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The title track on Michael Jackson’s hit album “Thriller” began life as a very different song - called “Starlight.” Jackson and producer Quincy Jones intended for the song to be part of a larger concept album about Jackson’s musical maturity. Ethnomusicologist and Soundcheck contributing producer Patrick Rivers joins us with Bruce Swedien, the recording engineer behind the “Thriller” sessions, to talk about the evolution of “Starlight.”

It seems like every day, another company jumps on the cloud bandwagon. Just yesterday, it was announced that consumer electronics retailer Best Buy is diving into the fray, hoping to compete with what have become known as the "Big Three" cloud-based music services in the U.S. (Google's Music Beta, Amazon's Cloud Drive, and Apple's iCloud). We get an update - and a forecast - from Digital Music News founder and publisher Paul Resnikoff.

There is no one actually named Ivan or Alyosha in the Seattle folk-pop act Ivan & Alyosha– the band takes its name from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s epic novel, “The Brothers Karamazov.” For the band’s own work, though, they’ve kept the format a bit more concise, releasing a series of EPs, the latest of which is called “Fathers Be Kind.” They join us in studio for a live performance.

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