The fine fellas at Songfight pointed this article out to me, which talks about a lot of the lack of music filters on the net that I was complaining about the other day. But unlike me who just whined, this article actually pointed out a few neat things, like this iRATE software:

One promising though unpolished piece of software for finding new music is called iRATE Radio, created by a New Zealand computer programmer named Anthony Jones. It serves up a steady flow of legal MP3s from sites like IUMA, which are then rated by the user.

I haven't had a chance to try it yet, but I think it's great that people are working on this sort of stuff, seeing the potential in the net indie scene, etc, etc, blah blah.

Gonna be on "The Regular Guys" show on WKLS in Atlanta, Georgia at 9 EST tomorrow morning.

I forgot to mention that MP3.com is going tits up. I know a lot of people are going to be out of hosting and that sucks. The writing has been on the wall for the past few years, but it's still too bad. This all reminds me that I do deeply wish someone would get their act together and try to provide an MP3.com service that actually tries to point out the good independent stuff out there. There is a severe lack of filters on the net, which is great for artistic freedom but bad for people looking to listen to some good indie music.

I've been doing a lot of interviews for Outside the Inbox lately and the subject often turns to the home recorder/indie thing. I usually point them to Songfight or somesongs.com to check out the scene.

Both of those sites are cool, but Songfight isn't really ideal as an introduction for a casual music listener. Somesongs probably does a better job at pointing out good music than MP3.com ever did. The voting is a little zany though and I could see a more elitist editor/reviewer system possibly being more effective.

Seems to me there would be something in an MP3.com mixed with Pitchfork Media type service. I occasionally get the motivation to start one, but I'd probably have to give up making music to find the time.

Thanks to everyone who dropped a line to say happy birthday, I appreciate it in my heart! I had a nice weekend drinking, eating Chinese food and watching 24 on DVD. It was more fun than maybe it sounds.

Did an interview for The Rude Awakening Show on Laser101 in St. Maarten in the Caribbean just moments ago. Nice guys. Apparently they're going to plug Outside the Inbox and the Brad Sucks all week, which is super cool. I also did an email interview with ABC Science Online in Australia yesterday.

And now it is my birthday. I am 27.

Lightning blew up my modem last night. Awesome. Did the WLAN interview and now I have no more scheduled. For fifteen minutes of fame that sure took a long time. I'm wondering if I'm going to have an attention hangover next week, forcing my friends to talk to me in the form of an interview. "So Brad, what was the idea behind your day today?" "Well it's funny you should ask..."

The RED FM interview went okay except that my dumb Canadian mind had a hard time with the Irish accent of the host. He was very nice, I am just a tool. Still, I don't think it was too bad. My sass was not at optimum levels however. Tomorrow morning is the WLAN interview and then I gots nothing else lined up. Is this the end of the media thrill ride for Brad? Friday is my birthday! Glug glug. (drinking sounds)

If anyone got to hear the interview on the Charles Adler show, you got to hear me get peer pressured into making up a pretty awful dumb ukulele song on the spot. It was pretty weak and may be a subject to drink about this evening. The Shredd and Regan show went well, they seemed nice and very into the whole indie home recording thing.

I have an interview with RED FM in Ireland tonight at 6:45 EST.

Today I did interviews for CKCU FM in Ottawa, WMAY FM in Springfield Illinois (I think) and 610 CKTB radio in St. Catherines. The WMAY guys were pretty cool and fun to talk to. They seemed to be digging the actual music and were real nice and encouraging. If memory serves they played MC Frontalot's track before I went on, so that's pretty cool. Tomorrow I'm supposed to be on CJOB in Winnipeg at 12:05pm on the "Adler On Line" show for 5-10 minutes and then I'm doing an interview for the Shredd and Regan show on WEDG in Buffalo. I'm not sure if that's going to be live or not.

Then Thursday morning I'm being a trooper and getting up early to do an interview with Joe Thomas for the morning show on WLAN-FM in Lancaster, PA.

For people who want to catch the BBC interview, someone named Ben posted a comment to one of these entries saying this:

If you're quick (by tomorrow) then you can catch the Radio 5 Live interview at [link]

Click listen again. Don't recall if his interview would be in the 1-2 am slot or the 2-3 am one...

