Slashdot Mirror

It occured to me nobody mentioned online solutions such as Streamload or MyPlay (great for mp3 storage)..

Too bad iDrive & Freespace.com went offline :(

If you're looking for a locker to store your mp3's online, go to MyPlay.com.They allow 3 gigs of space for your mp3's so you can listen anywhere or backup your library online, granted you don't go over 3 gigs.

RIAA doesn't touch MyPlay.com, which allows ANY MP3 to be stored on its servers, without even checking if it's legit.

Here's my math:

• numbers of total MP3 I have: 102
• number of MP3s I have on MP3.com: 26
• number of MP3s I have on MyPlay.com:76
• number of illegal songs I have on MP3.com: 0
• number of illegal songs I have on MyPlay.com: 76

Yep, RIAA is clueless.

I'd love to know how I could do something similar with Apache for when I'm in Linux instead.
--

Make sure you obey the DMCA Broadcast Rules... "A mix cannot contain more than three tracks from the same album in a three-hour period". Then again, if you're willing to follow the DMCA, just post your mix up on myplay.

Make sure you obey the DMCA Broadcast Rules... "A mix cannot contain more than three tracks from the same album in a three-hour period". Then again, if you're willing to follow the DMCA, just post your mix up on myplay.

These restrictions are arbitrary, needless, and will probably eventually run mp3.com out of business. Since they already have a rip of my CDs, it's not like they're using a log of server space to record that I have 25, 100, or even 10,000 of them. A simple database insert will record everything necessary.

The other restriction of periodically proving your ownership makes it even more useless since you lose all the portability of mp3s. Might as well use Napster or myplay.

Check out my mix.

These restrictions are arbitrary, needless, and will probably eventually run mp3.com out of business. Since they already have a rip of my CDs, it's not like they're using a log of server space to record that I have 25, 100, or even 10,000 of them. A simple database insert will record everything necessary.

The other restriction of periodically proving your ownership makes it even more useless since you lose all the portability of mp3s. Might as well use Napster or myplay.

Check out my mix.

My Map of all NEOs

BBC coverage of these events

My 'Musical Interpretation' of the report ;-)

Now... If only myplay will support vorbis alongside mp3 and windows media....

(Oh - and go and listen to my Downtemp/L eftfield Selection on myplay....)

Now... If only myplay will support vorbis alongside mp3 and windows media....

(Oh - and go and listen to my Downtemp/L eftfield Selection on myplay....)

For example.... it is specified that internet broadcasters cannot 'play a piece of music at a time requested by a user or within one hour of receving such a request' - this leads me to a cunning plan.

If everyone on /. requests all the tracks they don't like - e.g. everythign by the backstreet boys and britney spears. And spams every mail address at internet stations with these requests then they *won't* be able to play any of these. Leaving their broadcasting time free for good music like 'The Who' or this Fine selection of dance music which I've put together.

Plus there's the album sequencing rules which can tend to stifle creativity.... all this ends up doing is forcing people to change the names in their advertised playlists and no longer giving the real artists credit..

But if you want real proof the these rules are a load of bollocks - go on napster and search for 'Essential Mix' - you'll probably get a load of radio shows recorded from good old FM radio. Why bother recording from low quality, encrypted streams when it's jst as easy to get someone in the UK to record it for you....

Trying to display all my tracks basically means rendering a *huge* table - 1000+ rows with gifs and links on every one.

Netscape needs abotu 256megs of memory and takes 10 minutes to do it - this is one of the reasons I'm waiting for mozilla to be able to do it (IE handles it perfectly - shame on us).

Mozilla used to be able to do it. - but the latest build dies :-( Maybe it's just because I keep adding stuff to my collection and the test is getting harder - oh well.

I can imagine some people here saying that the myplay locker design is stupid because it renders everything in one big table (well - the default is only 15 items). But you have to keep in mind that the browser from the evil empire handles it perfectly well - so shouldn't we be able to do a bit better. Arrrgghhh it's so tempting to take a look at this code myself.... as if I have any spare time...

(Why don't you go listen to some of my stuff while you're here - go on - you know that a slashdotter should be number 1. ;-)

Myplay.com basically offers the same online storage of mp3 (and other formats) as my.mp3.com, they launched their site with the PR pitch of "Your Music, Anytime, Anywhere" - doesn't that remind you of anything?? The PR pitch used by my.mp3.com was "Anywhere, Anytime". I Imagine if myplay had patented the 'online music locker' concept and had sued mp3.com you'd all have lined up alongside mp3.com in response.....

mp3.com are hardly known for innovation - a 5 billion dollar domain name looking for a business plan.

