My new soul brother Glenn Reynolds blogs John Hiler noticing that the unsigned music and unpublished books he's finding via weblogs are pretty good. Yeah. I wrote about this in my Monoculture piece last month. "Perhaps monoculture has run its course. Maybe what's happening now, but it's hard to see, is that each of us is taking more responsibility for getting our own information, for creating our own entertainment, and not giving that power to the centralized entertainment and information industries." [Scripting News]

You're not going to hear innovative new music on the radio any time soon.  But you can already read about it on weblogs.  Weblogs distribute editorial decisions.  Soon weblogs may become a mechanism for music distribution.  The blog you trust for recommendations will become a radio station.

12:50:49 PM   

CNet: Universal, Sony to trim download prices. Good, they're learning. Since a downloaded album gives you less than a CD, it should cost less. At this rate, us Mac users will be able to buy music online in 2003 instead of never. [Hack the Planet]

Saw this last night.  It's a step forward.  It doesn't achieve parity with MP3-based rip-mix-burn, and until the industry gives us what we want, they're going to have trouble making money.

As soon as people figure out the implications of watermarking, they're going to be upset.  Customers really don't like spyware.  And not using MP3 is just dumb.  It's cross-platform and ubiquitous, and that gives it value.  But at least you can burn CDs.

The big unanswered question: how good is the quality?

10:42:47 AM