Who should be in the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame?

My thoughts on who's been left out of the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame.

Actually I just realized I left off Cheap Trick in that post. How could I have missed them?

The weakness of music audiobooks

I read a ton, but I also listen to lots of music, podcasts and audiobooks. I just finished a very good audio version of "The Rolling Stones' 'Exile on Main Street' (33 1/3 Series)."

A critical look at The Rolling Stones' finest albumLearned a lot of background about an album I'd have for years but never really dived deep on. I'll certainly listen to "Exile" with new appreciation and insight.

But guess what was sorely lacking in this audiobook? Yep, the music. And that's a regularity with music-related audiobooks I've listened to over the years, including a jazz history and a bio of Phil Spector.

I understand the high price of obtaining rights to the music is oppressive. But when I listen to music-related audiobooks, I'm constantly hitting pause and referring to songs in question. Thankfully, I have an XM Inno portable MP3 player that eases that process. But it's still a pain to listen to the book in isolation. I thought for sure when I was listening to an audiobook version of the Ken Burns' PBS "Jazz" series, that he'd have conquered that rights issue, given the fact there was a whole line of CDs released in conjunction with the series. Wrong.

I guess I just need to learn my lesson and keep my consumption of music books to print versions.

But is anyone aware of any audiobooks that have nice integration of music?

Amazon Kindle, Part 3

OK, so you know I’m a big fan of the Kindle 2 (but not Kindle 1). It’s a fantastic tool for reading text, and for extending the book industry in new and exciting ways. As I’ve noted, even for voracious readers like me, the Kindle really does make reading fun and exciting.

Since I first got my Kindle 2, Amazon has released the Kindle DX, a larger and heavier version designed to better serve textbook and newspaper readers. Many newspaper traditionalists saw the DX as a savior, and that consumers would suddenly drop what they were doing and open digital subscriptions to
their local newspapers. Um, right.

Certainly there’s a future for “newspapers” online, but it’s silly to think anything more than a minority will flock to e-readers to consume what are essentially replica newspapers. That propensity to “shovel” print content online is in part what’s contributed to newspapers’ inability to gain traction online over the years. Some newspaper execs have even hatched plans to buy Kindles and give them to subscribers for free in exchange for their loyalty. But those concepts ignore the usability question that has driven people away in the first place: You can’t win over readers long-term by shoveling replica-print content online and expect them to flock to it.

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