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"Dell Glover manufactured CDs for a living, but he began to wonder: if the MP3 was just as good, why bother with the CD?"

The book The Hidden City, People and Places in Gothenburg is an exploration of the open and hidden perspectives of this north European harbour town by journalist and writer Magnus Haglund and photographer Stefan Schneider. The cd "The Hidden City" consists of some 15 sound portraits from the city, by artists that are featured in the book or have an interesting relationship with certain places or addresses in Gothenburg.

Experimental Musical Instruments is an information outlet for interesting and unusual musical instruments of all sorts. Here you'll find how-to materials on instrument making, as well as books and CDs featuring the work of the most inventive instrument ma

"The year that Skype launched its calling service, the world was in the midst of a sonic crisis: the ringtone. Mobile phones - to which Skype was an indirect competitor - were becoming ubiquitous, and so were the personalized sounds that went with them. Shortly before the company put out the first of several betas in August of 2003, an analyst report predicted that ringtone sales would soon bring in more money than CD singles."

""When I'm on location, it's a totally solitary activity. You put some headphones on, and at that moment, nobody can hear the world like you can." Chris Watson is talking to me over Skype from his home in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, explaining the details of a soon to be released smartphone app, which contains a cherry-picked collection of his sound recordings made as far back as the 1990s. Many originally appeared on CD (via Touch, who now also have an iPhone app), but Watson is enthusiastic about finding new formats such as this for his work. "The app is going to be used by individuals, and that means there's an individual at either end of the chain," he says. "I like the idea that wherever you are, you can drop into this environment." "

"Ready to hear some trippy stuff? Check out these audio illusions from Diana Deutsch (of Sometimes Behaves So Strangely fame). Explanations for each illusion are at the bottom the post. All the audio and explanations come from Diana Deutsch's Audio Illusions site, where you can check out her CDs for more brain-bending tracks. And let us know how it goes -- leave us a note in the comments section."

This CD consists of geothermal recordings of vibrations in the ground around the area of Krisuvik, Geysir and Myvatn in Iceland. The recordings have been carried out using accelerometers inserted into the earth at various places around the geysers, mapping the sonic aspects of volcanic activity at the surface of the earth."

"As someone whose entry point into the vast world of musical repertoire has mostly been through collecting records and since the most unusual and unique things are usually the hardest ones to hear live, Maryanne Amacher has always been something of an enigma to me. A composer of vast, space-specific sonic panoramas at crushingly loud volumes, Amacher defies containment and commodification. When Tzadik finally released a CD of her music, I finally thought I was able to experience it. But actually, I hadn't. Two speakers can't really convey what she is doing in space and as an apartment dweller the kinds of volumes she demands would inevitably lead to an eviction. Yet through listening and reading her essays on various subjects, especially her fascinating contribution to a panel on Cage's influence where she spoke about creating a music that is somehow liberated from time, I felt compelled to talk to her. We spent only about an hour in conversation-the unfortunate time constraints of a reality based on schedules-but it felt like it could have gone on forever. And, in some ways, it will…"

"Pictures of Sound: One Thousand Years of Educed Audio: 980-1980" is a book/CD set produced by Patrick Feaster http://www.dust-digital.com/feaster/ This video is derived from a slideshow that was presented by Patrick Feaster at the 2011 ARSC Conference: http://www.arsc-audio.org/"

"Sound maps are boring. Why? I would argue it's because they've become stuck in a rut that began when the idea of 'sound map' became synonymous with online, Google API-based or other forms of point-and-click, CD-ROM era interface design. If we want sound maps to become less boring, this needs to stop. But how do we as sound artists (or would-be 'sound cartographers') break free of the point-and-click model? "

"Sub Pop Records has signed some of the most famous and influential indie bands of the last 30 years, including Nirvana, Sleater-Kinney, The Postal Service, and Beach House. Over time, the stars and hits have changed and the formats have evolved as well, from vinyl to CDs to MP3s. In recent years, however, the label has started releasing new albums on a medium few thought would ever see a comeback: the cassette. But there's one big user group that never entirely stopped using the old school technology. The United States prison system has the largest prison population in the world and many of its inmates listen to their music on tape. For this group, cassettes aren't necessarily the cheapest or hippest way to listen to music; in some cases, it's the only way."

'Sonic Journalism' is the aural equivalent of photojournalism. It describes the practice where field recordings play a major role in the discussion and documentation of places, issues and events and where listening to sounds of all kinds strongly informs the approach to research and following narratives whilst on location."

"Headphones are the norm. The new addiction replacing smoking, headphones frame the head and the perception of most urbanites today in some form or other. Whether commuting with an iPod, exercising to the radio, talking on a hands-free cellphone… or actually listening to music, headphones create a mobile and continually changing architecture that follows the listener, wrapping them in a private bubble. As the world rapidly interfaces, overlaps and confronts the boundaries of Private and Public through technologies and legislation, headphones become a quiet and invisible site of investigation. The audio tracks in this collection attempt to define a body of work that is fundamentally connected to the phenomenon of headphone listening. Some work was made specifically for headphones such as Bernhard Leitner or Janet Cardiff, other work was not originally composed for headphones, but when played over headphones a unique experience of the work is created-sometimes against the original intention of the artist or at least as a surprising by-product. While the most common thread between the works is the unique spatialisation of headphones, other attributes of headphone listening-such as intimacy and privacy-are also explored and included. "