One of the greatest things to evolve out of the Internet, the global adoption of broadband and more widespread adoption of Internet capable machines by households around the world is the widespread access to a huge number of artists and new music.

For a long time, we were force fed the music that big labels and corporate radio spooned out to us. Corporate rock. Same songs played over and over until they were hits. Napster came along and changed everything. Sure, it wasn't right to steal music without paying artists, but it sure was nice to be able to listen to indie bands who were labeless and on shareware.

Napster died and digital music sites like The Hype Machine were born. I've bought more CD's in one year, because of the exposure Hype Machine gave me, than I may have bought in 3 years of listening to corporate radio. And because of blogs like The Hype Machine, bands like, Clap Your Hands were able to sell hundreds of thousands of discs without the backing of a label. Internet Radio and Satellite radio came out and rocked new music as well. Power to the people!

And of course, video kills the radio star in 2.0. Here's a clip of one of my new favorite artists, Amanda Blank, as she rocks NYC with rising stars Spankrock. And of course, both are Philly artists, yo. (NSFW)

Oh God, it's so goooooood. Sit back in your chair, tip your head back and play Black Mirror, the first single off of the Arcade Fire's new album.

I want to be buried with this album.

Yay to my friend Maura and public radio; two great tastes that taste great together.(That's her at the bottom, being interviewed for the Superbowl/Prince segment)

And this guy has been in the room with way too many dead people in the last 10 months to not be a person of interest.

Here's a great site that someone at work just shared with me and now I'll share with you: vidmeter. Vidmeter aggregates views and rankings of the most popular videos on the top video sharing sites and showcases the most popular videos online in one place. Smart idea and a great place for marketers to get a feel for what's striking a cord virally among internet video users.

Tuesday afternoon I choo-choo'ed up to NYC to catch up with like-minded peeps at the New York Social Media Club meeting. There was a good showing and it was fun to chat up folks like Aaron Urhmacher from Text 100 and Christian Averill from NGT/Fleishman-Hillard.

It was a large group, so it was hard to get into more in-depth exchange on everything that everyone else is working on and exploring. I didn't stay for the shorter groups, so maybe that was more individual-specific. One thing that was mentioned was twitter. I'm not going to lie, I don't exactly understand twitter, but I joined, so maybe I'll figure it out. Hey Twitter folks, how about adding a "how it works" section?

My last note is that I've been following what the TV show "The L Word" is doing online. I thought it was genius at the beginning of this season when the show launched a paper chart that one of the characters had created in the first season of the show as a social network for lesbians. That application can be found here. I have to say, I'm disappointed with the application. I really thought that it would become a MySpace for that niche market, but it doesn't seem to be active at all.

Another L Word related item: one of their actresses, Janina Gavankar, is the new online sensation Ms Dewey. It's a really fun directory, but I can't figure out who's funding it and I hope they are going to update her soundbites soon. I've only been using it for two weeks and the soundbites are already old.

I have seen the future and apparently, it's name is now Joost. I'm one of the lucky Beta testers of what was formerly code named "The Venice Project" and is now named "Joost." I can't say much about it because I'm bound to a confidentiality agreement, I'll just basically reiterate what Wired says in their piece today.

This platform is flippin' amazing! I've been sitting at my desk just going ape over it. They warned us that this was going to blow youtube out of the water, but I can't believe what I'm seeing. It's just so SMART. Not just the architecture behind the platform, which I'm not technical enough to figure out, but the features they added - Instant Message, News Tickers, Rating systems that are like picture-in-picture P2P tools...it's so SMART. They thought of everything I want to do as a multitasking entertainment geek.

I'd better stop now before I say something I shouldn't. Just wait. Joost is going to change everything.

PS - Here's a screen grab of Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers "Making of the Video." Look at that resolution. Live TV! No more waiting to download from iTunes. Wooohooo.

This new campaign, Letitout.com by Kleenex, caught my eye. The core concept is very much like the widely covered campaign I worked on last year for my Secret client.

The point of difference, is that Kleenex is applying a similar concept in a very different way, and I have to say, I think they've done a great job with it. I wonder who their agencies are? I saw an ad spot on TV for it and because it is a unique and modern approach for a tissue brand that certainly doesn't have a brand awareness problem, I went to the website to check out their execution.

They don't have much submitted content yet, I'll be interested to watch and see if consumers do participate. The one thing they may have overlooked is providing incentive for the consumer to participate. I didn't see that.

Also, savvy is their involvement of a Blogher blogger as the editor for their blog. Looks like that may be a rotating post, but it sure is smart to involve a broad and respected community of bloggers like Blogher.

Creating and fostering an emotional bond for the consumer via Kleenex and in a way that their product *can't* get lost in the story - they're telling you to let it out! And use a Kleenex when you do so!

Well Done, Kleenex. Nice to see a corporate entity execute well online for once.