I haven't tried listening (I think I sound like a dink), but I'm pretty sure the interview was early into the 2-3am slot.

Thanks to everyone who's been writing in, ordering CDs and leaving comments. This has been a pretty crazy ride and I really appreciate all the awesome support.

I think the BBC Radio 5 interview went all right last night as well. It was pretty quick and there was quite the delay on the phone line so I kind of had to talk all kamikaze style and just barrel through rather than go back and forth with the DJ much. Hope it sounded OK, there were awkward silences and I couldn't tell if that was due to the delay or if the DJ was shocked and horrified by the things I was saying. The pre-interview guy said something about not saying "bradsucks dot net" on the air because that would be too racy for the BBC, but then the host asked me for the URL and I wound up spelling S-U-C-K-S out on the radio which was kinda fun.

Before I forget: on the CBC they played Add's "Do You Measure Up" and a clip of my song "Look and Feel Years Younger". On the BBC they played about 10-20 seconds of "Erik, Someone Wants To Date You".

If you have sent me email, I will reply to it, things are just a bit nuts right now.

The CBC interview went OK, I think. At least that's what my mom says. I managed to fit in plugs to Songfight and Jeff at Actdead.com (they played his song). I don't remember much of the interview but I don't remember actually choking at any point so it couldn't have been that bad. The girl I met in the green room was there for this NaNoWriMo novel-in-a-month thing which is like the writing version of Songfight. That's pretty cool. I wonder if they fight all the time and diss each other's novels when they come out. I'm going to be interviewed by Rhod Sharp on BBC Radio 5 at 9:20pm EST or something. It's interesting having all this stuff happen because there's no time to be neurotic about just one thing.

I'm being interviewed about Outside the Inbox on CBC Radio today at 4 EST on the show All In A Day by Alan Neal.

Apparently the Toronto Star article is on the front page of the arts section. Yikes!

Just as I start mouthing off about digital distribution being crud, CD Baby announces they've dropped the $40 fee to get your album digitally distributed. I have sold exactly zero copies of my album on CD Baby (though a few people who have bought it from me direct have told me they found out about it there), but getting included in the digital distribution junk is making me glad I ponied up the $35 + 5 copies of the album.

I'm real curious to see how this works out.

For some reason I was discussing Truck Driver's Gear Changes with people tonight and wandered over to the #1 Truck Driver's Gear Change resource: gearchange.org. There's a pretty fascinating article called The truck driver's gear change: a muso's introduction up there which elaborately defends each of The Beatles' gear change offenses. Very cool and also: silly.

Your 99c belong to the RIAA - Steve Jobs. This article in The Register is a little cynical sounding but it opens with a quote I like:

Wasn't the Internet, this weightless kingdom of bits and bytes, supposed to make distribution costs just vanish?

The author of this article seems really deeply angry at major record labels and possibly just angry in general. He also seems totally bewildered at some basic ideas in business. But I think I sympathize in that I find this whole iTunes universe totally bizarre and unnatural. To me it seems too much like the old decidedly F'd up model dressed up to look like something new. Maybe it'll stick, but right now it just feels like a step backwards to me and that technology + progress is going to lay the smack down on it any day now.

Did a phone interview with Murray Whyte from the Toronto Star today, he's a real nice guy and it was the least interview-like interview I've had yet. Hopefully I didn't ramble too much. It looks like the story on Outside the Inbox and I is going to run on Monday. Pretty exciting and also maybe totally terrifying! In case it doesn't make it into the article, in the interview I talked about home-recording being the new new-wave and the Internet being the next Seattle. I don't know if either of those things are true, but I would like a record of myself having said them before anyone else beats me to it. Ding.

Apparently I'm getting interviewed next week about Outside the Inbox for CKCU-FM, a local college radio station. I've been told that it'll be airing Wednesday sometime. They have a live audio stream so you guys can listen to it on the net if you want to hear me be a stumbly ass. I'll post the approximate time here when I find that out, I'm not sure yet what show it'll be on.

I've hastily put together a gallery finally. It has some art and things that nice folks have sent in. If anyone has anything to add, it would be awesome of you to send it in.