“groovy mother...”

Load a mysterious MP3 onto your iPod. Show up at Dolores Park at an appointed time. Simultaneously with hundreds of strangers, hit play. Follow the instructions. (See the report on 2007 for an example of the madness that my ensue!)

I loved Zooey Deschanel’s singing in Elf, and the tracks here sound lovely.

Large collection of loungecore covers. Hugo Montenegro’s version of “Na Na Hey Hey (Kiss Him Goodbye)” is my favourite so far.

Hooray! A new Best of Bootie CD for the new year!

Adds in-time sleigh-bells (and Santa) to any MP3 uploaded.

MP3 of the full version of Tracy Jordan’s novelty single. “I nearly dropped the Torah when my hands turned into paws!”

Ze Frank lives! A lovely little modern-day love song.

Presentation by Ian Rogers (ex-IUMA and Nullsoft) to music industry folks. “Want a track on-demand? Oh have we got a deal for you! If you’re on Windows XP or Vista, and you’re in North America, just download this 20MB application, go through these seven install screens, reboot your computer, go through these five setup screens, these six credit card screens, give us $160 dollars and POW! Now you can hear that song you wanted to hear…if you’re still with us.”

The new Radiohead album is released on the 10th, and will initially be available in only two forms: 1) Pay £40 for a deluxe box-set of two CDs and two LPs, or 2) Pay whatever you like for an MP3 download. I’ve chucked in £4, though will probably end up downloading it off of OiNK when the official servers are predictably swamped next week.

Amazon’s un-DRMed 256kbps MP3 store launches. It’s got the full EMI and indie catalogues that iTunes has DRM-free, plus the Universal catalogue.

There’s an optional downloader for Windows and Mac that allows you to queue up entire albums and import them into iTunes automagically, but you can also download individual tracks without any software.

My only problem with it? The first track I tried buying — “Sweet Caroline” by Neil Diamond — turned out to be a live recording without being marked as such. So now? I get to test Amazon’s refund policy!

Some stonking mashups on this album. The Bon Jovi vs. George Michael “Careless or Dead” is a particular favourite in this household.

Handy utility for ripping (stereo) music DVDs as MP3s.

New version of WinAmp (Remember them? It’s like an iPod, except you can’t carry it around with you. Ask your parents) includes “remote listening” — Stream music from your home PC to wherevers. Since Apple kept disabling hacks that did this with iTunes, I’m curious how AOL think they’re going to be able to keep this “legit”

” Writing songs about corporate malfeasance so you don’t have to!”. Free net-neutrality MP3 from Jill Sobule, Kay Hanley and Michelle Lewis.

I’m curious to test out RedSwoosh’s P2Pness, so link-followers: Have a shot at downloading seven stonking megabytes of J-Pop oddness! Windows users should be directed to download the RedSwoosh client, while Mac & Linux users should be redirected to the CoralCDN service. Let’s see how little bandwidth I can use distributing some QUALITY CHOONS!

“Our position is simple: DRM doesn?t add any value for the artist, label (who are selling DRM-free music every day ? the Compact Disc), or consumer, the only people it adds value to are the technology companies who are interested in locking consumers to a particular technology platform.” Hells yeah!

An MP3 of the obscure instrumental that “Crazy” is based on. It’s originally from the soundtrack to a spaghetti western!

Auntie releases a Radio 4 comedy show for MP3 download & podcast. Hurrah! If they do this with the next series of Just a Minute and I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue, I’m going to be a happy camper indeed.

App to apply ReplayGain volume normalization to MP3s by tweaking the audio data, so the normalized files can be played back on any player (such as yer iPod), not just those that understand the tagging format.

Kristin Hersh has released a new EP as free creativecommons-licensed FLAC files.