I know this guy who has hundreds of friends on the Facebook. I know another guy who’s trolling for his thousandth friend on the MySpace. I know authors by the score who talk about how many friends they have on this social network or that (LinkedIn geeks, anyone?). Musicians who have built entire careers on their friends list. What if Facebook disappeared tomorrow? Poof! Into the ether. Gone without a trace.

Taking all your friends with it.

Could happen. Could happen at any point. Could happen in a way that you don’t expect. Like, maybe the site doesn’t disappear, but there’s this weird database glitch and 90% of your friends are lost to you. Let’s say this happens, oh, about an hour before you send out a message touting your latest project.
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Waiting For The Plane To Land Edition

Todays links of interest:

• Live Add: U2 Joins the Nation
  It’s a 12 year deal, which should be good enough for up to two full albums worth of new U2 songs!
• Scott Sigler’s INFECTED — free download, inexplicably limited
  Cory Doctorow dissects the "free" promotion related to Scott Sigler’s new book. Seems like Crown Publishing is trying to have it all, create new and different partnerships, and confuse readers. The comments thread is equally fun to read.
• Yahoo hopes women take a Shine to site
  Sorry, after a headline like that, we’re out of snarky comments. Yahoo discovers that women are people too.

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We Always Had A Ball on Mars Edition

Todays links of interest:

• Space truck ready for rehearsals
  C’mon! . . . C’mon! . . . C’mon! . . . Let’s go space truckin!!!
• MacBook Air compromised in 2 minutes for $10,000
  There’s probably an Elliot Spitzer joke in here somewhere . . .
• Oldest recorded voices sing again
  Pitchfork gave it a 3.4, saying in part: "whatever value this recording may have in the historical milieu is overshadowed by the fact that — even in its time — everybody had already heard it all before."

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Longtime readers of this site (that would be Will and John) know that there are consumer products to which we’ve never been very kind. These products include Microsoft’s Zune, anything from DuroSport Electronics and of course SpiralFrog, the major label-sponsored website that allows you to download DRM’d music for FREE! All you have to do is ignore some ads.

After first making fun of the concept, then making fun of the amazingly long time to market, and finally, making fun of the thing itself, I figured that I was done with ever writing about it ever again. Hell, I thought I was done with ever thinking about it again.

Until last night.

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It’s About The Losing Edition

Todays links of interest:

• LA Times Apologizes for Shakur Story
  However, Sean Combs is still guilty of oversampling on his biggest singles; all of those name changes and that whole J Lo thing.
• STARTREK.COM
  Still dead.
• The Telefile - Online Blog, TV Show News, Current Events, TV Reviews
  In case you were wondering how far off we were when we recently worried that the departure of Television Without Pity’s founders would lead directly to a decline on the overall quality of the website, here’s Exhibit #1: their Telefile Blog, which had started out as a daily commentary on TV has been instantly reduced to virtually nothing more than a means to drive traffic to the Universal co-owned Hulu. Synergy!!

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Just six months after the launch of its mp3 music service, Amazon has emerged as the number two digital music retailer. While Apple still has a huge lead, that lead seems to be dwindling quickly.

The major labels may see this as some form of progress in their efforts to break Apple’s perceived monopoly in the digital music market, but the truth is they are very likely creating a new problem for their industry.

Despite the fact that the majors have begun licensing the rights to distribute DRM-free tracks to multiple retailers, Amazon seems to be the only company that has a clue about building a successful online marketplace. As a result, Amazon could quickly become something of a de facto monopoly for legal mp3 downloads. That’s astounding when you consider that the marketplace for unprotected music downloads should be wide open and highly competitive.

The formula for building a successful digital music marketplace seems relatively easy. Consumers want access to a wide selection of reasonably priced DRM-free music, presented in a well organized marketplace that supports all computing platforms. Retailers who expect to compete should offer decent search and discovery capabilities, and maybe even a few social features. This is 2008, after all.

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Pyramid of Acid Edition

Todays links of interest:

• Chinese Democracy in 2008? Free Dr. Pepper for All!
  Hilarious.
• Was HBO right to cancel 12 Miles of Bad Road?
  Before it even aired. They gambled that the bad publicity of not airing it wouldn’t outweigh the bad publicity they would have gained had they aired it and it was their latest flop. Were they right? Tough to know, but they’ve created an instant cult classic no matter what.
• Supreme Court rules Bush exceeded his powers
  Which time? Also, a little bit late for this, since much of the damage as been done.

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Previously, on An Early History of R.E.M.: We have complex, life-long relationships with the bands we love . . . It’s a piece written in 1991 . . . R.E.M. is discovered via Trouser Press flexi-disc . . . Chronic Town was their first EP . . . Murmur becomes an obsession . . . The R.E.M. lyric-deciphering party . . . Later on came Reckoning . . . The great American rock underground coalesced . . . R.E.M. is the “acceptable edge of the unacceptable stuff,” so they’re on a lot of TV shows . . .

And now, Part 2, of An Early History of R.E.M.!!

Written in March, 1991. Published in Rotting America in March, 1992

Oh yeah, something else happened in that summer of 1984 . . . R.E.M. played in Fresno. At a club called the Star Palace. And my roommate Kirk and I got to interview them.

The Star Palace, at some point in its history, used to be an Arthur Murray’s Dance Studio, and now it’s a waste of space, but for about five or six years, it was the coolest place in town to see shows. Since it held four or five hundred people it was perfect for big underground bands, and through some act of the gods which I don’t remember anymore, in June of 1984, R.E.M. and the Dream Syndicate played there.

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Happy Birthday to Joseph Edition

Todays links of interest:

• Sony BMG’s planned music service looks like a yawner
  Sigh. I guess that fact that they’re mired in 2003 is slightly better than when in 2003, they were mired in 1993. But only slightly.
• Could TV Show Save Brit’s Tanking Career?
  The denizens of one of your ‘Loper households are huge "How I Met Your Mother" fans — it’s a smart sitcom that is more continuity-obsessed than just about any show in TV history, and usually hilarious too — and Brit-brit was, well, there she was. She looked better than we anticipated, and acted about how we expected. While the episode itself was not one of their better ones, we can only hope that the ratings bump helps convince CBS to renew their only primetime show that we actually watch.
• Bloggers To Flacks: Pay Us
  Or, in a world with relative ethics, there are no good guys.

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The Island Won’t Let You Edition

Todays links of interest:

• Rachael Ray Throws An Indie Rock Party
  This one is for Jim.
• CBS cancels Jericho despite fan fervor
  Here’s a thought: the days of the nation watching a single program for mega-ratings is long gone; niche content is rising. Seems like CBS could move the ball forward a half field by trying new ways to connect niche audiences with the content they want.
• Sony BMG, Warner Near Deal With MySpace
  Confidential to music biz: While you’re taking years to make deals, all the cool kids are getting over the Facebook…

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