The Eliot Spitzer prostitute scandal has definitely taught me something - if only about a better music download model for aspiring musicians.

Previously I've written about sellaband.com, a site where a budding band can place their songs online. If 2500 visitors like it, and each chips in $US20 - then, like New Zealand's Maitreya, you'll get $US50,000 to record an album. Three songs from that album must be made available free via sellaband.com. The remainder are sold for $US0.50 each. Half the profit goes to you, the other half to your army of shareholders.

But that's all a little convoluted. The hooker who slept with former New York Governor Spitzer also had a music career on the side, pushing her wares through a site called Amie Street. The model there is that songs are priced according to popularity. When you first place a song for download, it's free - the better to encourage people to try your unknown songs and spread the word. But as your popularity increases, so does the price of your music, to up to $US0.98 a track - of which the artist gets to keep 70%. And there's no DRM. Nice model.

In the case of Spitzer's escort Ashley Dupre, a little instant tabloid celebrity has helped, too. The two songs she's had lurking on Amie Street for a while - both described as Britney lite - have both taken off, earning her an estimated $200,000 between them, plus a little mainstream radio airplay.

Against the day
My Nokia 95, which gains its intelligence from Vodafone's network, thought daylight savings ended today and duly tripped by phone's clock back an hour.

There's not much you can do about your phone's clock acting dumb, but if you want to inform your PC the end of daylight savings time has moved to April 6, you can download a patch from Microsoft's website here (which actually covers Windows Mobiles as well as PCs).