In Part 1 we looked at the revenues and costs of a moderately successful indie album release, and saw how hard it is for a record company to make money selling CDs. The promise of digital downloading is that it offers dramatically more efficient distribution. But a look at a comparison scenario using iTunes shows that the label may end up worse off.

Many of the arguments on emerging music business models seem to be based on speculation and assertions. So I thought I'd sit down and do some actual math, based on two sales scenarios for a moderately successful indie album: physical CDs vs. iTunes downloads. It's scary.

Our review of the M-Audio MicroTrack -- a 24-bit, handheld stereo recorder -- shot to number 1 on Google just two days after we published it. Clearly, people are interested in mobile recording. Here are some additional resources I've found, many of them fascinating.

The MusicGremlin = iPod + WiFi - Computer. It moves us closer to the celestial jukebox ideal: it's a wireless portable music player that doesn't need a computer. It could be the next iPod--unless the next iPod is essentially a MusicGremlin.

Keyword searches for audio have always been hit or miss. You end up missing more than you hit, but it's been the only way. Now with wave form analysis and datamining, audio clips can be found using sonic similarity features. Music can be found by simply whistling the tune into your computer, and getting a list of melodically similar tunes. One of them might even be the one you were thinking of...

Actually, audio loops are great. I’ve been loving them since the days I used to splice them together out of analog tape. But listening to electronic music podcasts, mod files, and my own pre-MIDI Ableton Live compositions, I finally realized what was missing.

Can we use the unique features of the podcasting mechanism to make for more compelling political podcasts?

Last night I saw a demo of a handheld music player with an intriguing twist: Not only could it download songs wirelessly, it could also beam them to other players—while compensating the artist.

Blogs, podcast & e-newsletters make it easy for anyone to be a journalist. Here are some tips on how to do it well.

This company uses the same voices (from a European company called Acapela) that I licensed for my in-car computer company. It's a very good idea; i've seen a few implementations but usually they're too annoying to listen to at length. A good trick is to use a UK English voice if you're american, or vice versa - then, the roboticness of the voice fades even more and your email sounds like a BBC broadcast.