Starting in the early 1990s, Thomas Dolby spent more than a decade out of the music business, building his company Beatnik from a MIDI synthesizer and web audio firm into the world’s leading provider of polyphonic mobile phone ringtones. Now he’s back recording and touring, and says he’s like the Austin Powers of the music industry, unfrozen and amazed at the new opportunities.

On Saturday, November 11, 2006, he gave a wide-ranging talk at the Music Tech Summit I attended in Seattle. The event was organized by the Pacific Northwest chapter of the Recording Academy (grammy.com), the organization best known for putting on the Grammy awards each year.

This is the 42-minute audio (download the MP3 file directly if you like) of his presentation. An eight-minute edited version appears in episode #28 of Inside Home Recording, the podcast I co-host.