Catching The Waves

My God, it's full of stars...

CTW has gone all 2001: A Space Odyssey because something momentous has happened: broadband!

Only those of you poor unfortunates out there with dial-up will understand the sheer agony of trying to enjoy music on the net without a fast connection. It's like window shopping: no matter how hard you press your nose up against the window, all those jewel-like albums will forever remain on the other side of the glass. But now:

• no more avoiding sites that take ages to load
• no more not listening to streaming audio
• no more waiting 45 minutes for one mp3 to download, only to find that the track is awful
• no more gnashing of teeth when someone helpfully offers a zipped album but no individual tracks

I shouldn't complain; I know I'm very lucky. Lots of people have far more serious things to worry about. But as this is a music blog, it's such a joy to be able to browse free albums and songs on the net and say, "I'll have that one, please. Oh, and that one. And would you mind if - ah, so kind, thank you."

All of which means I'll be listening to a lot more music, which should prompt more frequent posting at CTW. But...

*raises clenched fist*

...in the interests of world peace, CTW will continue, where possible, to post links to individual mp3's as well as zipped albums. The internet likes to pretend that everything is new and shiny and whizz-bang but we know better. In the real world, millions of people can't afford a fast computer and/or a fast connection (not to mention food, water, housing, health-care, etc. God, what a mess.), so the only way they can download music is to do it track by track. Netlabels, are you listening? You'll get more traffic if you ensure the availability of individual songs, and you'll increase your traffic still further if you offer visitors a choice of bit rates of 128, 192 and 300+ so the dial-up visitor can decide whether to sacrifice time for sound quality and vice versa.

Rant over. An alternative and less boring version of this post: "I'm giddy with excitement at getting broadband, free internet music is wonderful, and anyone can join in."

See you soon.

A look through the -ism prism

...is a word that's been waiting patiently for the discovery of electricity, the invention of computing, the spread of the internet and the proliferation of music on the web. Now its time has arrived and it's been adopted by a rather excellent Belgian website keen on, as you can see, "sharing music", which is the type of thing that gets CTW banging its cymbals in approval like the Duracell bunny.

Netlabelism is full of really useful things: netlabel top 10's, audio streaming, news and articles that emphasise just how exciting this free-&-legal-netmusic movement has become, and a comprehensive and well-organised links collection, of which Catching The Waves is proud to be the newest member. You can even buy a Netlabelism t-shirt and instantly out-geek everyone in your neighbourhood.

If you find the scope of music that's available on the net a bit daunting, the site has a very useful "Topbits" sections with helpful categories: "100 all time", "25 to move", "25 to watch", and, very usefully, "by style". Another excellent idea is the site's customised Google search engine that will find copyleft, Creative Commons, Open Source and Public Domain stuff. There are also highlighted netlabel and Creative Commons blog entries and listening suggestions.

One of the strengths of the netmusic movement is that nobody's in charge. Just about the only "must do" for netlabels releasing free music is that they use a Creative Commons licence - and that's optional. But it also means that it's easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of what's available. Where to start? Netlabelism provides a useful starting point, and therefore deserves to nest happily in CTW's "general netlabel sites" category - only the second site to do so, he said in a laughably weak and insanely pompous attempt to make such an honour sound vaguely prestigious.

My only bugbear is that the site takes a long time to load using my soon-to-be-drowned-in-a-barrel dial-up connection. I think it's about time that me and broadband got jiggy with it, don't you?