Australian vocalist Kylie Minogue appears to be the first mega-diva to launch her own social networking site.

KylieKonnect.com lets fans blog, upload images and video and interact with other users. By letting fans blog and post videos, the site has the potential to be the locus of attention for Kylie fans.

Currently the site is short on content, a bit of a ghost town, and, yes, Kylie is our only friend. But it’s interesting to see a global pop star experimenting with new media.

Along with groups like Radiohead and Madonna leaving their traditional labels behind, Minogue’s move is part of a growing trend towards musicians interacting with their audiences in new ways, especially through the Internet.
The site’s designers, New Visions Mobile, believe it is more mobile and flexible than social network sites like MySpace and Facebook, already important marketing tools for pop stars.

“The whole thing is set up so that Kylie can update her blog and have a closer connection with fans,” said Julia McNally, business development director at New Visions Mobile.

Kylie introduces her new site below.

comScore today released a study of online sales of In Rainbows, the new record album from the band Radiohead. The album’s release has challenged the music industry’s traditional distribution and sales model by allowing consumers to determine the price they are willing to pay.

Unfortunately for the future of musicians everywhere, nearly 2/3rds of Radioheads fans are freeloaders, according to comScore’s data.

‚ÄúI am surprised by the number of freeloaders. The stories to date about the In Rainbows ‚Äòpick your price‚Äô download offer have been much more optimistic,‚Äù said Fred Wilson, managing partner of Union Square Ventures. ‚ÄúThis shows pretty conclusively that the majority of music consumers feel that digital recorded music should be free and is not worth paying for.”

“That’s a large group that can’t be ignored,” adds Wilson, “and it’s time to come up with new business models to serve the freeloader market.‚Äù

Ze Frank offers his take on the writer’s strike….

Nick from the Gnatline podcast sent us a link to some photos of a custom podcasting table that he built.

The setup has spots at the table for multiple hosts, a central mixing area, a swivel-mount computer monitor and even a place below the table for rack-mounted audio gear.

While Nick has obviously put a lot of time and thought into creating the perfect podcasting rig for Gnatline, we’re sure that there are some other worthy contenders out there for the title of ultimate podcasting setup.

If you’ve got photos to share of your setup, let us know in the comments!

A reader, Graham Pollard, wrote us, wondering why podcasting hasn’t seemed to reach Apple’s UK stores.

Pollard is a big fan of podcasts, and dropped by the Apple store recently on a visit to London, so he could check out the latest iPods.

He writes:

“I was quite surprised to find that at the nano “bench”,¬ù with 8 working nano’s on display,¬† none of them had podcasts loaded. In fact, the opening screen did not have Podcasts selected as an option.”

“I moved on to the Touch iPod “bench”¬ù and found that all 8 working Touch iPods were also devoid of podcasts, both audio and video. This time I asked a personal shopper for help and her first words were ‘I am not sure podcasts are available on the Touch – lets check!'”

“No podcasts of any nature were to be found anywhere in the store on a Touch iPod.”

It’s easy to imagine that people looking for iPods at Apple’s London store could leave with no idea that the devices support podcasts, or that the 125,000+ podcasts listed in iTunes even exist.

In our experience in the US, Apple Store iPods and AppleTV’s feature a small selection of podcasts. So why no podcasts in the UK?

If you’ve got any insight on this, let us know in the comments!

Hollywood’s film and television writers are on strike, after negotiations broke down between the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and the Association of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) and major television networks.

At the core of the disagreement between writers and studios is the issue of writes for new media.

Issues the WGA wants to address include:

• Coverage and minimums for writing for the Internet and other non-traditional media.
• Addressing reuse on the Internet and other non-traditional media.
• Providing that companies shall offer a writer with separated rights in a theatrical film or television program the first opportunity to write the interactive game based on that film or program.
• Clarifying that merchandising provisions apply to ‚Äúringtones‚Äù based on MBA covered material.

There are a lot of other issues at stake, too, but adapting business agreements to account for new media tops the WGA’s list.

A Canadian study, The Impact of Music Downloads and P2P File-Sharing on the Purchase of Music, has found that people that people that use file-sharing services buy more music.

People that don’t appear to understand the difference between a correlation and cause-and-effect are falling all over themselves saying that this study proves that illegal file-sharing increases music sales. This is despite the fact that file-sharing has been rising for years and CD sales have been declining.

Unfortunately, the confusion appears to come directly from the report authors, Birgitte Andersen and Marion Frenz. According to the authors, “music downloads have a positive effect on music purchases among Canadian downloaders but….there is no effect taken over the entire population aged 15 and over.”

Reading through the report, though, it looks like Anderson & Frenz actually found a positive correlation, not a positive effect, between file-sharing and music purchases. In other words, music fans are more likely to use P2P music services, buy music online and buy CDs that people that aren’t interested in music.

But they aren’t going to make headlines saying that music fans buy more music, are they?

PodCamp AZ, the latest in a series of unconferences focusing on podcasting and new media, will be held tomorrow at The University of Advancing Technology.

PodCamp AZ is a free, one-day “unconference” dedicated to the sharing of information and ideas on the subject of social media including blogging and audio and video podcasting. Participants will include podcasters as well as podcast viewers. There will also be blog writers and readers as well as a of new types of media breaking into the world stage.

The first PodCamp was held in Boston on September 9-10, 2006, and was organized by podcasters and technology including Chris Brogan. PodCamp has expanded to nineteen difference events in over five countries, eleven states, and one virtual world in Second Life. PodCamp AZ is presented by local media companies and individuals including Synergy Productions, The Creation Shop, Steven Groves, Game Zone Radio and Minced Media.

Here are the detail on tomorrow’s event:

Tascam has posted updated drivers for the FW-1082, FW-1804 and FW-1884 audio interfaces to support Windows Vista 32 and Vista 64, Microsoft’s latest operating systems.

In addition, drivers for Tascam’s legacy USB products US-122, US-224 and US-428 have been updated. Nearly all of Tascam’s interfaces have been now been updated to support Windows Vista.

“Windows Vista support has been the top feature request for our top-selling FireWire interfaces,” said Jeff Laity, Marketing Manager for Tascam. “We took advantage of the opportunity to update our legacy USB interfaces at the same time, so even five-year old US-122 interfaces can be used in the latest Windows operating system.”

The new drivers are available for free download. Windows Vista drivers for the Tascam FireOne are in development and are expected to be available soon.

A new podcasting and new media industry group, the Association for Downloadable Media (ADM) generated a great deal of discussion in the podcasting community when it was announced in July.

I caught up with two of the ADM’s founders earlier this week to get an update, and what I found out may surprise you. Susan Bratton, the acting chair of ADM, is the CEO of Personal Life Media and the host of the Dishy Mix. Mark McCreary is CEO of podcasting advertising and metrics firm Podtrac, and is shepherding the nominations and elections process.

I asked for some background about what the group has done so far, and about how the nomination and election process is going……