Some bright nerdish young spark out there has once again raised the irk of Myspace by releasing the latest hack facilitating download of tracks on Myspace despite user permissions set by artists. Using a tiny programme running at a ridiculously low 100kbps, you take the user ID of your desired artist, insert it a field and press a wee button that summons up the tracks locked on their profile. It then lifts their flash music player and allows you to record the playback direct to your hard drive.

Anyone worried that this lark is the gig going equivilent of nicking records from behind the table of an Indie distro can rest assured, the quality of tracks you download come in just over a paltry 90 kbps. In other words that might do something for your ear drums as your mp3 player blasts you half way to deafness, but it'll do nowt for the sub-woofers on an even half decent stereo. There's no point bothering to up the compression quality via Soundforge or its ilk - you may as well try increasing a last drop of milk falling short of a bowl of Corn Flakes by adding whiskey. Proper Dj's might go for acetate dubplates but this moran might stick with his gophers.

Others: Having handed in my thesis all bound and wretchedly underachieving, I intend to do some serious blogging this week to make myself feel better. In store will be a dubstep feature to celebrate an upcoming album launch I'll be heading over to London for. This BBC faciliated night will lead me into some commentary on the absolute glory of internet radio in the face of the poverty of the Irish airwaves. NME will get a pasting for its latest attempts to manufacture a scene from dispersed bands it saw fit to ignore until the inevitable backlash against the skinny jeans and cons brigade became apparent, a politically worthy art project in Carlow gets a mention, Orla Barry gets muppeted and more besides. Why the flurry? Well, this jammy bastard is off to South America for two months so there has to be some heavy compensation before this turns into a travelouge.

Labels: Internet, Music