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Idiomag is a fascinating project that combines syndicated media content, user feedback, recommendation technology and now Attention Data to produce a very attractive personalized "web magazine" about music.

It's applications like this that make me love my job reviewing what's new on the web.

Radiohead's widely heralded experiment with free downloads plus a premium package and request for donations (effectively) remains shrouded in mystery, but Trent Reznor and Saul Williams released some numbers this week about a similar experiment. Those numbers indicate that very few people want to pay for recorded music these days.

An interesting new online video series, called Open Media Web, debuted today. The first episode is an interview with Yahoo's Lucas Gonze - who created music playlisting service WebJay, acquired by Yahoo! in January 2006. The interview was conducted by Chris Messina and Brian Oberkirch. In it Gonze discusses his thoughts on the Open Media Web, on user-respectful business models and coercive business practices, and business opportunities for open systems and data.

At the risk of jinxing things - I think it's pretty clear that there's a historic shift underway between activities we used to engage in offline and things we now do online. It's no surprise, for example, that CD sales were down 20% this US holiday season while online shopping was up 19%. That's how it works, right? People are moving from one marketplace to another, more virtual one.

Another dataset released this weekend, however, paints a more complex picture. According to the newest study from the Pew Internet and American Life Center - the youngest, most affluent and most internet-connected adults in the US are also the most likely to visit a physical library. It wasn't that way just 10 years ago. How many other legacy industries can you think of today that can say their strongest growth is among young, affluent, power-internet users? Something is going very right in library land. The music business ought to pay close attention to what's going on there.

last100 editor Steve O'Hear has written an informative and thorough overview of the digital music scene in 2007. Steve noted: "Ditching DRM, new mobile offerings, pay-what-you-want and other alternative business models - one word to sum up activity in the digital music space in 2007: “experimentation”."

The post also predicts what will happen in digital music in 2008. Here's what Steve expects to happen with DRM:

Music recommendation and discovery engines are hot stuff but what if you could use some of the same juju to better organize the music you already have in your collection? The newly launched Veenix TuneExplorer for Mac does just that. By looking at qualities the company says include "pitch values, pitch variance, fundamental strengths, and a host of other sonic qualities" - the program acts like Pandora within your music collection.

In a statement that directly contradicts an earlier position from the famous Grokster case - RIAA lawyers in Arizona told the defendant in the case Atlantic v. Howell yesterday that he violated copyright law when he put music from CDs he had purchased onto his computer in MP3 format.

"Once Defendant converted Plaintiffs’ recording into the compressed .mp3 format," the RIAA said, "and they are in his shared folder, they are no longer the authorized copies distributed by Plaintiffs."

Update: A number of people have told me I'm unfairly characterizing what was said. Perhaps someone can explain to me how the location of the file changes its legal status. I can understand changing the format being an issue, but that's passed the test in the past. Perhaps it's really just the sharing that's being objected to, in which case there's nothing new here - but the way the legal statement reads certainly looks like there are objections to putting the files on the computer at all. Otherwise why mention that part?

The blog Recording Industry vs. The People, origin of this and many related stories, pulls the corresponding quote out of the US Supreme Court case MGM v. Grokster:

"The record companies, my clients, have said, for some time now, and it's been on their Website for some time now, that it's perfectly lawful to take a CD that you've purchased, upload it onto your computer, put it onto your iPod."

Is the industry's newest position one of a paradigm on the brink of implosion or an indication of a coming era of greater control than ever before? Is all of this being overstated? Perhaps we can look to our wise leader for an indication. (Hint: The Beatles aren't available on iTunes, so in all likelihood...)

Earlier this month we wrote about the University of Oregon and Oregon Attorney General's resistance to the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) legal demands for the names of students alleged to have illegally downloaded free music.

Now the Oregon AG has taken a step further, taking the offensive and filing legal papers demanding disclosure of the RIAA's investigative methods. The filing alleges that the RIAA may have spied on students and illegally obtained their Social Security numbers and other personal information.

An RIAA spokesperson responded with indignation, accusing the University of protecting a wave of piracy. The Association now says that student pirates need to be stopped for their own good, lest they accidentally put files like their bank records and tax info into the folders they share on P2P services.

It's good to know there's some one, the Oregon Attorney General, taking an aggressive stand against such stupidity. While some record companies are changing their tune about suing customers, it's hard to imagine what else the attack dogs at the RIAA would do if not things like this. I imagine they feel the same way when they show up for work each day. Readers interested in some smart discussion on the legal move should check out posts and their comments by Mike Masnick at TechDirt and New York City lawyers Ty Rogers and Ray Beckerman at their blog Recording Industry vs. The People.

Peter Rojas, the man who was present at the founding of both of the two most linked-to blogs on the internet (Engadget and Gizmodo), launched the online music site he's working on today. Called RCRD LBL (record label without the vowels, you know how unhip vowels are, why not get rid of them all?) the site hasn't been accessible since it went live. Update: Rojas stopped by to leave a comment saying the site was back up and sure enough it is. I'm getting a musical education already.

None the less, here's the details. RCRD LBL will provide free, DRM-free music for download and streaming. It will be ad supported and the company simply asks on its site that you not reuse the music for commercial purposes. We'll see how well that works, but there's really no viable alternative. "In a world where many people get their music for free," the folks behind the experiment say, "we wanted to create a site where bands we loved could put their music out there for free AND get paid for it."

Music can be downloaded, it can be streamed and it can be listened to through a widget embedded on any web page or on the OSX dashboard.

Comparisons to the awful SpiralFrog, another ad-supported music site that was more or less born dead, fall short; SpiralFrog is thoroughly locked down with DRM and it's full of bands you've heard of before.

At RDCRD LBL's launch 10 record labels are participating so the selection is limited. I'm not hip enough to have heard of more than just a few of these bands, but I'll check them out once the site is up.

The RCRD LBL site, bless its overworked little heart, was designed by New York's Gelo Factory, who have worked on a variety of projects ranging from the Rhizome art community blog to the social site of the AARP.

National Public Radio, the US radio network too long lagging in the technology department, relaunched NPR Music late last night. The new site is a real joy to use. While the old NPR website ran all media through RealPlayer or Windows Media, the new site employs a slick Flash pop-up player that's easy to use. The site also integrates media from 12 leading local NPR affiliates. Say what you will about their politics - NPR does a great job on music.