Spotify:

well, new web-service Spotify goes at least someway towards the scenario imagined in my Cloud-based music post last month.

Lots of similarities - streamed music, subscription-based except revenue is based around advertising space rather than offering ownership to users in the form of downloads. Perhaps the market for music ownership is smaller than I imagine and all music will be solely on stream?

R.I.P. Ian Carr

Ian Carr (1933-2009) & Nucleus

British jazz loses one of it's best. Member of seventies jazz-rock-fusion band Nucleus, and author of Miles Davis: The Definitive Biography.

Ableton Live 8 beta:

Ableton Live 8 beta: demo track

Finally got around to joining the beta testing for Live 8 at version 8.0b11. Will spend every spare moment putting Live through it's paces over the next 3 days. 

So far, have just discovered the new Zoom feature. Hidden in the preferences, it can zoom Live's screen from 50%-200%. I really like the amount of screen real-estate a setting of 80% gives. Some users want the zoom feature on the GUI, personally I'm glad it's in the pref's. One of Live's main attractions for me is the uncluttered layout. 

Group tracks is also going to help out in this respect... you can now collapse a group into a single track (see above, indicated by the shaded Group Clip colouring).

more to follow....

Book Choice #5:

Scarlett Thomas: The End Of Mr. Y

An enjoyable enough mixture of Jostein Gaarder-type philosophical discussion and Michio Kaku-like popular quantum mechanics. Ultimately too far-fetched and implausible for my tastes but some interesting points on the mysteries of creation and consciousness. 

Berlin 06-02-2009: