PCs killed the mix-tape star: Putting together a home-brewed compilation of songs used to be an act of love and art. Now it’s just too damn easy to be worth caring about.

Praise be to the CD burner: Now is the golden age of compilations and mixes, thanks to computer technology. We should all be grateful.

iTunes Music Store RSS Generator: Generate XML feeds of iTunes Music Store data. Not necessarily amazing or helpful data, but access to iTMS data and tools is shit right now, so anything is good. Now all we need is someone to create an easy parser.

musicplasma: A music visual search engine that is a tool to help identify all the artists that fit your musical tastes.

Artistic Integrity: Some artists, such as cerebral Brit-rockers Radiohead, believe their albums should be listened to in their entirety and will not sell them online as singles. So, which listening patterns are Radiohead-approved? (See also: Music Fans Find Online Jukebox Half-Empty)

MP3 to M3U or SMIL playlist: An M3U bookmarklet; click it while on a web page containing links to MP3s and it’ll squirt out an M3U/SMIL playlist to play all those tracks.

Random iTunes links: How to Link to Items in the iTunes Store, Create links to the iTunes Music Store, and iPod Idea: Smart Shuffle. My direct searches to songs in ITMS were not working last night when I was creating them, but they appear to work now. Huzzah!

Why tech firms are out of tune: This revolution is clearly not about people taking control, it is about the entertainment cartel exerting even more control over what we, the people, can do with its expensive and often over-rated products.

It’s about restricting our freedom to use digital content in ways that fit with our lifestyles and choices. And it is about forcing us to pay more, and repeatedly, for stuff that we want to watch or listen to.

It is also, crucially, about limiting our freedom to play with the stuff we’ve bought.

Real freedom comes from below, not from the marketing department of a large corporation.

Counterpoint: Downloading Isn’t Stealing: Downloading may be illegal. But 60 million people used Napster and only 50 million voted for Bush or Gore. We live in a democracy. If the people want to share files then the law should be changed to let them.

And there’s a fair way to change it. A Harvard professor found that a $60/yr. charge for broadband users would make up for all lost revenues. The government would give it to the affected artists and, in return, make downloading legal, sparking easier-to-use systems and more shared music. The artists get more money and you get more music. What’s unethical about that?

Music Industry Puts Troops in the Streets: On being confronted by pseudo-cop RIAA agents: “They told me, ‘You’re a pirate!’ I said, ‘C’mon, guys, pirates are all at sea. I just work in a parking lot.’”

musicmobs.com: A community for iTunes users that allows you to share your listening habits and discover new music.