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Technology may have made it simple to obtain digital music, but it hasn't provided an easy way to sift through millions of tracks to find the tunes we like.

The Internet has, however, connected music fans to a legion of hardcore aficionados who help steer people to new music. Think of Barry, Jack Black's rock-addicted character from the film High Fidelity, with a blog.

Stereogum founder Scott Lapatine has had to fend off accusations that his blog is going corporate.

(Credit: Stereogum)

The difference is that some of today's most popular music bloggers may someday be worth more than Barry ever dreamed of earning in that record store. Music blogs are nearly as old as the Web, but the past year has brought unprecedented growth, influence, and dollars to the sector as people look for help discovering new music. Now, the most popular blogs, such as Stereogum, BrooklynVegan, and Pitchfork, look less and less like Internet fanzines and more like tech start-ups.

Last month, Stereogum was sold to social-media site Buzznet, while Pitchfork made a splashy foray into music videos that spurred observers to call the site the "new MTV." Music blogs are organizing concerts, being quoted on television, and releasing independent albums--just like a record label. The changes have spurred some to declare there is no limit to how far the blogs can go. Others fear they might lose their edge if they go corporate.

"With success come changes," said Yancey Strickler, eMusic's editorial director and a longtime observer of the music blogosphere. "The way these things normally go is you'll start to generate a lot of attention, and it gets harder to just keep writing a music blog. It can become more of a managerial role and less about curation and finding interesting ways to discover music."

If some music bloggers are overwhelmed by success, it's because they never planned for it. Pitchfork was launched in 1995 by a then-teenage Ryan Schreiber, who wrote from his parents' basement. Stereogum was started in 2003 as a workplace distraction for founder Scott Lapatine.

Hardly any were trained writers or music-industry veterans. They lured readers through wit, encyclopedic knowledge, and a hunk-of-burning love for music.

The music blogs also didn't try to cater to mass audiences--at least at first. They focused on niches. For example, BrooklynVegan developed a reputation for being the must-read blog for concert information in New York. At Pitchfork, Schreiber was early in covering independent music; his site is now famous for spotting new talent, including the band Arcade Fire.

Another sign of how far the blogs have come: A year ago, some of the big record companies were sending "cease and desist" letters to blogs that posted unauthorized MP3 files to their sites. Now, Strickler said, many of those same companies plead with the blogs to host their music.

How big is too big?
Gerd Leonhard, the tech sector's self-described media futurist, argues that the top music blogs will use their popularity and influence to build empires.

"The leading music blogs will become what used to be called record labels," Leonhard wrote in a blog last month. "The people running them will be those sharp, tuned-in, hyper-networked and resourceful BlogJs formerly known as bloggers...these disruptors, thought leaders, and influencers will be our future broadcasters."

To this point, there's little chance Universal or EMI feel threatened. Pitchfork sees 1.5 million unique users per month, while most other music blogs only see a fraction of that. Regardless, Leonhard says there is nothing to keep the blogs from expanding into other areas such as signing artists, selling downloads, and promoting concerts.

Some of the blogs have already begun doing much of this. Last July, Stereogum issued a digital album, OKX, a tribute to the 10th anniversary of Radiohead's classic OK Computer. Pitchfork has hosted a music festival in Chicago every year since 2005. Schreiber has even made the jump to online video with the launch last month of Pitchfork.tv, which hosts music-related clips.

In the site's first week, more than 1 million videos were viewed and critics have given the site a thumb's up.

But if they grow too big or allow corporate America to hijack their editorial content, couldn't these sites lose credibility with their young readers?

Even before Buzznet acquired Stereogum, the blog had strong ties to big business. Among the site's backers was the Pilot Group, an investment firm headed by former AOL honcho Bob Pittman. The real trouble for Stereogum came after Buzznet bought it. That was when it was reported that Universal Music Group was a Buzznet investor. To some observers, this meant that one of the major music companies was now in a position to influence Stereogum's editorial content.

