Australia's own Sophie Monk has been linked romantically with LA radio and American Idol host Ryan Seacrest. They are already being dubbed the "Ken and Barbie" of Hollywood. Without saying too much, I've met Ryan and I have a feeling this relationship is going nowhere.

Two weeks ago, I wrote about the then-newly revamped ABC Brisbane website. I'm sad to say it hasn't improved. Not only is the kind of information people might expect of such a site not readily accessible, but it's riddled with errors. Here's a screen shot from yesterday. Note that one of the few useful things - the link to the audio - is pretty much off the page on my laptop; the lack of a picture for the apple cake recipe (and the "undefined" caption, whatever that means); and the "image not available" message in one of the little green boxes. Apart from being ugly, the topics cloud is also alphabetical, meaning it's useful if you're interested in things starting with A but you have to scroll to find the rest of the alphabet. Why not rank things by popularity or topicality? And there is still no obvious link to details of the 612ABC presenters and their programs. I find this especially disturbing that, at a time when the ABC is trumpeting its digital future, it can't actually build a useful and relevant website. I'm sure the designers think it's great, though.

Sony BMG has plans to make its music catalogue available on line in a subscription service, where people pay a monthly fee to "rent" the music. Seems like a last-gasp thing to me. People want to own the music and they want to go to one site that will make the entire global music catalogue available, not just the output of one label.

An American woman whose duaughter allegedly illegally downloaded thousands of dollars worth of songs is suing the major record labels, accusing them of racketeering, fraud and illegal spying. Tanya Andersen says the companies use unlicensed private investigators who "have illegally entered the hard drives of tens of thousands of private American citizens". I can't comment on the merits of her case, but I can say that it seems the record companies are getting desperate. It's no longer a fight for the rights of the artists who are being denied their due by illegal downloading, it's a battle for survival. What the record companies don't want to acknowledge is that their hey-day is over, and more often than not now they are simply getting in the way between consumers and the people who make music. There's not much they can do for a musical act that the artists can't do for themselves far cheaper, more efficiently and with more conviction. People can create and market their music on the internet - and they can sell it for half what the record companies charge and still make a lot more than their current share of the pie. I think it's quite amusing, because the situation could have been very different if the industry had embraced downloading a long time ago. A lot of people who would have gladly paid a fair price for their music a decade ago, now continue to download if for nothing simply as a way of saying "up yours" to the major music companies. If the people who write and perform the songs are angry about this, they should be angry at the record companies, not at the punters.

News comes to me that the concept of "newsroom integration" is gathering pace in Australia. That basically means that the newsroom furniture is being rearranged to allow the online and print editorial staff to work together more closely. That's all very good - because, while newspapers are going to be around for a fair while to come, the future of news is most definitely online. What interests me, though, is the fact that this is happening at titles where they have had completely different news agendas for their online and print operations. Without naming names, here's two examples from different Australian capital-city mastheads:
+ One newspaper represents itself as a serious entity in print but never a day goes by when the front page of its website doesn't feature female cleavage, usually accompanied by a flimsy story from the world of celebrity. The pictures that hit web surfers in the eye when they log on to this very popular site would never appear on the front page of the newspaper. Why not?
+ A "quality" broadsheet's website promotes it as a good source of business news and world news, yet the No. 1 ranking story over the past few days has been a beat-up based on hearsay about the long-ago marriage between actors Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston. If web hits count for anything, shouldn't that story have been on the front page of the paper, too?
Now I know the immediate response from my friends in the newspapers concerned would be that the print and online products are different. If that's the case, then, why do they carry the same masthead, and are the "integrated" staff now expected to write differently for the two entities?
The simple truth is that, to this point, these websites have been designed and edited to attract the most number of hits possible - and that means dragging in people from anywhere they can in cyberspace by peddling gossip and bare flesh. While potential advertisers might initially be impressed by the site's statistics, surely those who currently pay a premium to plug their high-end products in the "quality" press are going to start asking questions one day. Why, they may well ask, should we advertise on a site that's been "dumbed down" for the sake of getting the attention of people who Googled the words "Brad Pitt" - especially if they don't even live in Australia?
PS: The solution, of course, is for the media organisations in question to create multiple online mastheads in order to capture as much of the market as possible. This would, however, require journalists who can rework the same copy into many different styles.

The ABC has revamped its local radio websites, and I can't say I'm a big fan of what's been done. There's nothing about the Brisbane site that, to me at least, really jumps out and actually says "Brisbane". The extreme "letter-boxing" of the rotating photos at the top of the page (with, at least I write, inaccurate captions) makes them unintelligible, and many of the blurbs on the scrolling "local feature" blurb are meaningless. Moreover, the important links (like the one for the live streaming) are buried at the bottom of my laptop's screen. I'm not yet sure where to find the links to the 612ABC presenters and programs. Seems to me like it's a triumph of design over functionality.
PS: The above may read as a "glass houses" item, but it's worth noting that I'm one person doing this in my very limited spare time. And this criticism is not targeted at the people who have to update the site, but those (presumably in Sydney) who approved it.

As readers of The Sunday Mail on the weekend will know, I interviewed singer-songwriter Billy Bragg about his upcoming Australian gigs, including appearances at the Big Day Out festival. Here are two audio clips from the interview. First, Bragg talks about finding his natural voice, and second about his attempts to find a copy of one of his old video clips.

"Wait a minute, are you sure you need six months for that? Couldn't some bright people do that in two days?" That's Paul McCartney venting his frustration with the time it took his former record company, EMI, to release and market his music. McCartney has put his finger on the problem that has faced Big Music ever since the original Napster taught people how to download songs over the internet. Instead of embracing the technology, the record companies spent countless millions trying to hold back the tide. Even now that the rest of us have discovered that we can find what we want online - and pay the artist directly - the musical middle men are still doing very little except running interference.

PS: McCartney's new album, Memory Almost Full, is released by a division of Starbucks.