At the tail end of last summer indie record label and promoter Popfrenzy toured a bunch of overseas acts and got them all together for a boat trip round Sydney Harbour.

One of those acts was The Gossip, a band i’d never heard of at the time. So when it was their turn to play, i remember i was still sitting out on the deck of the boat, chatting with friends watching the sun go down. But i couldn’t ignore the almighty wailing going on indoors, so headed inside for a look.

I made my way to the front, to discover a guitar and drum combo fronted by a large woman with a huge powerful voice. For a no frills punk band, they had a surprising groove, but the standout was definitely frontwoman Beth Ditto, with a raw soul diva’s voice. I was well impressed.

The Gossip have inspired some of the so-hot-right-now remixers to rejig their tunes for the dancefloor. Here’s some samples from various mp3 blogs:

• Standing in the Way of Control (Soulwax remix)
• Standing in the Way of Control (Original mix)
• Listen Up! (MSTRKRFT remix)
• Listen Up! (A Touch of Class remix)

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Last week Microsoft unveiled details of it’s iPod competitor, Zune. If you’re a reader of music blogs it would have been hard to miss the announcement as Stereogum, Coolfer, My Old Kentucky Blog, 3hive and Music for Robots all gave the product in-depth editorial coverage on their blogs.

That’s largely because Microsoft flew them, all expenses paid, to Microsoft HQ in Seattle to have an exclusive look at the Zune and be briefed on it by Microsoft staff.

It was a press junket in the traditional sense, where journalists are wined and dined by a company, in return for coverage in the media. Coverage that is unavoidably tainted by the circumstances in which it was gathered.

It’s happened for decades in traditional media, but it’s a PR technique that hasn’t been exploited that much in blogging circles until now. It was inevitable really, because from a company’s view its a technique that pays off in spades.

The coverage in blogs isn’t just a regular ad that people are attuned to ignoring, it’s editorial in the trusted voice of the blogger. Plus by the nature of blogs, coverage in one blog invariably leads to coverage in a network of others. Get a link from influence leaders like Stereogum or Music for Robots and you can be assured that link will be reposted exponentially down the line of other bloggers.

With blogs getting serious traffic, especially from affluent young gadget and music freaks, it’s an audience that marketers should rightly be lusting after.

On a much smaller scale you saw something similar happen here in Sydney last week. A handful of music bloggers, myself included, invited for free to a gig. The free entry (and good show) was in kind repaid by coverage on blogs (see here, here, here, here and here). There’s no sneaky backroom deals struck, it’s just the nature of things, when someone does you a favour you feel obligated to return it.

I’m not claiming to be holier than thou in this regard. If a company wanted to fly me somewhere or give me free tickets or camera gear or whatever i’d have trouble saying no. And why should i? If i’m open about the arrangement, it could be good fodder for the blog. But it’s a slippery slope, where you can lose your reputation and be tarnished as a corporate shill.

I think it’s important to mark a turning point that’s happened with music blogs, the naivety has been lost and readers need to question in the back of their mind the objectivity of the blogger. It probably happened a long time ago, but this Zune thing has brought it into the open.

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• The Gossip remixes
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