Myplay lets you use your own, mp3s, and it has a loot more features (public playlists). It does mean you need to upload, but that's the price you pay for abiding by the law. If I were myplay I'd be looking at how to do the beam-it system legally - which probably means a lot of deals with a lot of record companies. But those same companies are suing mp3.com - I'd i9magine a legitimate version of Beam-It Would make their case against mp3.com even stronger...

It seems to me that by bringing all these mp3.s together in one place myplay is doing a certain amount to 'control' this culture in the name of the record companies, I'd guess that they pay some sort of RIAA licensing so that the artists are in fact making money. mp3 as a format doesn't have controls, so all those controlsh ave to lie in the services.

So - give some respect to the real innovators here.......

The sound you hear is the RIAA sharpening their knives, while they turn their gaze to myplay.com.

my.mp3.com is basically requiring you to present evidence that you own a CD and then they are giving you mp3's of that CD so that yuou can play them.

Myplay.com instead lets you upload mp3's, so intead of 'beaming' your CD, you're ripping the CD (at whatever quality you like) and adding them to your myplay locaker.

Now - in the end the results are the same, but legally there's enough of a difference that mp3.com was breaking the law while myplay wasn't. If myplay were breaking the law then I presume that they'd have been taken to court first since they've been offering their locker service for a lot longer than my.mp3.com.

But then again - maybe I'm jsut defending them because I like the way I can put up tracks by obscure artists which mp3.com would never acquire (e.g. for vinyl only tracks). Or maybe it's they way they support linux and use software like icecast for streaming.....

or maybe it's because you can go there and listen to my current playlist. Downtempo, Leftfield and other words - go on - you know it deservers to be number 1.

:-)

my.mp3.com is basically requiring you to present evidence that you own a CD and then they are giving you mp3's of that CD so that yuou can play them.

Myplay.com instead lets you upload mp3's, so intead of 'beaming' your CD, you're ripping the CD (at whatever quality you like) and adding them to your myplay locaker.

Now - in the end the results are the same, but legally there's enough of a difference that mp3.com was breaking the law while myplay wasn't. If myplay were breaking the law then I presume that they'd have been taken to court first since they've been offering their locker service for a lot longer than my.mp3.com.

But then again - maybe I'm jsut defending them because I like the way I can put up tracks by obscure artists which mp3.com would never acquire (e.g. for vinyl only tracks). Or maybe it's they way they support linux and use software like icecast for streaming.....

or maybe it's because you can go there and listen to my current playlist. Downtempo, Leftfield and other words - go on - you know it deservers to be number 1.

:-)

Nowadays though, I'd suggest you use Icecast + Liveice - there are a few websites already doing this. But - as the author of Liveice I must admit that my documentation sucks, so if you have any problems then I'm always available for answers. Somtimes I even do hacks to order.

Liveice supports Soundcard Input, as well as multichannel mixing of mp3/wav/whatever. It can run as daemon and also supports almost every encoder available for linux. It also permits you to stream the same input at multiple bitrates - something which is probably essential if you're to cater for everyone. I've also got a plugin for xmms, but since there's no line in input plugin it's not so much use for live stuff just yet.

One major bit of advice I give to everyone - Get the latest version from my web page.

I'm terrible with CVS which is why most of my changes/improvements aren't in the tarballs/CVS on iceacst.org - one day when I have time to clean it up for a proper release.

(And while you're at it - why not listen to my latest selection of Scottish Music)

This basically is supposed to let you make up a 'compilation tape' of mp3's which you want everyone to listen to, a mini radio show of your favourite tracks.

Of course, because of the DMCA broadcasting/sequencing rules myplay has to check and 'approve' your selection before it can be legally made available. Some poor programmer has had to go and code up a DMCA compliance checker. You can't go and put up the complete 'Dark Side Of The Moon', at least not without cheating.

Personally, I've never come close to infringing these sequencing rules, I think the idea is to have fun with the mixing - if you can't come up with more interesting sequencnig than the original then what's the point? BUT! I don't like any rules like this, even if it does help keep the playlists more interesting......

(go on - try my playlist - DMCA Approved).

This basically is supposed to let you make up a 'compilation tape' of mp3's which you want everyone to listen to, a mini radio show of your favourite tracks.

Of course, because of the DMCA broadcasting/sequencing rules myplay has to check and 'approve' your selection before it can be legally made available. Some poor programmer has had to go and code up a DMCA compliance checker. You can't go and put up the complete 'Dark Side Of The Moon', at least not without cheating.

