The debate of subscription vs. ad-supported model has been going on since the dawn of online music services (you know, way back in the early/mid 2000s). Some services have you pay a monthly fee to get your music downloads while others don't have you pay anything but instead have ads all over the site that can interrupt your user experience.

Now comes news that Last.fm, formerly only an ad-supported model, is going to launch a subscription fee for users outside of the US, UK and Germany. For about $5 a month, users can sign up to Last.fm's radio service (Last.fm did formerly offer a monthly fee in exchange for no advertising).

More and more services seem to be moving away from ads. The change comes hot on the heels of last week's shuttering of Spiralfrog, an ad-supported model. Dada.net has always been a monthly subscription fee as you know, as have many other music services. It will be interesting to look at the Last.fm test and watch which type of service is more popular with users.

Which do you prefer?

I'm here at SXSW in Austin, checking out some bands...

SXSW is a huge music festival where bands come from all over the world to play live and make it big. That means the city is overflowing with artists, bringing both the noise and the funk. And, soon, Dada will be bringing all the noisy funky goodness directly to you!

I'm talking to artists like Eric McCarley and An Horse. We're going to bring you their live interviews on our new Dada Spot page!

Stay tuned for all the Austin action and musical magic.

I am excited to go to SXSW next week!

For those of you who don't know, SXSW is a huge music festival and trade show that takes place in Austin every year. I'm going with my Dada.net crew to hang out with bands and artists like An Horse, Landon Pigg, Cage The Elephant, Shiny Toy Guns, Inward Eye, Barcelona and many more! We're going to interview the bands and post the videos on Dada.net so you can get to know these great artists! Also, Jen and I will be Twittering all week from Austin so follow our updates at AriDada and JenDada. We'll give you all the music news and gossip from Austin just as if you were there...

We've made some exciting changes to Dada.net's Community pages!

We have two new tabs: Music and Playlist. The Music tab shows you what your friends are listening to, while the Playlist tab lists the Community's most popular playlists.

These new features will help you find and discover new music. Log onto the Community now and take a look (and listen)!

I read in Billboard.Biz today that social networking has overtaken e-mail as the most popular activity on the internet. 67% of internet users use social networking while just 65% use e-mail.

It makes sense. I can e-mail on Facebook and MySpace as well as do everything else those sites offer. I still have a separate e-mail account though and I expect most people do. Which do you check  more often - your e-mail account or your social networking page?

Digital Music News is reporting today that album sales, which have been dismal for years, are continuing their downward slide in 2009. As of the end of February, Soundscan figures show that albums are selling at 11.7% below comparable levels in 2008. Compare that with a 14% decline for all of 2008 - and a 54.6% drop since album sales peaked in 2000.

But there is a silver lining - or at least DMN has found one. They interviewed several music retail analysts earlier this year who predicted a larger drop in album sales than what has actually happened. So, according to earlier predictions, album sales could be  - and should've been - in a lot worse shape.

Luckily, digital sales continue to rise both here at Dada.net and across the other music sites. People are still buying music, it's just the format they want it in has changed.

Congrats to NightOwl88, this week's Dada DJ and a fan of Mariah Carey, Jazmine Sullivan and and Britney Spears. Check out NightOwl's Deja Vu playlist for songs like ""Dreamlover," "Lions, Tigers & Bears" and "Womanizer."

Want to be a Dada DJ of the Week? All you have to do is create a playlist of your favorite tracks. Each week, I am choosing a new guest Dada DJ  - I'll highlight your playlist on Dada.net and give you a shout-out right here.

So, how do you get started creating a playlist? It's really easy -

1) Log onto your Dada.net account
2) Click the 'play' icon next to the song you want to add to your playlist and it will open in the Dada Player.
3) Continue to select all the songs you want to listen to - they will be automatically added to your Dada Player. Don't want a song to remain in your playlist after you have listened to it? Just delete it.
4) Once you've collected all the songs you want to include in your playlist, click "Add All Songs To Playlist." You will now be prompted to create a playlist which will let you name all the songs you just added.
5) Name your playlist and give it a description.
6) You will now see your just-created playlist in the 'Your Playlists' section of the Dada Player. Now, you can listen to it at anytime!
7) If you are listening to a new song and want to add it to an already existiing playlist, just click  'Add all songs to playlist.'  But make sure you only have songs in the player that you want to add to your playlist!
8) You can also delete a playlist anytime!

Want to share your playlist with the entire community? Just add your playlist to your profile - make sure you log in and click on your username at the top right corner of the home page. When your profile page loads:

1) Click "Add/Remove Widget" at the top of the page.
2) Select "Music Widgets" and then "Playlist Widget."
3) Save your changes. Your playlist will now show on your page.

You can make as many playlists (with up to 100 songs per playlist) as you like!

Don't forget to check back here to find out who is next week's guest Dada DJ.

Nokia reportedly wants to remove DRM from its popular Comes With Music, which means that when a user downloads a song to the phone, the song can then be moved to any other device. Right now, once a song is downloaded to the Nokia phone, it stays on the phone. If a user wants the same song on his MP3 player, he has to download it (and pay for it) separately. There's an interesting item on today's Hits blog.

That's basically what's behind DRM, an industry term meaning Digital Rights Management. The idea behind DRM is that once you download a song to your computer or cell phone or MP3 or iPod, it can't be moved to another device. For several years, DRM was an industry standard. However, there's been a lot of change lately as the music industry tries to adapt to digital trends and savvy customers. As a result, many services, most recently iTunes, have removed DRM from their music. We here at Dada.net have always been DRM-free - once you download one of our tracks, you are free to move it to your MP3 player, iPod, computer or cell phone. It looks like the music revolution is spreading...

The music industry is buzzing with the news that the two biggest ticket agencies - Ticketmaster and Live Nation -  are looking to merge. But the story is about more than the country's two biggest ticket giants headed towards marital bliss. Ticketmaster also owns a successful artist management company and Live Nation is now the record company of superstars like U2 and Madonna. So, a marriage between Ticketmaster and Live Nation could mean that the new combined company could actually manage your favorite band, release its new album and sell tickets to its tour. It's a controversial idea since U.S. business is built on the idea of competition. One-stop shopping might be very intriguing for the artist  but if there's no competition, prices won't stay competitive for the consumer. Billboard has a good run-down of all the pros and cons here. Stay tuned.. this one is far from over.