Seems a good time for signposts to free audio ticklers online – given all those empty winter hard-drive mp3 appeals going around, and the difficulty of walking a city block without running into an ipod owner with tampon strings hanging out of their ears.
ReInventing Radio
Radio audiences are generally shrinking. As are TV audiences. Online audiences are massively increasing. San Francisco’s WFMU ( home of many fine audio artists over the decades ) understand this well, and are already adapting their fine programs and back catalogues for online audiences. Most of their finer shows can be automatically downloaded by your favourite ‘podcast’ application and listened to each week whenever suits. They also maintain a consistently provocative and piss-funny blog, each entry usually packed to the hilt with a foaming mouth of bizarro mp3s. The Blog Of The Freeform Radio Station of The Nation, be clickable here : http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/.
Audio Ink
Podcasts of course, while being hyped all over the place as revolutionising easy audio distribution and audience building, are so numerous now that the difficulty is wading through the swampy noise to find those podcasts worth subscribing to. Fiendish comic writer and online trawler of note, Warren Ellis, keeps his ears to the ground, or the sky, and the fruits of his gatherings are displayed for all to feast their ears on at www.warrenellis.com. He compiles the odd podcast ‘mixtape’ but also sends fairly regular links to curiosities like: www.quietamerican.org/vacation.html – which is a collection of 1 minute found sounds from around the world.
JukeBox Madness
The Scopitone is a “Film Jukebox” invented in France in the early 1960’s (from surplus World War II airplane parts!). Anyone who has seen the amount of repair needed for a busy photocopier won’t be surprised to learn that such a machine with so many moving parts eventually disappeared, but while they lasted, they ushered in a new era of musical short films which pre-date today’s music videos. Word has it that Francis Ford Coppola bought the company at some point, but it sank regardless. The Mu Mesons archives in Sydney have two of these jukeboxes, as well a dazzling collection of clips – but aside from that – the best bet for watching and hearing some of these clips is : http://bedazzled.blogs.com – an enthusiastic music of yesteryear fan site that ‘lovingly’ rips and uploads esoterica on a daily basis. Latest entries included a Swedish Christian instrumental surf rock band,
a grab from a ‘music for orgies’ compilation, videos of the Carpenters performing on TV and vintage telephone ads.
Del.icio.us Audio
http://del.icio.us is an online service that folks have taken to calling ‘social bookmarking’. It’s both a place to conveniently store your own bookmarks online with comments, and view from anywhere, as well as somewhere for exploring other people’s bookmarks. Simple as it sounds, it takes a little to get used to, but then you can easily wander, or subscribe for example – the all the webpages in a given week that all users have bookmarked with the keyword ( or tag as they say ) ‘video’ ‘audio’ ‘skateboarding’ ‘pixels’ or whatever you want. In an era of white noise, ways to harness the combined brain power of communities like this are only going to become more and more useful. They’ve recently added functions that let you to keep track of any media items bookmarked such as mp3s or movie files. The best guide to using del.icio.us is here :
http://www.beelerspace.com/index.php?p=890.
Outsider Audio
365 days, one track a day during 2003, ripped and uploaded by garage sale maniacs: http://www.ubu.com/outsiders/365.
Sample tracks? Muhummad Ali’s historical theme song, songs from the Atari corp about ‘Fly, Yar Warriors/Missile Command’ and of course, the Atari Theme, I.B.M. 7090 – Music From Mathematics, The Amazing Adventures of Pac-Man, Charlie the Hamster Sings the Ten Commandments, William Shatner’s drunken cover of Rocket Man and 360ish more.
Net Label Audio ( Free Music!)
Archive.org are well known online for their generous hosting of video files, and their extensive back catalogue of weird mostly American public domain films. They also host a huge range of net label mp3s, from a huge range of mostly electronic music labels. Well worth a browse >> http://www.archive.org/audio/netlabels.php
tags: mp3blogs, mp3, podcasting