The above video (or rather a link to it) turned up in my inbox not so long ago with a message from a rather cynical friend that suggested that it was worth a look. Having watched it I continued and watched a few more of her videos on YouTube before, by this point totally hooked, eventually ending up at her myspace page.

At which point I was presented with the offer that if I sent 20 USD via paypall I would recieve a CD in a handmade felt pouch. So I sent my 20 bucks to a person I don’t know in the States, subscribed in YouTube (my first subscription BTW) and went about my business.

A couple of weeks later (my post goes via the UK then to China) I had in my hand a lovely green felt pouch containing a CD. Priceless.

Which reminded me of Seth Godin’s point in the awesome book Tribes, and he’s by no means a unique voice here, that as long as you are not trying to cling desparately to an obsolete view of the world, then now is an amazingly  great time to be involved with making, distributing or enjoying music.

How cool is this? A graphical representation of what you’ve been listening, or more accurately what you’ve been scrobbling with last.fm. Made by LastGraph.

Click for larger image.

So I discovered the other day that I’m a bit of a Bowie fan, which came as a surprise. A friend lent me the T.V. series Life on Mars which is ok as TV series go but one thing that did strike me was how good the title track is. The title track is, not surprisingly, Life on Mars by Bowie which I don’t think I’d heard before. The show featured some other tracks which were good, Jean Genie is the only one I remember as it was, for reasons that aren’t worth explaining, mentioned in the show. So on the basis of this and memories of liking the one about the space man and the one he did with Queen I decided that it was probably worth a bit of a look. Especially given the fact that I live in a new-music-inspiration-starved vacuum (wow, there are two u’s in vacuum, who knew?).

As a new-music-inspiration-starved-vacuum (we’re going to run out of u’s at this rate) aside, more people using last.fm and adding me as a friend would help, go do it now. I did buy a Ladytron album on the basis of a song cropping up on neighbour radio, the album has lasted longer on the iPod than I expected at first listen. As a further aside I did think until the other night that me and my last.fm neighbour might be the only people who’d heard of Ladytron until a song cropped on the internet radio station that is played in a bar I frequent (being a bit vague here as I’m not sure if this is legit) the other night.

Any hu. So I decided I was going to lay my hands on a Bowie ‘best of’ which brings up the next music and China problem, the selection of legit CD’s (and for that matter non-legit ones) on sale is limited to Chinese music and the few foreign bands that somehow inexplicably seem to get some kind of following here, an odd collection including Backstreet boys, Avril Lavigne, Linkin Park. I actually found Fort Minor: The Rising Tied, the solo project of Linkin Park front man Mike Shinoda in my local super market of all places.

And so to the point of the post, I bought the best of album off iTunes and am not 100% comfortable with that. I like owning CDs, I like looking at them, browsing them for inspiration. I’m also fairly convinced that paying the same price for music electronically as I used to pay for a CD and getting less functionality is kinda wrong but I seem to be slipping into it through a lack of alternatives.

Thoroughly enjoying the Bowie album by the way.

A music post for a change as I’m sufficiently excited about this stuff to want to share.
Radio Three Sixty – Music For Strange Moments is a fantastic podcast that comes out every other week (used to be weekly, boo-hiss). It is an eclectic mix of chilled stuff from across a bunch genres and is well worth a look if you’re into your chilled.

RadioThreeSixty has put me onto a few bands / artisits that I’m sure I would otherwise not have come across; two of note are Chimp Beams and Alvik.

Check out:

• Chimp Beams – Menina
• Alvik – Wonder

Helpfully both in show seventeen.