the corporate mining of our metamaps would seem to support.”

If I like the sound of that, does it pin me to my generation?

Perhaps more than any other style of music, grime and dubstep have taken advantage, or taken the interest of cyber networks and internet denizens. Although plenty of the prose gets lost in detailed sociological critique or scene squabbles, a few get past that with tight commentary and (for those of us not on the East London pulse) an in to the limited run, super-limited availability dubplate culture with MP3 downloads.

36 year old Bristolian Nick Edwards runs one of the more enjoyable - Gutterbreakz. He’s not as immersed in grime/dubstep as some, but I find his eclectic take on it all more interesting than most of the purist bloggers. Originally a text blog, in recent months he’s made the shift to hosting dirty new breakbeat tracks and the odd mix set.

I’ve been keen to see just what makes people host MP3 music files for general access when it seems the mainstream record industry is so righteously against it. And alongside my recent interviews with Jace Clayton (DJ/Rupture) and Stuart Buchanan (Fat Planet), Edwards is focused on a niche sound, but his approach seems indicative of a wider pattern and it seemed like another corner of the puzzle.

Why did you start your blog and what did you hope to get out of it?

Don’t know exactly. Just inspired by other people doing it and thought I’d have a go. It’s a way to record all those random thoughts and feelings I get from music that I wouldn’t normally have an outlet to express. I started in August 2003, but the first year was kind of aimless. I didn’t really find my ‘direction’ until last year.

What decisions do you make when you’re thinking of hosting a song?

It depends. If it’s older material, especially forgotten/out of print stuff then I just go for it. With new releases I’m more careful. I’ve started ripping tracks at 96kbps - I don’t want the quality too high, because I don’t want to give away other people’s music. Or I might just host a two minute clip. I want to inspire people to buy the music that I think is good, rather than giving it away. Hosting mixes is another good way of getting people into good music without giving away full tracks. I’ve also started my Gutterbreakz FM thing, where I play all the music I’m currently into at 64kbps, with me chatting over the top.

What sort of feedback do you get? From public, labels, artists?

Generally favourable so far! Quite a few people leave comments at the blog or send me e-mails. It’s mainly other music fans, but occasionally artists or labels with get in touch. I have built up quite a few contacts from this.

How many unique visitors do you get to the site? How many return?

Around 10,000 a month. I think I have quite a few regular visitors, but I don’t monitor that too closely.

What’s the bandwidth like? Does it cost you a lot to keep the site up? Do you host your own music or just link to others?

Generally shifting between 50-70 gb a month. It costs me to have the server space to host the MP3s, but it’s pretty cheap. I almost always host myself, but will sometimes link to others, with acknowledgements.

What do you think about file-sharing, P2P and so on?

Having been a big P2P user in the past, I’ve now stopped completely. It is a good way to hear new music, but I don’t think it helps anyone in the industry particularly. Not that I care about the well being of the major labels - if they all went bankrupt tomorrow I wouldn’t give a damn. But if you’re into underground innovative music, you’ve got to support it by buying the releases, because these people are on the breadline. Actually P2P can still be good for getting hold of hard to find deleted/unreleased stuff, but I found that I wasn’t really listening to a lot of the stuff I was downloading - without having made a financial commitment you just take it for granted and your iPod gets full of MP3s you never get around to playing. You end up hoarding more music then you have time to listen to. Now I prefer to buy selectively and really appreciate the music.

(Check Nick Southall’s recent piece for Stylus on this topic.)

What do you think of the recent case in Australia, where mp3s4free.net went down for linking to music hosted elsewhere? Do you see any precedent for MP3 blogs in general?

Well it’s gonna happen. I’ve already seen an example of an MP3 blog being threatened with legal action. It’s only a matter of time before the big crackdown. Certain blogs like mine probably won’t be affected for a while because we’re not sharing the sort of music that the big publishers are concerned with. I’m pretty much out of the loop for now.

What do you think of the impact of technology on the music industry? Do you think it is set for a shakeup? Or will the current players get everything under control?

