Mp3 Blogs are all around us

“Forget squeezing millions from a few megahits at the top of the charts. The future of entertainment is in the millions of niche markets at the shallow end of the bitstream.”

– Chris Anderson ( Wired magazine boy, currently authoring The Long Tail about the above phenomenon ).

Mp3 Blogs live in virtually every ecosystem on earth including the most extreme hot springs, freezing cold ice, deep beneath the earth’s surface, and at altitudes only reachable by aircraft. Mp3 Blogs even live in such hostile environments as pure salt, petroleum, and gas. These creatures vary greatly in size. The smallest Mp3 Blogs are smaller than some single-celled protozoa. Others are as large as small species of mammals. They are gifted with strength far greater than one would expect given their size. Some are capable of shifting units 50 to 300 times their weight.

The success of the Mp3 Blogs as a whole is due to their having many major assets in the endless struggle for survival. Here are just a few:
1) High mobility– allowing them to actively seek favorable environments, food, mates as well as to escape from their enemies.
2) Adaptability– the ability to survive extreme living conditions, and to get nourishment from a wide variety of sources.
3) Durability- an external skeleton, the strongest possible construction for so small an amount of material.
4) Small size– their demands of on given environment are meager, and they occupy many niches deemed unusable by other creatures of the earth.
5) Metamorphosis– this allows immature Mp3 Blogs to exploit completely different food supplies than the adults as well as to develop a multitude of other adaptations for survival.
6) Proliferation– by producing huge numbers of offspring more will survive to breed, thus ensuring the future of the species.

Small wonder then, that the flocks of oversized flapping flesh-beasts want a piece of this action. Alas, those mountains of record-company meat won’t last for long in the heat of the 21C, but there are already swarms of the tiny winged zapping ahead. And before we dance – sink your teeth into a piece of recent research by Chris Anderson, into the top 100 best-selling albums of all-time. Turns out 30 of them came from 1976-85, more than 20 came from 91-95, 20 came from 96-2000, and less than 5 came from 2001-05. Oh No~! Less mega-mega-mega rich musicians in the world. Does that mean David Hasselhoff won’t be coming back to sing Carols By Candlelight to Australia again in 2006? Swoon..

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by Sean Healy, January 4, 2006 4 Comments

Slayer covers using C64 & NES

c64 slayerMp3 blogs are becoming one of my favourite ways to find new music. Wander/wade through the ginormous collection of them, subscribe to the one’s you like (via RSS), and watch the daily flow of great mp3s roll in.

Such as these Slayer covers via Cake and Polka:

Commodore 64 Sid Chip Tune Slayer!
Lunatic – Seasons In The Abyss (mp3)

NES Chip Tune Slayer!
lonytynch – Angel Of Death (mp3)

The demented acapella version of Slayer’s Angel of Death is well worth a listen too.

slayer obey

And shout-out for this post goes to Emile Zile, who suffers that most awkward of birth-dates – January 1st~! Watch Emile’s videos and drop him a line b4 the clock strikes~! ( Look out for ‘Larry Edmur’s Suit’, where Emile hilariously out-gestured the goofy host on the national television gameshow ‘The New Price is Right’.) Here’s hoping NYE 2005 is a rockin one 4u in Europe, EZ~!

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by Sean Healy, December 30, 2005 3 Comments

Smart Mobs In Cronulla?

After a weekend of race-related clashes on Cronulla beach in Sydney, Australian Prime Minister weighed in with his important contribution : “Keep up the Christmas decorations,” declaring a need to keep our countries shopping malls covered with Christian tinsel. In all of the media coverage surrounding the sad events, a debate about what it means to be a ‘real Australian’ has emerged, generally referring to caucasians or Mediterraneans born here or there, and it seems striking that no-one seems to have considered looking at the Aboriginal perspective on this at the same time. The Queen of the empire will be out to Oz in March for the Commonwealth Games, so no doubt there will be plenty more letters to editors and talkback radio complaints about people using terrorist technologies like SMS and email to gather at this time. One site ( www.blackgst.com) already suggests a few changes to the Goods & Services Tax ( Genocide to end, Sovereignty acknowledged, Treaty to be made) and promises an Indigenous Gathering and Convergence of Supporters at Melbourne, March, 2006.

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by Sean Healy, December 21, 2005 0 comments

Mutant Media Biology

Sometimes the human population is usefully imagined as a sea of nipples, seamlessly joined, a tactile surface area of however many thousands of square kilometres. Or a trampoline perhaps? Point being, there’s a lot of us, and nipples seem to have this inherent goodness about them. Cruelly we are limited to just two in this lifetime, but thankfully the transhumanists amongst us are busy trying to rectify that. As such, sites like www.humanupgrades.com are a good option for a third ( or fourth ) nipple, while ‘trad’ body mod sites like bmezine.com are good for replacing your fingernails. And some people think brass knuckles embedded under your chest skin are passe already.

From a media perspective, another body part worth shoving under the anatomical spotlight is the tail, specifically the “long tail”, which refers to the way in which our culture and economy is beginning to focus less on a small number of giant hits, and more on a giant number of small hits ( the long tail). Chris Anderson who coined the phrase, has of course a site and blog on the topic. Also of note, Tim Berners Lee now has a posse. Or a blog in fact, which has just started up. Given it’s by the man founded the world wide web, it’s already saturated with comments from the fawning, appreciative masses, but will no doubt prove an interesting read over times to come.

by Sean Healy, December 20, 2005 0 comments

Scientology Rock Videos

While not all science fiction authors are religious, there’s arguably some merit in the idea that all religious authors are ultimately involved with science fiction. Moving right along – if you had said to the high school companions of Ron Hubbard back in the day, that he would become a science fiction author and later found a religion ( scientology ) based on interplanetary beings, which people would take seriously ( mainly Tom Cruise ), they’d have understandably scoffed at the idea. But how would they have reacted to Ron’s music? We will never know, but can remain thankful that some of Ron’s rock genius has been preserved online for future generations. Religion starters tend to be a multi-faceted bunch, and so of course, there’s more : Ron was also an apparent pioneering user of the Australian made
Fairlight CVI video synthesiser. Let us pray for Tom’s album.

by Sean Healy, December 20, 2005 0 comments