Talk about zeitgeist. About half a dozen friends have  effectively yelled 'Spotify" at me over the course of the last week. Then I got an invitation to join this rather nifty little P2P-based streaming service, and, well yes, it's pretty fabulous on first look. Lovely, intuitive drag-and-drop interface, easy-to-build playlists, recommendations radio and a lot of music in there. The free version plays you the odd ad, but nothing too intrusive - and not that often. Tonight it's all been about metal and jazz rock: Mahavishnu, Perfect Circle, Opeth, Weather Report, Can and Meshuggah. Couldn't get hold of any Benea Reach or Fell Silent, but still... It's pretty fun toggling between a specialist show on the BBC iPlayer and checking out Spotify to see if they have stuff you liked on said show.

My hunch? It's going to be massive.

I think I'll largely avoid downturn stories here; they're pretty much ubiquitous, after all. Still, Google shedding staff seems to be, well, something.

It seems the iTMS has already shifted 500 million iPhone apps, a staggering 2 million a day. They don't say how many are paid for or free, but still... We particularly like the look of synthpod. Lovely.

Various bits of news came out of MidemNet, a lot of it a bit ho-hum, I thought. We were taken with the notion of the Isle of Man being a testing ground for a broadband "tax" to reimburse downloaded copyright owners. Not entirely sure it's going to get offf the ground though...

I'm the Brighton-based bit of DS, so feel duty-bound to point out these two bits of, er, Silicon Beach coverage in New Media Knowledge. Our good friend Daniel Nathan of, well, everything (but especially of totallyradio) talks about radio and web. And in a more general article the mag talks to some other South Coast notables.

One thing Daniel certainly wouldn't be surprised by is the news that DAB sales are properly flatlining, despite the DRDB's best efforts to obscure the fact.

Uh oh, big hair metaller in not-getting-the-new-world alert: Skid Row's Sebastain Bach is apparently well pissed off with being downloaded for free. To be fair, he's a pretty cogent interviewee, but he does seem to be missing the point here: if the kids really are downloading shitloads of your music for free (and really, Seb, are they?) can't you figure out a way to take advantage? File under "The Metallica approach to the web,".

Oh and one last mention for The Reg's Andrew Orlowski. Orlowski's no free-for-aller, but he points out that Virgin Media's proposed monetised P2P approach had a lot going for it and that the UK record industry's (sadly successful) assault on it before it even had chance to launch is a missed opportunity.
Simon

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