They always regain control. Power breeds more power. Enjoy the freedom while it lasts.

What do you think are the biggest issues at the moment?

I dunno really. I’m not on a crusade or anything. I just wanna get people into good music that they might not get a chance to hear otherwise. I’ll be interested to see how well the CD format holds up against downloads. I think its days might be numbered.

Are there any really radical options being put forward?

From my point of view (ie underground) there are two main options. Unsigned artists who just want people to hear their shit will be able to share it around easily enough on the Internet. I give loads of my own music away. There’s quite few netlabels (eg Tokyo Dawn) that offer the music completely free. It’s accepted now that none of us will make a living out of it anyway, so why not? Some people choose to go to the expense of releasing their music on vinyl, which is great - and if you like the tunes, go buy the record. What the mainstream industry chooses to do is their business. I really couldn’t give a shit.

Aside from the blog, what else do you do? Do you write elsewhere?

I have no professional involvement with the music industry. I work a normal job. Blogging is my hobby, along with DJing and making my own music. I sometimes guest at another blog, but that’s about it. I don’t really have any aspirations to write anywhere else. I’m quite happy where I am.

Listen to Guttah’s mixes and net radio segments at Bleepfiend, check him championing bleep’n'bass and chatting about everything from Fennesz to DJ Maxximus to Tricky Disco at the Guttah.

Ripping its way around the net several years ago, the Gold Teeth Thief mix was the first challenger to Coldcut’s 70 Minutes of Madness crown and its raucous melange reacted fiercely against the fake rules of DJing, the artificial boundaries saying what music you can/can’t play in different environments and how to put that music together. But unlike Coldcut’s studio-recorded set, Rupture recorded his live on three turntables.

Like a few of my favourite DJs – Optimo, Mark N, Bec Paton, Glimmer Twins, even Certified Bananas – he sits somewhere between Simon Reynold’s two schools of music fan, neither strictly genreist or populist, instead, right where the best DJs should be, unwrapping music.

He tears through sets, cutting up tracks he obviously loves with complete irreverence. Soaring Middle Eastern voices ride nasty basslines, Crunk anthems bump against big time pop tunes and searing junglist breakbeats play host to chatting ragga MCs, somehow it all makes a global rhythmic sense that’s a hell of a long way from your local record shop’s World Music section.

As well as DJing, recording for labels including Tigerbeat6, Soul Jazz and his own Soot Records, Rupture, real name Jace Clayton, also runs one of the best MP3 blogs around, Mudd Up!. Covering grime to favela to screw to breakcore to Moroccan chants to whatever else – and always coupled with equally incisive readable commentary. In a world of music that just keeps getting wider, he’s becoming one of my favourite filters on it all. He’s been interviewed about music plenty of times, so I bounced him a handful of questions about technology, music and the future.

What decisions do you make when you’re thinking of hosting a song?

It has to be quality of course, and it also has to be useful – something that is not already digitized and floating around. 90% of the time, I only host music I own, and as far as I know, it’s music that tends not to be ripped - from vinyl, cassettes, CDs – it’s cool that blogs post mainstream commercial tunes that you can readily find on P2P networks, but Mudd Up! is more like … decentertainment. I like posting amazing songs by bands or artists people haven’t really heard of or are hard to get even for fans, like rips of expensive grime 12″s, or gems from African CD-Rs I get from Moroccan and Senegalese shops here in Spain. Part of the whole point is that hotness is everywhere, not just in the handful of tightly controlled music labels and media outlets who spend money to create demand.

What sort of feedback do you get?

Most people just download and don’t say anything! The public and artists who read regularly appreciate it though, I do get thank-you emails, often as basic as ‘thanks for posting this kind of music, it’s so hard to learn about where I live’. Plus folks understand that I’m sharing music I like & writing about it and all for free.

What do you think of the recent case in Australia, where mp3s4free.net went down for linking to music hosted elsewhere? Do you see any precedent for MP3 blogs in general?