Personally, I've never come close to infringing these sequencing rules, I think the idea is to have fun with the mixing - if you can't come up with more interesting sequencnig than the original then what's the point? BUT! I don't like any rules like this, even if it does help keep the playlists more interesting......

(go on - try my playlist - DMCA Approved).

A simple re-implementation that would fall under the bounds of the law would have the first person to pop a CD in automatically encode and upload the result to the server; later users would just upload the "compressed" (verification) information to gain access. Note that under this scheme everybody gets access to all of their music, unlike the "Gee, I hope they have it scheme" that is the first incarnation of my.mp3.com...

It's interesting to note that myplay (whom I've worked with) is forcing the actual upload of bits to a locker; they could transition to such a strategy as mentioned above and fall within legal bounds.

The main problem is that of the proxy. Is MP3.com allowed to make copies on behalf of customers? The service that they provide is fundamentally compelling, and IMHO not damaging to any CD owners. In this way, I believe that they fall under the bounds of the intent of the law, while failing the letter thereof.

As regards the security issue, it was brought up in the "DVD CCA vs. John Does" case that inadequate security is not an open invitation to break it, nor can it be counted as a facilitating mechanism; so that argument is moot.

David E. Weekly (dew, Think)

They only have Windows & Mac versions of the 'upload' software, but you can play the m3u playlists with any MP3 player, whether Linux, Be or OS X, as long as it can cope with the long URLs they use. This is good for me as I can 'beam' the CDs in from home, and play them at work, without taking them in and possibly losing them.

Note that the URLs for individual tracks expire after an hour, and then they play you a speech message saying "go and make a new playlist". They weren't smart enough to offset the expiration window by the duration of each track, so you can't play an indefinite playlist. They also forgot the 'shuffle' button.
However this does mean you have an hour to download the MP3s they have of your CD, which (assuming you have a good connection) is significantly faster than ripping them yourself.

I suspect CmdrTaco's scripts are more like myplay.com, which is a similar legal MP3 repository, but requires you to do your own ripping.

Oddly enough I posted this story last week but Slashdot ignored it..... Perhaps because I pointed out that the whole site is an exact carbon copy (check some of the html and layouts) of Myplay.com.

Myplay have been offering an online storage system like this for free for the last 4 months and they don't force you to use their technology, or limit you to streaming only.

So - for all you Unix users who don't want to cart a CD selection back and forth here's an online music HOWTO

(1) Get CD Paraoia or cdda2wav
(2) get LAME
( You can also get GRIP - that's a fancy GUI system that uses GTK - nice and easy)
(3) Extract your favourte CD audio to .wav files
(4) encode .wav files to .mp3 files using LAME
(5) Delete the .wav files

then....
(6) Get XMMS
(7) Listen to your funky mp3's


Now for the anytime/anywhere part....
(8) go to Myplay.com
(9) Get an account (they're free)
(10) upload your chosen tracks
(11) Listen to them wherever you go


okokok but there's more

If you want to show off your music taste you can assemble your favourite tracks into public playlists which anybody can listen to - so it's like creating a radio show. (they use icecast for this BTW)

Plus they've also got a few free tracks, both from themselves and from affiliates like emusic.com....


SO.... my.mp3.com is not Innovative... it's a copy.

So - why isn't myplay in the related links box?

Oddly enough I posted this story last week but Slashdot ignored it..... Perhaps because I pointed out that the whole site is an exact carbon copy (check some of the html and layouts) of Myplay.com.

Myplay have been offering an online storage system like this for free for the last 4 months and they don't force you to use their technology, or limit you to streaming only.

So - for all you Unix users who don't want to cart a CD selection back and forth here's an online music HOWTO

(1) Get CD Paraoia or cdda2wav
(2) get LAME
( You can also get GRIP - that's a fancy GUI system that uses GTK - nice and easy)
(3) Extract your favourte CD audio to .wav files
(4) encode .wav files to .mp3 files using LAME
(5) Delete the .wav files

then....
(6) Get XMMS
(7) Listen to your funky mp3's


Now for the anytime/anywhere part....
(8) go to Myplay.com
(9) Get an account (they're free)
(10) upload your chosen tracks
(11) Listen to them wherever you go


okokok but there's more

If you want to show off your music taste you can assemble your favourite tracks into public playlists which anybody can listen to - so it's like creating a radio show. (they use icecast for this BTW)

Plus they've also got a few free tracks, both from themselves and from affiliates like emusic.com....


SO.... my.mp3.com is not Innovative... it's a copy.

So - why isn't myplay in the related links box?

Beam It was put together for my.mp3.com which is a straight rip off of myplay.com.

Of course myplay have had linux support from Day one.