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Proper R&B vocals never go out of style--and that enables Ashanti's new cross-decade mash-up. Instead of just letting her early arias rot in storage, a fresh production squad modernizes them with '08 beats. The cross of ingénue singing and bold, even trunk-rattling beats is impressive.

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October 8, 2008 -- San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center for the Arts knows how to throw a party. Inspired by the cuckoo election season, this year's charitable event was dubbed Artists Ball Seven: The New Party and offered an evening of unpredictable, red, white, and blue fun.

Supporting innovative artists of our time, the event attracted everyone from socialites and drag queens to music revelers and activists. Guests were greeted upon entry by cardboard replicas from the likes of "W," Sarah Palin, the Clintons, McCain, and Obama, which sparked fun chatter among folks about the week in politics. We also received a rare performance from a group of cheerleaders who formed human pyramids with a political agenda.

(Credit: A.D.)

(Credit: A.D.)

But enough about politicians the main attraction of the evening was the music. And, who better to headline a politically themed event than Mos Def? As soon as his intelligent word play hit the mic, the dance floor sizzled like a skillet--making fans of all shades and colors yelp out words like "I love you!" and "You're so hot!" ... Read more

They were a childlike, bass-obsessed duo called L'Trimm and were responsible for the kitchy Miami bass track still loved today, called "Bass That Goes Boom"--a tribute to subwoofers. If you're thinking, "Girls after my own heart!" then you're in for a treat, because the defunct duo is at least slightly reborn in rapper Lady Tigra coming back on the scene. Her new track with MC Lyte--"Stole My Radio"--is a chilly smooth comeback track, while "Bass On Thee Bottom" will no doubt be bangin' in clubland and backyard barbecues this summer.

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Last.fm is a top-notch music player plug-in for music discovery, sharing, and tracking. Compatible with iTunes, MediaMonkey, Winamp, and many other players, and available for Windows, Mac, and the iPhone, it "scrobbles" your music when you play it, keeping track of what you're listening to. Once you've created an account, you can set your musical likes, favorite bands, and tag tracks as it plays them back to you. The tagging option is customizable, so you can create your own tags on the fly or use the same ones that other users have chosen. When you stream music from Last.fm, it chooses what songs to play for you based on your scrobbling history and your favorite genres.

There's also an iPhone app that's loaded with features, tabs, and buttons--one of the most in-depth and dynamic iPhone streaming-music apps. Streaming-audio performance in this version has noticeably improved since the application's original release. During testing in both Wi-Fi and 3G modes, buffer delays between songs took no more than 1 or 2 seconds, which is comparable to similar applications.

The app's menus and Now Playing screen have also been overhauled for a much more attractive and easier-to-use experience. Few applications can match Last.fm's combination of crisp-looking album art, local concert information, iTunes links, and artist biographies, which also come through on the desktop version. Whether you're new to Last.fm or a habitual user, Last.fm is a recommended download for anyone seriously interested in discovering new music.

Editors' note: Last.fm is owned by CNET's parent company, CBS Interactive.

I read Matt Rosoff's Digital Noise blog all the time, and his recent lamenting radio's irrelevance hit me hard.

I think Matt was mostly referring to AM or FM radio, but what about Internet or satellite radio? Me, I'm still a die hard Sirius subscriber and listen to Left of Center, Sirius Disorder, and Underground Garage channels many hours a day. They turn me onto new music all the time, so I buy an average of two CDs a week.

(Credit: Steve Guttenberg)

Of course, now that the hoopla over the Siriius/XM merger has died down and the stock price hovers around fifty cents, it seems like the stockholders don't have that strong a belief in the future of satellite radio. Or maybe they finally realized there are not enough people willing to pay $12.95 a month for commercial-free radio to make Sirius, er, profitable? Gee, I wonder if Howard Stern is the only one to score big bucks in the satellite radio biz? Did he cash out his Sirius stock long ago?

As for AM/FM terrestrial radio music stations, the audience for non-oldies music is too small to support commercial stations anymore. Matt's observation, "But apart from college radio, nobody's playing cutting-edge rock and roll with potentially broad appeal," rings true to me. Too bad.

Hey, MTV gave up on music long ago, let's face it, when the youth market isn't all that interested in music, music's future looks pretty dim. And it's not the big, bad record labels fault, no, music's appeal is fading. Then again, when you're not paying for music, it proves it's not worth anything. No wonder even "free" music on the radio can't hold its own anymore. It's worth less than zero...

Do you listen to music over AM, FM, Sirius, or Internet radio?

The Zune software is coming into its own, but it's still no iTunes-killer.

The Zune desktop software has historically been a necessary evil for Zune owners. The original version of the software released in 2006 was nothing more than Windows Media Player 11 with a fresh coat of paint and a built-in store. Then, the remodeled, stripped-down, and buggy Version 2.0 was unveiled in 2007, forcing CNET's Molly Wood to sever her ties with Zune.

