There's a new music craze sweeping the web

Every now and then someone in the computer industry decides that something that is very difficult and requires significant training and experience should be massively simplified to the point that anyone can do it.

Music seems to be a popular difficult thing to tackle.

A few years ago Apple tried with Garageband. Apple call this component of their iLife suite "your own recording studio".

Now Microsoft are at it with Songsmith. The idea is simple, select a style, sing into the computer and the software will create a backing track. Instant music! No doubt Microsoft hope to see Youtube filling up with Songsmith records created by budding musicians, but it looks like the jokers are beating them to it.

There's now a growing collection of Songsmith tracks on Youtube where cunning artists have extracted classic vocal tracks and told Songsmith to create the new backing track. I think this version of Wonderwall is my favourite so far.