[from wired.com]

Over the past few years, entertainment has become more incestuous than ever. Rock stars became actors, comic book characters morphed into title roles in blockbuster films and everyone involved goes to the same after-parties.

Now, the blending of popular culture has gone even further with a new MTV show of animated music videos featuring popular video game characters performing bands’ songs.

Today’s the Day. Known as “video mods,” the videos star characters from The Sims 2, Tribes: Vengeance, BloodRayne and other games jamming on guitar, break dancing and belting out the latest tracks from Evanescence, the Von Bondies, Lil Jon & the East Side Boyz, Fountains of Wayne and other bands. MTV2 showcases these videos in a half-hour show called, what else, Video Mods.

“Music videos and video games (are) two roads that have been pointing to each other and about to intersect,” said Alex Coletti, executive producer for MTV2, which broadcasts Video Mods. “I know that our audience, when they’re not watching music videos, they’re playing video games. Here’s a way to do both.”

Read more.

by Ross Fadner

As it turns out, you can do more with mp3s than just play music. Adam Curry, weblogger and former MTV VJ, has started offering visitors what he calls a “daily audio log” of syndicated radio shows through an iPod or other mp3 player. The project is called iPodder, and it uses RSS (really simple syndication) feeds with mp3 enclosures to allow users to download audio files from the Web to their mp3.

On an “iPodder” Web site, which Curry created, he writes that those who syndicate their material via iPodder have found the tool helpful in distributing their work. He notes that iPodder is still in development–it’s only a month old–but adds that hundreds of people are using it every day.

iPodder makes audio mp3 or Windows Media Player files available via RSS–an electronic content feed with a piece of XML attached to it, enabling the content to be delivered over real-time networks to recipients. Users choose the feed they want, and aggregators then cull the files from Curry’s iPodder site and deliver them through an application to an mp3. Audio blogs currently being syndicated via iPodder include: Adam Curry’s The Daily Source Code, RSS founding father Dave Winer’s Morning Coffee Notes, IT Conversations, Evil Genius Chronicles, RasterWeb, Blogdigger Audio, and FreeFlow.

Read more.

Check out the iPodder site.

Beat Society is a free platform for hip hop producers to showcase their talent. The website boasts over 300 producers and 3,500 beats from across the globe.

Check out the site.

by Yingdan Gu

In the same way that people used to record their favorite songs from the radio on cassettes or their favorite TV shows with VCR’s, they can now capture streaming audio from the Internet on a computer hard drive.

A new piece of software called Audio Xtract is the key. After the software is installed on your computer, it connects you to a database of Internet radio stations that can be sorted by genre or bandwidth. Once you’ve found one that appeals to you, just click on Record. The software enables the computer to record the material in the form of individual MP3 files and stores them in a folder. The files are named according to their content, making it easy to delete those – like commercials – you don’t want.

Because the contents are recorded as MP3 files, they can be played on computers and portable media players and burned onto CD’s. Audio Xtract is $50 at www.audioxtract.com and at other Web sites, and has begun to reach stores. A professional version, which includes the ability to edit recorded material, is $70.

Audio Xtract can record as many as eight stations simultaneously, although a broadband Internet connection is recommended when multiple streams are being recorded. And you can even schedule recording sessions in advance.

Read more.