Scott Lapatine, the site's founder and editor in chief, didn't want to delve too deeply into such criticism but did say there's no way anyone except him is going to steer the direction of editorial content. "I'm still running the site," Lapatine said. "A lot of what was reported about the sale was inaccurate. Our editorial isn't going to change."

Should Rolling Stone watch its back?
The bloggers interviewed said they have absolutely no intentions of trying to replacing the record companies. But how about knocking off Rolling Stone as the big daddy of music publications?

Well, the truth is, the iconic music magazine doesn't hold much sway with the bloggers.

"I'm kind of in the minority of my friends or anyone I know," Lapatine said. "I'm the only one who reads Rolling Stone or any of the music magazines."

Nathan Brackett, Rolling Stone's deputy managing editor, doesn't blink. He says there isn't any blog out there that can rival his magazine's readership or level of journalism.

"I wouldn't call what they do as writing," Brackett said. "The blogs do the really quick 50-word update on what a band's doing. They'll write about (singer) Lilly Allen releasing a new EP or (that the band) Man Man is preparing an album. The way Rolling Stone competes is we pick up the phone and bring original reporting. We take advantage of our access. Most blogs don't have the staffs to pick up the phone."

SAN FRANCISCO--Sun Chief Executive Jonathan Schwartz rightly gets credit for pioneering the corporate blog as a tool to reach customers, employees, and others. But pretty soon the novelty of his methods will wear off, he predicted.

Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz speaks at the Web 2.0 Expo

(Credit: Corinne Schulze/CNET Networks)

"At some point the word 'blogging' will be anachronistic," Schwartz said at the Web 2.0 Expo here in San Francisco. "I communicate."

And he predicted, in effect, that the rest of the executive world will catch up. "Historically, communication took place by being a celebrity CEO who met with heads of state, and got the local media to cover it," he said in an on-stage interview with O'Reily Media chief Tim O'Reilly. "You got the message out in an inefficient and environmentally irresponsible way. Then the Internet came round and gave you a way to reach the entire planet."

In Sun's effort to recover some of the glory and profitability it had in the first Internet bubble, the company has embraced open-source software, adopted servers based on Intel and AMD's x86 processors, and switched CEOs.

One thing hasn't changed, though, from the Scott McNealy era to the Schwartz era: the company tries to be provocative. It's cheaper than advertising, and blogs are just a new way to accomplish the goal.

"If you say undifferentiated things that are expected, then you shouldn't expect anyone to care," Schwartz said, asked about what he meant when he said, "Controversy was...not a byproduct of the strategy--it was the strategy," on his blog earlier this month when discussing his company's open-source processor strategy.

Blogs and open-source software are complementary, Schwartz added.

"Sun makes money by selling the innovations in data centers," but that's a hard market to reach, he said. "Free software and free ideas are the best way to reach the marketplace."

The Pirate Bay, a popular BitTorrent tracking site, has launched a blogging service where bloggers won't have to fear censorship, according to TorrentFreak.

(Credit: The Pirate Bay)

The new blogging site, dubbed BayWords, is powered by Wordpress and will eventually make money off ads.

The Pirate Bay already has an uncensored image-hosting site call BayIMG and has confirmed it is working on an uncensored video-hosting site.

Brokep, one of the founders of The Pirate Bay, told blog TorrentFreak that the group decided to launch BayWords after a friend's Wordpress blog was removed for linking to copyrighted material.

"Many blogs are being shut down for uncomfortable thoughts and ideas," the group wrote on the BayWords home page. "We will not do that. Our goal is to protect freedom of speech and your thoughts. As long as you don't break any Swedish laws in your blog, we will defend it."

While you can use the blog to write about whatever you want, that doesn't mean that everyone will be able to read it. In February, a Danish court ordered a Danish ISP to block access to The Pirate Bay, and Chinese authorities block access to content regularly.

The group also faces a possible lawsuit from musical artist Prince over copyright issues.

Sometimes, you get a press release that's so accidentally, astonishingly funny that you can't stop laughing long enough to make fun of it. This morning's latte-through-the-nose nominee is the deadpan announcement "Kodak Names Chief Blogger: Company Extends its Revolutionary Approach to Product Innovation with Cutting-edge Approach to Social Media."