The third time may be the charm for Microsoft. Version 3.0 of the Zune software shows some real promise as a stable and attractive multimedia jukebox.

There's still much work to be done before this PC-only software will hold any appeal beyond the Zune-owners of the world, but there are plenty of things the software gets right. To read my full account of the pros and cons of using the Zune software as your computer's media jukebox, click through to read the Zune 3.0 software review on CNET Reviews.

West Coast punk rock used to mean something really different, and Seattle's Cute Lepers, though technically a new outfit, hearken back to alienation's heyday. Tracks like "Terminal Boredom" run on trashed guitars and peppy melodies, treating DIY as a matter of religion.

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There has been much blogorrhea on Tuesday over Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak's offhand comment to the Telegraph that the iPod would go the way of the transistor radio and the Sony Walkman, becoming a cheap and eventually boring commodity product.

iPod? Isn't that the music application for the iPhone?

News flash: it's already there. Sure, Apple will still sell millions of units every quarter, and it might even continue to grow unit sales and revenue for a while. But it's clear from Apple's most recent announcements that the company no longer views the iPod as its main vehicle for innovation--new (old) form factors, colors, and one interesting update are the kind of incremental tweaks you make to a cash cow product line, not the groundbreaking innovations that move markets forward.

Apple passed its mantle of innovation to the first iPhone a year ago, and that's where the action's going to be, from now on--multifunction devices with interesting new interfaces (touch is just the beginning) that act more like tiny computers than single-purpose devices. iPod? That's just another application icon on the iPhone deck.

(And here's something you'll never hear in a presidential debate: I was wrong. Specifically, I was wrong when I suggested that consumers would continue to favor single-function devices and that the iPhone's bet on convergence would sink it. I underestimated the power of the touch screen and Apple's relentless focus on ease of use, which have made the iPhone the first ultraportable computer for mere mortals.)

I appreciate Microsoft's latest Zune innovations, but they needed to be in the product when it launched two years ago. MP3 players are becoming a commodity in which low price overrides new features--especially given how tight consumer spending is likely to be this holiday season. Microsoft isn't into commodities, unless it's got dominant market share, so look for the company to turn its attention to building a more competitive version of Windows Mobile. Zune will live on--as the music playback application for Microsoft's mobile phones.

Steve Wozniak said it best in his exclusive interview with the Daily Telegraph earlier this week: "The iPod has sort of lived a long life at No. 1," he said. "Things like, that if you look back to transistor radios and Walkmans, they kind of die out after awhile.

"It's kind of like everyone has got one or two or three. You get to a point when they are on display everywhere, they get real cheap, and they are not selling as much."

Finally, someone on the "inside" at Apple has made some sense about the iPod and its future. Although it may be difficult for Apple zealots and even CEO Steve Jobs to understand, the iPod is not going to be one of the most important devices forever, and if we consider the impact the Walkman had on the industry, the iPod should be moving to the execution chamber in the next 5 to 10 years.

Nowhere is that more apparent than in the Apple Store itself. How many times must Jobs find his way to the stage only to show off an iPod with barely upgraded specs and a so-called fresh design that we've seen already? Granted, the iPod Touch is unique in its own right, but the iPod Nano and Shuffle have been the joke of the iPod world for years now. The design changes look more like Apple felt it needed to do something to get people to keep buying them, so they went from long and thin to short and fat and back to long and thin again. And don't even get me started on the iPod Classic.

But it's tough to make the argument that iPods will die when sales are up. According to the company's latest quarterly filing, iPod revenue is up 7 percent since last year and unit sales have jumped 12 percent.

Of course, that doesn't stop me from wanting the iPod to die off as soon as possible.

The audiophile lexicon goes way, way back, at least to the early 1950s hi-fi craze. Here's a place to get a grip on it.

The Audiophile Wiki was initiated by PS Audio's Paul McGowan to help answer questions about audio.

"For years, I have been on a personal crusade to put whatever effort I could into helping raise awareness of our industry," McGowan said. "I have spent hundreds (probably thousands) of hours answering questions about everything from how to connect a loudspeaker to how a transistor works, all in service to PS Audio customers and the high end."

The Audiophile Wiki logo

It's all in the Audiophile Wiki: audio companies, designers, analog, digital, tubes, transistors, reviewers, speakers, amplifiers, turntables, etc. For example, if you're just getting into vinyl, check out the entry for Phono Cartridge:

"A phono cartridge is a device that reads the grooves on a phonograph record. There are multiple types of phono cartridges, moving magnet, moving coil, strain gauge, ceramic cartridge, and many others through the years.

All phono cartridges share in common the conversion of mechanical movement into either sound (mechanical cartridge) or electrical energy for later amplification.

The Audiophile Wiki launched in May of this year, so there's lots of gaps. Feel free to fill in missing facts.