Audioblogs tap into the human desire to share what’s important to us – or at least to show everyone how cool we are. This growth in “MP3jays” writing audioblogs further demonstrates that there’s a lot of interest out there in what other people are listening to. To join in, Apple have recently included a feature in iTunes 1.5 that allows users to publish up their playlists for all to see (and admire or laugh at) – but outside of iTunes, some blogs are courting controversy by offering unlicensed samples of tracks.
The RIAA could chose to target audiobloggers if they don’t license tracks properly – and since many of the bloggers are individuals, they won’t be able to afford the fees to get legal.
However, the advantages in audioblogs to the industry are immense: people place greater value on individual’s tastes and being able to listen to a piece of music tells you much more about how you feel about it than words ever will. Audioblogs represent high quality, highly-targeted publicity for record companies, and not only is it free, but someone else is paying for the bandwidth.
Try the most successful audioblog out there: Fluxblog from Matthew Perpetua posts music on the site – but all the tracks are used properly and with permission.
Fluxblog
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Fraser Lovatt
Fraser Lovatt has spent the last fifteen years working in publishing, TV and the Internet in various capacities, and believes that they will be seperate platforms for at least a while yet. His main interests at the moment are exploring where Linux is taking home entertainment and how technology is conferring technical skills on more and more people.
Fraser Lovatt was born in the same year that 2001: A Space Odyssey was delighting and confusing people in the cinemas, and developed a lifelong love of technology as soon as he realised that things could be taken apart, sometimes put back together again, but mostly left in bits or made into something the original designer hadn't quite planned upon.
At school he was definitely in the ZX Spectrum/Magpie/BMX camp, rather than the BBC Micro/Blue Peter/well-behaved group. This is all deeply ironic as he later went on to spend nine years working at the BBC.
After a few years of working as a bookseller in Scotland, ("Back when it was actually a skilled profession" he'll tell anyone still listening), he moved to England for reasons he can't quite explain adequately to himself. After a couple of publishing jobs punctuated by sporadic bursts of travelling and photography came the aforementioned nine years at the BBC where he specialised in internet technologies and video.
These days his primary interests are Java, Linux, videogames and pies - and if they're not candidates for convergence, then what is?
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