According to the release, "Just over 10 percent of Fortune 500 companies have public blogs. Fewer still have Chief Bloggers, and Kodak is among the first to name a female Chief Blogger." Wow. I had thought that writing, customer service, and public relations jobs were chock full 'o women, but now I discover that Chief Blogger was a job title heretofore out of my chromosomal reach. So much more rewarding than CTO or CFO.

Now, there are lots of corporate blogs and bloggers out there (can I officially coin the terms "clog" and "clogger"?), some of whom I even read, like Adobe's John Nack. But really, once you've appointed an official blogging overlord and publicly announce it just to impress Wall Street analysts, blogs take on all the glamour and interest of CRM.

A recent libel lawsuit filed against Cisco Systems over one of its employees' personal blogs could spur companies, many of which have encouraged workers to share their writings publicly, to reconsider how much latitude to give them.

Thousands of companies have embraced the idea of giving employees an unfiltered voice as a means to keep in touch with customers, suppliers, and the media. Sun Microsystems boasts a 4,000-employee-strong blog network, including its chief executive, and some corporate "spokesbloggers" like Microsoft's Robert Scoble have even rocketed to Internet stardom.

Cisco's legal trouble stems from a Blogspot-hosted blog called Patent Troll Tracker, which Rick Frenkel, who directs the company's intellectual property department, launched last May. His posts focused on patents and patent litigation--an issue that Cisco has pressed Congress to address by overhauling what it views as a broken U.S. patent system.

A few weeks ago, Frenkel revealed his identity, and two patent attorneys in Texas filed suit, accusing him of tarnishing their good names and disparaging a patent case their client had filed against Cisco--all the while allegedly concealing his affiliation with the company.

Cisco has responded by rethinking how it does blogging. Now the Patent Troll Tracker posts appear to be open only to invited readers. Although the company says it's standing by Frenkel and allowing him to continue his personal blog, the incident also highlighted a number of important "lessons," Cisco said in a statement--including the potential perils of unchecked anonymous blogging.

Cisco said it still believes "common sense" should be a guiding force for employees sharing information online, but it also added the following rule to its three-year-old Internet postings policy: "If you comment on any aspect of the company's business or any policy issue the company is involved in where you have responsibility for Cisco's engagement, you must clearly identify yourself as a Cisco employee in your postings or blog site(s) and include a disclaimer that the views are your own and not those of Cisco."

Although it wasn't a surprising move, it also may discourage other employees, said Denise Howell, an intellectual property and technology lawyer based in Newport Beach, Calif., who has written about corporate blogging policies.

"It helps show what expectations are for the company," she said, "but it's telling everyone else, 'Gee, we think you're just as big a risk as this guy.'"

Sun Microsystems, Yahoo, Google, Dell weigh in
To be sure, it's still the exception, not the rule, for companies to have rules governing blogging in the first place. But among those who do, not all of them make it absolutely mandatory to disclose one's corporate affiliation.

Sun Microsystems, which hosts blogs from CEO Jonathan Schwartz and some 4,000 other employees, has had a blogging policy in place since 2004. It broadly prohibits discussing a wealth of "non-public" information, including financial data, code, personal information about other individuals, all manner of confidential information, and "work-related legal proceedings or controversies." (Click for PDF)

But unlike Cisco, Sun doesn't require bloggers to disclose that they work for the company, although Tim Bray, the company's Web technologies director, says he considers doing so "good practice."

Google similarly recommends, but does not require, such disclosures, said spokeswoman Sunny Gettinger. (Google said it has an internal "communications" policy but doesn't make it public, although its general employee code of conduct is.)

Yahoo is arguably even gentler, but its policy has "been successful in providing employees with guidance on blogging practices with respect to the company," said spokeswoman Nicki Dugan. Its guidelines, issued in 2005 (PDF), decree two main rules: don't reveal proprietary information, and be cautious about posting exaggerations, obscenities, or other characterizations that could invite litigation.

