The Life & Times of Sooz

Chris Brogan tagged me for a round of “7 Songs” blog tag. Here’s my list — a few favorites of the moment. These are of course subject to change within a few minutes. To keep tabs on what I’m listening to, check out my page at last.fm. I’ve been digging into Whiskeytown a lot in the past twenty-four hours.

• Everything I Do - Whiskeytown
• We Made A Killing - The Casual Lean
• Delirious Love - Neil Diamond
• Show Me - The Blizzard of 78
• Everybody Here Wants You - Jeff Buckley
• Trickle Down - The Tragically Hip
• It’s All Good - Shööt The Möön [They’re playing a “Tuesdays in April” residency at the Abbey Lounge in Somerville on April 3, 10, 17 and 24.]

I’m tagging Michael, Regina, Brad, Halcyon and Heath.

I spoke to business reporter Hiawatha Bray at The Boston Globe earlier this week about the new internet radio royalty rate increase. The resulting article is in the Boston Globe today. You can read it at boston.com. And hey, they even LINKED to Exploit Boston. This is no small accomplishment for the Globe, apparently — sometimes they link, but most times they do not.

A few details to clarify: Exploit Boston isn’t a music blog but it does include an event blog, internet radio station, photo collective and monthly board game night. Exploit Boston Radio has a couple hundred bands in rotation with 524 songs in the library. And there are dozens of listeners per day not total/overall. (What a sad day that would be if 24 people total listened to the station in one month. Ha!)

I’m all in favor of artists being paid for their work. But the way this rate increase is structured it means there’s a $500 per station minimum and it is only charged to internet radio broadcasters and not terrestrial radio. Obviously this means small broadcasters are likely to go off the air and they are the ONLY STATIONS playing new/emerging/independent bands in regular rotation. Awesome. So if you are tired of hearing the same Top 40 bands on regular radio, now you can tune into internet radio and hear the same music over and over.

I was hoping Hiawatha would include my comments about podcasting. I really prefer to run Exploit Boston Radio through Live365 as an internet radio station. But if these rates really go through, I’m either going to have to shut down the station entirely or set it up as a podcast. And I really, really don’t want to run it as a podcast. The amount of time it would take to set that up and maintain it would be annoying at best. I pay a monthly fee to Live365 that covers the music storage and streaming plus the ASCAP, BMI and SESAC fees. Podcasts are great for the ocassional show but to run a 24-hour station with several different playlists — not my idea of fun. Especially as a labor of love project.

Michael chimes in, too.

If you want to help save internet radio, Live365 has set up a helpful page of information and you should also contact your Senators and Representatives. If you’ve got some time on your hands, read the 115 page PDF of the Copyright Royalty Board about the internet radio royalty increase.

You know what? I still love the Internet. Love it. Love it! The other day I got a message in my Vox blog message center from someone named Regina. She found me while she was poking around Vox looking for likeminded humans who write about Boston, music, etc. She’s local and it seemed odd we hadn’t already met. Then we find out my former roommate is a good friend of hers and la la la. I love the small worldness of the web when it connects you with people in your own backyard.

It turns out Regina is not only awesome but also working on a new newspaper+website startup called BostonNOW. Their plan is to publish a newspaper that includes both pro and citizen journalists plus a website, too. If you’re a blogger curious about what they (and maybe you) are going to be up to, join the conversation at All Asia Cafe in Central Square on Saturday, March 10th from 11-2. They’ve got an RSVP page on Upcoming.org with more more info.

Somehow I completely missed this video when it was first noted online last Fall. Found out about it via Chris Brogan mentioning it on Twitter.

So cool.

If you’re using Twitter, here’s where you can find (and add) me.

I like how Chris Brogan described it:

Twitter, to me, is a real pulse point on the online people I know. Twitter broke Macworld news to me while I was at CES. It seems necessary.

Halcyon and his 94-year old Grandpa Caleb do a weekly “HugNation” webcam thingy and in honor of Valentine’s Day today they are spreading the good word of hugs through the huggable campaign.

The backstory from Halcyon:

A 13 year old girl sent me a message on MySpace. She was a regular participant in HugNation, and needed advice.

Her school had just outlawed hugging. She (and her parents) felt it was an excessively harsh response to the fear of inappropriate touching.

“There are 1000’s of things children need to be protected from,” her mom said, “Hugging is not one of them.”

So we brainstormed via email some course of action. We agreed that hugging someone against their will, or hugging inappropriately was not cool. So we decided that we should figure out some symbol that means, “I believe in the power of touch. And within appropriate context, I am open to a platonic embrace.”

Read the rest of the story …

I’ve been tracking music I listen to via last.fm off and on for a while. They’ve got a nifty flash player that will let you listen to a bunch of the songs I’ve tracked. Handy! If you want to add me as a friend at last.fm, here’s my profile over there.

We may have had our biggest turnout at last night's Exploit Boston Game Night. Somewhere between 60-70 people were there. I didn't realize it until someone told me (and gave me a cute little clipping) that it was written up in The Weekly Dig again. This time it was an excellent and somehow snark-free paragraph. Now we just need to get into the Phoenix, Boston Herald and Boston Magazine (though it was at least listed in Boston Magazine's online calendar a few months ago).

I'm finally going to get around to working on adding a second night to the monthly adventure. Kristen very awesomely introduced me to someone at Fire & Ice in Harvard Square so we are going to look into that as another spot to have the event along with the one at Soul Fire.

Yesterday I bought Michael and I our tickets to see The Tragically Hip. They are going to be in town at the Avalon on Friday, April 20th. This is by far the absolute world's greatest band to see live. Gord Downie has a stage presence that is nothing short of inspired. A-M-A-Z-I-N-G. They are huge in their homeland of Canada but haven't seen mega success in the US. Which means it's always lots easier to get concert tickets to see them at smaller-ish venues than it really should be!

If you want to experience something spectacular, get a ticket and join me and Michael at the show.

There is possibly no one as funny as Eddie Izzard.