Take a look at this story from The Times about SonyBMG and the new way they're going to sign new artists to their label.
Instead of throwing unopened Jiffy bags from unsigned artists straight out of the nearest window, their A&R people are now going to be doing the whole thing online through columbiademos.co.uk and rcademos.co.uk.
That is quite a good idea. Less good is that the Greatest British Public — who think Michelle McManus is a pop idol and are even worse A&R men than actual A&R men — will be allowed to have their say too. This is yet another addition to the horrendous MySpace-fuelled climate of first glimpsing bands before they or their songs are any good.
As part of this new thing, bigwigs at Sony are now writing blogs. Some of them are pretty good — we really like this one with hand-drawn illustrations, for example. And this A&R one is alright too.
Our advice to A&R men with blogs
Can't you write a blog that looks a bit more like it was done by Timbaland?
You know that bit where you say that thing, well could you make it a bit more 'whoosh'?
With the second blog story, nothing really happened in the first thirty words so we skipped to the next one.
Have you got any ideas for blog stories that are a bit like that one but different, but the same?
Could you do a blog that will be linked to by the Radio One, Radio Two and ILR websites?
We think it would make more sense if you move that sentence from the middle to the start and then the whole third paragraph down one and then spell all the words backwards?
Have you thought about writing blogs for someone else?
To be honest we're really not looking to add any more blogs to our bookmarks at the moment, good luck in the future.