A few things which've caught our eye of late...

We often hold up UCG centred on Swedish math-metallers Meshuggah as exemplary stuff; a little flurry of online activity stirred up by the band themselves recently demonstrated the very real paradigm shift that's occurred in terms of musicians' relationship with their fans and with the media. It seems that in an interview with Metal Sucks, rhythm guitarist Mårten Hagström was somewhat misquoted about the Nuclear Blast record label. At one time, such an interview would simply have passed by. The most Hagström could have asked for would have been a follow up letter from him to the editor, attempting to put the record straight. And even that would have been unlikely. Very unlikely.

Now, within days of the regional interview appearing, Hagström cropped up right across the metal blogosphere/webspace politely informing fans about what he'd actually said. We noted Heavy Metal News, Loudside and Bravewords amongst the fray... I think it's impossible to overestimate just how dramatic a shift this is...

Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor is another of our hobbyhorses. Here he is talking about the NIN iPhone app - version 1.0, mind; how does Reznor stay so resolutely ahead of the pack?

At the other end of the spectrum... the introduction of variable pricing in the iTunes Music Store has been much anticipated; the record industry has seized the day and reduced 90% of its back catalogue to just $0.69, realising that getting music out there cheaply would be good for everyone - them, fans and artists.  Oh hold on, that's precisely what hasn't happened. In fact the industry seems to have taken the opportunity to jack up the prices of much of the best-selling catalogue. Hypebot are particularly acute on the matter.

Talking of Hypebot, The Gang of Four's Dave Allen has written a very insightful piece for them on the death of the album as an "organising principle" for music. He rounds it of with these bullets, which struck us as on-the-money:

• First, communicate openly and ask your fans what they want from you
• Listen to what they have to say. Really listen
• Provide unique content such as early demos of new songs• Never under estimate the power of a free MP3
• Forget completely the idea of an organizing principle. Invent a new one
• Use social media wisely. Twitter and Facebook Pages are best, MySpace is too cluttered
• Don't push messages to your fans, have a two way interaction with them
• Invite them to share, join, support and build goodwill with you
• Scrap your web site and start a blog
• Remember to forget everything you know about the CD "business"
• Start to monetize the experience around your music
• Remember - the browser is the new iPod

We're big fans of Singstar; it strikes us as a proper example of games-as-learning. Check out their current online competition, a right brand mash-up between Playstation, Glastonbury and cult(ish) club night Guilty Pleasures. Users upload videos of their performances to the site, and the winners will get a slot at the festival, with runners up getting a year's access to GP. Lovely.

There's a bunch of IP/litigation stories out there at the moment. Wizards of the Coast, the people behind Dungeons and Dragons are no longer distributing PDF's of their manuals since they're being widely shared for free. Meanwhile, Discovery are suing Amazon, claiming that the latter's ebook reader the Kindle infringes a Discovery patent. And a FoxNews.com journalist has had to resign after reviewing an illegally downloaded copy of the forthcoming Wolverine movie. (Thanks to The Register for those.)

Not sure what the lawyers would make of this rather lovely album-sleeves-reimagined-as-old-Pelican-paperbacks collection, pointed out to us by our good friend Peter Marsh.

The games industry is so often held up as a global success... and one in which the UK has particularly excelled. And there's a lot of truth in that. This smart article in the New York Times looks at some of the problems facing the industry as it tackled the financial crisis, the spiralling costs of Next Gen game production and, perhaps most significantly, the rise and rise of casual gaming, especially since the introduction of iPhone apps.

Justin pointed out this nice post on the Analog Industries blog looking at the prodigious creative output of teenagers, and the way that access to digital tools has unleashed this. The comments on the post are as telling as the original point.

The Guardian's Simon Waldman is guardedly enthusiastic - if that's not too oxymoronic - about the (re-)launch of Wired UK.The magazine's predictions for the future apparently look forward decades (obviously The Black Swan hasn't done the rounds of the office), whereas self-styled MediaFuturist Gerd Leonhard confines himself to looking at 8 trends in tech over the next five years in this smart post on his always-readable blog.
Simon