I was going to say what is the point of a tech journal like IT Pro when MSN has it’s own Tech news. My tongue was going to be firmly in my cheek as MSN’s idea of News usually involves Paris Hilton so I assumed the tech stuff would be the same. However, I did actually find an interesting story 

http://tech.uk.msn.com/news/article.aspx?cp-documentid=11130442

 and I agree with the comment. This is the way to use the net to sell stuff not just get it ripped off. The point the record company people have missed since the days of cassettes is that 5,000 personally made illegal copies  is NOT 5,000 lost sales. 4,000+ of those people would just do with out and of those 5,000 some at least will be new fans who will go on and buy a genuine copy at some point.

Of course if we are talking about Hear Say X’s latest single then it will be totally forgotten in a couple of weeks so no one will buy it. But what kind of loss is that?

I feel bad referring to an MSN blog - call me a snob for decrying the populist but let’s face it most MSN stories are about Britney or X Factor or something else no one should care about - however… http://entertainment.uk.msn.com/music/features/article.aspx?cp-documentid=9617667&ocid=today>1=61501 is just so right. Abba - clever, competent, catchy but not great.

I’m tempted to say not music but that would be unfair. Music doesn’t have to be inspiring, life changing art but it can be  and anything that isn’t just shouldn’t be lauded - it can be enjoyed but not worshiped.

If Miles Davis’s “Kind of Blue” is Manet’s “The Bar at the Follies Bergere” then Mama Mia is the tennis girl scratching her bum - cleverly done and not without a simple (if guilty) pleasure but it ain’t great.
But  maybe I am just a snob  decrying the popullar.

Qu’est-ce que c’est le point? As Georgia Nicolson might say (I haven’t seen the film but the books are excellent.)

I’m using quite an old Music Match Juke Box (v7.5) as my CD ripper. The newer one screws up some other apps and is just bigger & bloatier & I have registered this version (I don’t just use freeware, on occasion I will pay for stuff!).

I use my own player “what I wrote” as an MP3 player as MM tends to hog resources, displays the tag name when I want the file name and doesn’t do some of the shuffle effects I want (like play next sequential track when in shuffle mode). Also it saves play lists as text files so it’s easy to manipulate them & doesn’t create weird libraries I never use. Anyway writing your own apps is cool & a CD / MP3 player is so easy with Visual Basic why not?

 However, back to MMJB. The problem I have is that it doesn’t tend to find newer CD & I end up typing in track names (well not typing, cutting & pasting from Amazon CD listings usually). Is there a new CDDB? Can I get MM to look it at it? Has someone declared copyright on track listings so they can’t be accessed?

Get yourselves along to The Great Satan of the (UK) retail world (AKA Tesco) and nab a bargain. I’ve just taken procession of a DAB radio for £15 and although it is a bit tacky (not quite blue & white stripy but almost) it works much better than the £60 one (admittedly Goodman’s) I used to have. The sound quality may not be as good but it does get a signal in my kitchen which the other didn’t - only in the lounge where I already have cable TV with all those nice radio stations on anyway. If you can’t get to a Tesco store you can order online but you’ll have to pay postage - unless they have some deal going, you’ll have to check, this is a blog not an advert.

The down side is my favourite music stations are Planet Rock (for the old prog rock hippy in me) & The Jazz (for the slightly cooler dude). Both of these are due to close down In fact there is talk of DAB being old technology and being phased out in favour of DAB+ (DAB is MP2 format, DAB+ is MP3?) which is probably why I’m buying in about now Whether this unit will handle DAB+ I don’t know, for this silly price I’m assuming not.

However, I mainly listen to talk radio so I will still have Radio 7 (old Radio 4/2 stuff - lots of great comedy) and the World Service which has some very interesting stuff. And if I need music, 6 music has some pretty good tunes too.

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/article3393148.ece

<snip/>men responded to music on an intellectual level, whereas female listeners had a more emotional reaction to songs and were not interested in track listings and production techniques. </snip>

Men have no emotions? Or at least have no contact with them? This kind of sexist twaddle could get you into trouble! 

Obviously it’s a generalisation and should be qualified as such but more to the point she is confusing primary & secondary responses. Blokes (and, to be gender non-specific, you can, in this context, have female “blokes”) tend to have a “do” response. Given a situation they want to do something with it /about it. Given a fine piece of music all you can “do” is play it, dance to it or learn about it - listening is too passive (& dancing is somehow passive?). Given the problems of playing and dancing learning about it is the easier option! Read the sleeve notes, google the band, collect the set, collect the set of the family tree (the bassist once seasoned for XYZ, get all their material…)

All that said it requires an emotional reaction to trigger the “do” response. The more a “bloke” is emotionally touched by a song the more they will do the anorak thing about it. But unless there is that initial emotional response… no “do” response.

The empirical proof of this is Abba - hugely technical and precise in recording techniques, worthy of many hours of anorakdom but how many blokes start their alphabetical collection with Abba?