Muxtape: Sound Sounds

Muxtape is what it sounds like, a 2.0 mixtape community that keeps it simple. Clean interfaces, with a few colors and a simple idea – upload 12 tracks at a time to simulate an old school mixtape that captures your mood at the moment. It just went live, so we’ll see where it goes. For now, yours truly had some fun choosing a dozen jams that captured a rainy night, after a long day of working and writing. Enjoy.

Blog Nation

Outside.in, a location-based/neighborhood-themed social network released a list of the bloggiest cities and hoods in the country. A common preoccupation? Gentrification. Hmm. Check out the network and the story > Here.

1. Boston
2. Philadelphia
3. Pittsburgh
4. Washington, D.C.
5. Portland, OR
6. New York
7. San Francisco
8. Seattle
9. Chicago
10. Los Angeles

1. Clinton Hill, Brooklyn
2. Shaw, DC
3. Downtown LA
4. Newton, Mass
5. Rogers Park/North Howard Chicago
6. Pearl District (“The Pearl”), Portland
7. Watertown, Mass
8. Harlem, NY
9. Potrero Hill, SF
10. Coconut Grove (“The Grove”), FL

Smash the System

Chris “The Long Tail” Anderson posted some interesting figures about the state of the record industry as we know it on his blog. A couple of people posted negative comments, but the general consensus was postive. David Allen, guitarist for Gang Of Four posted a comment that’s in line with what I’ve been hearing from most progressive artists who do not confuse the death of the old label system with the death of music. Allen also has a nifty blog which you can peruse HERE. Of course, yours truly couldn’t resist throwing in his two cents. I’ve been arguing that MP3s serve their function perfectly well as a mere ENTRY point into a larger music experience, laden with revenue-generating potential – concerts, t-shirts, cds, vinyl, posters, dvds, etc. The figures below are all from Anderson’s blog.

• Concerts and merchandise: UP (+4%)
• Digital tracks: UP (+46%)
• Ringtones: UP (+86% last year, but probably just single-digit percent this year)
• Licensing for commercials, TV shows, movies and videogames: UP (Warner Music saw licensing grow by about $20 million over the past year)
• Even vinyl singles (think DJs): UP (more than doubled in the UK)
• And, if you include the iPod in the music industry, as I’d argue a fair-minded analysis would: UP, UP, UP! (+31% this year)

Only CDs are down (-18%).

Monkey Love

Happy Hump Day heathens, may this inspire you to kinder heights. Almost as comforting as the image and story is the collection of comments linked to the story from places as far flung as Romania and Miami. See, the web as Martha might say, can be a good thing. Credits: Associated Press and UK Daily Mail.

The abandoned monkey who has found love with a pigeon

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They’re an odd couple in every sense but a monkey and a pigeon have become inseparable at an animal sanctuary in China.
The 12-week-old macaque – who was abandoned by his mother – was close to death when it was rescued on Neilingding Island, in Goangdong Province.
After being taken to an animal hospital his health began to improve but he seemed spiritless – until he developed a friendship with a white pigeon.

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The blossoming relationship helped to revive the macaque who has developed a new lease of life, say staff at the sanctuary.
Now the unlikely duo are never far from each other’s side, but they aren’t the only ones to strike up an unusual friendship.
Earlier this year a pig adopted a tiger cub and raised him along with her piglets because his mother couldn’t feed him.
And in 2005 a baby deer named Mi-Lu befriended lurcher Geoffrey at the Knowsley Animal Park in Merseyside after she was rejected by her mother.

Ustream, iStream, We all stream

Ok, here’s the unveiling of my next video scheme. My sore, bruised, sensitive shallow ego bounced back from my editorial critique convinced that it was time to bump things up to another level. I will always love and cherish the printed word, but Gemini that I am, I cannot resist new doodads with bells and whistles and buttons and things.
So, combining my idea for reporting on music wherever I may roam, I’m jumping on the video streaming cluster fuck called LifeCasting. Don’t worry, I won’t be televising my bowel movements – well, maybe on special request. And I’m not strapping a mobile cam to my skull and streaming shots of me slowly growing cancerous outgrowths.
What I do intend to broadcast on the world wide web and its mobile channels is going to be purely music-related for now. “This is me DJ-ing in my boxers!! This is me listening to a new CD and thinking of something clever to say. This is me hustling the do ho at this club to let me in. This is me in the DJ booth with the world’s greatest spinner ever!!!” At least until copyright gestapo and overzealous publicists come hunting me down. Although, with my freelance Press Pass conspicuously tucked into my Kangol, I should be able to maneuver these overcrowded seas of See-Me/Love-Me media without much trauma. Until all the legal bugs regarding user-generated-content get worked out, pretty much anything goes. Hopefully, this whole User-Content hoopla won’t go the way of the 1.0 Dot.com bubble before I get… um, what is it, again???? Oh yeah – my 15 minutes. Lunchtime!

Radiohead Gaga

God’s favorite band, Radiohead, earns their keep. Proving why they are geeks’ last hope for indie pop, and possibly better than every other musician and mere mortal on this scorched earth, the label-free group released its latest album In Rainbows online, direct to ‘Head heads, allowing them to download fully shareable mp3s – for whatever price they wish to set. Of course, their site crashed. In a Web 2.0 world, that’s like having multiple clitoral, vaginal, anal and oral orgasms on-camera during half-time at the Superbowl. Record labels, ask not for whom the ping tolls. To cover their wee rocker arses, they’re releasing a fetish CD box set including – gasp! – vinyl, reminding users that while instant gratification in your earhole is all good, there’s nothing quite like the feeling of….acetate in your hands.

Hitotoki

hitotoki |hee toe toe key|

noun 1. a single moment; one’s moment; a point in time.
hitotoki.org is a new literary site collecting stories of personal, singular experiences in Tokyo.

Just Letters

Flash-based real-time word scramble. Just what you need, another online distraction.