You don’t actually need a reason to put your 2 cents on the Web these days. Sometimes, it’s just to kill time.

Neither is there an earth-shattering need to broadcast one’s opinions or analyses. Obsession is often its own reward, after all, and one can fruitfully obsess away in a private bomb shelter cut off from the rest of the world.

But this also happens to be a pivotal moment in the global music industry, when industry decisions – and the response of you listeners to those decisions – will determine the shape of music consumption to come. We think it would be interesting to track the rise and ebb of this musical tide as it happens, and to walk against the wind if we think it’s blowing in the wrong direction. So, we’re going to write about music and everything that surrounds it – CDs, concerts, hifi, instruments, copyright, etc; it’s all fair game to us. And this obsession of ours will hopefully also ensure that we’re looking in the right direction when significant changes occur.

Of course, this might just be misguided conceit, and we could just be living in the proverbial best of times and worst of times. Down the road, if you can remember where we went wrong, you will be welcome to shove it back in our faces. We eat crow, but only if it’s well seasoned and there’s enough ale to wash it all down.

Our focus is international but Singapore, where we’re based, has its own music scene, so we’ll be paying special attention to what’s happening on this tiny island off the tip of the Malaysian archipelago. We’ll also be keeping an eye on Singaporean musicians who are blazing trails around the world. A perfect example is Sonicfreakz contributor Shueh-li Ong, a Singaporean musician based in the USA, who will be bringing us stories, interviews and more from America and beyond.

The sonicfreakz are:

muser is Chris Lim, who is described by his wife as a music slut, but is just inveterately curious. Once upon a time, he wanted to be a rock star. These days, he just writes about rock stars and the like for The Business Times, where he also covers the booze industry and indulges his insatiable appetite for gadgets and gizmos, especially if they are music-related. Like Boon Kiat, he’s also spent too many hours of his life re-ripping all his CDs (those he can find or that haven’t succumbed to rot, anyway) into Apple Lossless format, and then hunting down cover art. Knowing his luck, by the time he finishes tracking down the last few CDs he’s lost, the digital music industry will have finally moved beyond CD quality and he will have to start all over.

bk is Ong Boon Kiat, an ex-Apple Newton crazy and now a Business Times technology scribe. The ex-Computer Times, ex-CNET, ex-Questex, ex-CMP writer has been just about everywhere in tech publishing. He has also been a 3D digital animator, traveled with National Geographic Channel, worked in IT and financial biz in past lives. The jazz-mad music geek has just completed the arduous chore of re-ripping all his CDs from crummy MP3 into glorious uncompressed format, and is now in the hunt for more crusty old records to lay his mitts on. Mwahaha!

Guest contributors:

Shueh-li Ong is Singapore’s first (and only) theremin virtuoso, and is an electronic musician with one foot in the world of musicology and the other on the concert stage. She put her pedal to the metal professionally when chasing her proverbial rainbow in the multimedia, experimental-theatre and mainstream pop areas as a show designer/composer/performer/producer and 3D animator. Based in the USA since 2005 as an Artist of Extraordinary Ability, she performs and records as Xenovibes with her partner John Anthony Martinez.

Shueh-li has also written and done reviews for Singapore’s Arts Magazine. As our first artist guest writer, she’ll be sharing insights on music gleaned from actually using technology and gear to make a living, the people she meets in her quest to find new and relevant artforms, and the business of being an indie artist in this brave new world. Shueh-li is as puzzling as her rainbow is elusive.