That is completely absurd, both in terms of moral standards and ideological reasoning, and in terms of possibilities for enforcement. Making links to free music hosted in other countries illegal on Australian sites is like arresting fish for being wet.

Precedents, of course. Radio itself: it’s a freely accessible technology that allows people to broadcast & talk about music and lets people at home copy what they like. (the fact that taping from radio is seen as legal fair use, and mp3 copying is viewed as piracy is ludicrous– the legality of identical acts changes with the fidelity of the medium) of course radio’s structure is one transmitter and thousands of receivers: it’s free culture, but its top-down, controlled. Blogs spring up like weeds, their architecture is much closer to the P2P standard of thousands of transmitters and thousands of receivers.

What do you think of the impact of technology on the music industry? Do you think it is set for a shakeup? Or will the current players get everything under control?

What do you mean by ‘current players’? The music industry is a strange ecology populated by the audience/consumers, artists and producers, and incredibly dense layers of lawyers and distributors and managers and bureaucracy and whatnot in between.

Will fans keep on sharing and talking about music they love? yes.

Will labels keep trying to force a rapidly-aging business plan using legal arm-wringing? yes.

What do you think are the biggest issues at the moment?

Structural equality in the developing world. Access to drinkable water. AIDS in Africa… Oh you mean music? heh-heh. The big issue is no big issues.

Don’t get it twisted: MP3s and legality is not a big issue. Labels and lawyers are trying to push that notion into the public, but it’s hardly the case. There is no piracy crisis. Now’s the best time EVER to be a music fan. We have an unprecedented wealth of choices. Now is the best time EVER to be making music: the barriers to entry are at their lowest, you can record an album with an inexpensive PC running free open source linux software. Moreover, the ease of distribution is incredible. At least 80,000 people have downloaded my Gold Teeth Thief mix, I just put it online to share it with friends and it exploded exponentially.

There is, as always, a shocking amount of misguided corporate greed, but that’s nothing new. The obvious global consensus is that official CD prices are unreasonably high. The CD industry is _aided_ by the fact that people will get free MP3s of artists they would not otherwise hear of and get excited enough to pay exorbitant prices for the full audio CD. People sharing files is what people always have done Rampant bootlegging is market forces as work. Russian, China, India, and Africa: in all these countries it is easier to find a bootleg CD than a ‘real’ ‘official’ version. That is the cutting edge. RIAA-style litigation, Australia link case-style absurdities are almost surreal approaches to stem the tide.

Are there any really radical options being put forward?

The radical, extremist options are what is regularly put forward by the major labels and organizations like America’s RIAA. Trying to stop fans from sharing excerpts of music online - free advertising, unlike the millions of payola labels give to radios each year to ensure airplay - is radical. Trying to force consumers to still feel satisfied by spending $12-20 on a shiny plastic circle is radical.

Paid downloads are ridiculous as well. All this upheaval or evolution of whatever you wanna call it just marks an emphasis back on performance, back on realtime music. It has long been the case that most large bands earn more money by Selling T-Shirts than they do be playing shows, and virtually all musicians they earn more money by playing shows than they do my selling albums.

So it’s possible for bands to sell fewer CDs now but continue to grow in popularity. Whether people are buying or downloading your music, though, if you come to town and perform a lot of those people will pay to go to the show. So eventually record labels will focus more on ‘artist management’, with a special emphasis on cutting into the tour profits– which traditionally labels do not earn money from. Yeah, I think soon, you know, to sign with Matador (a fake indie owned by a major label) you´ll have to commit to giving away a percentage of your live profit to the label; or labels will force artists to use their in-house booking agents. It’s a negative view but I think labels will rapidly realize that live performances will ALWAYS be an income source, and although that is not their territory, it will be easier for them, in the long run, to go parasitic on artists that way.

The music industry is stunningly corrupt, by the way. Much more corrupt than drug cartels, and almost as corrupt as corporate interests lobbying government officials in Washington D.C.