Under a separate list of not-mandatory guidelines, Yahoo employees who choose to identify themselves as employees of the company are told to consider telling their supervisors, but they're not required to do so, nor are they required to disclose that they work for Yahoo at all.

"If you're worried about what your mom, manager, ex-coworker, or Terry Semel would think, listen to that instinct," Jeremy Zawodny, one of Yahoo's best-known employee bloggers, wrote in a May 2005 blog post introducing the policy.

The BBC's blogging guidance actually carves out "blogs or Web sites which do not identify the blogger as a BBC employee, do not discuss the BBC, and are purely about personal matters" from its guidance.

Dell's stance is perhaps the most similar to--and predates--Cisco's. Bob Pearson, the computer maker's vice president of communities and conversations, said the company prides itself on being one of the first companies to release a "clear transparency policy."

That "online communication policy," released in November 2006, sets standards for employees when they're acting as "a delegate of the company."

Specifically, they're expected to disclose their association with Dell whenever they do any sort of blogging, social networking, Wikipedia entry-editing, or other online activities related to or on behalf of the company. If the subject matter crosses over into hobbies or people's personal lives, "there would be no rationale for us to get involved in that," Pearson said in a phone interview Tuesday.

Translation: "If someone is a fisherman and they want to talk about fly fishing outside of work, then that's not our business, it's personal," said Pearson. "But if someone is going to talk about notebooks and anything related to Dell, they have to say they're from Dell."

IBM also requires its employees to identify themselves and their roles with the company if they're blogging about company-related topics. Its lengthy guidelines began through a wiki process in spring 2005 and have been evolving since then.

Other companies were less forthcoming about what rules, if any, they have in place.

Apple and Symantec spokespeople declined to comment on whether they have employee-blogging policies and what they entail. An Adobe spokeswoman said the company "does have an active blogging community and asks those participating to adhere to Adobe's blogging guidelines," but she declined to share those rules. A McAfee representative said the company is in the process of "refreshing" its blogging guidelines--for undisclosed reasons unrelated to the Cisco incident--but declined to share any details about what's in place now.

Microsoft offers employees a list of frequently asked questions about how to apply existing company policies on confidentiality and other matters to the blogging world, but it doesn't make that public, a spokeswoman said. The gist of the guidance, though, is to be smart and use common sense, she said.

Any company that decides to adopt blogging policies should keep them short, clear, and to-the-point, said Howell, the online communications lawyer.

"I don't think you need to necessarily try to take into account every single specific situation that might come up in your blogging policy," she said. "You'll come up with something that's unreadable and draconian. No one will actually read it or respect it."

A new survey shows that few Americans really care what bloggers have to say about politics, despite the plethora of opinionated blogs out there this campaign year.

Of 2,300 adults who filled out an online poll in January, 56 percent said they never read blogs on politics and 22 percent said they read them regularly, meaning several times a month or more, according to a survey conducted by Harris Interactive and reported on by Reuters.

Older people are more likely to read the political blogs, with 26 percent of those aged 63 or older reading them and less than 20 percent for people younger than 44.

We wondered what the percentage of readers was for blogs in general. ComScore looked at its online traffic stats and found that 40 percent of all U.S. Internet users visited a blog at least once during February. That represented 74 million unique users.

It would be difficult to converge the two data sets since the methodologies and sample sizes are so different, and ComScore does not break out the numbers based on blog type.

I would have thought that blogs in general had become more mainstream by now, but given that they aren't it's not that surprising that so few people read political blogs.

Up until today, only Windows Mobile 5 and 6 and BlackBerry users could take CellSpin's mobile blogging and media-sharing platform for, well, a spin. On Thursday the San Jose, Calif. company announced a big addition to the family: phones on the Symbian platform.

Adding Symbian cell phones, many of them high-end, brings CellSpin's free beta service to over 300 handsets and over 30 carriers worldwide.

