It's a comin'!

This text is aging rapidly... for now, i'll just add that most of my music ranting will be taking place here:

mog.com

Mog is good.

See you there!

I love music. I love it all the time. There is music i like for every mood, emotion, and occasion. There is music i like to wake up to, music i like to work to, music i like to dance to, music i like to socialize to, if my wife let me, i'd probably even sleep with my music on. I like almost all of it: new and old, fast and slow, pop and avant-garde. And I'm really excited about the future of digital music. The ways we enjoy music in the future are sure to change and the possibilities are brilliant. Imagine having access to a library of everything that has ever been recorded, from the latest single to the classic archives, all at your fingertips wherever you are. In your car, home, office, or even mobile. Imagine that there are ways to organize your favorite music based on your tastes. And to share your tastes with others. To have new music recommended to you by friends or others who share your tastes in non-trivial ways. It could be way cool. This could all be done with today's technology - and some of it is being done already. In this case, we are waiting for the music industry to catch up with the technology. With further advancements in technology, these things will become even easier and more accessible. Soon the benefits of these commodities will outweigh the resistance to them and there will be absolutely no stopping there flow. Trying to block progress of this nature would be like trying to hold back the tide. Forward-thinking members of the music community will embrace and harness these possibilities, everyone else will be left behind.

In the here and now.... i've switched from winamp to media jukebox as my main mp3 player. Winamp rules. It is light, practical, functional, free, and rock-solid stable. I've switched because it lacks an effective means of organizing my sprawling collection of 7,000 tracks. With MJ, i can now organize my collection based on custom database attributes and play them back based on dynamic queries of those attributes. This is an incredibly powerful concept! I don't think they take it far enough, but so far, this is the best software i've seen for organizing a large collection. If they don't get off their butts and keep the enhancements coming though, i may have to do it myself. Some friends of mine are starting some open source music software and i'm tempted to join in and help write the product i really want... I spend a lot of time at allmusic.com . This is a very cool website for music lovers. I love to explore sounds i haven't heard before and allmusic is a great guide. Thanks to allmusic, the list of cds i want to buy is longer than ever (despite my binge in the states over xmas...).

The distribution of music via the internet is truly revolutionizing and democratizing the music business (well, slowly anyway...). Major record labels are becoming less and less necessary for promotion and distribution. You can discover unsigned bands from around the world on the internet. The whole process is falling back into the peoples' hands! Punk rock put the fire back in D.I.Y. music and now technology has given us the means. More and more quality recordings are coming out of basements and flowing around the internet. This is a trend that is only going to grow. Plenty of people will always prefer to have their mass-marketed music spoon-fed to them, but many who are ready to embrace a more interactive and immersive music community.

Welcome to the underground - where it's always a little bit cooler. Just to give you a frame of reference, above ground i dig: Pavement, Ben Harper, Smashing Pumpkins, PJ Harvey, Cat Stevens, Liz Phair, Flaming Lips, Ali Akbar Khan, Levellers, Bare Naked Ladies, Indigo Girls, Stereolab, Ani Difranco, Arrested Development, Peter Gabriel, Bettie Serveert, Bob Marley, Digable Planets, Modest Mouse, Built to Spill, and most Real World and Putumayo compilations.