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Ever since the likes of Michel Gondry went from directing music videos to directing feature films, we've seen an increasing number of innovative music videos. 

My favorite site to keep up on the best new releases is videos.antville.org. Directors often embed their own videos to the site to receive feedback from the often-vocal commenters. 

The Transform Window is a great tool in Logic Pro 8 that allows you to manipulate all sorts of parameters of a MIDI performance. Dave takes us thru a lot of the control options and illustrates the effects they have on MIDI notes. He dives in a little on some of the specific controls, but also highlights the use of default presets that can humanize, or otherwise control a simple MIDI region.

There is also some stuff about a live chat, but since this tip was made some time ago, you can just ignore that part.

Enjoy!

It's time again for the best industry festival in the country. The South by Southwest Music, Film and Interactive Festival is held in Austin, Texas from March 13 to 22. The Music festival begins on the 18th.

This blog was contributed by Adam Brawerman, Zoom In Online's music channel assistant.

Today NME.com ran a story about Spotify, a new and legal online music service that, they say, "offers users unlimited music for free." Sounds too good to be true, right? Apparently not. Everyone I know who's tried it says it's every bit as wonderful as you can imagine.

Spotify is made to look like iTunes, but you can stream full length songs for free rather than pay to download them. 

This blog was submitted by Adam Brawerman, Zoom In Online's Music Channel assistant. 

THESE QUESTIONS GO TO ELEVEN is a new series where these same 11 questions are emailed to different music artists, and they email their responses back. Check out Zoom In Music every Wednesday for a new installment. 

Today marks the very first time that Americans who've never heard of bit torrent will hear Glasvegas' debut album. Loved by critics and fans alike, the self-titled album will probably receive the same acclaim over here. (mostly because it already has)

The ever-elusive British dubstep producer Burial has tackled the fifth DJ Kicks compilation.

As cd sales continue to return decreased profits to the music industry, touring becomes even more important.

So who raked in the most in 2008? Here are the results of North American tours, according to Pollstar:

According to Nielsen SoundScan, there have now been more than 1 billion songs downloaded (legally). This is a 27% increase from last year.

However, CD sales dropped almost another 20%. The combined number of albums bought in 2008 is down 8.5%. This follows the trend of falling CD sales that have plagued the music industry for the last decade. 

This is further proof that while cds probably won't go the way of the 8-track, they might very well follow the cassette tape's path.