CellSpinners can quickly share photos, video, text, and audio to Blogger, eBay, Facebook, YouTube, Picasa, LiveJournal, Flickr, and Windows Live Spaces, with more partnerships on the way. Of course, there are a few limitations brought on by the partner sites. YouTube only accepts video submissions, for example, and photos are the only media that can be uploaded to Flickr, Picasa, and Facebook. The blogging sites and eBay accept all four media types.

DUBLIN--Ireland might be one of Europe's more active technology hubs, but blogging still isn't big there.

That's the opinion of Tom Raftery, a longtime member of the tech community here and author of a blog on social media. (He's one of the bigger ones, and he starts his day by getting on Twitter.)

Part of the reason is that broadband penetration stinks. A survey published last June by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development pegged Ireland at No. 22 in terms of national broadband penetration by inhabitants, sandwiched between Italy and Portugal, but below the Scandinavian countries, the U.S., and Japan. In all, 15.4 people per 100 had broadband, and it's a small population on top of that. In all, the OECD counted 653,000 subscribers. That puts Ireland 27th overall, between New Zealand and the Slovak Republic.

Getting broadband to your house requires a lot of phone calls and appointment scheduling, one person told me. All those factors make it tough to start your own site.

A lot of people in the Irish tech community also tend to be somewhat reserved, Raftery said. You don't see execs or companies publishing their own blogs like Sun's Jonathan Schwartz does. That should change over time, however.

On the positive side for publishing, newspapers continue to do better than in the States, it seems. Dublin is still served by two major dailies, the Irish Independent and the Irish Times, as well as a bunch of smaller papers. Not bad for a city with 1.6 million residents in the urban hub and surrounding region.

And even though the country doesn't have many bloggers, and hence few arguments over the differences between journalists and bloggers, there is a dichotomy between journalists and reporters, a reporter called Derek Foley from the Irish Daily Star told me. Journalists specialize in writing well-crafted analysis pieces. Reporters might not be able to string two sentences together, but they are the ones who find out first about which soccer star was seen getting a lap dance.

The courthouse has long been one of the last bastions of gadget-free life. Cell phones, PDAs, and laptops are often banned in courtrooms, and based on first-hand observation, I can warn that you never, ever want to be caught there with a ringing device.

That means when you're covering a trial, you leave your multitasking life behind. Even during the most mind-numbing of testimony, you have to sit tight, a particularly challenging task for San Francisco Chronicle crime reporter Henry Lee, who is known for toting around a folder of crossword and sudoku puzzles to help get him through long trials.

Lee is way behind on his puzzles, however, since joining the growing ranks of reporters who are blogging live, straight from the courtroom, thanks to judges who are rethinking their earlier gadget aversions. Lee's first such blog launched in November with the ongoing trial of Hans Reiser, the 44-year-old Oakland, Calif., computer programmer accused of killing his wife.

Hans Reiser

(Credit: via Stanford University)

Now Lee, 34, doesn't haven't to worry about what to do in his downtime any more--he doesn't get any. If he's not typing in notes, composing, fact-checking, and publishing blog posts, he spends trial time responding to e-mail, writing up his traditional trial stories, or even keeping up on other cases he's following.

"Having a laptop is a blessing and a curse," said Lee, a self-described technology novice who is also equipped in court with a BlackBerry and wireless card. "I thrive on this...But it's a wonder that I'm not at my wit's end."

Lee sees the live-blog approach as good for journalism and an overall service to readers who want the blow by blow and enjoy discussing the happenings through the blog feedback forum. He tries to be more than a stenographer by offering color from the courtroom scene itself. And this trial has been colorful, to say the least.

Lee and the Chronicle are far from the first to feature live blogging. Even The New York Times has been featuring such coverage prominently on its site. A recent example was the live blog of Roger Clemens' and Brian McNamee's testimony before Congress.

David Kravets has also been blogging from the Reiser trial for Wired's "Threat Level" blog. (It was he who got Judge Larry Goodman to allow laptops in the courtroom). I will join them both at the Oakland courthouse on Monday morning to cover expected testimony from Reiser himself, a prominent developer who founded the ReiserFS file system software available for Linux.