The iconic Siren Festival which takes place at New York’s Coney Island will be returning this July 17th for its 10th edition and, as always, will be absolutely free of charge.

The first five artists announced to play this year’s festival are as follows:

Matt & Kim
Ted Leo & The Pharmacists
The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart
Surfer Blood
Harlem

Many more artists will be announced in the coming weeks. More information about the festival past and present can be found on the official site.

Do you ever feel like iTunes exists not for the user, but for the record and Apple executives? Well you’d be right, and I hope you aren’t surprised.

iTunes will most likely continue it’s Store integration until users get fed up, or they start using alternatives like Songbird.

Here are five reasons why Songbird is better:

1. You can search The Hype Machine directly from Songbird and download music directly to Songbird. Best of all, this replaces the annoying music Store nags and integration that iTunes has.
2. It’s available on all platforms, including Linux.
3. You can still connect your beloved iPod, and Songbird will find all of your iTunes music.
4. Using an excellent concert search algorithm called Songkick, it’ll find which of your artists are playing live. Its not completely accurate, but it is really helpful.
5. It has Last.FM scrobbling built right in, and includes other add-ons, and even skins like Firefox.

It still has some kinks to work out, but with open and ongoing development, it’s sure to only go up from here. If you like what you read, you can give Songbird a try, and see for yourself.

- Kyle

Famous TV personality, president promoter, Kindle kisser, car giver-awayer, and book lover* Oprah Winfrey now has a Twitter account to call her own. Here is her first tweet:

HI TWITTERS . THANK YOU FOR A WARM WELCOME. FEELING REALLY 21st CENTURY .

Here is another one:

good nite tweets. first big day in twitterland. gotta get some shut eye and use the weekend for rebooting.

Her first tweets are absolutely provocative and engaging, as I find myself re-reading them trying to find new and hidden meanings.

Since everything Oprah touches turns to gold, prepare to see an influx of Oprah fans with user names like:

• SoccerMom88
• OprahRocksMyAfternoon1
• ImAPowerfulWoman35
• InviteMeToOprahsChristmasEpisodePlease

If only Oprah could discover how awesome Amazing Wow is and how lame traditional music distribution is becoming. We should assemble a street team called Project O and we should send press releases to Harpo Inc. every single hour of every day to get us some air time on the Oprah Winfrey Show. Heck, we’d be happy for a little snippet in O Magazine.

*See James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces.

- Kyle

- Kyle