You’re probably aware that I use Twitter. In fact, I’m a bit of an evangelist for it. I think it’s up there with Email and RSS as one of the few absolutely killer online appliances – and pretty much a must for musicians and independent music businesses these days.

And yet, it’s been getting some bad press. There are people who say it’s all narcissists and psychopaths. Others who claim it’s just a hiding ground for celebrity junkies.

Steve Lawson, one of my top must-read music business thinkers, wrote a blog post today that explains Twitter in the face of some terrible journalism. I caught up with him for lunch in London and we had a chat about it.

Quite predictably, I made a video. That’s it up there.

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I don’t watch a lot of music videos on YouTube. But I know that a lot of people do. So the dispute between the UK Performing Rights Society and YouTube is an interesting one.

In short, YouTube are blocking premium music videos in the UK, because the PRS is demanding a hefty increase in royalty payments. In other words, PRS have scored what must be the ultimate music revenue own goal.

By taking an aggressive stance and trying to squeeze everything they can out of an online service in the interests of its rights-holding members, they’ve managed to trigger a response that means that songwriters will get nothing from this important source because nobody here can watch their clips.

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I’m a few months late to the game, but I’ve finally been trying out Spotify properly and using it to listen to music at home. Many other people have written about this service, most of whom seem to be hugely impressed with the depth of catalogue, the reduced buffering and the overall concept: all music, free and legal.

I have to say, I was initially skeptical. I’m a long term iTunes user, because I think it’s a brilliant music database manager and player. I also like the ease with which it integrates into a wireless playback system in my house, and that it’s also the way in which I subscribe to podcasts and synchronise my iPod.

I don’t buy music from the iTunes store. Only ever did that once for research purposes – and it made me cross. Usual reasons – DRM, cost per track, that sort of thing. I’m a big eMusic fan, actually – and I like the way it integrates with iTunes (though I wish they’d think to embed the album covers within the mp3s).

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You’ve probably already seen this video. It’s doing the rounds. I just wanted to underline the key message it has to offer us. A media artefact has a cultural and creative potential that exceeds its own boundaries. That is to say – when media is open and not locked away, culture benefits.

Some of the source material for this clip (indeed, this whole album of material) is probably pretty mediocre by itself. But as has been pointed out so often, creativity builds upon the past – and sometimes you can make very interesting things out of found or discarded objects.

This video could probably be the poster child for a more open and enlightened approach to a media commons. I’m going to be on a panel about sound archives at Unlocking Audio at the British Library next week. This will no doubt come up.