Just had one of those moments that make it worthwile being a parent. Four minutes and 13 seconds of joy dancing round the kitcen with my four year old daughter. The reason - I Wish by Stevie Wonder, she just loves it. Fellow Worders what makes you dance around your kitchen with or without your offspring

Tweeted by Charles Arthur (@charlesarthur), the Grauniad's Technology Editor this morning is an Information is Beautiful pictogram(?) of how much a solo artist has to sell before he or she makes the euivalent of the current US monthly minimim wage of $1,160.

http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/how-much-do-music-artists-ear...

I'm guessing not many artists get the 4,549,020 plays a month on Spotify but the self-pressed CD route looks feasible and presumably a self-hosted download would relieve them of the costs of pressing and packaging.

Strikes me that this kind of backs up the theory put out on the podast a while ago that the way anyone is going to make any money online is by treating streaming sites as advertising (like the radio shows of yesteryear) and hoping folks will like the product enough to buy a download.

I thought I'd better point out to the proper authorities (i.e. you lot)that some cove has posted a recording of a recent (last month) live performance by one Mr Leonard Cohen on the T.U.B.E website.

Should the proper authorities wish to check it out it is available here:
http://theultimatebootlegexperience.blogspot.com/

This may be New Year's day today, but it has only been so since 1752. I'm reading Revelation by CJ Sansom a book wot I got for Christmas and the story starts on a New Years Day during the latter part of Henry VIII's reign but the date is 25th March. Intrigued, I used the good offices of Wikipedia to discover the facts behind this:
"Most countries in Western Europe officially adopted January 1 as New Year's Day somewhat before they adopted the Gregorian calendar. The Feast of the Annunciation, March 25 (9 months before December 25), was the first day of the new year in England until the adoption of the Gregorian Calendar in 1752. The March 25th date was called Annunciation Style; the January 1 date was called Circumcision Style, because this was the date of the Feast of the Circumcision, being the eighth day counting from December 25."
Posted as a public service...

NPR in the US are streaming Sugar Mountain, Live at Cantabury House 1968 from their website http://npr.org/music on Monday November 24th at 11.59 EST (thats just shy of 7pm in the UK). It's his "new" CD and they're streaming it a week before its release. Just heard it on the NPR All Songs Considered podcast (which I commend to the massive).