Here’s one for the musicians in the crowd: TuneCore and Eventful.com are sponsoring a contest to send one lucky band (up to five people) to the U.K. to record in the ultra-cool Real World studios. This is a pretty posh, state-of-the-art recording facility with all of the dials and knobs one would expect from a world-class studio, including in-house engineers, band living quarters and even an in-house chef. Ooh la la! Check it out here for more details (you do have to register with Eventful and I’ll leave it up to you to read the fine print. Contest ends 10/31/07):

www.tunecore.com/realworld

TuneCore, for those of you who don’t already know, was formed by former SpinART label head Jeff Price, whose indie imprint released great music from folks like the Pixies, Frank Black, Clem Snide, Apples In Stereo, Richard Thompson and others through the years. The company delivers your song downloads to major league digital retailers like iTunes, Napster, Rhapsody, eMusic and even the new Amazon.com mp3 store for a flat fee and the artist collects all of the royalty payments.