I've been to a handful of concerts in recent years where artists have said to the audience, that they would not be amused if the video they shoot at the concert goes up on YouTube, or similar puffy statements, as if the video on YouTube would affect the sales or popularity of this artist in an adverse way.

This is what makes CASH Music (dubbed the musician’s open source revolution), and what founder Kristin Hersh is doing with it, refreshing. Her husband, Billy O'Connell gets on stage at the intimate Whelans venue in Dublin to present her. In the intro, CASH Music is mentioned extensively. It's also stressed, that the music on her website is free, as he says, 'payment is an option, the music is not'.
Several times during the concert, which covers both her back catalogue as a solo artist, a couple of Throwing Muses tracks from a forthcoming album, plus tracks from her latest solo album Crooked (released as a book with a CD), the prologue of the songs quite often contains the sentence "you can download this track from my website when you get home tonight". She also plays brand new tracks, that will be available from her website, for free, in the coming weeks.

The whole concert is the closest I've ever gotten to experiencing a 1000 True Fans-situation as described by Kevin Kelly. I'm sure Hersh have read his piece, and if she hasn't, Kevin Kelly would be happy to see, that there's someone in the industry that thinks, at least partly, like him.

At CASH Music, the option to pay comes in different versions. You can choose to pay whatever amount you want for the music you can download, for free – a sort of donationware model for acquiring music online. The other option is to become a Strange Angel. A Strange Angel is a person who donates money to Kristin's projects. The smallest amount starts at $US 30 pr. quarter, which gives you two free tickets to any Kristin, Throwing Muses or 50FOOTWAVE performances, so you don't have to worry about tickets anymore. You also get Kristin's new CDs ahead of release date, and you get access to a media-rich subscribers page with "cool stuff", including live bootlegs, video links and more. On the other end of the Strange Angel scale, is the Executive Producer Level Support worth $US 5000. Donating that will earn you an Executive Producer credit on Kristin's next CD. You don't just support the product, you become the product. How brilliant is that? It is the closest I've seen to the Street Performer Protocol, as described in the paper by Kelsey and Schneier.

Hersh is not the only one approaching the music industry, and the life as a musician this way, although she is probably the only one doing it in the all-embracing way she is doing it. The stables at CASH Music has more than 60 projects using the software developed by the organization, popularizing the web as a platform to socialize music, reaching more people, in a new way, where sustainability for the artist is the goal. And judging from Hersh's productivity, it works for her.

You can follow Kristin Hersh on her blog, twitter, and facebook.

I've been using an Android device since the G1 came out in Europe in 2009, and I've been impressed with how much better is has gotten in the last 18 months. Looking at old screenshots from the 1.5 and 1.6 releases looks like lightyears away from the current look and feel of 2.1, and will soon be even better with 2.2 (aka Froyo), which boasts a lot of improvements.

I'm not going to get into all that, others have covered this much better than I can, what I'll do instead is give you a list of applications that floats my boat on Android.

Appbrain. Takes the pain out of searching for and installing apps on your phone via the Market. If you sign up with appbrain, you can go straight to my list of apps in this post, and easily install them on your phone.

twicca. Full-featured twitter client, with a simple and non-cluttered interface. The widget is not very rich, but the rest of the application gets a big thumbs up.

Cubed³. A great and visually pleasing substitution for the bundled music player. Best feature is the option to have controls on the lock screen.

Rmaps. Maps application with options for offline maps via a third party application. You can add your own points of interest as well. Best offline maps client I've tried.

Newsrob. Get your Google Reader feeds on to your phone, and read them while offline. Very handy.

Listen. Bring your Podcasts with you. Also syncs your subscriptions with your Google Reader account.

Vignette. A paid app, also available with limitations in the Market. Does wonders to your camera, including more than 50 effects and 20 different frames. Easy and intuitive interface.

Dropbox. Get your dropbox files on your phone. Simple and easy.

Astro. File manager, task manager, pretty much the swiss army knife application for managing your files on Android.

OpenLoopz. Very nice productivity tool. Let's you organize your todo-lists in GTD-style.

Simple Last.fm Scrobbler. Scrobbles the tunes you play on your phone.

SMS Popup. Does just that, pops up your text messages so you don't have to navigate to the messaging application when new messages arrive.

SMS Backup. Backs up your text messages, MMS messages, and call log to the cloud, using your Gmail account as storage.

Free Advanced Task Manager. Lets you kill applications, and exclude applications from being killed. Keeps your phone responsive and fast by killing background processes.

Instafetch Lite. Syncs your instapaper articles to your phone for offline reading.

That's all, I hope you find this list useful, and if you have comments, suggestions, liquorice or crackers, drop 'em in the comments.

Nabil Elderkin's movie about b-boying/b-girling and hip-hop in Uganda looks really worthwhile. Looks like hip-hop can still save lives.

If you haven't been introduced to the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, then here's the skinny on them. 8 brothers, they all play brass, hailing from the Chicago southside, sons of Phil Cohran who was a key player in Sun Ra's Arkestra in the late 50s. Last year I got to see HBE two days in a row, and on the first night, I had just seen The Arkestra play at the Cork jazz-festival, so it was like an evening spanning 50 years of jazz.

They played Dublin last week, arranged by the mighty Choice Cuts, and then they got ashed in over the weekend. They were supposed to support Gorillaz at Coachella, but had to cancel, and thankfully, Mark Murphy acted fast, got a gig arranged at Sugar Club (my personal favorite venue in Dublin), and they sold it out. I'm sorry for all the people who missed them at Coachella, but they made 400 people in Dublin extremely happy. HBE don't sleep on no ash-induced delays!

Below are some pictures from the gig:

And if there's nothing showing, it's because 23 is having some issues. They are up on Choice Cuts flickr-account as well.

This Saturday the 17th it's Record Store Day, a day to celebrate your local vinyl pusher, and support the format that shaped the first music industry, and created its own one in the process. Where would we be with no DJ Kool Herc and a set of old records at a block party?

In Dublin it's not that easy to find out what's happening this year, apart from a list of exclusive releases on the day from Universal records. According to the page for Dublin on the official website the following shops has things happening:

• Beatfinder Records in Temple Bar
• Road Records in Fade Street
• City Discs in Temple Bar (whose website seems to be b0rked at the moment)
• Tower Records
• And the always (but not for much longer) fantastic Freebird Records who still have their 50% off closing down sale.

If you like your vintage vinyl it's also worth mentioning the flea market in Ranelagh on the 17th, and if the weather next weekend looks anything like what it did this weekend, that's where you'll find me getting my fingers dusty.

Yet I can't remember either, when I last sat down with a sample, a bassline, a drumbeat, and a cup of vanilla bean tea. This is what came out of that, enjoy.

You'd probably know this piece of piano better with Roisin Murphy's sultry voice on top of it, off the Handsome Boy Modelling School track, but this is a pretty insane cook-up of Galt McDermot's piano loop.

Oh internets...