If you haven’t heard the Gold Teeth Thief mix, download it immediately from Negrophonic complete with a full tracklisting. Mudd Up! is equally essential, you have to check his current piece on indie acts selling out, from Dabrye, P73 and Oval to Stereolab, Alias and M.I.A.

Disturbing reports floating around the blogosphere of government plans to block Skype. Reuters reports that China Telecom has started blacklisting Skype users in the southern city of Shenzhen. China is the third largest market for the voice over IP (VOIP) service and I guess Chinese telecoms aren’t happy.

Fat Planet has fast become an essential filter on the world of music. Run by Stuart Buchanan, 35, of Marrickville, Sydney, the MP3 blog grew out of his weekly radio show on Sydney’s FBI 94.5 FM. The radio show (and site) aspire to a wider definition of ‘world music’. Hence the name. Typical of the best MP3 blogs, Stuart has an individual take on music, an elegant way with words and a workaholic’s list of RSS feeds, blogs, artist and label websites. Stuart and his wife run a web design shop – they’ve done sites for Depeche Mode, Gronland Records and Goldfrapp, and won the MTV Europe web award – so the simple effective website comes as no surprise. His background in writing - he edited the local student rag at uni - and a huge record collection fire the site with the passion of a music fan. He was kind enough to answer a few bounced questions on MP3 blogs and the state of music.

Why did you start your blog and what did you hope to get out of it?

The blog started as a natural extension of the radio show that I do on Sydney’s FBi 94.5FM. The idea of the show is to feature new alternative & contemporary music from around the world, to give an alternative view of what ‘world music’ is. That might be baile funk from Brazil, dancehall from Jamaica, hip-hop from Senegal, psych rock from Japan, electronica from Iceland etc. The show’s been running for two years, the blog started not long after that, basically as a recognition that much of the music I was playing were MP3s sourced from artist and label web sites and not from CDs.

Do you source your own music? Do you find it a challenge to keep your own musical vision/taste intact while filtering through so much music?

Labels send a few promos, but not as many as you might think – many labels are still nervous about allowing even one of their tracks to be posted as a free MP3. I respect that decision, but it’s becoming abundantly clear that a blog visitor hearing one MP3 can lead directly to an album sale – I hear it all the time from comments on the blog. Most of the music I source however comes via my own research, I have a long list of RSS feeds that I visit daily and make connections via articles, reviews and – of course – other members of the blog community. I never tire of hearing new music, but the long list of sites, CDs and mp3s can sometimes start to morph into a large elephant shitting in the corner of the room.

What decisions do you make when you’re thinking of hosting a song?

There’s a few – how easy is it to find this music elsewhere (if it’s readily available or well known, I may not post it); does it offer anything new or original; where is it from? Generally, I don’t post Anglo-American (also true of the radio show), but occasionally I like to post a few Australian tracks as the majority of readers are actually from overseas.

What sort of feedback do you get?

All very positive, people seem to appreciate the time and effort that goes into it and even a little ‘nice post!’ comment can work wonders on a Monday morning. I’ve yet to have any negative comments from any corner of the industry. I cover my ass by only posting mp3s from artist or label sites, or from other legitimate sources – i.e. that which is legally available for free elsewhere.

How many unique visitors do you get to the site? How many return?

I’m around 50,000 page impressions a month, and approx 12,000 users

What are bandwidth costs like? Do you host your own music or just link to others?

That’s where third party linking comes in handy – I’m conscious though of not just posting a link to an MP3 on a label site, but also posting links to the artist page, artist site or (as I’m sometimes asked to do) to online stores or to iTunes store too.

What do you think about file-sharing, p2p and so on?

I’ve used P2P to source music, yes – but generally for music that is no longer available for sale (out of print etc). It can definitely enhance and broaden your appreciation of music, however I think every P2P user will know when they’ve crossed the line. If you consciously use P2P to download an entire new album, then I’m absolutely opposed to that.

What do you think of the recent case in Australia, where mp3s4free.net went down for linking to music hosted elsewhere? Do you see any precedent for MP3 blogs in general?

