I just found this great internet radio station hosted by David Byrne. Each month David hosts a playlist from a different genre. This month is sort of a southern contemporary selection (that I hesitate to call country) which includes but is not limited to Lyle Lovett, Lucinda Williams, Neil Young, Emmylou Harris, Wilco, Gillian Welch, and Willie Nelson. The station plays alot of off the beaten path stuff that is eclectic as Byrne’s musical style. I give this station two thumbs up! Thanks for the linkage Boing Boing!

I remember when I was surfing the web in 1995 for music, one of the few bands that had a decent internet presence was Phish. In contrast to other musicians who have jumped on the RIAA bandwagon, Phish have concentrated their efforts on using the internet as a tool to both sell and distribute their music. Phish was the first jam band to sell live soundboard recordings on the internet (via LivePhish.com and is one of the most heavily circulated bands on Etree. In keeping with their tradition of embracing technology as a distribution mechanism for their music, Phish announced last week that they will be selling video of live performances for consumption on the iPod video for $1.99. Perhaps the coolest thing about it is that the files will be encoded in MPEG-4 format and completely 100% DRM free! It really really bugs me that when I purchase a CD or DVD that my choices of how I can listen to it are dictated to me by the distributor. Another thing that is cool about Phish offering iPod videos is that I love seeing alternatives to iTunes. The competition will mean better prices and more innovation.

Here’s another great idea from Google who in an attempt to reduce some of the new PC setup time has released the “Google Pack“. Google Pack is a bundle of software apps that commonly get installed on a freshly formatted PC. The packages included are Google Earth, Google Desktop, Picassa, Google Toolbar (for IE), Google Pack Screensaver, Mozilla FireFox, Ad-Aware SE Personal, Norton Antivirus 2005 Special Edition and Adobe Reader 7. Now I know that part of this is to promote Google’s software but I use 7 out of 9 of these applications on my PC and I know that many other people use most of these apps as well. This will save me at least half an hour next time I set up a PC. Thanks Google!