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Over the past couple of years, Flickr has made it possible to upload your entire photo collection to the Net, MSN Spaces (among other platforms) has made it relatively easy to create your own blog, video blogging is yet another recently-developed form of blogging expression (just check out a few of these video blogs), while podcasting (a portmanteau that combines the words broadcasting and iPod) makes available everything from conventional news shows to self-published radio shows, downloadable as mp3 files and playable on your mp3 player.
Perhaps the most salutary blogging development, though (at least for those of us who love music, and are always on the look out for intriguing new sounds) is the audio blogging phenomenon — where a new breed of tastemakers devote their spare time to disseminating, free of charge, music that’s obscure, unusual, cutting-edge, or on the verge of being forgotten.
Siddhartha Mitter, a Boston Globe correspondent, provides an introduction to the “the best music you’ve never heard” phenomenon.
The principle behind an audioblog — also called MP3 blog — is simple. You find a track you want to share with the masses. You place it online as an MP3 file, which anyone with a fast connection can play or save. And you write a little commentary, which might be pithy or detailed, straightforward or oblique. Think of each post as a whimsical capsule review, with sound attached.
In the course of his Globe piece, Mitter turns readers onto a number of audio blogging sites — including Paul Irish’s Aurgasm; San Francisco music journalist and scholar Oliver Wang’s Soul Sides; London-raised, Boston-based blogger Lee Caulfield’s The Number One Songs in Heaven, which specializes in near-forgotten soul tracks; and Christopher Porter’s appropriately named audio blog, the suburbs are killing us.
Treat yourself today: download some new music from the Internet.