Think of MP3 blogs like a combination of radio and music press – they work as a sampler for new music in exactly the same way as radio, and come bundled with the kind of critical appraisal that you’d expect from your favourite music magazine. Smarter labels and artists recognise that and work with blogs to promote their artists. It’s only a matter a time before the practice becomes more wide-spread, by which point the music industry itself may well be supporting the blog movement, rather than trying to attack at it as the bogeyman. Perhaps blogs will start to ‘licence’ free MP3s from artists and labels, I know this is starting to happen with some of the more successful American blogs, although it could potentially limit your posting options. The vast majority of blog editors do it because they love music and they want to spread the word about the artists they love – what does it say about the commercial end of the music industry that they want to stop this practice, and cut off this avenue for breaking new music?

What do you think of the impact of technology on the music industry? Do you think it is set for a shakeup? Or will the current players get everything under control?

I don’t have any faith in the major players to get it under control. For example, many of the majors use Windows as their download format, thus ensuring that iPod owners – who essentially kick-started the market for downloadable music - cannot buy the files. I can’t fathom that decision at all – it’s like trying to flog cassettes to owners of CD players. It’s the independent sector and the smaller operators who have grasped technology well. With digitial technology, means of distribution is now feasibly back in the hands of the artists, which surely has to be a good thing.

What do you think are the biggest issues at the moment?

Convincing people that digital distribution is here to stay, and not to be nervous or anxious about the implications.

Are there any really radical options being put forward? Eg. MP3 blogs, netlabels, vinyl, pay per download, free downloads, cottage industry. Do you think the music industry needs a shakeup and what do you think are good ideas or workable new models for the industry?

I think we’re already in the middle of that shake-up. There’s a lot of old school industry people sitting around talking, thinking about the future – while on the ground, the revolution has already happened. Crucially, an artist having their own means of distribution could alter the agreements that they enter into with their labels, management etc. It’s back to the ‘balance of power’ again.

The Australian-based file-sharing hub, Kazaa, has been ordered to pay 90 percent of record companies costs and make sure future versions of their software include filters to prevent the trading of copyrighted music. The record companies are celebrating a victory and Kazaa may well be too. As with the Grokster case, the courts have mostly penalised Kazaa for promoting the illegal file-sharing component of their business, dismissing the more serious allegations of copyright infringement. And as with Grokster it’s virtually a blueprint for future filesharing co’s wanting to keep out of trouble.

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.

So legal downloads are up, tripled in fact, over the past year.
Lobbyists for the record industry have had a field day, touting their battle against file-sharers as the reason paid downloads have finally started to make a return.
Here are several reasons why it is not so cut and dried.
Online music sales have come of age in the past year. As paid downloads have tripled, so have the number of online music sellers, up from 100 last year to around 300 now, and especially, Apple’s triumphant run from iTunes shop to iTunes software to everyone’s favourite Christmas present last year, the iPod.
Paid downloads have increased – 180 million single tracks downloaded in the US, Britain, Germany and France between January and June this year, compared to 57 million last year – but file-sharing still dwarfs its respectable sibling, there are at least 900 million files available on sites around the world.
Three years ago, researchers said that “active usage of online music content is one of the best predictors of increased consumer purchasing.” Parallel research found that 81 percent of music downloaders reported that their CD purchasing remained the same or increased. Many people reported they would like to pay for downloads but couldn’t do it simply enough. In fact, there’s been a constant stream of evidence that file-sharing is a positive tool for the music industry. See articles in USA Today and Wired.
Although big record industry litigation claims to have successfully sued thousands of infringing music copyrights, it’s fair to say in practice they’ve been primarily about fear. RIAA president Cary Sherman said as much, “The lawsuits are an essential educational tool.” Most (all?) of the people sued by the music industry have settled before appearing in court, they barely have a choice, either settle for a small slap on the wrist or fight against the big labels in court.
Certainly some people are scared of litigation, but most are paying for their downloads because (a) it’s easier to do and (b) there’s wider range of music and (c) possibly most importantly, broadband take up means a wider demographic is getting their music from the Internet.