The View from the Spaghetti Factory

Just a few things that have been amusing me recently…

1. It’s been mentioned by loads of people already, but Marcus Brigstocke’s non-faith-specific religion rant is worth repeating regularly.

2. Good to see Paul Ford writing on his website Ftrain again. He isn’t as prolific as he used to be, but that just means it’s even better when he returns after a long absence… Ftrain - I Am Making a Difference.

3. Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip “Thou Shalt always Kill”

4. Lincoln City’s comedy start to the season. While some have criticised defensive ineptness and a continued failure to repair tactical inconsistencies since early last year, I still insist this is a deliberate piece of black comic performance art, a satirical commentary on the futility of artistic life in an age of global conflict.

Are you familiar with Audioscrobbler? It’s a little tool that works with your computer’s media player (iTunes, Winamp, etc) and uploads your listening habits to a central website. That way, you can marvel at the number of times you’ve listened to “Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep”, while also browsing other people’s playlists and finding new things to listen to. I’ve been using it for years, and it’s lots of fun.

Anyway, the people who designed Audioscrobbler expanded their operation a couple of years ago, creating Last.FM, a cuddly Web 2.0 social networking site combining the Audioscrobbler technology with Facebook-style profile pages, messageboards, personalised streaming radio feeds and the potential to run your own little online record label.

Oh, and then music industry giants CBS bought the company.

Yep, another corporate takeover, and this one cost 280 million US dollars, to be precise. And while Flickr, Myspace and Youtube don’t seem to have been affected too badly by their corporate takeovers, I think I’ll be keeping Last.FM at arm’s length. Via Robert Fripp, here’s an extract from the contract you must agree to if you upload any of your music to Last.FM…

Now, I’d be naive to think that I was going to get rich by uploading any of my tracks to Last.FM, but that’s not the point. There’s an underground music revolution going on out there… or perhaps not.