Welcome to this week’s IAAO email

Collecting music is one of my main passions in life and has been since I was a child when I started buying music with my pocket money. One of the sad things about the digital age is that the days of going down to your local record shop to spend hours browsing vinyl and finding “the” track seem to be a thing of the past (along with those local record shops) and it’s upsetting to see that those days will never return. We do still have the likes on HTFR (Hard To Find Records) but for the most part they are too expensive and it’s not like I can do down to Birmingham every week to pick up some tracks, plus I’ve generally moved away from Vinyl now (ok, I’ve actually moved away completely but I’m trying to paint a picture here)

What we have now are Digital stores where there are literally 1000’s upon 1000’s of tracks from every genre you can think of. I use a few of these on a weekly basis to buy music and when I can I grab the WAV versions (a little bit more expensive than the MP3 version but so much better) and they have preview functions so you can listen to your tracks before handing over your virtual money. It’s quick, it’s convenient, it’s cheap and it’s easy.

The trouble (for me) with having so much music available to you is that I find I buy all this music, but I don’t actually find the time to sit down and listen to all these new tracks. I find this quite disturbing. How can I hand my money over but not actually listen to the music I’m buying apart from a 1 minute sample? This isn’t always the case, I might buy 3 tracks and listen to them, but if I’m buying 20 tracks at a time, it’s not really possible for me to do it, especially if I end up buying another 20 3 days later. It’s a scary thought. While it’s great all this music is available to us 24 hours a day 7 days a week, it feels less personal now.

Talking about music and sorting out your very large collections, I bought myself Mediamonkey this week. It’s a fantastic piece of software for tagging and renaming your collections. You can read my full thoughts on it here: The Holy Grail Of Music Management?

The Paranoid recordings boys have taken time out of their busy schedules to do an interview. Swipezster has done the honours and it’s a cracker. Swipezster offered them both a free haircut under the condition they could be interviewed while they had their curly locks cut. You can find out more about it here: SWIPEZSTERS INTERVIEW WITH PARANOID RECORDINGS

Tyree Cooper did his monthly show on Renegade last week and it’s was fantastic. If you missed this show you missed a treat. You can find out more about it here: The Soundroom : The Legend Tyree Cooper on Renegade Radio along with a link to download the whole show.

Also on Renegade is our man Dodders. He’s been a busy boy over the last week with his fruit and veg stall, but he’s found time to do his show and has filled in for others. If you have missed any of his shows, then you can grab them here: Dodders - Bit of a RR catch up

The Christmas and New Year forum theme is finally being switched off today (9th January 2011) but I will be looking at new themes to add this year. There are lots out there to use but none have really caught my eye yet. But when one does excite me, I will get it on the site for you to drool over (maybe)

Before I end this week’s email I have some very important and exciting news to share with you all. There is a new DJ that will be taking over the Renegade Radio airwaves on a monthly basis. The DJ in question is yours truly. Yes, that’s right; China Rising will be doing a monthly Trance show. The show will be called Its All About Trance and it will be showcasing the latest in Trance & Progressive, as well as playing some of the classic tracks that has made Trance one of the biggest genres in Dance music. You can catch me on the third Tuesday of every month, starting on the 18th January 2011 at 9pm and finishing at 11pm. More details on the show are to follow but put the date in your diary and tune in at RENEGADE RADIO - Oldskool | Hardcore Breaks | Jungle Music Download | Pirate Radio Download

Have a great week,

China.